Sobering drama about a poor Albanian woman living in Belgium and trying to keep her head above water in hard times.
Google Opens an Online Storefront For Android Phones [Android]
Since launch, Android has descended into a confusing soup of hardware manufacturers, carriers and software versions, while Google has watched, helplessly. Starting today, they're taking Android back: Google's selling Android phones through a unified store, starting with the Nexus One.
Aside from the best-in-class hardware, the potential for newness with the Nexus One was centered around how they'd sell it. And they have taken a fresh approach with the Nexus One, to an extent: This is the first Android phone sold directly by Google, which is rare in the US. They've opened a new store, from which they plan to sell Android phones from a variety of carriers and manufacturers—Verizon is up next, presumably with the Droid—and which will serve as a single, unified storefront for basically every Android phone on the market. It'll be a way for people who want to buy one of those "google phones" they've heard about—by which they mean an Android phone—from a storefront that lets them compare not just hardware, but carrier and pricing options.
On its own, Google.com/phone isn't a game-changer, but its a sign that Google's aware of how fragmentation—not just in software, but in brand identity—could pull Android down, and that they're willing to do something about it.
Apple and Verizon Disagreeing on CDMA iPhone Pricing, Analyst Says [Rumor]
Shockingly enough, analyst Maynard J. Um "expects" a new iPhone launching in mid-2010. See, this guy is so smart that we must trust him when he says that he "believes" that a CDMA-based iPhone is coming from Verizon, right? RIGHT?
We believe a CDMA-iPhone is also in the works, though believe Verizon Wireless and Apple may currently be apart on pricing.
When he says "We" he refers to him and the Queen of England. I guess that Verizon's customers are really waiting for this to happen, but other analysts are calling all this wishful thinking. While we wait to see if he is right or not, I would be polishing my
The Google Phone Is Here: $180 on Contract, $530 Unlocked [Google]
Sorry guys, Google's not changing the game today: the Nexus One will be priced like any other smartphone: $180 on contract with T-Mobile, $530 unlocked, both available through Google's online store. It's what we'd heard, not what we'd dreamt.
Google handed the Nexus One out to employees weeks ago, and we even had a change to play with one—in other words, little was left to mystery with the Nexus One, as phone. As a product, though, it had potential: Google's a cash-rich company with a habit of giving things away for free, so... free phone? A subisidized, no-contract phone? A Google telco company? Ha, nope. But still, it's a hell of a phone at a competitive price, so that's worth something. [Google]
Google Earth Is Finally Coming To Android [Nexus One]
The Nexus One is here, and it brings gifts: Google Earth, a fantastic app that was inexplicably released for the iPhone before its parent company's mobile OS, is coming to the App Market.
So how is it better than Google Earth on the iPhone? Voice search. Just say where you want to go. And we're betting the whole experience is a bit smoother thanks to the Nexus One's oomphier internals.
Who Needs DNA? Prions Evolve Without It | 80beats
For evolution to take place, you need DNA or RNA to change through mutation, providing the variations for natural selection to select. Right? Well, it may be more complicated than that. A new study suggests an exception: prions, the infectious protein bits that can cause degenerative brain diseases like mad cow disease. In a paper in Science, researchers document these lifeless structures evolving, despite the fact that they lack any DNA or RNA.
Study leader Charles Weissmann and his team transferred prions from brain cells to other kinds of cells and watched as certain members of the prion population adapted to the new environment and took over, out-competing their brethren. When he transferred the prions back to brain cells, the ones most adapted to brain living got the upper hand and increased in number as they out-competed the prions that had adapted to other cells. Weissmann argues that this shows Darwinian evolution can go even further than we thought: “In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. Now, this adaptability has moved one level down- to prions and protein folding – and it’s clear that you do not need nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) for the process of evolution” [BBC News].
In diseases like mad cow and the human version of it, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, proteins in the brain go awry. Mammals produce the normal protein cousins of infectious prions as part of normal cell development, but during infection, misfolded or warped proteins can convert normal host prion protein into its own toxic, misfolded form. When this happens enough times, massive tissue and cell damage can occur [Popular Science].
This pattern of warping proteins could be the key to how this DNA-less evolution occurs, the researchers propose. When a prion converts a normal protein, it typically forces it into the same structure as itself, but at a low probability, other variant structures result. The population of these variants can then expand or contract based on selective pressures [Ars Technica]. This appears to happen more quickly when the prions are transferred to a new host, as happened in previous research when scientists moved prions from sheep to mice—the more virulent variants got a chance to take hold.
Given the problems today with bacteria and viruses evolving drug resistance, the idea of evolving prions seems like more bad news. But, taking a note from DISCOVER blogger Carl Zimmer’s “Evolving Viruses to Death,” perhaps doctors could use prions’ strength against them: Since infectious prions need their normal cousins to feed their own replication and evolution, therapies that limit the supply of normal prion proteins could essentially starve the degenerative cycle that makes those illnesses so effective at killing their hosts [Popular Science].
Related Content:
80beats: Ripped From the Journals, including a Nature study fingering prions from spreading chronic wasting disease in deer.
The Loom: Return of Mad Cow Memories
DISCOVER: When Bad Prions Go Good
DISCOVER: Prionlike Protein Help Form Memories
DISCOVER: Picturing Prions
Image: Eye of Science / Science Photo Library
Light Writing Proposal Created With Two Canon 7Ds, a Spotlight and a Lot of Love [Cameras]
Well now, this certainly puts my fiance's restaurant proposal to shame. Boy Derick proposed to girl Emily using a spotlight, DSLR and three nights, creating a spectacular light writing proposal.
Along with several friends, two Canon 7D cameras were used by Derick to create the proposal—one on the ground, one from a hotel room looking out across the scene—with the ground camera using a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Dragon Stop Motion was used to superimpose the light writing image over the live view from the ground camera, with the video shown a few days later to the happy Emily. [Derick and Emily proposal via Neatorama]
Pico Projector From Light Blue Optics Throws Up a 10-inch Touchscreen Laser Projection [Projector]
Light Blue Optics has been showing off their cool projection wares since 2004, so it's great to hear they're close to turning that "holographic laser projection technology" into a viable product, albeit as an OEM.
The Light Touch pico projector throws a laser WVGA image out to the size of 10-inches, turning any available surface into a touchscreen. The angle is a pretty decent wide throw, which means the projector can be quite close to the surface.
Running on Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, the Light Touch projector has 2GB of flash memory and a microSD card slot (with support up to 32GB) for storing media on, and also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for hooking up with a laptop or device. It supposedly has a 2 hour battery life, which unfortunately seems to be the norm with these little projectors, though kudos to Light Blue Optics for throwing in a bunch of other features that could make this actually useful, for consumers as well as businesses (as the pic below shows). [Light Blue Optics via BusinessWire]
Social Network for Beautiful People Kicks Out 5,000 “Fatties” | Discoblog
The elite online dating club BeautifulPeople.com (yes, this is a real Web site), trimmed 5,000 members from its service because they appear to have indulged in too much Christmas ham.
Feast your eyes on this excerpt from the company’s statement, via CNN:
“As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld,” said Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”
Publicity stunt? Probably. Shocking? Hardly. When vain folks sign up for a service so they can be rated by a group of narcissistic pretty people this is bound to happen.
If you’re one of the expelled 5,000, don’t let this get you down. The company says you’re welcome to reapply—after the love handles are gone, of course.
Related Content:
Discoblog: New Theory: Plastic Can Make You Fat?
Discoblog: Fighting Child Obesity, One Bake Sale at a Time
Discoblog: Researchers Discover How Ice Cream Controls Your Brain
Image: Beautifulpeople.com
What Is This? [Imagecache]
Hint: it's not from space and it's not from inside your body. But it does represent something you're totally reliant on.
It's an electrograph of a brass wire gauge, made in 1900 to help show the wary public that electricity didn't come in just the form of tree-felling and fire-starting lightning. Scientists needed to prove that it was a safe thing to allow into their homes, and that involved visualizing electromagnetic waves in a way that the public could understand. This was one of the ways they did it. It just happens to look pretty awesome. [Wired; Photo courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]
Google Nexus One Liveblog [Liveblog]
Google's Nexus One: The Google Phone. It's being unveiled officially right now. We're here. Here's our liveblog page.
Check in bright and early to see what's coming, and see whether the leaked pricing details are really true, and whether anything's changed since our first hands on back in December. [Liveblog Page]
Watch it live here:
Loss | Cosmic Variance
I am heartbroken to learn the loss of a member of the physics community in the recent avalanche in Switzerland. I have few details, but it appears that Thomas Binoth was killed in the avalanche, and that at least two other physicists and astrophysicists from the party have been hospitalized. Many others were lost, including some of the rescuers, who were swept up in a second avalanche.
Condolences to all who have been affected by this tragedy.
Nvidia Optimus the Secret to the New MacBook Guts? [Notebooks]
Nvidia's teasing a new notebook tech called Optimus that "get[s] the performance of discrete graphics from a notebook while still delivering great battery life." Which could solve the mystery of the next MacBook guts.
A brief recap: Intel's new Arrandale Core i5 processors for notebooks have integrated graphics built right into the chip, but they suck, and Nvidia's chipsets with superior integrated graphics, like the current MacBooks have, are incompatible with all of Intel's new chips. So if refreshed MacBooks were to use Intel's integrated graphics, they'd have worse graphics than the current models.
The top-end MacBook Pros have switchable graphics and have had them since the unibody debuted—integrated GeForce 9400M to save battery life, discrete GeForce 9600 GT for more power. Nvidia's Optimus, if it's good, seems to open a door for Apple to use straight-up discrete graphics, like older MacBook Pros (and even PowerBooks), without seriously harming the massive battery life that's a big part of the current MacBook Pros—maintaining graphics performance and battery life without some kind of custom hardware arrangement.
And it wouldn't be the first time Nvidia's debuted new tech with Apple, since that was exactly the case with the GeForce 9400M chipset/graphics that's in almost all of Apple's current machines, which you might also know as Ion, Nvidia's better-graphics-for-netbooks chip.
My guess is that it's simply scalable performance, trading off battery and performance as efficiently as possible. Guess we'll see, and know more, in about a month, according to Nvidia. [Nvidia]
Lexar Media Echo SE and ZE: 64GB In a Nail Drive [Memory]
I can't wait to get my nails over one of these absurdly small 64GB USB drives. They come in 8 to 64GB, and will continuously backup your files, no matter what you are doing. [Crunchgear]
iRiver Story Ereader Hits US Shores This Month; Pricing Still a Terrifying Mystery [IRiver]
iRiver's Story eReader has taken its sweet time making a stateside appearance, and as of today, it's still not here. But it's coming! Sometime in January, to be "specific." But will it be as comically expensive as its European counterpart?
Hopefully, no. But probably? Yes. The Story has reviewed fairly well, with testers citing attractive (if obviously derivative) industrial design, ePub support and a decent screen among its strengths, but with a sky-high price tag—the equivalent to $320—more or less pulling it out of the running, especially when cheaper reader like the Kindle and Nook come with 3G and Wi-Fi, the former being excluded on the Story, and the latter not making an appearance until "early Q2," possibly at a premium.
In other words, iRiver: you need to make this thing cheaper, or else it will drown. Ok! [iRiver]
The Viliv N5 Netbook Is One Tiny Step Up From a Smartphone [NetBooks]
The Viliv n5 touchscreen netbook looks a lot like the Vaio P, but let's hope it's not priced like one. Either way, I don't see much of an advantage here over a traditional smartphone.
I mean, it may not be touchscreen like the 4.8-inch Viliv display, but the 8-inch screen on the Vaio P does a little more to distinguish it from a smartphone. Other Viliv features include: an Intel Atom Z520 1.3GHz processor (Windows 7 Home Premium), 32GB of SSD storage, GPS, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, Bluetooth, WiFi and a microSD memory card slot. Personally, I think their upcoming 10-inch Blade netbook tablet looks more promising, although Viliv has been disappointing in the past. [UMPC Portal via Ubergizmo]
Cool Down Your Thighs and Ears With Logitech’s N700 Speaker Lapdesk [Laptops]
Laptop speaker meets laptop fan, in the shape of Logitech's Speaker Lapdesk. The N700 can support up to 16-inch models and is powered solely by USB.
The 2-inch stereo speakers are actually positioned on the outer edges of the lapdesk so you can have a non-tinny musical experience, with the fans on the top half for cooling down your laptop (and your knees). You can actually turn the fan on and off, just in case you're working from the Antarctic one week and actually need the heat to survive.
On sale in February for $80. [Logitech via Macworld]
Sony Walkman A845 Gets Skinny, Lasts Over a Day on One Charge [Sony]
The Sony Walkman A845 is a scant 7.2mm thick and gets a reported 29 hours of audio playback on one charge. It's perfect for the next time you want to listen to Wagner's Ring Cycle in one sitting. Twice.
The A845 also touts an impressive nine hours of video playback on its 2.8-inch OLED display, offers 16GB of storage, and supports WMA, WMV, MP3 files. It can be hooked up to your TV with an optional A/V out cable for SD playback. There's no word yet on pricing, but it will be available at least in Europe next month.
Slimmest ever WALKMAN® is big on sound and picture quality
05 January 2010High-spec WALKMAN® A845 is just 7.2mm thin
· Ultra-slim (only 7.2mm) and easy to carry
· Big, bright 7.1cm (2.8") wide OLED display
· High quality listening with S-Master Digital Amplifier and Digital Clear Audio technologies
· Digital Noise cancelling with supplied NC headphones cancels 98.0% (approx.) of ambient noise*1
· Enjoy SD video playback on connected Televisions*2
· Long audio playback time up to 29 hours*3
· New Battery Care mode for extended battery lifespanJust 7.2mm slim and weighing only 62g (without headphones), the WALKMAN® A845 Video MP3 Player by Sony proves that less really is more. Slipping easily into a back pocket or bag, it's a great way to keep your favourite music tracks, podcasts and videos with you to enjoy any time.
Despite its chic, slender lines, the thinnest WALKMAN® yet is a true heavyweight when it comes to legendary sound and video quality by Sony.
The player's front panel is dominated by a big, bright 7.1cm (2.8") OLED screen. Delivering superb colours, high contrast ratio, wide viewing angle and super-fast response time, it's a great way to enjoy online movie store downloads, clips from sharing sites, album artwork and digital photos. A new Scene Scroll view lets you browse quickly through longer videos that are displayed as a series of thumbnail images. Find the scene you want, press play and the action picks up at the moment you're looking for. You can also scroll through cover art images to effortlessly track down the album you want to hear.
Want an even bigger picture? Connect the WALKMAN® A845 to your television via the optional A/V output cable (WMC-NWV10) and enjoy videos on the big screen. Pictures are delivered to your TV set in SD format (720 x 480) at a silk-smooth 30fps frame rate (excludes some DRM content).
As you'd expect from Sony, it's sheer audio quality that sets the WALKMAN® A845 apart from other MP3 players. S-Master Digital Amplifier technology assures rich, lifelike ultra-low distortion sound. Already featured on Sony hi-fi and home theatre products, S-Master amplification puts you centre-stage in the studio or concert hall while maintaining crisp, clear sound.
Listening is further enhanced with unique Clear Audio technologies from Sony for a dynamic, detail-packed soundstage. Clear Stereo reduces leakage between left and right channels, while Clear Bass delivers powerful, controlled low-end frequencies without distortion. In addition, DSEE Sound Enhancement Technology ensures smooth, detailed reproduction of high-frequency information that's typically lost when the original CD-quality music source is compressed as an MP3 file.
Plug in the high-quality 13.5mm EX vertical in-ear headphones and immerse yourself in a blissful world of beautiful WALKMAN® sound without intrusions. Digital Noise Cancelling cuts approximately 98.0%*1 of ambient sound, using advanced processing to detect and filter external noise without impairing audio quality. Three different profile settings let you enjoy optimised noise reduction, whether you're onboard a plane, bus/train or in the office. With the supplied adaptor, air travellers can connect WALKMAN® directly to the plane's AV system and enjoy their in-flight entertainment with digital noise cancelling provided by WALKMAN®.
Importing music, video, photos and playlists is quick and fuss-free, with simple drag-and-drop transfer from your PC's media folder or via iTunes 9.0 using supplied Content Transfer software. Certain MPEG1 and other downloaded files can be played back on WALKMAN® when converted via Content Transfer. A wide range of major music and video formats are supported, including rights-managed WMA and WMV files.
The WALKMAN® A845 lets you listen for longer, with a generous 29 hours*3 listening time from a single charge. Battery life with video playback is 9 hours*4 - more than enough to keep you entertained on those long journeys. There's also a new optional Battery Care function that optimises overall battery lifespan by limiting charging levels to 90% of maximum. The home menu can be personalised with a choice of pre-installed wallpaper designs. Alternatively, add an individual touch by choosing your own favourite photo as wallpaper.
The WALKMAN® NWZ-A845 Video MP3 Player with 16GB storage capacity is available from February 2010.
Apple Dabbles With a 3D Multitouch UI [Apple]
A recently released patent by Apple shows that they are one of several companies dabbling with the idea of a 3D mulitouch interface. In this case, a "touch screen device, method and graphical user interface for manipulating three-dimensional virtual objects."
Will we see this sort of technology on upcoming Apple products like the tablet? Probably not, but it is interesting to point out that Apple went to some lengths to "disguise" the patent under the names of three obscure French employees. That might be business as usual for Apple, but it could also mean that they are serious about moving beyond standard pinching and zooming. [Baltimore Sun]
Vizio XVT Pro 580CD: Their First 2560×1080 Res, 58-inch 21×9 Cinema Wide TV [TVs]
The Vizio TV I'm most interested in: Their 58-inch 21x9 Cinema Wide TV with a resolution of 2560x1080. Like their other XVT sets, it's got wireless HDMI and built-in Wi-Fi, though is only 120Hz. No price or hard ship date.
58" Cinema Wide Display
Taking a major step forward in enabling viewers to experience a fully immersive widescreen film experience without a separate projector and screen, VIZIO's first Cinema Wide Display, the XVTPRO580CD offers the ultimate experience for the movie enthusiast. This 58" Razor LED display has a 21x9 aspect ratio, with an incredible resolution of 2560 x 1080p, allowing consumers to view 2.35:1 "Scope" aspect ratio films using the entire display area, with no loss of resolution and no black bars. With 1 million to 1 Mega Dynamic Contrast Ratio™, Smart Dimming™, and 120 Hz with Smooth Motion technology, the XVTPRO580CD delivers brilliant details and rich colors to bring the cinematic experience into the home.Its striking wide appearance is further enhanced by its brushed aluminum chassis. The Cinema Wide Display also includes VIA, built-in wireless (802.11n dual-band) or wired networking, and a Bluetooth universal remote control with sliding QWERTY keyboard. It is expected to ship later this year.
[Vizio]
