Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Digitimes is reporting that Apple [AAPL] is currently testing out touchscreen technology for a future generation iMac. We have heard these rumours before although as of yet, nothing has surfaced just yet.
The touchscreens being used in testing are supposedly capacitive panels supplied by Sinek Photronics. [Read more…]
Apple [AAPL] has been granted a patent for a MacBook that has built in multiband cellular technology.
Apple’s Patent Abstract: Antenna window structures and antennas are provided for electronic devices. The electronic devices may be laptop computers or other devices that have conductive housings. Antenna windows can be formed from dielectric members. The dielectric members can have elastomeric properties. An antenna may be mounted inside a conductive housing beneath a dielectric member. The antenna could be formed from a parallel plate waveguide structure. The parallel plate waveguide structure may have a ground plate and a radiator plate and may have dielectric material between the ground and radiator plates. The ground plate can have a primary ground plate portion and a ground strip. The ground strip may reflect radio-frequency signals so that they travel through the dielectric member. The antenna may handle radio-frequency antenna signals in one or more communications bands. The radio-frequency antenna signals pass through the dielectric member.
When uploading photos to Facebook to share with friends, Facebook compresses the images and makes them smaller in size so that they download quicker for users, and take up less resources in regards to server processor, storage and bandwidth usage.
This is changing though as Facebook is about to allow larger images to be uploaded and displayed. Over the next few weeks the service will roll out to users and once active, you’ll be able to upload images with a resolution of 2048 pixels on the largest edge. [Read more…]
The Street View service from Google is expanding around the globe. The next place to get it is Antartica.
From what we can see, it looks like a camera is being carried around rather than driven around and has captured scenery around Antartica of an expedition happening.
Image quality is good and overall its very interesting to see what happens down that way. [Read more…]
Google [GOOG] is launching a new image format called WebP. What WebP does is squashes down the file size of images to make them smaller, hence, a quicker download for users.
The aim of Google is to make the web faster and this is just another step to make this happen. Typically, the webP format can reduce the file size of a JPEG image by about 40% making images a lot smaller in file size. However, with this format, not much changes in image quality with it not really even being noticable. It’s a bonus in both ways for the end user (and webmaster who pays out for bandwidth usage on his hosting account).
Another interesting thing to note is that 65 percent of traffic on the internet is image traffic according to Google. Cut image sizes down by 40% on average and you have a lot of bandwidth savings. [Read more…]
Rumours started back in April about a Dell Streak 7 inch and 10 inch model being launched. Up till now, only the 5 inch model actually made it on sale.
Recently, Michael Dell himself mentioned that a 7 inch tablet was being looked in to although no specifics could be revealed last week when he made the comment. More details of the 7 inch version have now appeared and it seems like a 7 inch model could be landing as early as this month. [Read more…]
With the launch of the Nokia N8 yesterday, one of the big questions about the new smartphone is how it compares to the iPhone 4 in terms of picture quality.
The Nokia N8 has a 12 megapixel sensor with Carl Zeiss optics while the iPhone 4 has a 5 megapixel sensor.
Engadget decided to run a side by side video and picture test to see which performs the best. Naturally you’d think a 12 megapixel camera would be the winner, but surprisingly the results are quite similar. [Read more…]
It was confirmed a few days ago that the SHAttered tool can be used to jailbreak iOS 4.1 that is loaded on to the new generation Apple TV.
A video demonstration of this happening has now been uploaded to YouTube and shows a user logging in to the Apple TV and running commands as root.
SHAtter is a low level exploit that manages to break in to the Apple TV and other iOS 4.1 devices through a hardware issue. What this means is that Apple will not be able to patch the hole unless a new version with modified hardware ships. [Read more…]
We mentioned earlier today that the Nokia N8 had started shipping. SlashGear managed to get hold of one today and have done a mini video review of the new smartphone.
The review goes through a basic unboxing that shows which cables are available along with the manuals, PSU and a quick overview of the phone. Software is demonstrated on the device and shows a number of features such as the video editing software thats built in, along with various other applications that run on the device. [Read more…]
Super Talent has created the CKB USB flash drive that has been designed to attach to your keychain. The reason for creating it was due to the need to carry keys around with you when you leave your home. If a flash drive is attached to them, you’ll never forget to carry it around with you.
Storage capacities for the CKB starts at 2GB and goes all the way up to 32GB. Dimensions of the flash drive reveal it measures 40mm x 25.9mm x 3.7mm making it quite compact. [Read more…]
The Roomba robot vacuum cleaner appears to currently employ a random approach to vacuuming the carpet in a house although we have been informed that its more involved that being just random. In that way, we mean that it does cover every part of the floor a certain amount of times to make sure every square inch is clear.
This new patent though looks to make cleaning the floor even more accurate. It uses external celestial beacons that track Roombas movements across the floor and that data looks to then be used to create a map of the floor and a way to vacuum it. We assume that this will also ensure every inch is vacuumed as well as making it quicker to vacuum the floor. [Read more…]
The BlackBerry Curve 3G and Pearl 3G will soon become available on the AT&T network in the US.
The announcement came from AT&T who said that each of the smartphones would be made available on its 3G network.
Each of the smartphones has social networking access along with access to the BlackBerry App World. Carrier billing is also integrated with App World that allows customers to purchase apps from the store but be billed by AT&T for the download. [Read more…]
