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Apple has been pushing to get its phones into the hands of the masses, particularly those in the low-end market looking to make their first smartphone purchase. That initiative takes on a new direction today as Cricket Wireless announced it would be selling the iPhone 4 and 4S prepaid for the first time.

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For all the ruckus raised by security software vendors, it’s unclear whether the Flame malware, which has mainly hit computers in Iran, is a cause for major concern or something of a dud. Yes, it has been around for several years and has hit computers in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But its total tally is about 1,000 or so infected systems.

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UK carriers often like to elbow their way into the limelight when a rival’s getting some attention. This time, Vodafone‘s cutting into Orange’s Intel excitement with the Smart II; an update to its wallet-happy Android device from 2011. The UK carrier even let us get some hands-on time with the pebble-sized phone. While the specifications (800MHz processor, 3.2-inch screen) aren’t going to wow, at £70 (around $109) it could reel in plenty of feature phone graduates. Check out a brief hands-on video and our own impressions right after the break.

Continue reading Vodafone UK launches Smart II: Android Gingerbread for £70 (hands-on)

Vodafone UK launches Smart II: Android Gingerbread for £70 (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 May 2012 11:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like webOS isn’t going quietly into the mobile OS retirement home. While its journey to open-source continues, an eager cabal of developers, fans and designers have decided to reignite the ill-fated operating system under the banner of Phoenix International Communications. Focusing its efforts on transporting open webOS to existing devices, both HP-made and otherwise, Phoenix also wants throw in some new features and fixes — presumably throwing in some extra software gems and UI tweaks. If it all goes to plan, the organization even wants to bring new webOS devices to market — a heady dream, but you’ve got to admire their pluck. Any webOS devotees out there can pledge their allegiance (and assistance) to the cause at the source below.

Phoenix project wants to rise from the ashes of webOS with open source wings originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 May 2012 17:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Privacy guidelines such as the “Do Not Track” option proposed by the Federal Trade Commission does not necessarily mean the end of the kind of targeted online ads that have brought such riches to web companies over the past decade. In fact, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz says, more privacy on the Internet could actually bring the industry much more money that it attracts now.

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Selling Apple prototypes is tricky business. There’s always the chance that Apple will shut it down and ask for the device back. The seller of the dual-dock iPad prototype knew this when he posted his Ebay auction. “I wasn’t expecting the auction to finish, I was expecting Apple to take it down.”

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The war on drugs has a new front, and so far it appears to be a losing one. More »

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Sergey Brin has once again hit the town with Project Glass — but this time he let someone else wear Google’s augmented reality headset. California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom wore the specs on his own talk show — and told Wired all about it.

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I’m getting fat; that’s what you see on the screenshot to the right — my gradual move from chubby to portly. But never mind the numbers, look at the pretty graph!

If you’ve ever read The Hacker’s Diet, this graph should be instantly recognizable. Each point shows the weight for a given day, while the trend line lets you see if you’re gaining or losing weight.

When I use my “main” PC, I have a homebrew solution for creating and maintaining this graph. But I’ve had to find a temporary solution for Android, and Libra is it.

It’s a beautifully simple app, very true to the spirit of The Hacker’s Diet. You can create a shortcut on your homescreen that brings you right into the data entry screen, so you just tap the shortcut every morning, feed in your weight for the day and hit OK, and then you get to see your progress (or lack thereof) on the graph.

The app remembers the previous day’s weigh-in, which makes it easy to enter today’s weight (as they’re usually not too different). The graph is zoomable and scrollable, and most importantly, you can export the data to CSV so you’re not locked into the app.

If you ever need to track your weight using an Android device for any period of time, Libra is one excellent solution.

Libra for Android helps you track your weight using The Hacker’s Diet system originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yes, that’s right, I said adorable. Because Cueboy Quest really is!

You play an 8-bit cowboy whose goal on each level is to get to the door (and thus to the next level), but the door is often locked. To get it to open, you must shoot at one or more targets, and those targets aren’t always in your line of sight. For example, on one level the the target is a balloon which is stuck all the way at the other end of the screen. You must first nudge it free, and then watch it float up and try to shoot it before it floats clear off the screen. Your bullets are chunky pixels that have some weight – the have arcing trajectories, so you don’t always hit exactly where you aim.

There’s another level where you must jump on the balloon as it floats up, use it as a platform to get to the other end of the screen, and then turn to shoot it very quickly before it flies away. Each level is very short, and most of them are quite easy. And not only are the graphics 8-bit blocky, but they’re large too. Simply beautiful!

Cueboy Quest is an adorable 8-bit style physics game originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At the release of the iPad 2, Apple also brought out its Smart Cover product, which quickly became a favorite. Although the new iPad 3 is a little thicker through the middle than the iPad 2 (due to a bigger battery), it is still compatible with the previous Smart Covers that are currently for sale. This is excellent news as the Smart Cover not only protects the iPad screen from scratches and scrapes but is also functional and practical, and [...]

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The economic downturn of the last few years hit few cities as hard as Detroit. Still, the city has recently become somewhat of a startup hub in its own right and today Ford Global Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford Motor Company that manages Ford’s intellectual property portfolio, announced that it is opening a showroom for “innovators to show off their creations to peers and potential customers.” This Motor City Innovation Exchange will be open to anyone, as a Ford spokesperson told us earlier today. The goal here is to build a marketplace for licensing technological innovation from local startups across and beyond the auto industry. The public will be able to visit and browse the technologies on display and anyone who participates (including startups, established companies, universities and individuals) can license their inventions.

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Many of us use gadgets that sport gleamingly refined, anodized aluminum or titanium cases — but have you ever wondered exactly how the process works? Bill Hammack, at it again after explaining to us how the CCD, LCDs, and hard drives work, breaks it down (pun intended) for us — in less than five minutes. He talks about, and even shows us how the surface of titanium is meticulously rusted using electro-chemicals to grow an oxide layer, changing the color based on its thickness. He follows that up with some commentary on how a similar reaction gobbles up and transforms aluminum, creating a much thicker, porous oxide layer that can be filled with any color dye. So, just to be clear: controlled corrosion is good for your Mac, border control — maybe not so much. You can watch the video right after the break.

Continue reading Anodizing aluminum and titanium explained and demonstrated in less than five minutes (video)

Anodizing aluminum and titanium explained and demonstrated in less than five minutes (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 May 2012 00:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Less than 24 hours after winning a crucial decision regarding evidence disclosure, MegaUpload’s legal team is going for the jugular—filing a motion to dismiss in District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. More »

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We all know the coffee shop WiFi routine: crack open the laptop, visit a splash page, and dutifully wait until you’re logged in before you get to Twitter. Through a new deal between Intel and DeviceScape, you won’t even have to think about it. Intel’s Smart Connect tool will soon automatically sign in your Ultrabook to a curated list of quality, open WiFi hotspots, even if the PC is fast asleep. This last trick might need Windows 8′s Connected Standby mode to live up to Intel’s expectations, but the dream is to have your email and social feeds updated and waiting before that laptop or tablet screen has even blinked into life. Intel is leaving some gaps in the story, such as whether or not gadget owners will pay a premium for the fast access. We’d guess that Intel is counting on higher computer (and more importantly, processor) sales to make up the difference.

Intel teams up with DeviceScape for automatic public WiFi, will hook up your Ultrabook in the background originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 May 2012 17:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have lifted a nearly month long blockade of HTC’s two newest smartphones, the One X and the Evo 4G LTE. The two new phones are on the way to retailers.

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Few things scare me more than disk partitioning and GRUB configuration software. Both of those chores involve knowledge about hard drive operations and a good slice of luck. And both can render a computer unbootable with one slight user error. So discovering the latest version of Grub Customizer helped lower my anxiety levels considerably.

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So about that Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE … We know it's cleared Customs, following that pesky International Trade Commission review. And we know preorders have and are still being delivered, but apparently the bulk of the phones are still in transit. Sprint this morning has given us a bit of a non-update update, which reads thusly:

While Sprint customers who pre-ordered their HTC EVO 4G LTE received their device last week, Sprint continues to wait for our full inventory from HTC.

We recently learned that HTC devices have been released by U.S. Customs. We expect shipments of HTC EVO 4G LTE to enter the U.S. in the next few days.  An exact availability date for HTC EVO 4G LTE will be communicated as soon as possible.

We’ll continue updating this post as we have new information to share.

Thank you everybody for your interest and continued patience.

So in-store availability is still up in the air. Soon as we know something, you will, too.

Source: Sprint; More: EVO 4G LTE forums

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We originally reported on SPDY way back in November 2009, when Google introduced it as yet another experiment in making the Web faster, like Go, Native Client and speculative pre-connections. Over the last 18 months, though, SPDY support has found its way into the stable build of Chrome.

SPDY is basically a streamlined and more efficient version of HTTP. At its most basic, SPDY introduces parallel, multiplexed streams over a single TCP connection — but at the same time, SPDY allows for prioritization, so that vital content (HTML) can be sent before periphery content (JavaScript, video). All in all, the SPDY protocol can halve page load times, which is obviously rather significant.

The best bit, though, is that SPDY is an open-source project. HTTP 1.1 is a lumbering beast that needs to be replaced before low-latency real-time computing really becomes a reality, and SPDY is one of the best options currently on the table. To be honest, we’re not sure why SPDY hasn’t received more coverage — it’s awesome in every way. At the moment, though, the only way to help speed up SPDY’s proliferation, is with an experimental Apache mod.

As far as actually ‘trying it out,’ your best bet is downloading Chrome, hitting up some Google sites, and then checking chrome://net-internals to see your active SPDY sessions. SPDY is a transparent replacement for HTTP, though, and as such it’s rather hard to see its effects. Google’s sites definitely feel fast in Chrome, but there are more technologies than just SPDY at work.

Google Chrome now uses SPDY HTTP replacement, halves page load time originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you were underwhelmed by the middling specs of Sony’s past toughphones, you might want to take a look at the latest pair to join the 2012 Xperia family. First up, the Xperia go houses a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 display with a dual-core 1GHz processor, powering the (unfortunately still) Gingerbread interface. Sony has reiterated that Android 4.0 will find its way to both new devices. The Xperia go also throws in a 5-megapixel camera and the same wet finger tracking seen on the Xperia Active, which will mean the phone can be steered during underwater adventures. You be able to pick from white, black and yellow color options when the phone arrives in Q3 this year.

The Xperia acro S bumps the screen resolution up to 720p, slathered across a 4.3-inch surface, alongside a 12-megapixel camera and dedicated shutter button. It appears to be the global version of the Japan-only Xperia acro HD and arrives PlayStation-certified. Like the Xperia go, it totes IP55 and IP57 ratings for dust and water resistance, plus NFC capability of Sony’s SmartTags. The Xperia acro S will land in black, white and pink color options — but we’re still waiting to hear more precise availability details. Video tours for both handsets are right after the break.

Update: We’ve been told that the Xperia go will launch as the Xperia advance in the US — but dates and prices remain a mystery.

Continue reading Sony announces Xperia Go and Xperia acro S: waterproof and dual-core (video)

Sony announces Xperia Go and Xperia acro S: waterproof and dual-core (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 May 2012 04:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SoftBank’s Pantone 5 107SH is the world’s first phone with a built-in geiger counter, capable of measuring radiation levels within 20 percent accuracy.

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The May 29 ShopAndroid.com Deal of the Day is the Incipio Feather Ultralight Hard Shell Case for HTC Inspire 4G. The Feather Case is made of an ultra light, ultra strong polymer that's light as a feather and form-fitted for durable protection without the added bulk. It features a soft touch matte finish and measures less than 1mm thin. Comes in black, magenta, red, and purple.

The Incipio Feather Ultralight Case is available for just $9.95 today only, 60% off the regular price.  Pick yours up while supplies last!

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While we’ve still yet to see anything truly Earth-shattering, the tandem of Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott continues to churn out insight about interesting new features they’ve discovered in Windows 8 milestone 3. The latest discovery is that Aero in Windows 8 will be able to automatically adapt itself to match your current wallpaper image. It’s a bit like what Windows 7 already does with your taskbar icons: if a program alert needs your attention, the icon will glow using the predominant color (e.g. Firefox should glow orange).

And yes, you can already make Windows 7 behave this way if you like. Over at CodePlex, there’s a little program called Aura that parks itself in your system tray and automatically adjusts your window borders to compliment your wallpaper images. The effect is quite nice, and you can try it out by minimizing your windows and cycling through your theme’s wallpapers (right click on your desktop and choose next desktop background).

Windows 8 to feature adaptive Aero colorization, get it now on Windows 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After last weekend’s delayed launch, the Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX blasted off Tuesday, carrying the unmanned Dragon capsule into low-Earth orbit.While the launch itself could have been considered breathtaking, there will be more “hold your breath” moments ahead. The next one will come on Thursday when the craft is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station.

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