Tech Today w/ Ken May

Google is on a roll this week. It took the tech world by storm with Google+ , freshened up the user interface of Google Calendar and just unleashed a new design for Gmail. More

Jailbreaking unleashes the true potential of iOS. That’s an undeniable fact, people. But in order to squeeze every bit of juice from iOS, you need all the best tweaks, enhancements and apps there are. This is what you need. More

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a… fuel-electric hybrid air car? Well, yes actually, but right now it’s more ready-to-go concept than airborne reality. This brainchild of Trek Aerospace designer Michael Moshier and test-pilot Robert Bulaga employs the same ducted-fan tech the duo used in their DARPA -funded, NASA design-assisted, Popular Science ‘Invention of the Year’ winning SoloTrek . Like its predecessor, this hybrid air car is ideal for those close-quartered take-off and landing situations thanks to its enclosed propulsion system — good news for birds, trees and even human heads everywhere. Though still in the design phase, the pair hopes a generous round of funding will propel this 1960s Jetsons promise into a world-class fleet. While we can’t see the DMV rushing to approve licenses of this sort for the common joe, the copter-car should prove beneficial in roadless third-world nations, and maybe even lend a covered-propeller hand to first-world emergency service units. Pay attention billionaires of the world, this flying car’s got your bank account written all over it. PR for the deep-pocketed after the break. [Image credit via Michael Moshier/Robert Bulaga ] Continue reading Fuel-electric hybrid air car wants to take flight, needs funding to do it Fuel-electric hybrid air car wants to take flight, needs funding to do it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

As the world runs short on snarky phone titles (and in fact, starts using a couple of the gems on more than one occasion ), we’re left to overlook the moniker here while focusing on what’s important: that display. In fact, the 4.7-inch WVGA Super LCD shown here actually does seem to extend on for Eternity, and if HTC Inside ‘s leak pans out, we could be looking at the world’s next WP7 superphone. It’s bruited that this fellow will be shipping with a single-core 1.5GHz processor, 8 megapixel camera (autofocus, dual LED flash), a 720p movie mode, front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera, 16GB of storage, DLNA support, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and a 1,650mAh battery. That’s a pretty startling list of features, and savvy Windows Phone followers will recognize that the Mango update will indeed be necessary before that front-facing shooter becomes useful. Needless to say, we’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for more, as essentials like price and release have thus far eluded us. HTC Eternity leaked: 1.5GHz processor, 4.7-inch display, front-facing camera originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Ars Technica’s Anders Bylund does some guesstimating about the total losses incurred by Newscorp in their purchase of MySpace, coming up with a figure of at least $1B, including operating losses since the acquisition. So all things considered, MySpace has cost Murdoch’s empire something like $1.3 billion. Even if my assumptions are way off, the final cost can’t be less than $1 billion. That fiasco isn’t putting Murdoch out of business: News Corp turned a $2.9 billion dollar profit in the last four quarters and generated $2.2 billion in free cash flow, for example. But it still stings as Murdoch’s dreams of an end-to-end interactive media empire falls apart. And his shareholders have been trailing the broader market as well as rivals Viacom and Disney over those five painful years. Doing the math on News Corp.’s disastrous MySpace years

China opened the world’s longest bridge over water on Thursday. The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26.4 miles long, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

You’ve got to hand it to IBM’s engineers. They drag themselves into work after their company’s 100th birthday party , pop a few Alka-Seltzers and then promptly announce yet another seismic invention. This time it’s a new kind of phase change memory (PCM) that reads and writes 100 times faster than flash, stays reliable for millions of write-cycles (as opposed to just thousands with flash), and is cheap enough to be used in anything from enterprise-level servers all the way down to mobile phones. PCM is based on a special alloy that can be nudged into different physical states, or phases, by controlled bursts of electricity. In the past, the technology suffered from the tendency of one of the states to relax and increase its electrical resistance over time, leading to read errors. Another limitation was that each alloy cell could only store a single bit of data . But IBM employees burn through problems like these on their cigarette breaks: not only is their latest variant more reliable, it can also store four data bits per cell, which means we can expect a data storage “paradigm shift” within the next five years. Combine this with Intel’s promised 50Gbps interconnect , which has a similar ETA, and data will start flowing faster than booze from an open bar on the boss’s tab. There’s more detailed science in the PR after the break, if you have a clear head. Continue reading IBM develops ‘instantaneous’ memory, 100x faster than flash IBM develops ‘instantaneous’ memory, 100x faster than flash originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

If you don’t want to manage multiple music libraries and would rather just have one, but your iTunes is eating up precious disk space, TuneSpan can migrate your excess media to external drives while still keeping it accessible within iTunes. This way you can move music you don’t listen to very often to an external drive and just plug it in when you want to access the files. More

In Symantec’s bleak, dystopian world, it doesn’t matter whether you choose Android or iOS — you’ll be making yourself vulnerable to attacks regardless of the camp you’re in. The company just concluded a study pitting iOS’s security against Android’s — an undertaking intended mainly for corporate IT staffs trying to figure out which devices they can safely issue to employees. (Curiously, despite the enterprise focus, you won’t find a single comparison against BlackBerrys.) Although iOS won higher marks when it came to thwarting traditional malware and showed a more modest advantage in terms of data loss, data integrity, and service attacks, the two platforms proved equally adept at preventing web-based attacks — and equally powerless to catch socially engineered ones. And when it came to implementing certain security measures, such as permissions-based controls, Android pulled ahead. Ultimately, Symantec (which sells mobile security software of its own, by the by) concluded that both “are still vulnerable to many existing categories of attacks,” not least because both platforms allow users to sync with third-party apps or web services that may or may not be secure themselves. Indeed, Symantec’s thesis is that Apple’s App Store approval process helps explain its lead in the malware-blocking department. Also, in shocking news, Symantec adds that people using jailbroken are especially attractive targets for attackers, and that these devices are as vulnerable as computers. Don’t say no one warned you. Head past the break for a press release with a summary of the findings or, if you’re curious, hit the source link for a PDF version of the full report. Continue reading Symantec report on mobile security concludes iOS and Android both vulnerable to attacks Symantec report on mobile security concludes iOS and Android both vulnerable to attacks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Still hanging on to those sweet site loaders hoping they’d be of use again someday? Perhaps the time has come — for some ads and animations, that is. Google Labs has cooked up Swiffy, which takes an antediluvian SWF file and creates an HTML5 version that will run in most current browsers (Chrome and Safari, for example). The converted file is pretty close in size to the original; however, the company warns that the project is fresh out of the oven, so it won’t convert your entire Flash library just yet. Even still, software that makes existing animations useful without starting from scratch? Sign us up! Check out the source link for the FAQs and some of Swiffy’s handiwork, then test drive this bad boy yourself. Google unveils Swiffy: turns high maintenance Flash animations into HTML5 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink