Here it is, ladies and nerds: the Pioneer AppRadio. As the name implies it’s centered around applications in a smartphone-ish sort of way. All the big boys are here: RDIO, Pandora, and Google Maps along with the driver-centric apps of INRIX and MotionX-GPS Drive. This is possible through the Pioneer AppRadio iOS app that serves up data and app access to the head-unit from a connected iPhone or iPod touch. It lacks the native iOS support we had incorrectly heard it has, but features enough compelling features to earn a good deal of respect.

The aftermarket audio scene has been somewhat stagnant over the last decade. The biggest innovation was navigation and perhaps the addition of a USB host, but GUIs and even prices have stayed about the same. Pioneer has a real chance with the AppRadio to push the rest of the industry into embracing connected data and, in a way, learn to take a back seat to the smartphone by servering a more companion role — as it should be.

A WVGA (800 x 480) 6.1-inch capacitive multitouch serves up all the action. But there’s nothing behind it. The screen doesn’t flip down to reveal a fancy iPhone dock or even an optical drive. iPhones and iPod touches connect to the unit through a Dock Connector cable that hooks into the rear of the radio so it’s up to the installer to hide this wire.

Updates and more apps come by way of a Pioneer iOS app. When an iDevice is connected it unlocks all the wonders of Google Maps including search, routing, directions and even drop pins bookmarks. The iDevice serves up reformated apps to the AppRadio and Pioneer wrangled several popular apps to hit the device at launch and custom versions of RDIO and Pandora are currently available.

This iDevice dependency comes at a price, though. While the AppRadio can certainly stand on its own without a connected device, it loses most of its appeal. Also, Android owners need not apply. Pioneer isn’t servering their kind as Bluetooth connectivity seems only for phone functions and not for streaming content or data connectivity sharing. The AppRadio doesn’t have an optical drive and I worry about the capacitive screen handling direct sunlight. Still, the AppRadio is a welcomed addition to the car audio aftermarket scene.

Pioneer hasn’t announced the price or exact release date yet, but the press announcement states that the “AppRadio will be available in late June with a suggested retail price below $500.”

Side note: big props to our graphic guy Bryce for making a nearly accurate hardware rendering based on blurry FCC pics and several emails from a tester. The OS is clearly wrong, but he nailed the button design.

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The Pioneer AppRadio: Select iOS Apps In Your Car’s Dash For Less Than $500

Check out Kaydara, a sprawling, almost hour-long Matrix fan movie conceived by Raphaël Hernandez and Savitri Joly-Gonfard, French fans of the Wachowskis’ trilogy. The special effects are an absolute knockout for a labor of love. More

Facebook appears to have added a “Subscribe via RSS” option to Pages. The link, found at the bottom left side of Pages beneath the profile picture, leads to an Atom feed of wall posts by the Page that can be auto-discovered by clients.

The RSS option will assist users that want to stay up to date with news distributed from specific Pages without constantly having to check Facebook. Some people that might find this especially useful include those tasked with industry or corporate communications policy compliance, researchers, or those whose access to Facebook is blocked by an employer, educator, or government.

This link joins RSS links on Notes as evidence that RSS is not dead on Facebook, despite the site more actively supporting JSON-based API feeds.

Fans of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series will recall the city planet Trantor which housed the “Library of Trantor” (also known as the Galactic Library) in which librarians attempted to create an index of all human knowledge. Well now it seems the University of Chicago right here on Earth have built a library that can hold 3.5 million books which are delivered to patrons by a robotic storage system. (This is in addition to the 4.4 million books available from the University’s traditional library.)

The Mansueto library was recently opened to the faculty and students of the University of Chicago. The library’s unique construction is meant to accommodate the way research is done today: online. In the case an old journal article isn’t available online or a book hasn’t been scanned due to copyright limitations, for example, then the student can request the book right there on the computer. The automated storage and retrieval system will deliver the volume to the circulation desk, usually within the five minutes it takes for the student to walk there. Oversized and novelty books are also stored for retrieval.

Link

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Robotic Library of The Future

Windows only: When your computer crashes, you can send a report to Microsoft, but that doesn’t help you very much. Soluto collects crash reports and their solutions from other users, so when a program crashes you can get it fixed right away. More

Sure, IBM’s ten petaflop supercomputer may sound impressive, but Cray can do you five better — the outfit just announced the Cray XK6, an upgradable, hybrid supercomputing system capable of more than 50 petaflops of computational muscle. Powered by Cray’s Gemini interconnect, AMD Opteron 6200 processors, and NVIDIA Tesla 20-Series GPUs, the XK6 system blends x86 and GPU environments with the firm’s own flavor of Linux. The folks at Cray won’t resort to bragging, however — they’re humbly declaring the machine to be the first “general-purpose supercomputer based on GPU technology,” and not, as they put it, a stunt to place high on any Top 500 lists. Suggestive, aren’t they? Check out the unassuming press release after the break.

Continue reading Cray XK6 supercomputer smashes petaflop record, humbly calls itself a ‘general-purpose’ machine

Cray XK6 supercomputer smashes petaflop record, humbly calls itself a ‘general-purpose’ machine originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 06:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows only: When your computer crashes, you can send a report to Microsoft, but that doesn’t help you very much. Soluto collects crash reports and their solutions from other users, so when a program crashes you can get it fixed right away. More

The Nigerian scam (aliases: the 419 scam, the Spanish Prisoner scam, the Letter From Jerusalem) dates back to the 1700s, but email has made it as commonplace an inbox nuisance as penis-enlargement ads or forwarded jokes from your mother’s second-cousin. Just who are the confidence men behind the broken English? Are they even Nigerian? And does anyone ever fall for them? We now have answers to all of those questions, as Pennsylvania law enforcement has captured a 100% authentic Nigerian scammer! More

The tech sphere is abuzz with Square CEO Jack Dorsey’s announcement of a couple new features that are already hailed as a new model for digital payments. To hear Dorsey (one of Twitter’s co-founders) tell it:

We revolutionized the payment industry with the Square card reader which makes it possible for anyone to accept credit cards on their phone. Now, with Square Register, we’re reinventing point of sale with a beautiful, intuitive iPad app. Card Case goes beyond point of sale to transform the entire buyer-seller relationship… we’re transforming everyday transactions between buyers and sellers into something special

The Square app+card reader allows merchants to turn their iPads into a mobile point of sale, with customizable inventory, as well as “Google-style analytics”—i.e. full reports of daily transactions—and digital receipts. It's a significant upgrade from the simple (yet innovative) credit card reader that launched over $1 billion in sales, in 1 million total transactions, for small businesses.

But Square's major innovation, in terms of user experience, is the Card Case, which links customers to merchants through virtual business or customer loyalty cards without the physical cards or case. After the first transaction between a merchant and a Card Case-holding customer, Square stores the customer information such that he or she can simply provide his or her name—as in a running tab—to make a payment. (The Card Case also serves as a transaction history, which is handy when it comes to balancing your books.)

Geolocation rounds out the Card Case’s seamless integration into real life: the app features directories, menus, specials and even exclusive incentives from local businesses.

The 2.75% transaction fee will remain the same for all transactions.

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Square's iPad Register & Card Case to Revolutionize Digital Payments

See that iconic UPS truck above. It looks like your standard cargo truck, but it’s actually made of plastic. It’s also fuel efficient and recyclable. More