The ride only lasts four or five seconds, but you’ll never forget it. The Insano at Beach Park in Porto das Dunas, Brazil has a 134 foot drop. It holds the Guinness World Record for the tallest waterslide in the world.

Pro tip: make sure that your swimming suit is firmly secured to your body.

Link -via American Digest | Photo: Entertainment Designer

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The World’s Tallest Waterslide Shoots You into a Pool at 65 MPH

With his use of Red cameras, 3ality rigs, and high frame rate 3D technology, no one can accuse Peter Jackson of being stuck in the past. Need more evidence of his anti-luddism? He just gave the first projection of footage from his 3D opus “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” in its full 48 fps glory at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas. With the public having endured 80 years of 24 fps film-watching, Jackson appealed to viewers to allow their eyes to adjust to the doubled rate during the ten minute screening. But the reaction showed that public acceptance might take a while. One projectionist compared it to made-for-TV fare, and others referenced Mexican soap-operas and TruMotion. The reply to these criticisms by Jackson (and James Cameron) has always been that 3D is better suited to faster frame rates than 2D — making it more immersive, reducing headaches and improving stereoscopy. We’ll have to wait for the film’s release this December to find out whether he’s right, or if this attempt at high frame speeds will go the way of Showscan.

Frame rate debate rages on with 48 fps projection of 3D Hobbit footage originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Frame rate debate rages on with 48 fps projection of 3D Hobbit footage

Ah, the Galaxy S III. We always knew it’d be a keystone among Android smartphones, but according to the AnTuTu benchmark suite, it’ll be the one device to rule them all. While there’s no way to verify whether this test is indeed legitimate, all Android users may currently peep the AnTuTu app, which not only shows the smartphone as having bested the mighty Transformer Prime tablet, but it also reveals the most comprehensive set of specs we’ve yet seen for the Galaxy S III — again, take this with a grain of salt. The device is said to wield a Samsung Exynos 4212 SoC with a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 4.7-inch, 720p HD display. This lines up similarly with the product listing from Amazon Germany, as the specs also reveal a 12 megapixel primary camera on the rear, along with a 2MP shooter on the front. No big surprises for the OS, which is listed as Android 4.0. Should the benchmark tests turn out to be legitimate, the HTC One X will no doubt have some very stiff competition.

AnTuTu pegs Galaxy S III as most powerful Android device, potentially reveals its specs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AnTuTu pegs Galaxy S III as most powerful Android device, potentially reveals its specs

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Some time in the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources, Inc. will launch a series of mass-produced 9″ space telescopes, dubbed Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft. They’re specifically designed to identify which of the roughly 8,900 near-Earth asteroids are both smaller than 50 meters and suitable targets for retrieval back to Earth orbit. These small near-Earth asteroids represent a transient population, with life spans in the millions of years, typically cut short by running into a planet or being thrown out of the solar system by Jupiter.

That mission, according to Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson, will be completed well enough within the ensuing year or two that the follow-up spacecraft, the Arkyd Series 200, can track some of these asteroids as they fly by in high Earth orbit. Still later, Arkyd Series 300 swarm spacecraft can begin launching to survey those asteroids from a closer perspective, gathering information on spin, shape, and composition.

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Planetary Resources set to begin hunt for asteroids to mine in 18-24 months

Apple just released its second quarter financial numbers. Overall hardware sales decreased from its record previous quarter but with the notable exception of the iPods, they’re up from the same quarter a year ago. Apple sold 88% more iPhones in the quarter than it did during the same time last year.

Besides the huge year-over-year increase of iPhone sales, iPad and Mac sales increased 188% and 7%, respectively. However, the iPod didn’t fare so well: Sales are down 15% over last year’s quarter.

“We’re thrilled with sales of over 35 million iPhones and almost 12 million iPads in the March quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO said in a release statement today. “The new iPad is off to a great start, and across the year you’re going to see a lot more of the kind of innovation that only Apple can deliver.”

These numbers are actually down from 1Q2012 where Apple shattered nearly all its previous records. In that period Apple sold 37.04M iPhones, 15.43M iPads, and 5.2M Macs. Even the iPad sold well with 15.4M in sales. But thanks to Apple’s offset financial quarters, this time period included the iPhone 4S launch and holiday sales.

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Apple Q2 2012: 35.1M iPhones, 11.8M iPads, 4M Macs, and 7.7M iPods

Sometimes a table says a thousand words. Now that Google has finally announced its cloud service, Google Drive, we’re sure more than a few of you are crunching the numbers in your head in an attempt to figure which is the best deal. Far be it for us to tell you which service to use when we’ve barely had a chance to poke around Drive, but for now, better if we lay out those gigabytes and dollars in number form, rather than squeeze them into a crowded paragraph, don’tcha think? Follow past the break for a brief breakdown of what you’ll get from Google, along with Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive and iCloud.

Continue reading Google Drive vs. the competition: pricing plans and perks, compared

Google Drive vs. the competition: pricing plans and perks, compared originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Drive vs. the competition: pricing plans and perks, compared

More than three months after releasing software for Windows-users to send documents to a Kindle, Amazon has now released the Mac version. Announced on Tuesday afternoon, the “Send to Kindle for Mac” application allows Mac users to wirelessly send personal documents to their Kindles via drag-and-drop in the Dock or within the app itself. Users can also send documents to the Kindle by printing from any Mac application.

As we wrote in January when the Windows version was released, each Kindle already comes with its own e-mail address so users can send files to themselves. (There’s also an Instapaper mechanism for sending documents to Kindle.) The desktop software aims to make that process easier, however, by eliminating the need to involve an e-mail client (especially convoluted in the case of printing from an app, which would involve printing to PDF and then sending that PDF to your Kindle). Users don’t have to be sending documents to a hardware Kindle either—files can be sent to a Kindle app on a mobile device, too (such as the iPad or an Android phone).

According to Amazon, users can also use the Mac software to archive documents in your Kindle library for download later if you don’t want those files to show up and take up space on your device right away. “Your last page read along with bookmarks, notes, and highlights are automatically synchronized for your documents (with the exception of PDFs) across your Kindle devices and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android,” the company said in a statement.

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Amazon releases “Send to Kindle” desktop software for the Mac

Today, Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world, announced that henceforth all of its ebooks would be completely DRM-free. This comes six weeks after an antitrust action against Tor’s parent company, Macmillan USA, for price-fixing in relation to its arrangements with Apple and Amazon.

Now that there is a major publisher that has gone completely DRM-free (with more to follow, I’m sure; I’ve had contact with very highly placed execs at two more of the big six publishers), there is suddenly a market for tools that automate the conversion and loading of ebooks from multiple formats and vendors.

For example, I’d expect someone to make a browser plugin that draws a “Buy this book at BN.com” button on Amazon pages (and vice-versa), which then facilitates auto-conversion between the formats. I’d also expect BN.com to produce a “switch” toolkit for Kindle owners who want to go Nook (and vice-versa).

I think that this might be the watershed for ebook DRM, the turning point that marks the moment at which all ebooks end up DRM-free. It’s a good day.

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

DRM-free titles from Tom Doherty Associates will be available from the same range of retailers that currently sell their e-books. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books.

Tor/Forge E-book Titles to Go DRM-Free

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Tor Books goes completely DRM-free