Measuring in at just over a half-inch thick and just under three pounds, the Acer Aspire S3 ushers in the era of the official, Intel-supported Ultrabook, meant to compete against the likes of the MacBook Air. More
Netflix has decided to abandon its plan to split the streaming and DVD company in two and instead will keep both integrated in one service at Netflix.com. More
Doesn’t matter if Microsoft hasn’t made it official. The company is working on something that will succeed the Xbox 360. Employees at tech giants like Microsoft are always working on designing the future. More
And the Ultrabooks have arrived! We just got word that the Acer Aspire S3 will go on sale in the US and Canada this week for $899 — making it the first pinch-thin, MacBook Air competitor to hit the market, landing ahead of competing models from Toshiba, Lenovo and ASUS. To recap, this 2.98-pound aluminum beaut has a 13.3-inch (1366 x 768) panel, is rated for six hours (or 50 standby days!) of battery life and promises to wake from sleep in a mere two seconds. For the money, you’ll get an ultra low voltage Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and 20GB of solid-state storage combined with a 320GB HDD. No word yet on how many additional configs will be available, though Acer did confirm that this $899 version will be followed by models with Core i3 and i7 processors and beefier storage capacity. Intrigued? Have a gander at our hands-on preview if you missed it the first time around, and find some fancy press shots below.
Gallery: Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook
Continue reading Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook hits the US and Canada this week, rings in at $899
Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook hits the US and Canada this week, rings in at $899 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Last week, Myriad outed its plans to unveil Alien Dalvik 2.0 — which works on iOS — at CTIA, which starts today. But, knowing our readers would be champing at the bit to see it in action a little early, we got an exclusive sneak preview of the software for you right now. As a quick refresher, Alien Dalvik’s a custom bit of code that lets you run unaltered Android apps on a non-Android OS, like Maemo or MeeGo. This new version brings that same black magic to iDevices (and just about anything else), so head on past the break for more about Myriad bringing Apple and Android together in app harmony.
Continue reading Hands-on with Myriad’s Alien Dalvik 2.0 on an iPad (video)
Hands-on with Myriad’s Alien Dalvik 2.0 on an iPad (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The US Postal Service is like a damsel in distress. Severe distress.
The rise of email and the Great Recession, coupled with bad management
and its high labor (and labor’s retirement) costs have caused the institution
to be near
collapse.
But, like the analogy goes, there’s a white knight! Here’s how the Post
Office plans to rescue itself from bankruptcy: more junk mail for everyone!
Many consumers are irked by the catalogs, credit-card pitches and
other “junk mail” they receive. But the U.S. Postal Service
loves it—and wants to deliver more.The agency, beset by historic losses and a plummet in first-class
mail, is running promotions, easing rules and planning television and
radio ads to encourage more businesses to send pitches by standard mail,
the official term for bulk mailings used by marketers to prospect for
customers.“What we want to do is to make standard mail more interesting
for customers so we can grow the total volume,” Postmaster General
Patrick Donahoe said in an interview. “We don't call it junk mail—it's
a lucrative avenue for anyone who wants to reach customers.”
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USPS Rescue Plan: More Junk Mail!
It looks like Bookeen may finally be through teasing us — the company is preparing to unleash the Odyssey, a reader sporting its High Speed Ink System. The modified Pearl E Ink screen has been shown off multiple times, playing back video and browsing the web. Now it will finally make the transition from interesting tech demo to actual product. Better yet, the 6-inch, full motion-capable screen has been paired with a touch layer, which means it could deliver a tablet-like experience with battery life closer to a traditional e-reader. Underneath the hood is a an 800MHz Cortex A8 processor from Texas Instruments and a WiFi radio, presumably for downloading content and browsing the web. The Odyssey is expect to start shipping in Europe in the next few weeks, but Bookeen has yet to reveal a price. You can check out the machine translated PR at the source link.
Cybook prepping Odyssey reader with High Speed Ink System screen originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
twoheadedboy writes “UK service provider BT has launched its Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) product, pledging it will offer downstream speeds of 300Mbps by spring next year. At present, the service can hit 110Mbps downstream speeds and will be available in just six locations from the end of October. More locations will be added and speeds will rise, however, with a 1Gbps service currently being trialled in Kesgrave, Suffolk. There may be continuing disputes over BT Openreach’s pricing of fibre products, given the recent industry in-fighting. Nevertheless, 300Mbps fibre will provide some pretty speedy downloads for end users.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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BT Promises 300Mbps FTTP By 2012
MrSeb writes with news out of MIT about another interesting and potentially useful property of graphene. Researchers have known for several years that graphene generates electricity when exposed to sunlight, but incorrectly attributed it to the photovoltaic effect. A new paper shows that the current is actually generated from the much more unusual 'hot-carrier' response. Quoting:
“The material’s electrons, which carry current, are heated by the light, but the lattice of carbon nuclei that forms graphene’s backbone remains cool. It’s this difference in temperature within the material that produces the flow of electricity. … Such differential heating has been observed before, but only under very special circumstances: either at ultralow temperatures (measured in thousandths of a degree above absolute zero), or when materials are blasted with intense energy from a high-power laser. This response in graphene, by contrast, occurs across a broad range of temperatures all the way up to room temperature, and with light no more intense than ordinary sunlight.”
It will take more work to determine what new applications are reasonable from an efficiency perspective, but it does broaden graphene's already-impressive capabilities.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Graphene Creates Electricity When Struck By Light
