Archive for the ‘software’ Category

Droid 2 Global gets Gingerbread, customizable dock and more in latest update from Verizon

Droid 2 Global users, your moment in the Gingerbread sun has arrived. Verizon’s put up a page with download instructions for a 103MB update, taking your QWERTY slider from version 2.4.330 to 4.5.600. Updating isn’t the most taxing of activities, you just look for a system update in the About Phone menu and then give your blessing for the download to commence. VZW will also be prompting tardy users to take their OTA medicine in due course. So what’s new apart from Android 2.3? Well, the big change is that the previously static phone, contacts and apps icons at the bottom of the UI have now been turned into a user-customizable dock, with three links of your choosing sidling up next to the App Launcher. There’s also a freshened up UI look, a Download Manager App, user-definable App Groups, encryption for data both on the device and its SD card, improvements in battery life while using WiFi and Bluetooth, and the obligatory stability fixes. If all that sounds irresistible and you have the requisite phone in hand, go get it!

[Thanks, Jon]

Droid 2 Global gets Gingerbread, customizable dock and more in latest update from Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gadget Lab Notes: A Wireless Router That Looks Like a Wind Turbine

Gadget Lab Notes is an eclectic roundup of gadget news briefs and intriguing products that catch our eye.

Is That a Mini Wind Turbine? Nope, It’s a Logitech Wireless Router
Logitech’s LAN-WH450N/GR wireless router definitely wins the title of “most uniquely designed router” in my book (at least for the moment). The turbine or fan looking contraption at the top does not in fact have anything to do with wind; it’s a tri-tenna that is supposed to help the router access speeds up to 450 Mbps, with compatible devices. Other than that, it’s basically your average wireless router. It’ll be available in Japan in mid-April.

Logitech Introduces 5 GHz 450 Mbps Wireless Router in Japan [Akihabara News via Oh Gizmo]

GFI Labs Admits Responsibility for False Positive Samsung Keylogger Incident
Samsung notebooks have not shipped with the Starlogger keylogger program installed and active. GFI Labs, an anti-spyware developer, confirmed in a blog post that their VIPRE software used a rare and very aggressive anti-spyware method that wrongly flagged the Slovenian language directionr, C:\WINDOWS\SL as Starlogger. That directory is the same one that Starlogger actually uses.

Samsung Laptops Do Not Have Keylogger [GFI Labs Blog via Crunchgear]

Google Cracking Down on “Willy-Nilly” Software Customization
Google is stepping in and beginning to regulate the user experience of Android devices more closel, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. They haven’t changed the game, but they have begun enforcing some Android distribution agreement rules so Google has the “final say” with regards to the way carriers and manufacturers adjust their code. This should help prevent fragmentation and assure a positive experience for the user.

Do Not Anger the Alpha Android [Businessweek via Android Guys]

NO Sign Puts Your Vice On Display
Trying to cut back? Slide your vice of choice—a bottle of whiskey, your iPod, a candy bar—under the elastic strap of the NO Sign and give yourself a constant reminder that it’s not allowed. I’m more of the “out of sight, out of mind” opinion, but perhaps for some, this could be a constant reminder that you have successfully abstained from that off-limits thing. Or you really need to.

NO Sign [Animica USA via Book of Joe]

Samsung Transparent Display Concept Becoming a Reality
Samsung has begun mass-producing transparent black-and-white and color LCDs, which have previously been shown off in prototype form. Calling it a “world’s first”, the 1,680 x 1,050 resolution 22-inch displays feature a 500:1 contrast ratio and use 90% less power than regular backlit LCD panels. The black-and-white models are over 20% see-through, while the color ones have a slightly lower 15% transparency. Transparent displays have “endless possibilities” for advertising, so we can look forward to seeing these guys plastered in malls and billboards in the future.

Samsung Electronics Becomes the World’s First in Mass Production of the Transparent LCD Panel [Samsung via Crunchgear]

WebOS 1.4.1.1 now available for Verizon subscribers

Hardly the most exciting Palm news you’re gonna hear this week, but the company that still owns itself for the time being has just updated its WebOS software on Verizon to the extremely granular version 1.4.1.1. The helpful changelog informs us there are no new apps, but pinch-zoom now works correctly in Doc and PDF views, a lag in the camera shutter sound has been rectified, and forwarding videos uploaded to YouTube on to your friends via email has also been made to work as it should. The most important fix of all, though, is to a keyboard input issue whereby a single key press would generate a letter twice — both Pre Central and one of our readers report that this problem appears to have been consigned to the past. Good stuff, now let’s see it go global, shall we?

[Thanks, subzero and Sam F.]

WebOS 1.4.1.1 now available for Verizon subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 02:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone App Makes Sure Your Date is Safe

Even though dating should be about having fun and meeting new people, it’s also about finding out if this person is potential mate material. I mean you want to know if the person sitting across from you has had serious run-ins with the law or has picked their nose since age seven. Thanks to this new iPhone and Android app, you might not be able to check about the nose picking habit, but you can get the deets on just about everything else.

Created by information commerce company, Intelius, Date Check does what the company does best, dig up dirt.Date Check is an app that lets users pull up all those juicy secrets that you want to know, but might be too shy to ask on the first or second date. With a flick of the wrist you can find out if a person has a criminal history via the sleeze detector. You can also see if they own real estate, or if they’re living with someone — say a spouse they might have forgotten to mention.

The app is currently available for free on the Android Marketplace and the Apple App Store.

Via Gadgetwise

iPhone in iPhone app is useless, but mesmerizing

Here’s the premise: you take a good old fashioned augmented reality setup, the likes of which we’ve seen all over the land, and attach a three-dimensional, rotatable iPhone to it. Not impressed yet, are you? Neither were we, but there’s some secret sauce to this one: you can actually launch apps on the simulated iPhone. That extra layer of interactivity makes the video after the break a lot more fascinating than it has any right to be, though it’s worth pointing out that we don’t think the apps are actually usable — they just give the illusion of launching. Anyhow, don’t wait around while all the cool kids are watching it, go have a gander yourself.

Continue reading iPhone in iPhone app is useless, but mesmerizing

iPhone in iPhone app is useless, but mesmerizing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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