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HTC Flyer 7-inch tablet now retailing for £200 (deals)

December 28, 2011 at 5:42 am

HTC’s Flyer is quite a capable 7-inch Android tablet. It runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.5GHz processor, weighs 420 grams (14.82 oz) and comes with a digital pen for creativity on the go. The Flyer has recently been updated to Android Honeycomb, and together with today’s price cuts, it has become quite a bargain.

The 16GB Wi-Fi only HTC Flyer now retails for £200 in the UK; you can grab one either from Amazon UK (make sure it’s directly from Amazon) or Dixons. The 32GB 3G/Wi-Fi version is showing as £250 from Dixons, but we are having issues accessing the item’s website, maybe it’s a temporary problem.
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Android Ice Cream Sandwich finds its way on the Kindle Fire, melts into our hearts (video)

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December 27, 2011 at 3:31 am

It had to happen. Someone was bound to get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running on Amazon’s budget conscious 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet. Thanks to the Android developer community a pre-alpha version of Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) can now be seen running on the Fire and if you are feeling extremely adventurous you can go ahead and download the test ROM to start tinkering.

The pre-alpha ROM is based on the public Android Open Source Project (AOSP) release of ICS, and judging from the video, things are going well on the development front. Main issues are with audio and video not always working properly. The video and download link are after the break.
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Panasonic Lumix GX1 shipping now

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December 25, 2011 at 4:53 am

If you’ve been holding off for the latest high-end Micro Four Thirds compact mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC), a.k.a. the Panasonic Lumix GX1, we’re happy to let you know that it’s in stock and shipping now over at both Amazon US and UK.

You can grab either the body-only black and silver versions of the GX1 or the standard 14-42mm zoom lens kit. Unfortunately the 14-42mm X power zoom lens kit is still on pre-order, because of delays shipping the new X-series collapsible power zoom lens.

While you are pondering gifting yourself a brand new shooter, why not checkout our comparison between the Panasonic GX1, Sony NEX-7, Fujifilm X100 and Olympus E-P3. We’re personally salivating already over the GX1 and yeah the roasted turkey scent isn’t really helping. Better make up your mind before all that eggnog clouds up your head. Unhelpful video after the break.
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Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from Google and Android (video)

News

December 25, 2011 at 4:24 am

An interactive Google Doodle is up on the giant’s main search page celebrating Christmas. Clicking each button under a letter in the Google logo switches it with a symbol and when you’ve gone through all the buttons you’ll be greeted with a familiar tune and a typical gaudy light show. We’ve able to access the Doodle over at the UK search page google.co.uk, but we’re pretty sure it will go up in the US very soon too.

The Android team has also been pretty active and with the help of some free Galaxy Nexus’s being distributed to employees and tons of snow being sprayed at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters, they really got into the holiday spirit and have created the video below. As you would expect, there is a lot of Ice Cream Sandwich plastered all over.
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Could porn beat Christmas these holidays?

News

December 23, 2011 at 10:02 am

There is a repeating pattern each year. According to Google Trends, apparently, a lot of people search for “porn” throughout the year. The pattern has been that for the past seven years “Christmas” eclipses “porn” for the short period every year when we actually celebrate it.

The interesting part is that the popularity of porn as a search term has been on a rising trend, whereas the popularity of Christmas as a search term has been going down. So, could the pattern be broken this year? According to our latest check of Google Trends on the two terms, Christmas is lagging way behind for now, though we are hopping for a quick comeback.

Leading the search for porn is Ireland followed by the United Kindgom and then Greece. Interestingly Greek speakers also lead the search for porn in general!
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Surprise, people are more likely to lie over text messages

News

December 23, 2011 at 5:41 am

When are people more inclined to lie? A study performed by the University of British Columbia suggests that text messaging is the preferred mode of communication for all long-nosed liars. The study was performed on 170 students using face-to-face, video, audio and text messaging communication.

Students were divided into brokers who had to sell stocks and buyers of the stocks. The brokers were told that the stock was set to lose half of its value while the buyers were only informed of this after the role-playing transaction had taken place. Buyers then reported to the researchers whether and how often they had been lied to by the brokers. The results showed that brokers would lie 95 percent more when texting than on video.
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Apple new prototype glass-roofed Palo Alto store coming soon

News

December 23, 2011 at 5:09 am

Apple is set to begin construction on a new prototype store in Palo Alto, California. The $3.15 millon, two-story, 15,050-square-foot store will have a curved glass roof, like New York’s Upper West Side store (see below) and a unique design as Apple will increasingly design retail spaces to match their location and environment.

The new Palo Alto store is only a block away from one of Apple’s first retail stores, built over a decade ago. The current Palo Alto store is extremely popular and the late Steve Jobs, who was a Palo Alto resident, used to visit it regularly.
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Search for ‘let it snow’ on Google for a flurry of holiday fun

News

December 18, 2011 at 3:59 am

Google loves its virtual Easter eggs and the latest hidden piece of virtual fun has come from the Google Search page. Head over to google.com and search for ‘let it snow’ (without the quotation marks). The resulting page will be covered with snowflakes until it freezes over. Don’t despair, just hit defrost to get back to the results, but you might want to try your hand on some drawing first. Once the page has frozen over click with your mouse and draw.

You can now initiate Hangouts video conferencing sessions directly from Google+ for mobile

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December 14, 2011 at 3:25 pm

You already could do video conferencing through Google+ on smartphones, but the Hangouts session had to be initiated from a desktop computer. Google is launching a new version of Google+ for Android in the next few days, which will allow Hangouts sessions to be completely mobile, that is you can initiate a Hangouts video conference directly from your device. You simply touch the little camera button at the top to start a hangout. An updated version of Google+ for iOS devices is also coming soon.
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“Laputa: Castle in the Sky” TV screening breaks tweets per second record

News

December 14, 2011 at 1:39 pm

It’s become a yearly tradition in Japan for Hayao Miyazaki’s and Studio Ghibli’s 1986 anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky to air around this time of year on TV. On December 9, the amazing anime film was broadcasted for the thirteenth time since first airing in 1988.

Another tradition is for viewers to join the two main characters, Pazu and Sheeta, in shouting “Balse!” (the spell of destruction), at the climax of the movie over social networking sites. Well, this year viewers had taken to Twitter in droves and broke the social networking site’s all time record with 25,088 for tweets per second while the movie was broadcasted from NTV. Even rival broadcaster NHK joined the action with a tweet from its official PR account.
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Skype for Android updated with photo, video and file sharing; supports more devices for video calling

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December 13, 2011 at 4:08 pm

Skype for Android has just been updated to version 2.6 with a number of notable changes. First off, you can now send photos, videos and files to your Skype contacts from your Android device. Sharing files works on either Wi-Fi or over your mobile data plan.

The new version promises to be more gentle on your battery, while certain devices will enjoy better video quality, such as those using Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset (like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Motorola XOOM). The Skype team is adding to the number of devices officially supported, with the HTC Amaze 4G and the Motorola DROID RAZR. If after the update your device is still not supported for video calling you might want to check out our post here on how to unofficially enable calling on your device.

B&N Nook Color 1.4.1 update brings additional functionality, Netflix and comics

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December 12, 2011 at 12:17 pm

There is no better way to start your day than to find out that you lovely tablet/e-reader has received a software update, making it, well, more awesome. The Barnes & Noble Nook Color has just received an update to version 1.4.1 which brings a number of enhancements and additional functionality bringing it closer to the recently released Nook Tablet.

First off the new version brings landscape reading with books, something we had noted was lacking when we initially reviewed the Nook Color — you can find our pretty lengthy review here. There is also a new category of books named PagePerfect, which are carefully put together electronic versions keeping with the original colorful print version; the category includes cookbooks, art books and the rest.

Those of you who prefer to sit back and be entertained, the Nook Color is getting Netflix movies and TV shows support. Marvel comic book fans should also be excited as the Nook Color joins the Nook Tablet in receiving Nook Comics. Finally B&N is claiming over 100 minor enhancement which should make the Nook experience better.

You can connect your Nook Color to a Wi-Fi network and wait for the update to be delivered to your device automatically or if your are the impatient type (and we would completely understand if you were), head over here and follow the instructions under ‘Get Version 1.4.1 Today’.
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Panasonic to enter the world smartphone market with an ultra-thin 4.3-inch OLED Android device in 2012

News

December 11, 2011 at 5:39 pm

South Korean and Taiwanese companies have been making it big in the world of smartphones. At the same time Japanese consumer electronic giants only have a presence in their home country. I’ve been meaning to write a post about this for some time, and it would have gone something like this. Japanese companies like Panasonic and Sharp make great devices, absolutely fantastic hardware. A while back I was a devotee of Sharp feature phones, but then they slowly disappeared from non-Asian markets. So what was keeping Japanese phones away from international markets? Software. They had the hardware ironed out but it was impossible to write software for any number of markets.

The takeaway of my imaginary article was that the rapid emergence of Android presented a great opportunity for Japanese giants to finally make a comeback. It doesn’t guarantee them success however. HTC churns out great devices by the dozen, and Samsung is currently the most popular Android manufacturer. Japanese companies have been finding it more difficult to sell their quality wares abroad as people increasingly go for value for money rather than high-end products. For example Panasonic, which makes great TV sets, is taking a beating from Samsung on flat panel sales.
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