Still waiting for the Android 4.0.4 OTA on your GSM Galaxy Nexus? Try these simple steps

Guides

  • April 3, 2012 at 5:30 pm

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus back close-up

GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus devices have been gradually receiving an over the air (OTA) update to the latest version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.0.4. However, many users are still waiting on the official OTA update from Google and pressing the ‘Check now’ button in system updates on their Galaxy Nexus devices doesn’t help much.

To get the update immediately, one way is to root your device and manually install the latest version of Android. But if you don’t have a rooted device and don’t wanna go through the hassle and risk losing your data, there’s is an easy way to get your device to automatically update now.
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Instagram is out now for Android

News

  • April 3, 2012 at 12:31 pm

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Instagram for Android app

Instagram has been an incredibly popular app for iOS devices and while it has created a number of clones on Android the social photo application has now officially made the platform a home. The Instagram team had recently promised that an Android app was coming and true to their word the app is now available for download on Google Play (a.k.a. Android Market).

Visually the application is a direct port from the iOS version. The team didn’t make much of an effort in adopting Android’s design philosophy and the iOS-style buttons feel a bit out of place. Nevertheless, we took the app for a spin and it performs admirably on a Galaxy Nexus (see our full review here) running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, the app is fluid and stable.
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New 2012 iMacs to be slimmer and lighter with anti-reflective glass displays according to rumors

News

  • April 3, 2012 at 8:53 am

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Apple aluminium unibody iMac line

Ever since the introduction of the aluminium unibody iMac line in 2009, Apple’s all-in-one personal computers have remained the same externally. Nevertheless, the series had received annual refreshes with faster processors and graphics units, with the most recent mid-2011 iMacs also receiving Thunderbolt ports.

Well recent rumors suggest that the 2012 iMacs will receive a redesign as well, making them slimmer and lighter than the current models. AppleInsider is claiming that the new iMacs will more closely resemble the footprint of today’s most popular LED televisions.
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PSA: Olympus OM-D E-M5 shipping date delayed until April 23 in the UK

News

  • April 2, 2012 at 3:01 pm

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Olympus OM-D E-M5 wet - water drops dripping off

The Olympus OM-D E-M5 is already shipping in Asia and we’ve seen the first unboxing photos here. We had high hopes that the rest of the world would be receiving their new Micro Four Thirds wonders soon as Amazon UK had been listing the E-M5’s shipping date as April 1st.

Well, April 1st is now history and Amazon UK has been sending emails to early pre-orderers letting them know that the new shipping date is now April 23rd — unfortunately that’s no April Fool’s. We’ve received the below email from Amazon:
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New 3rd generation iPad customer satisfaction at an all time high, excessive heat not an issue according to survey

News

  • April 2, 2012 at 9:29 am

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3rd generation iPad in hand - homescreen

A survey done by ChangeWave Research on the new 3rd generation iPad has revealed some interesting tidbits, though we have to foreword this by saying that the company has polled a mere 200 new iPad owners, which is a pretty small sample if you consider that Apple has sold more than three million new iPads in the initial release weekend.

According to the survey more than four out of five people polled (82% to be exact) have said that they are very satisfied with the new iPad, compared to 74% for the iPad 2. Only 2%, or four people, have said they are somewhat dissatisfied.
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Canon 5D Mark III goes under the knife, gets its anti-aliasing filter removed in the name of sharpness

News

  • April 1, 2012 at 2:04 pm

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Canon 5D Mark III teardown - shutter curtain

Camera makers load their goods with moiré-busting anti-aliasing (AA) filters, however these low-pass filters come with a big caveat. You see they are placed in front of the camera’s sensor and work by slightly blurring the image in order to avoid moiré and aliasing effects at the cost of resolution and sharpness.

It seems that Canon has chosen a pretty strong AA for its latest full-frame shooter, the 5D Mark III, which is bad news for videographers and lovers of sharp stills. Nikon offers two versions of the competing D800, the D800E flavor has a weaker anti-aliasing filter than the standard model, but Canon fans are pretty much stuck.

Now you’d think that a weak low-pass filter leaves you at the mercy of moiré, but in reality these patterns are not as common as they are made to be and we’ve seen the benefits to resolution of a weak anti-aliasing filter in our real world review of the Fujifilm X100 here.
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First unboxing photos of the Olympus OM-D E-M5 MFT camera

News

  • April 1, 2012 at 6:34 am

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Olympus OM-D E-M5 unboxing photos

While the rest of the world is still holding its breath for the Olympus OM-D E-M5 digital camera, the Micro Four Thirds shooter has already started shipping in Asia.

A lucky Flickr user, Zetton Nara, just got his silver 12-50mm kit lens version delivered and was kind enough to post a couple of shots from the unboxing process.

You can check the full set of drool-worthy photos here, including a pairing of the E-M5 with the Olympus Four Thirds 50mm f/2 macro lens seen below.
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Public jailbreak for A5 and A5X devices (i.e. iPad 3) running iOS 5.1 still some time away

News

  • April 1, 2012 at 4:58 am

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Cydia running on 3rd generation iPad - chpwn method

There was much hope that a jailbreak for A5 and A5X devices, that’s the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and the 3rd generation iPad, running iOS 5.1 would materialize soon after the new iPad’s release. After all, just a few hours following the official release of the new iPad three different jailbreak methods were demonstrated and confirmed.

Two weeks later and there haven’t been any updates on a public release of a jailbreak yet. Now it would seem that we might still be weeks away from a usable public jailbreak for iOS 5.1 and that’s unfortunate news for new iPad (3) owners itching to install Cydia and 3rd party apps on their retina-touting tablet.
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Google Maps goes 8-bit Dragon Warrior-style for April Fool’s

News

  • April 1, 2012 at 1:37 am

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Google Maps 8-bit cartridge for NES April Fool's

What could be the biggest, and most hilarious, upgrade to Google Maps? Going 8-bit of course! In an ode to console RPGs of yesteryear, and to poke a bit of fun, Google has just added one more view option to Google Maps, called Quest. By selecting this, your neighborhood and the entire world goes 8-bit Dragon Warrior-style.

Most famous landmarks are still there, like the Pyramids, the Taj Majal, Mount Rushmore, the Parthenon, Mount Fuji, the Eiffel Tower and there’s even a UFO in Area 51.
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That interactive animation of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” is now an iPad app

News

  • March 30, 2012 at 11:07 am

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The Starry Night interactive iPad app

Do you remember that amazing interactive (and multitouch) version of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” by Petros Vrellis? Well it has now become an iPad app, so that you can literally interact with the paintings brushstrokes and watch them flow and whirl around.

The app is compatible with the iPad 2 and the new 3rd generation iPad. It’s $1.99 from the App Store and was created using openframeworks, similar to the original PC version that was demonstrated earlier. The app allows you to change the music and the animation speed and touching the painting not only affects the particle animation but also the music.
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Android 4.0.4 source heading to Android Open-Source Project carrying a few hundred changes

News

  • March 28, 2012 at 2:59 pm

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Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich close-up on homescreen elements

Android 4.0.4 (build IMM76D) is hitting the Android Open-Source Project now according to Google developer Jean-Baptiste Queru. The update was sent to a small number of devices yesterday, like the Verizon LTE Galaxy Nexus (check out our in-depth review of the Galaxy Nexus here) and the Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi. Queru notes that the incremental update brings a few hundred changes over Android 4.0.3.

Those who got the update on their LTE Galaxy Nexus and Motorola XOOM devices are reporting better battery life, performance and signal strength. As Queru points out, the code release doesn’t mean that the update will hit devices any day now. Updates will depend on carriers and device manufacturers. Of course even the stock Android Galaxy Nexus GSM, was still still stuck on Android 4.0.2 and suffering from the same old random reboot bug.
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EPSON Moverio BT-100 wearable 3D head-mounted display puts Android close to your eyeballs

News

  • March 28, 2012 at 12:24 pm

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EPSON Moverio BT-100 Android 3D glasses and controller worn by a man

We have to hand it to EPSON for originality. The company has just announced that it’s shipping the world’s first see-through wearable display (a.k.a. glasses with built-in displays) running Android. The EPSON Moverio BT-100 is a relatively bulky set of glasses (that are however much smaller than other head-mounted displays we’ve seen, like the Sony HMZ-T1) with twin 0.52-inch qHD (960×540) resolution LCD displays, a pair of earphones and a separate hand controller connected to the glasses with a wire.

The hand controller features a touchpad in order to control the on-screen cursor, a directional-pad and a standard set of Android buttons. There is also a 2D/3D mode toggle. The glasses can obviously do 3D and, similar to other 3D goggles, the effect is better than let’s say 3D TVs since each eye is seeing a completely different image, eliminating cross-talk.
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Olympus OM-D E-M5 going for a dive, PT-E08 underwater housing to be released July 2012

News

  • March 26, 2012 at 3:56 am

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Olympus PT-EP08 underwater housing for OM-D E-M5 front

We can’t deny that we are anxiously waiting for Olympus’s upcoming high-end Micro Four Thirds digital camera. The Olympus OM-D E-M5 should start shipping any day now if Amazon UK‘s 1st of April ship date pans out, while BHPhotoVideo has the camera shipping on April 16 in the US.

So what if you want to get this 16.1-megapixel, 5-axis in-body image stabilization shooter underwater? Well Olympus has you covered. Together with the E-M5, Olympus had announced the PT-EP08 underwater housing. The PT-EP08 is rated waterproof for up to 45 meters and you can use it together with the M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm II, 14-42mm IIR and ED 9-18mm lenses using the separate PPO-EP01 lens port. Olympus will also release a lens port compatible with a couple of Four Third lenses like the Zuiko Digital ED 50mm f2.0 Macro and 35mm f3.5 Macro.
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Why we love tech: Watch life explode into moving paintings in Jeff Scher’s experimental films

News

  • March 25, 2012 at 9:19 am

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A frame from Jeff Scher's animated short Tulips

Jeff Scher wasn’t content just with painting a beautiful picture; he wanted to breathe life into his work. By drawing a series of paintings and then shooting them in sequence, with each painting making up a frame to a film, the same way old-school hand-drawn animation was made, he’s been doing exactly this. The New York-based artist has been experimenting with video most of his life and his collection of short animated films are a combination of a lot of patience, hard work and a touch of technology.

Each second of video is around fifteen paintings or collages. Every painting is captured with a digital camera and joined in software to create the end product. Most films end up being around two minutes with a minute and a half of video being shy of 1,500 drawings.
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