Armed and Loaded » Gadgets

Insignia Narrator is a “talking” HD radio

admin — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:06 +0000

This July, we will have seen our fair share of Hollywood blockbusters, but apart from that, there is also the Insignia Narrator, which has been touted to be the first “talking” HD radio on the market. The Narrator will be bound for a Best Buy debut, and is also the first IAAIS-certified HD radio product, which sports an ergonomical design that caters for folks who are visually impaired, sporting audible voice prompts as well as a slew of niche programming to get one started right out of the box. If this description alone is enough to have captured your heart, then you can go ahead and place a pre-order for The Narrator on BestBuy.com for just one dollar shy of a Benjamin. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Best Buy retracts 23rd of May HTC EVO 4G LTE release date, Best Buy slashes prices on all Mac models, refresh imminent?,

Insignia Narrator is a “talking” HD radio via http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/05/insignia-narrator-is-a-talking-hd-radio/ UberGizmo

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Radio Tactics’ ACESO Kiosk mobile data extraction to be used by London Police

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:03 +0000

The Metropolitan Police, the police force responsible for Greater London, has announced that it will begin using a mobile device data extraction system that will give its officers the ability to extract data from a mobile device in a matter of minutes. The said system will use Radio Tactics’ ACESO Kiosk, a touchscreen device that will be deployed in the city. According to Radio Tactics, the ACESO Kiosk has the capability to extract data including call history, photos, videos, and email and social networking info from a phone at an average time of 20 minutes. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Wikipedia banner ads could mean that your PC has malware, OS X 10.7.4 FileVault Security Issue Fixed,

Radio Tactics’ ACESO Kiosk mobile data extraction to be used by London Police via http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/05/radio-tactics-aceso-kiosk-mobile-data-extraction-to-be-used-by-london-police/ UberGizmo

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Did Steve Jobs’s own words damn Apple in anti-trust suit?

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:04 +0000

Apple’s attempts to have the anti-trust suit brought against them by the US Department of Justice thrown out of court were denied on Tuesday.

Federal Judge Denise Cote cited previous statements from Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs as justification for the dispute over e-book pricing to continue.

Jobs’s comment was included in the DOJ’s case against Apple. "We’ll go to [an] agency mode, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the cusomter pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway," Jobs reportedly said.

He added that prices would "be the same" at Apple and Amazon, which the DOJ contested in the suit.

The DOJ’s suit alleges that Apple colluded with book publishers including Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin to standardize e-book prices when the publishers should have been competing with one another.

"…The cusomter pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway," Jobs reportedly said.

Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster were quick to settle, but Apple insisted that the company has done nothing wrong, going so far as to say that they’re eager to begin litigation.

Eliminating the competition

Jobs’s statements were previously known, but it was unclear what importance they would play in the case until now.

"It has everything to do with coordinating a horizontal agreement among publishers to raise prices, and eliminating horizontal price competition among Apple’s competitors at the retail level," Judge Cote said.

The suit alleges that Apple contacted major publishers in 2009, just before the launch of the iPad, and hatched a plan to force Amazon’s then-low e-book prices up to make Apple’s iBooks store more attractive to consumers.

At the time it was widely assumed that Amazon was selling e-books at a loss in order to stimulate sales of its Kindle devices.

"With the fortuitous entry of Apple into the market for e-books, and the decision by Apple to join the price-fixing conspiracy, that horizontal conspiracy became a potent weapon for engineering a fundamental shift in an entire industry," Judge Cote said.

If the court rules against Apple and Macmillan and Penguin, the two publishers who have yet to settle, the companies could be forced to implement anti-trust compliance programs and pay hefty fines.

Did Steve Jobs’s own words damn Apple in anti-trust suit? via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/portable-devices-news/~3/ELP7gS69EkE/story01.htm”> TechRadar Portable Devices

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Gmail updated with quick access to contacts in search and new Google+ integration

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:02 +0000

Small things do matter. That’s exactly why Google is deploying another update to Gmail. Today, Google is introducing a few changes in Gmail which include quick access to contact details when viewing past conversations, as well as an improved integration with Google+ circles. Let’s get down into the details. Today’s update will give Gmail users rich contact information when searching for an email address on their contact list.

If previous email address searches have brought up relevant email messages, the search results will now show you the contact details in addition to the contact’s profile photo and previous emails sent from and to them. Google said that users can also start a chat or initiate a call from the searches. And since the Google+ integration has been improved, any changes made on a specific contact’s Google+ profile will be reflected in the searches as well. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Gmail gets updated with automatic translation, tab title tweaks and smart mute, Gmail storage gets bumped to 10GB,

Gmail updated with quick access to contacts in search and new Google+ integration via http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/05/gmail-updated-with-quick-access-to-contacts-in-search-and-new-google-integration/ UberGizmo

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Front-lit Kindle to land in July but Kindle Colour unlikely

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:04 +0000

Night owls will be pleased to hear that Amazon’s next Kindle is said to be front-lit so you can do away with those pesky reading lights.

Reuter’s source, who claims to have seen a prototype of the front-lit ereader, says the new Kindle will arrive in July in both Wi-Fi only and 3G versions.

July, of course, being one of the months in which the nights are shortest – how’s that for timing?

Half light

What the new front-lit Kindle won’t have, though, is colour – the source was quite clear on it running a monochrome E-Ink display.

Rumours broke last week (by way of the ever-patchy Digitimes) that a Kindle Colour may be hitting the shelves in the second half of 2012.

But Reuters now reports that there is "very little chance" of Amazon launching a Kindle Colour this year, although the company has apparently had talks about such a thing with E Ink so it may yet be in the works.

As for the ever-elusive Kindle Fire 2, the front-light source said it will launch in time for the Christmas shopping season this year, with an 8.9-inch screen in tow.

GeForce Grid To Accelerate Cloud-Based Gaming Rendering

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:02 +0000

GeForce Grid is described by NVIDIA has a cloud gaming platform which is a “gaming-as-a-service” product which lets developer address a larger market by executing games on remote servers and stream them to all kinds of devices (laptop, tablets…) over the Internet. This is not unlike OnLive by the looks of it.

Of course, the main issue when dealing with game streaming games is latency. It’s not a new problem, and we’ve talked about this when OnLive was first demonstrated. To reduce the latency, there’s no secret: NVIDIA or their partners (Gakai was on-stage) need to build data-centers closer to customers. So far, the first one is located in Sunnyvale, so Bay Area residents may see network latency as low as 5ms to 10ms. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NVIDIA’s Kepler GPU Supports Cloud Environments, NVIDIA iRay, RealityServer,

GeForce Grid To Accelerate Cloud-Based Gaming Rendering via http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/05/geforce-grid/ UberGizmo

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The music industry ‘just didn’t get’ Zune, says ex-Microsoft ent head

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:03 +0000

An ex-Microsoft exec has spoken out about the company’s Xbox success and relative Zune failings, saying part of the blame lies with the music industry.

Robbie Bach, who headed up Microsoft’s entertainment division during the early days of Xbox and Zune, was speaking at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network event in Seattle.

Talking about how the Zune team tried to replicate the Xbox’s success by working with retail and game publishing partners, Bach said, "It’s not like we didn’t try but — I don’t know how to say this politely — the music industry just didn’t get it."

The day the music died

"They just didn’t figure out that being dependent on Apple was bad for them," he continued.

"And they were so hooked on the drug of what Apple was supplying them that they couldn’t see past that to realize that they needed something else to actually drive their business.

"The label business, the music industry, has never recovered from that."

But he does admit that it wasn’t all down to the music biz being unable to see past the big shiny iPod in front of them:

"The portable music market is gone and it was already leaving when we started.

"We just weren’t brave enough, honestly, and we ended up chasing Apple with a product that actually wasn’t a bad product, but it was still a chasing product, and there wasn’t a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get that thing."

The music industry ‘just didn’t get’ Zune, says ex-Microsoft ent head via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/portable-devices-news/~3/aRNDUPqcRKA/story01.htm”> TechRadar Portable Devices

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Kindle Fire 8.9-inch and Front-lit Kindle eReader launching soon?

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:02 +0000

A few days ago, we wrote about the possibility for Amazon to release color e-book Kindles this year. Today, Reuters is backing up the rumor by saying that Amazon will indeed launch new versions of its Kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire tablet, including a monochrome e-reader with front lighting. According to Reuters, a source of theirs who claims to have direct knowledge of the matter told them that the world’s largest Internet retailer is planning to have the new e-reader in stores in July. The source, who asked not to be named because Amazon has not yet made the decision public, also told Reuters that Amazon has been ramping up production of the new Kindle which will run on E Ink’s display. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Amazon opens French Kindle Store, Disable ads on your Kindle e-reader for $30,

Kindle Fire 8.9-inch and Front-lit Kindle eReader launching soon? via http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/05/kindle-fire-8-9-inch-and-front-lit-kindle-ereader-launching-soon/ UberGizmo

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Tutorial: How to use iTunes Match

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:05 +0000

How to use iTunes Match

Does your entire music collection fit on your iOS device? Even if it does, you’ll want to reserve some space for your apps, games, photos and ebooks as well.

Cramming these things onto your device often means having to make some hard decisions about which songs you leave behind on your computer, which can be frustrating when you realise that a song you want to hear isn’t on your device.

This isn’t a problem if all your music has been purchased from the iTunes Store. That music is available to download in your iPhone or iPod touch’s iTunes app when you tap the Purchased tab.

However, the iTunes Match subscription service, which costs £21.99 per year, reaches much further than this.

It also makes music ripped from CDs and purchased from other online stores available for download at any time with just a few taps. As long as your device has an internet connection, whether it’s 3G or Wi-Fi, you can download your music on a whim.

That’s an incredible convenience, but there are some pitfalls that are important to know about. For instance, you might find that some tracks haven’t been uploaded, but you have no idea why.

It could be as simple as a broken link to a file in your computer’s library, or it might be down to one of the criteria imposed by Apple for the service, which you can read more about on the Apple support page.

You should also know that if you play a song using Match and let it run on to the next song on the album, it will keep downloading songs in sequence, potentially using your data allowance.

So, if you’re keen to try iTunes Match, here’s how to begin.

1. Subscribe to iTunes Match

In the iTunes Store on your PC or Mac, click iTunes Match under Quick Links at the top-right. Below the overview, click to subscribe. Enter your account details. A credit or debit card must be on file in your account.

2. Match your music

iTunes runs through three steps to put your music online. It tries to match tracks not from the iTunes Store against items available in the store, and makes those items available to you even if your copy was lower quality.

3. Get unmatched tracks

Unmatched music is uploaded. The time this takes depends on the track sizes and your connection’s upload speed. If you quit and reopen iTunes, it checks whether items are now available from the store, then resumes.

4. Prepare your iOS device

Enabling iTunes Match on an iOS device stops it syncing music with your PC. It warns that the device’s library will be overwritten, but if you sync now you won’t have to waste time re-downloading tracks already on your device.

5. Turn on iTunes Match

In the Settings app, find and tap Music. iTunes Match can take a few seconds to appear at the top of the next page. Flick its switch to On, then enter the same account details you entered when subscribing in step one.

6. Wait for the library to sync

Your device downloads library details while you use it, during which the Music app shows a progress bar or enables you to play tracks already on the device. When ready, cloud symbols indicate items not on the device.

7. Download individual tracks

Tap the cloud button next to a track name to download it, or the track’s name to play it. Playback advances through the track list on which you tapped, automatically downloading subsequent tracks, even over 3G.

8. Skip unwanted tracks

Use playlists to avoid downloading unwanted tracks over 3G. Tap Playlists, then Add Playlist… Tracks can be added even if they haven’t yet been downloaded. Tap Done, swipe to the bottom of the list and tap Download All.

9. Download whole albums

You’ll find a Download All button below an album’s track list, and below the list of everything by each artist or composer in your library. This enables you to grab whole bundles of tracks that fit your mood with only a few taps.

Tutorial: How to use iTunes Match via http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/portable-devices-news/~3/Q23uo1NOY_o/story01.htm”> TechRadar Portable Devices

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Snapkeys 2i touchscreen keyboard coming soon

admin — Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:03 +0000

This might be the third time that we’ll talk to you about the Snapkeys 2i touchscreen keyboard. In case you forgot, we wrote about Snapkeys 2i (Imaginary Interface) last year and that it will be demoed at the CES 2012. But as a matter of review, Snapkeys 2i replaces the traditional QWERTY layout with four buttons that float near the bottom corners of the phone or tablet. Using predictive text technology, expert users can blind type on touchscreen devices. Today, we’re writing about Snapkeys 2i again, but this time, with a promising update. According to Jared Newman of Techland, he was able to test the Snapkeys 2i at the CTIA Wireless show this week to which he thought that the concept could actually work. Check out how Snapkeys 2i works after the break. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Facebook for Android updated, Samsung Cares app does not make you shed a tear,

Snapkeys 2i touchscreen keyboard coming soon via http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/05/snapkeys-2i-touchscreen-keyboard-coming-soon/ UberGizmo

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