Gadget & Technology News http://techiefreak.com The latest Tech and Gadget news, photos, reviews and more Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:42:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 en Handy Light for iPhone’s dirty little secret: tethering (video) http://techiefreak.com/handy-light-for-iphone-s-dirty-little-secret-tethering-video/ http://techiefreak.com/handy-light-for-iphone-s-dirty-little-secret-tethering-video/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:46:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/handy-light-for-iphone-s-dirty-little-secret-tethering-video/ You may ask yourself, why on earth would anyone pay 99 cents for an iPhone app whose sole purpose is to flash bright, solid colors? We certainly wouldn’t recommend it, but Handy Light has a great little Easter egg that undoubtedly doesn’t jive with the folks at Cupertino HQ. Like Nullriver’s Netshare app before it, that little piece of software allows for SOCKS proxy tethering, without having to sign up for AT&T’s tethering plan. directions available via the video below, and whether you’re looking to pick up the app yourself, better rush — we can’t imagine Apple will let that one stay in the store for very much longer.

Continue reading Handy Light for iPhone’s dirty little secret: tethering (video)

Handy Light for iPhone’s dirty little secret: tethering (video) originally arised on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Ross Miller

]]> http://techiefreak.com/handy-light-for-iphone-s-dirty-little-secret-tethering-video/feed/ Google signs 20-year deal to ability input centers with wind energy http://techiefreak.com/google-signs-20-year-deal-to-power-data-centers-with-wind-energy/ http://techiefreak.com/google-signs-20-year-deal-to-power-data-centers-with-wind-energy/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:45:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/google-signs-20-year-deal-to-power-data-centers-with-wind-energy/
It’s not the first investment Google has made in wind power, but anyone wondering about its commitment needn’t look any further than the company’s just-announced deal with NextEra Energy. It’s agreed to buy wind ability from NextEra’s wind farm in Iowa for the next twenty years, which it says will supply sufficient capability to supply “several” of its documents centers. What’s more, Google says that the size and length of the deal (taking 114 megawatts of energy off the market) will additionally lead to other indirect benefits for the wind potential industry, and give NextEra the flexibility to invest in additional clean energy projects. Head on past the break for NextEra’s press release on the deal.

Continue reading Google signs 20-year deal to ability notes centers with wind energy

Google signs 20-year deal to ability documents centers with wind energy originally presented on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

]]> http://techiefreak.com/google-signs-20-year-deal-to-power-data-centers-with-wind-energy/feed/ Floppy drive grows legs to avoid spills, still can’t avoid extinction http://techiefreak.com/floppy-drive-grows-legs-to-avoid-spills-still-can-t-avoid-extinction/ http://techiefreak.com/floppy-drive-grows-legs-to-avoid-spills-still-can-t-avoid-extinction/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:52:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/floppy-drive-grows-legs-to-avoid-spills-still-can-t-avoid-extinction/
We might one day live in a world where everyday electronics can fend for themselves against household disasters but, for the instance being, we can only marvel at one of a kind projects like that “Floppy Legs” drive from British design team Chambers Judd. As you can probably surmise, they’ve added some legs to an otherwise ordinary external floppy drive, which remain concealed most of the day, but spring to life whether there’s liquid spilled near the drive. Head on past the break to see that amazing feat for yourself, and be certain to take a peek at some of the team’s earlier projects as well, including the Gesundheit Radio that “sneezes” to clear away dust.

Continue reading Floppy drive grows legs to avoid spills, still can’t avoid extinction

Floppy drive grows legs to avoid spills, still can’t avoid extinction originally arised on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

]]> http://techiefreak.com/floppy-drive-grows-legs-to-avoid-spills-still-can-t-avoid-extinction/feed/ Samsung ships 1TB Spinpoint MT2 2.5-inch hard drive, but it won’t fit in your laptop http://techiefreak.com/samsung-ships-1tb-spinpoint-mt2-2-5-inch-hard-drive-but-it-won-t-fit-in-your-laptop/ http://techiefreak.com/samsung-ships-1tb-spinpoint-mt2-2-5-inch-hard-drive-but-it-won-t-fit-in-your-laptop/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:05:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/samsung-ships-1tb-spinpoint-mt2-2-5-inch-hard-drive-but-it-won-t-fit-in-your-laptop/ So, we’ve good news and poor news. Given that we aren’t accepting votes for which you’ll be fed first, we’ll go ahead and extol the virtues of cramming a full terabyte of space into a 2.5-inch scheme factor. Not that that feat hasn’t been accomplished before, but the 2.5-inch 1TB HDD realm could certainly use the competition. Now, the rough part — Samsung’s Spinpoint MT2 boasts a 12.5mm height, which is 3mm too high for your existing laptop. Unless, of course, you’re rocking one of those otherworldly Clevo machines with suitable space for a Karmann Ghia in there. There’s plus the fact that it’s humming along at just 5,400RPM and rocks just 8MB of buffer memory, meaning that that one’s entirely more likely to find a home within a portable HDD case than inside of Apple’s next MacBook Air. Oh, and there’s no price being made public, but honestly, we’re sort of glad Sammy didn’t bother teasing us.

Continue reading Samsung ships 1TB Spinpoint MT2 2.5-inch hard drive, but it won’t fit in your laptop

Samsung ships 1TB Spinpoint MT2 2.5-inch hard drive, but it won’t fit in your laptop originally presented on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

]]> http://techiefreak.com/samsung-ships-1tb-spinpoint-mt2-2-5-inch-hard-drive-but-it-won-t-fit-in-your-laptop/feed/ Dell Streak review redux: thoughts from the New World http://techiefreak.com/dell-streak-review-redux-thoughts-from-the-new-world/ http://techiefreak.com/dell-streak-review-redux-thoughts-from-the-new-world/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:00:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/dell-streak-review-redux-thoughts-from-the-new-world/

whether you’ve been following the ongoing saga of Dell’s Streak, you’ve probably already read our review of O2 UK’s version — thing is, the British perspective can be very different from the Yankee one (we didn’t see eye-to-eye during the War of 1812, for instance). To that end, we wanted to circle back now that the gargantuan Android beast is finally coming close to a US release and get another quick take.

As a refresher, that thing matches or exceeds the specs you’d expect to find on any contemporary high-end smartphone in most respects, starting with a 1GHz Snapdragon core, a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, 850 / 1900MHz 3G for use on AT&T, Rogers, Bell, and Telus, and 2GB of internal storage coupled with a bundled and pre-installed 16GB microSDHC card. Where the Streak sets itself far, far apart from the crowd, though, is with an absolutely huge 5-inch capacitive touchscreen at 800 x 480 resolution. Needless to say, it’s a polarizing feature — and for many, it’ll singlehandedly determine whether the phone is a buy or a no-buy.

Our original review ultimately concluded that the Streak was a promising device in need of an update from Android 1.6 to Froyo. On second look, does our American reviewer agree? Read on.

Gallery: Dell Streak review redux: thoughts from the New World

Continue reading Dell Streak review redux: thoughts from the New World

Dell Streak review redux: thoughts from the New World originally arised on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

]]> http://techiefreak.com/dell-streak-review-redux-thoughts-from-the-new-world/feed/ Silicon chips get speed boost with a lead start http://techiefreak.com/silicon-chips-get-speed-boost-with-a-lead-start/ http://techiefreak.com/silicon-chips-get-speed-boost-with-a-lead-start/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:46:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/silicon-chips-get-speed-boost-with-a-lead-start/ In tennis, the materials of the tennis court affect the performance of the ball. Such is the case, on a much, much smaller scale, for electron movement across circuitry. Silicon chips give resistance that lowers the speed limit, while atom-thick sheets of carbon (a.k.a. graphene) have a special property whereby free electrons are nearly weightless and can travel up to 0.003 times the speed of light — sounds great, but it’s hard to produce in bulk. Cut to Han Woong Yeom and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea. His team has added a thin layer lead on a silicon chip, lowering the electron mass (and thus proportionally raising its speed) to 1/20th compared to standard silicon. Still a ways to go for graphene speeds — by a factor of three, according to Yeom — but it’s additionally more likely to mass production.

Silicon chips get speed boost with a lead start originally presented on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Ross Miller

]]> http://techiefreak.com/silicon-chips-get-speed-boost-with-a-lead-start/feed/ Lenovo promises LePad Android tablet for the end of the year http://techiefreak.com/lenovo-promises-lepad-android-tablet-for-the-end-of-the-year/ http://techiefreak.com/lenovo-promises-lepad-android-tablet-for-the-end-of-the-year/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:36:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/lenovo-promises-lepad-android-tablet-for-the-end-of-the-year/

Liu Jun, Senior VP and President of Lenovo’s Consumer Business Group, has revealed his company’s intention to deliver an Android tablet by the end of that year. To be known as LePad, that obvious resurrection of the Skylight / U1 Hybrid R&D effort seems destined to follow LePhone in seeking its fortunes in China first before expanding out to the rest of the world. Lenovo’s chairman did recently note that Apple’s relative inaction toward mainland China makes opportunities for others, so that may well represent the IdeaPad maker’s play for that burgeoning market. Of course, we’d love to be wrong and see a simultaneous release around the world — it’s about day the iPad got some legitimate competition in the slate realm.

Lenovo promises LePad Android tablet for the end of the year originally presented on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Vlad Savov

]]> http://techiefreak.com/lenovo-promises-lepad-android-tablet-for-the-end-of-the-year/feed/ Verizon’s 4G LTE SIM in the wild http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-4g-lte-sim-in-the-wild/ http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-4g-lte-sim-in-the-wild/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:31:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-4g-lte-sim-in-the-wild/

It’s still baking our noodles to think about a Verizon device using a SIM on American soil — but certain ample, those cards allegedly set up in Big Red’s systems are floating around in the wild. What you’re looking at here is a SIM that will slot into Verizon’s LTE-enabled 4G devices when they launch later that year (hence the big “4G” logo on there), and yes, they look just like the SIMs you’ve been using for the last two decades on carriers around the world. The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems.

[Thanks, RWN]

Gallery: Verizon’s 4G LTE SIM in the wild

Verizon’s 4G LTE SIM in the wild originally presented on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

]]> http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-4g-lte-sim-in-the-wild/feed/ First official Droid 2 pictures spotted in teaser site cipher? http://techiefreak.com/first-official-droid-2-pictures-spotted-in-teaser-site-code/ http://techiefreak.com/first-official-droid-2-pictures-spotted-in-teaser-site-code/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:57:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/first-official-droid-2-pictures-spotted-in-teaser-site-code/

Astute reader Dominic was just minding his business, hunting for hints in the Droid Does website source cipher, when what should he allegedly discover but an entire Droid 2 spread inside an Shockwave Flash file. To our knowledge these may be the first official images of the Motorola A955, though of course we’ve already seen it a number of times before. We just need Verizon to leak an official announcement with price and release moment now — we’re hearing August 23rd — and perhaps a nice Hollywood trailer to round things out. See a larger version of Dominic’s discovery right after the break.

Continue reading First official Droid 2 pictures spotted in teaser site cipher?

First official Droid 2 pictures spotted in teaser site cipher? originally arised on Engadget on Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Sean Hollister

]]> http://techiefreak.com/first-official-droid-2-pictures-spotted-in-teaser-site-code/feed/ Verizon’s LTE rollout is imminent, computers updated for 4G SIM cards http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-lte-rollout-is-imminent-computers-updated-for-4g-sim-cards/ http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-lte-rollout-is-imminent-computers-updated-for-4g-sim-cards/#comments Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:03:00 +0000 Gadget CornerGadget Corner http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-lte-rollout-is-imminent-computers-updated-for-4g-sim-cards/

We just got some alleged (but very convincing) internal documents on Verizon’s 4G plans, and it’s mostly stuff we’ve already heard — 5-12Mbps down, aircards before smartphones, and plans to roll out in 30 cities in 2010. That said, documents dated that week show the company’s still on track to serve up 100 million connections by the end of the year, and a pair of independent tipsters have just sent us pics of Verizon computers ready and waiting for those precious LTE SIM cards. Furthermore, the docs plus claim that the planned LTE isn’t just fast, it’s got a lag-destroying 30ms latency too, and fans of wider wireless computing can expect 4G tablets of some sort in 2011 as well. See all the goodies in our gallery below.

Gallery: Verizon Wireless alleged internal 4G plans

[Thanks to everyone who sent that in]

Verizon’s LTE rollout is imminent, computers updated for 4G SIM cards originally presented on Engadget on Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Sean Hollister

]]> http://techiefreak.com/verizon-s-lte-rollout-is-imminent-computers-updated-for-4g-sim-cards/feed/