Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive hands on: surprisingly cool, but still US-only

When Amazon Appstore for Android launched last week, one of its primary features -- Test Drive -- was disabled just a few minutes after it opened. With no try-before-you-buy, no refund process, and 1-Click purchasing ready to strike at any moment, this caused some problems. Anyway, don't despair: Test Drive is now enabled.

Before you get your hopes up, Test Drive doesn't work with every app. The IMDb app works fine -- you can even watch movie trailers on it! -- but the Angry Birds games are sadly not enabled. Some games work surprisingly well, though, like Bubble Buster. There's very little latency, and the framerate is really rather good. The Test Drive experience is so true to life that you even get ads; how cool is that?

Gallery: Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive

Continue reading Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive hands on: surprisingly cool, but still US-only

Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive hands on: surprisingly cool, but still US-only originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/28/amazon-appstore-for-android-test-drive-hands-on-surprisingly-co/

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Quentin vs. Coen Pays Artistic Homage to Directors

The folks at Spoke Art, the transient art gallery and publishing house behind the awesome Samurai Star Wars prints we mentioned last September, are putting on an exhibit in New York City that will pay tribute to three giants in film: Quentin Tarantino, and Joel and Ethan Coen.
For Quentin vs. Coen: An Art Show Tribute [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/03/quentin-vs-coen-pays-artistic-homage-to-directors/

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CrunchGear Week in Review: Speed of Snow Edition

Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Fez: Check Out The Indie Game Everyone Will Be Talking About This Year For Your Friday: Skiing With A Jetpack On Cute Pixelated Camera Decals For Your Wallz R.I.P. Microsoft Zune, 2006-2011 Flea 2.0 USB Rechargeable Bike Light Powers Your Night With The Light Of [...]

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/03/21/week-in-review-speed-of-snow/

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The GoPano: A Panoramic Lens System For The iPhone

There are quite a few panoramic apps for the iPhone but they all require a steady hand, lots of patience and, most important, you can only take still photos. The GoPano aims to solve that by adding a panoramic mirror to the iPhone's video camera, thereby allowing you to take panoramic video in real time. The GoPano simply snaps onto your iPhone and the included app does the rest. As you record, you can turn the panorama by swiping the screen to shoot what you want as it happens.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/r5uolVZDmjs/

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Chrome 11 goes beta, adds hardware-accelerated 3D CSS and HTML5 speech input

Google Chrome 11 has arrived on the beta channel, and while there's not a lot reported in Google's official release post there have been a few important additions. As we've come to expect from Chrome version bumps, both the Webkit core and V8 JavaScript engine have been updated and tweaked for better performance. GPU-accelerated 3D CSS transforms and compositing are now enabled as well, allowing for richer, smoother Web visuals.

Chrome 11 adds HTML5 Speech Recognition, improving accessibility, and no doubt leading to Web apps which mimic certain mobile apps like Google Voice Search. Chrome 11's Speech Recognition worked quite well in our testing, and you can give it a go yourself by visiting this demo page.

Mac users will also find that Tab Overview has been enabled by default, Chrome 11 also includes improved support for the newer MacBooks' accelerometer. Finally, there's an experimental New Tab Page designed for touchscreens which you can enable on about:flags.

If you're on the beta channel already, you should be upgraded to Chrome 11 automatically. Want to install manually? Grab the Google Chrome 11 beta from this page.

Chrome 11 goes beta, adds hardware-accelerated 3D CSS and HTML5 speech input originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/23/chrome-11-goes-beta-adds-hardware-accelerated-3d-css-and-html5/

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Turn That iPhone Into a Game Boy Camera [Apps]

Everyone had a friend whose parents bought him everything—including a Game Boy Camera, which could take photos in that lovely pixellated look, and even print them out instantly if they'd sprung for a printer too. Now you can throw two fingers your friend's way, because for $1 you can shoot photos in the exact same quality. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/oNqWoODBWnw/turn-that-iphone-into-a-game-boy-camera

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Microsoft buys 666,624 IPv4 addresses from Nortel for $7.5 million

In times of a shortage, people tend to stockpile certain things. And with the looming exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, it's really no surprise that Microsoft jumped all over Nortel's stash of nearly 700,000 addresses when they became available for purchase. Nortel, of course, has been selling off what assets it can as the company battles through bankruptcy proceedings.

Microsoft ponied up $7.5 million for the Nortel pool, which works out to just over $11 per IP address. There were reportedly 13 other interested buyers, but only Microsoft and three others actually submitted bids.

With the last block of IPv4 addresses already issued, snatching up 2/3 of a million in one fell swoop is a smart move by Microsoft, and we're sure they have plans for the IPs. As far as what those plans actually are, we'll just have to wait and see -- though something cloud-based seems like a safe bet.

Microsoft buys 666,624 IPv4 addresses from Nortel for $7.5 million originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/25/microsoft-buys-666-624-ipv4-addresses-from-nortel-for-7-5-milli/

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UK's first fuel cell-powered black cab hits the streets of London

It may not look much different than your average black cab on the outside (decals aside), but it's quite a different story under the hood of this taxi, which has just been deemed road legal in the UK. Developed by Intelligent Energy, the cab actually includes both a fuel cell with a 30 kW net output and a 14 kWh lithium polymer battery pack, which combined promise to provide enough juice for a full day of operation -- along with a top speed of 81 MPH and acceleration from zero to sixty in fourteen seconds. Londoners won't be seeing them everywhere just yet, however, as the company only expects the first fleet to be ready sometime next year in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Continue reading UK's first fuel cell-powered black cab hits the streets of London

UK's first fuel cell-powered black cab hits the streets of London originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/csXKGOOTVoQ/

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Google Payment VP/Former PayPal Exec Osama Bedier On eCommerce: Major Change Is Coming

My old friend Osama Bedier now works for Google. This is especially interesting after reports that Google has partnered up with MasterCard and CitiGroup to test out an NFC payments system. It's also pretty interesting in light of the fact that Google recently filed for a patent for a "Distributed Electronic Commerce System With Centralized Point Of Purchase," or what sounds like a mobile shopping cart that wraps ups all elements of a transaction into a process, goes beyond PayPal and actually collects data about what users are buying.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xbc7zCbaX2k/

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Test that showed Android browser faster than iPhone Safari was flawed

Yesterday's rather shocking finding that the Nexus S loads Web pages 52% faster than the iPhone 4 has turned out to be a sham.

Apple has lashed out at Blaze Software, the company behind the test, saying: "Their testing is flawed. They didn't actually test the Safari browser on the iPhone. Instead they only tested their own proprietary app, which uses an embedded Web viewer that doesn't actually take advantage of Safari's Web performance optimizations."

Blaze has updated its website in response to Apple's rebuttal, kind of admitting it made a mistake, but also attacking Apple for crippling iOS's embedded Web viewer.

There's another, more nefarious, story at play, though. With iOS 4.3, Apple shipped a new version of Mobile Safari, which thanks to Nitro JavaScript and asynchronous rendering should be very fast indeed. Apple didn't update the embedded Web viewer that iOS Web apps use, however. The result is that while websites are very snappy, Web apps that you launch from the home screen are sluggish.

By not updating the embedded Web viewer, developers are claiming that Apple is intentionally stymying the performance -- and thus adoption -- of Web apps on the iOS platform. It could simply be that Apple didn't get around to updating the embedded Web viewer in time for iOS 4.3's release, though.

Test that showed Android browser faster than iPhone Safari was flawed originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 07:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/18/test-that-showed-android-browser-faster-than-iphone-safari-was-flawed/

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Japan’s SoftBank To Offer Free Phones, Waive All Communication Fees For Quake Orphans

Japan's telecommunications juggernaut SoftBank, the third largest mobile carrier of the country, had to register quite a lot of damage after the big earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. 3,800 of SoftBank's base stations were knocked out, meaning no customer in the affected areas could make or receive calls via cell phones (the situation was similar with other carriers). But it turned out that this damage wasn't the main concern of SoftBank's president and founder Masayoshi Son (pictured above). After visiting Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato in his prefecture on March 22 and seeing the real damage done, Son promised his company will offer free cell phones to all children who became orphans due to the earthquake.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Rr9Wz1YQKZk/

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Twitter’s Biz Stone Talks About Awkward Acquisition Meeting With Zuck On Howard Stern

After talking to Conan a few weeks ago, and CNN's Piers Morgan last night, Biz Stone made an appearance on another mainstream media show today: Howard Stern. You can access the interview here. Unlike many of Stern's interviews, this one was mostly PG-rated. One of the most interesting tales revealed in the interview was the backstory behind Facebook's offer to acquire Twitter back in 2008 (the story is at the 16 minute mark in the interview). As we know, Facebook reportedly offered Twitter $500 million to acquire the company in the fall of 2008. Biz tells Stern that he showed up at work one day and Twitter employee Jason Goldman (who is no longer with the company) told him that fellow co-founder Evan Williams was waiting for him downstairs in a car.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/QHVi1mMYeBI/

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NoDo Windows Phone 7 update hits the Venue Pro, Dell update to follow

Well, it looks like Venue Pro owners will be getting not one but two software updates in the near future. Dell has just confirmed that the much-anticipated NoDo Windows Phone 7 update has begun rolling out to devices today, and also announced that a separate update of its own will be "coming later." NoDo, of course, adds copy and paste functionality among some other updates and tweaks, while the Dell update is only said to have "more fixes." Feel free to let us know how the update works out for you in comments.

NoDo Windows Phone 7 update hits the Venue Pro, Dell update to follow originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/30/nodo-windows-phone-7-update-hits-the-venue-pro-dell-update-to-f/

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Android Market in-app billing now testing, goes live next week

The Android Market is still missing a few key pieces of functionality. Among them is in-app payments -- which Google has now announced will begin rolling out next week. The company is encouraging developers to upload apps that include in-app purchases, and instructions have been provided to walk submitters through the set-up and testing process. Google has made sure test apps can't actually be published until the launch next week, though.

While it's nice that Android users will finally be able to make in-app purchases, we're not going to lie -- right now we're more interested in the Amazon Appstore's daily freebie...

Android Market in-app billing now testing, goes live next week originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/25/android-market-in-app-billing-now-testing-goes-live-next-week/

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Are you concerned about your headphone jack?

Yeah, me neither… But I’m sure that some of you out there are worried about dust, dirt or liquids invading the headphone jack of your phone or other device. The iCatchi is $6.95 accessory that plugs into the jack when you don’t have your headphones plugged in. It protects the jack from all sorts of [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/03/28/are-you-concerned-about-your-headphone-jack/

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Why Do These Breathtaking Russian Images of Earth Look So Different from NASA's? [Image Cache]

While this morning's orbital image of Mercury is historic, these two images are the ones that have truly left me in complete awe today. Even more so than the most accurate, highest resolution view of Earth to date. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/nGYgNn6nnQA/this-is-the-moon-and-the-earth-like-you-have-never-seen-them-before

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An Analog Watch That Looks Like a Digital Watch [Watches]

You name it, this watch has got it—it's greedily made from platinum, gold, titanium and carbon fiber, and has three mechanics in the analog watch face that align to make the time look digital. Further details on just how much this digital-pretender will cost have sadly been cloaked in secrecy, for now. [Wired UK] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/W4Agwd-r2XY/an-analog-watch-that-looks-like-a-digital-watch

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