Redspotgames has plans for further Dreamcast development originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In mid-July, Mozilla announced that it was upping its “bug bounty” from $500 to $3,000 for every critical, reproducible security flaw reported. Today, MacWorld is reporting that, “Between 10 percent and 15 percent of the serious security bugs reported since Mozilla launched its bug bounty program have been provided free of charge.” Mozilla spokesperson Johnathan Nightingale said: “A lot of people would say, ‘Don’t worry about it. Donate it to the EFF or just send me a T-shirt.” Now that is the open source type spirt that just warms the cockles of your heart, isn’t it?

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Take heart, freshmen -- six months from now, you'll be kickin' it on holiday break, while the rest of us working folk glare angrily and curse the wasted chances that haunt us still today. Positive thinking goes a long way, right? At any rate, Barnes & Noble has made sure that its newly announced Nook Study is live prior to the start of most fall semesters and as of today, both Windows and OS X users can head to the source link to get those bits a-flowin'. We'll be interested to see just how many students take advantage of the portal -- not everyone's keen on digital textbooks, you know -- but hopefully it'll have a better go at things than did the Kindle DX.

Barnes & Noble Nook Study now available to download, just in time for fall semester originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook has confirmed that it is testing out a new feature that will provide users with the ability to delete their account. Currently, Facebook users that want to delete their account must go through the cumbersome process of first de-activating their account for 14 days before deletion takes place. For those that have gone through it, this process is heart-wrenching as Facebook assaults you with images of your friends who will “miss you” and reminds you during your 14 days of withdrawal that so-and-so has “tried to contact you.” Only the strong can make it through these two weeks of torture. This new feature will bypass this 14-day purgatory and will allow users to delete their account easily and presumably immediately. Don’t panic if you can not find this delete button as this feature is being tested on a  select number of users. Head on over to your Facebook account settings to see if you are one of the chosen few.

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Sure, the Samsung Vibrant came out three days earlier, but you don't care if T-Mobile customers beat you to the Galaxy S punch -- you're on AT&T, and it's about time you had (another) high-end Android smartphone to call your own. Our recent hands-on showed it was a bit sluggish, so you might want to wait for our full review, but if your heart's set on that 4-inch Super AMOLED screen and 1GHz Hummingbird core, you're only two clicks away from adding the Android 2.1 handset to your virtual shopping cart. Click one is our source link, immediately below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Samsung Captivate now shipping from AT&T, right on cue originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An HTC represesntative in attendance at the HTC Aria event in Chicago last night, reportedly provided some insight into the 30FPS limitation that has been reported on the HTC EVO 4G. As was suspected, the 30FPS limit is imposed via software, but it is a hardware limitation that lies at the heart of this issue. Though the smartphone is capable of much more than 30FPS — as shown above — the EVO 4G is throttled down to support the 30FPS limitation of the HDMI hardware that is included on the handset. EVO 4G owners will be stuck with 30FPS on all their games until HTC decides to throw in some code to dynamically adjust the FPS based upon the presence or absence of an HDMI cable.  Of course, there is always the folks at xda-developers who have already been working on this limitation and most likely have some hackery already on-hand that will give you both 30FPS HDMI out and 60FPS gaming.

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Still looking for an excuse to buy a pico projector? We might just have the perfect thing. LuminAR, a project of MIT student Natan Linder, is something like a sentient desk lamp of the sort that will make any dedicated Pixar fan's heart skip a beat. It can follow a user's actions, using a camera to detect gestures and beam information down to augment whichever reality they're currently experiencing. Interestingly, the whole thing is built into a bulb socket, meaning it could be thrown into any lamp you like -- if you can do without the whole automatic motion aspect. It's based on what looks to be a Microsoft Lifecam Show webcam and what is certainly a Microvision Show WX projector, which is both focus and care free. There's a demo video after the break but, sadly, little hope that this thing will be replacing your current desktop lamp any time soon.

Continue reading LiminAR robot finally shows us what pico projectors were meant for (video)

LiminAR robot finally shows us what pico projectors were meant for (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint’s announcement that it was going to charge customers $30 per month to turn their EVO 4G into a Wi-Fi hotspot was met with a lot of criticism, but as the saying goes, good things come to those who wait. A weekend update made the popular android-wifi-tether app now allows EVO owners to tether over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to your heart’s content. To use the app you’ll first need to root your EVO, but thanks to unrevoked, anyone can root their EVO in a matter of seconds. After you’ve obtained root access, simply download 2.0.2.pre14 and up. One major drawback of the app is that it does not include support for WPA/WAP2 encryption, but so long as you’re willing to place your trust in WEP you’re good to go. That is provided your EVOs Wi-Fi isn’t on the fritz.

[Via Android Police]

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According to the generally reliable Boy Genius Report, Verizon Wireless is in the process of testing iPads compatible with their CDMA network as well as, possibly, a separate 4G model. An iPad on Verizon's network? Be still my heart. More »

Verizon Wireless - Wireless - Telecommunication - Business - Technology

Sure, Project Natal is the hotness and a little bird tells us PlayStation Move is pretty bodacious, but you don't have to buy a fancy game console to sooth your motion-tracking blues. When students at Cornell University wanted to play Human Tetris (and ace a final project to boot), they taught a 20Mhz, 8-bit microcontroller how to follow their moves. Combined with an NTSC camera, the resulting system can display a 39 x 60 pixel space at 24 frames per second, apparently enough to slot your body into some grooves -- and as you'll see in videos after the break, it plays a mean game of Breakout, too. Full codebase and plans to build your own at the source link. Eat your heart out, geeks.

Continue reading Students program Human Tetris into 8-bit microcontroller, give away schematics for free (video)

Students program Human Tetris into 8-bit microcontroller, give away schematics for free (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 May 2010 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like a billion other people, I download things illegally. I'm also an actor, writer and director whose income depends on revenue from DVDs, movies and books. This leads to many conflicts in my head, in my heart, and in bars. More »

Keepin' it real fake: iPad QWERTY slider edition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Turn your iPad into a MIDI controller in 3,700 easy steps

Turn your iPad into a MIDI controller in 3,700 easy steps originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This probably isn't a response to the 3D onslaught or even "superbit" releases like the upcoming Avatar 2D disc, but just in case the standard 50GB Blu-ray discs were beginning to feel a bit -- how do you say... cramped? -- the Blu-ray Disc Association's rolling out a new BDXL format capable of holding up to 128GB (write-once) or 100GB (rewriteable). Before you get too excited, you should know that you'll need a new player to access these -- even a firmware update won't save the PS3 this time -- since they go up to three or four layers deep and will likely need a more powerful laser. While our home movies can be compressed just fine, corporations currently still using other mediums for archiving might appreciate the extra space, as well as the new IH-BD discs, designed with one 25GB read-only layer, and one 25GB rewritable layer on the same platter. If you're looking for a place to permanently back up that super high-res "amateur photography," take heart -- a consumer version is in the works, though it will first be aimed at markets where Blu-ray Disc recorders are popular, or available at all (read: maybe Japan, definitely not the US). No word when the new hardware will actually hit the market, but final specs are due "in the next few months." In the meantime, check out the full details after the break.

Continue reading Blu-ray Discs expand to 128GB under new BDXL spec

Blu-ray Discs expand to 128GB under new BDXL spec originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How do we know we're years away from a final resolution to the Nokia / Apple patent lawsuit? It's been six months since Nokia first filed its complaint, and the two parties are just now starting to argue about which specific substantive claims they're eventually going to argue about. Let's do a quick refresh: at the heart of the lawsuit is a conflict over Nokia's wireless patents, some of which are almost certainly essential to how cell data and WiFi operate. As a member of the ETSI and the IEEE licensing groups which oversee GSM and WiFi, Nokia's required to license its patents to anyone who asks on fair terms, but those terms aren't set in stone -- Nokia can negotiate separate licenses as it sees fit, and it apparently wanted Apple to cross-license its touchscreen patents as part of the deal. Apple said no, and now we're all in court, with both sides alleging patent infringement in three different lawsuits (one of which is on hold) and Apple claiming that Nokia is also liable for breach of contract, because it promised fair licensing terms and didn't deliver. Got all that? Right.

So that brings us to yesterday, when Nokia asked the court to dismiss all of Apple's contract-related claims, saying that they're simply a distraction from the real issue, which is patents, and that its license offers aren't unfair simply because Apple doesn't like them. In short: Apple and Nokia's patent lawsuit is currently not really about patents at all, but about whether or not it should also be a fight about contract terms in addition to a fight about patents, and that question won't be resolved for months. And that's why vigilante justice is the future of America's tarnished civilization something like 90 percent of patent cases eventually settle out of court.

P.S. Oh, and in case you're wondering, today Reuters reported that the first trial date isn't expected until 2012. So, yeah.

Nokia asks court to dismiss part of Apple patent lawsuit originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are already plenty of fish in the sea when it comes to VoIP picture-frame phones, and only a few have succeeded in arousing us, but this well-guarded fella here at MSI's CeBIT booth seems to have some potential with its unusually large touchscreen. According to the label, the MS-9A31 landline-VoIP hybrid phone will support DECT, video conference call and instant messaging, all courtesy of Android. A quick glance around the phone also reveals two LAN ports, a USB port and a card reader -- the latter two presumably for stuffing multimedia files. No word on price or availability, but if MSI's prominence can win over Skype's heart then we might have a winner here (and ASUS better watch out). We gathered some shots, but there's also a video walkthrough after the break.

[Thanks, Andy]

Continue reading MSI caught showing off VoIP video conferencing phone running Android

MSI caught showing off VoIP video conferencing phone running Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, the PSP is still a mighty attractive piece of hardware. "Handsome," you might say, but that heart-pounding allure is all but gone these days. While we wait a few more years for Sony to rectify that with a PSP 2, we can drool over another mod by "f00 f00." This time he's managed to squeeze a working VU Meter onto the back of the ever-moddable machine. Sure, it's not a revolution in the world of PSP hacking, but it's impressive and somehow comforting in its own we-guess-the-PSP-is-still-pretty-cool sort of way. Video is after the break.

Continue reading VU Meter finagled into a PSP, reminds us of a time when the PSP was sexy

VU Meter finagled into a PSP, reminds us of a time when the PSP was sexy originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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