Cut a Watermelon into Sticks (Perfect for Kids and Parties)

Source: http://lifehacker.com/cut-a-watermelon-into-sticks-perfect-for-kids-and-part-1603562078

Summer's beloved fruit, the watermelon, can get pretty messy to eat. Instead of serving the melon in traditional wedges, cut it into sticks—easy finger foods.

This is great for little kids or for serving a crowd and you need smaller portions. I did this the other day and found another benefit: The sticks stack up much better in a container, so you don't have to do that Tetris-like watermelon wedges cramming to save space.

A Thrifty Mom has a tutorial for cutting the watermelon. Basically you'll first cut it into three pieces, then the intersecting 1-2" slices. If you have an apple corer, you can make watermelon cylinders, but with this method you only need a sharp knife.

Watermelon Slices - Perfect for Little Hands | A Thrify Mom

Chromebooks can get cheaper thanks to new support for a low-end chip

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/12/chromebooks-can-get-cheaper/

You can pick up a Chromebook for a dirt-cheap $200, if you know where to shop. However, there are now signs that these Google-powered portables could get even cheaper. MediaTek has contributed code to Chromium OS (the base for Chrome OS) for a test device with an entry-level ARM Cortex-A7 processor -- a big step down from the relatively inexpensive Cortex-A15/A7 hybrid that Samsung uses, not to mention the Intel Celeron chips in other Chrome devices. Theoretically, this leads to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes that cost significantly less than $200, albeit after a big speed hit. Just as with phones and tablets, a Cortex-A7 system is likely to be pretty sluggish.

MediaTek hasn't discussed what it's doing with the code, and it could be a while (if ever) before there's hardware you can buy. However, it's not hard to see why the semiconductor firm would want to support Chrome gear. The company's chips are seemingly omnipresent in the basic smartphones seen across developing markets like China and India. Support for a starter Cortex-A7 processor could have a similar effect in the PC world, bringing Chrome OS systems to people who might not otherwise get a computer at all.

Filed under: Laptops, Internet, Google

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Via: Francois Beaufort (Google+)

Source: Google Source

This Fitness Watch Doesn't Have A Lot Of Bells And Whistles But It Works Extremely Well

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/lifetrak-zone-c410-2014-7

Salutron's LifeTrak Zone C410 is a simple fitness-tracking watch. 

It doesn't have any bells and whistles. It simply tracks your steps, sleep, distance traveled, calories, heart rate, and it tells the time. All for a very affordable $99. 

The best part about it? You can forget about adding another charger to your collection: The C410 runs off a regular battery and you won't have to replace it more than once a year.

The Design

The watch has a pretty basic design. There are two buttons on the side that allow you to do things like scroll through menu items, start and stop the tracking, light up the display, and sync the watch to your phone (more on that later). 

There's also a button underneath the display that allows you to scroll through all the various tracking modes. When you hold it down, it tracks your heart rate. It even tells you the percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is an added bonus. 

The watch and band are waterproof up to 90 feet. The band is reversible (blue and black), but you can buy different watch bands for around $14 from LifeTrak's site. It fits securely on the wrist and overall looks pretty unassuming. 

The Watch

You can set goals on the watch, like how many steps you'd like to take per day. This is pretty straightforward; you scroll through your options with the top-right button. It also has an iOS and Android app that allows you to change the settings. 

There's a bar at the top on the watch face that shows you how close you are to reaching your daily goals. 

The coolest feature is the automatic sleep mode. I've used fitness bands in the past that required you to put it in sleep mode before it would t! rack how much shut eye you're getting. But it's hard to remember to press a button when you're halfway to dreamland. 

But luckily, the C410 senses it automatically. Once the device hasn't moved for a little bit, it goes into sleep mode and starts tracking your Zzzzs.

The problem is, it works a little too well. The watch would sometimes go into sleep mode even when I just took it off for a little while, like before a shower. But overall, that didn't seem to overly affect the overall sleep it thought I was getting.  

The watch can also sync with third-party health-tracking apps like as MapMyFitness. Syncing is easy; you just press and hold the bottom-right button, and all your information is pulled into the app via Bluetooth. 

Conclusion

The C410 is a basic fitness watch that performs well. It even offers more features than some of the competition.

All the information you need is right there on the watch. You don't have to take out your phone or use an app, if you don't want to. 

It doesn't vibrate. You can't track your food calories. It doesn't even have an alarm function.

But for $99, you get a straightforward fitness tracker, with the added bonus of a heart-rate monitor and automatic sleep detection. And it's super accurate.

In a world of Galaxy Gears and Pebbles, it's nice to have an option on the opposite end of the spectrum. And the Zone C410 performs exactly as advertised, with very little fuss. 

SEE ALSO: I tried out a standing desk for all the health benefits — here's why I quit

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Demand For Light Beer Is Collapsing

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/demand-for-light-beer-is-collapsing-2014-7

American beer drinkers are becoming more discerning. 

Thanks to the booming popularity of the craft beer business, light beer sales will hit a 10-year low in 2015, writes Devin Leonard at Bloomberg Businessweek. 

Sales of once-popular staples like Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite are on the decline, Leonard writes. 

Craft beer has become so popular that there's now a black market for rare brews. 

Anheuser-Busch executives told Businessweek that it was pushing light beer sales through flavored beverages such as the Bud Light Lime Straw-Ber-Rita. 

The cocktail-beer hybrid appeals to women who don't want to drink heavy craft beer. 

Sales of the so-called 'Ritas hit $462 million last year, according to IRI, a research company in Chicago. 

Bud Light is also working to develop seasonal flavors, such as apple for the fall, writes Venessa Wong the magazine.

The brand is also expected to step up marketing in the near future, executives told Businessweek. 

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The 29 Most American Foods Of All Time

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âBreach is a completely modular, hackable and open source web browser

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/12/breach-is-a-completely-modular-hackable-and-open-source-web-br/

When it comes to surfing the web, our options are limited: the market is dominated by three or four mainstream web browsers, all of which share major similarities in design and function. Unless you want to build your own browsing program, you're stuck with their modern browsing paradigms. For San Francisco programmer Stanislas Polu, that wasn't good enough, so, he created Breach -- an open source modular web browser designed to allow anybody to tweak and modify it on a whim.

Breach wants to be a different kind of web browser, one that's not only a tool for browsing the internet, but one that is built of the technologies that power it. Using the Chromium Content API as a base layer, Polu built a browser with a UI coded entirely in JavaScript and HTML5 -- each element of the experience existing as its own individual webapp with access to Breach's deeper API. In fact, when the browser first boots up, it doesn't even have the ability to navigate the internet. "You don't have any modules running yet," it warns. "Let's add 'mod_strip', a module that provides a basic tab strip and URL box support." Install a module, and your browser suddenly has features. Neglect to, and it won't be able to do much at all.

The new browser only launched its public Alpha release this week, and doesn't have many modules to call its own. The basic strip and data components are active, but an official bookmarks module and other functions aren't yet done. Still, that's not the point: Breach is designed so any user with an idea for any feature can create it themselves in JavaScript or CSS. It's a barebones experience now, but one that's created so you can add any meat you fancy. We can't say it's likely to replace Chrome or Firefox in our hearts yet, but it's a neat take on an old technology we all use every single day. Check it out at the source link below.

Filed under: Internet

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Via: Aaron Draczynski (Twitter)

Source: Breach

Dropbox Stays Ahead Of Amazon With Big File-Syncing Upgrade

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-file-transfer-speed-boost-2014-7

Dropbox’s seamless file-sync technology is perhaps what keeps the fledgling startup alive in the increasingly competitive cloud storage market.

In fact, some people think Dropbox's file-syncing technology is exactly what will prevent Amazon from destroying the company with its own streaming service.

Today Dropbox just made their file-sync speed even faster. 

Dropbox rolled out a new service called Streaming Sync, which, according to the company, will speed up the sync time by as much as 2X. With Streaming Sync, users no longer have to wait for the entire file to be uploaded before accessing it, because it now “streams” data simultaneously from its servers to user devices. The service only works on files over 16MB, so large-file transfers will benefit the most from it.

Following Thursday’s launch of Zocalo, Amazon’s own file-sharing and collaboration service, Dropbox is in position to find a way to further distinguish itself from other competitors. Streaming Sync could be one of the features that make users want to stick to Dropbox’s service.

You can download the latest Dropbox desktop client here.

Here’s the how the sync times break down:

SEE ALSO: Amazon just launched a Box and Dropbox killer

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Mix beats and loop vocals with Propellerhead's Take for iOS

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/11/propellerhead-take/

If you saw Reggie Watts' musical set at Engadget Expand (don't worry, there's video after the break), then you probably noticed the table full of gear he needs to construct his loops. Propellerhead -- the Swedish software company behind Reason, not the electronica duo -- is hoping to lighten this load with Take, a creative vocal loop recorder that's being given away free to iPhone users. The interface is reasonably simple, offering you a wide variety of pre-made backing loops as well as three tracks that you can rap, sing or otherwise make noise on. It's tremendously easy to use, but it won't compensate for your lack of musical talent, which is why we won't be sharing our ham-fisted efforts with you.

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio/Video, Software, Apple

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Source: Take (App Store)

âAcer upgrades its C720 Chromebook with more power... and a higher price

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/10/acer-upgrades-c720/

Looking for a more powerful Acer Chromebook? It'll cost you -- the company announced today that its C720 Chromebook is getting a processor bump and a new price tag. $350 buys a notebook with a 4th generation Intel Core i3-4005U CPU clocked at 1.7GHz with a 32GB SSD, a modest bump from the 1.4GHz Celeron CPU, 16GB SSD and $200 starting price of the current model. Acer says the new CPU will give the machine a noticeable performance boost without affecting the 8.5 hour runtime consumers have come to expect from the laptop. Little else about the Chromeboook seems to have changed; its still available with 2GB or 4GB (in a $380 model) of RAM. Still, if you want to save some money with Acer's cheaper, slower laptop, buy now: the new models hit store shelves later this month.

Filed under: Laptops, Acer

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Source: PRWeb

These high-tech headphones will livestream your next gig

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/10/soundsight-headphones-omg/

Let's face it, most headphones pack a pretty short features list, and the majority of us are just fine with that. There's wired and wireless, on-ear and over-ear, with all of them coming at a range of prices and catering to varying sonic sensibilities. We've seen social-minded cans pop up as of late, and now, a new offering looks to pack even more into a set of headphones. SoundSight packed in a 1080p camera, six microphones, voice control and an accelerometer into its wireless set. Not only does the audio add-on capture video from the wearer's point of view, but it also offers livestreaming capabilities from the stage or studio.

Thanks to the companion app for Android and iOS, you can wrangle edits before broadcasting on social networks of your choosing. The smartphone-based toolbox enables adding music to clips when you need to swap out the audio, futzing with filters and sorting recording controls. If you're concerned about having to hold your head just so to get a good angle, don't be: the camera portion is mounted to the outside of the earcups, rotating 270 degrees so allow for proper adjustments. In addition to the requisite 3.5mm cable, a USB option is also included to those who favor that connection.

Remember we mentioned these are wireless? Won't all of that extra stuff drastically cut into the battery life? Well, the company claims that with all of those features activated, you can expect around four hours of action from the 800mAh cell, getting bumped up to 18 hours when only the active noise cancellation is switched on. That may not be enough to broadcast your entire day, but it should certainly last for an entire set. The 1080p camera can capture 720p video at 30 fps, with Bluetooth streaming clocking in with 640p at 24 fps. If having all of that tech in one place sounds too good to pass up, SoundSight goes up for limited pre-order tomorrow at $349, with an official launch coming in next spring at the full $499 retail price.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video

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Source: SoundSight Headphones

drag2share: Amazon Just Launched A Box And Dropbox Killer â And It Really Needs One

source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/uGESIVHuVuw/amazon-zocalo-2014-7

Amazon launched on Wednesday a challenger to Box and Dropbox: an enterprise cloud file storage service called Zocalo.

Zocalo allows you to access and share files on any type of device, Amazon says.

The service costs just $5 per user per month and comes with 200GB of storage and no other software requirements.

Companies that use Amazon WorkSpaces get free storage up to 50GB, or can elect to pay $2 a month per user for the entire 200GB. Amazon WorkSpaces gives employees access to Windows 7 in the cloud, which can be accessed on any device.

While Amazon is already popular with enterprises for its cloud-computing storage offerings, those are used mostly by IT professionals. Amazon hasn't exactly been a major player when it comes to enterprise apps used by  ordinary workers. But Zocalo is a move in that direction.

As Janakiram MSV, principal analyst at Janakiram & Associates, says, "Zocalo is an indication of Amazon's ambitious plan to become the one-stop shop for enterprise IT."

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Elon Musk pledges $1 million to help build Nikola Tesla Museum

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/10/elon-musk-tesla-museum/

Nikola Tesla just scored a very generous birthday present. The "father or electricity" was born 158 years ago today, and several fans are trying to preserve his legacy with a museum, to be built on the site of his final laboratory in Shoreham, New York. A 2012 Indiegogo campaign helped raise more than enough to cover purchasing the land, but nowhere near the $8 million that's needed to refurbish the property and actually build a museum. Fortunately, Elon Musk, the father of the modern day Tesla, has pledged $1 million and has promised to install a supercharger in the parking lot. That's still not enough to complete the project, but you can help out my making your own contribution here.

[Image credit: Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe]

Filed under: Household

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Source: The Oatmeal

Microsoft CEO Is Betting On A New Product You've Probably Never Heard Of: Delve

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/nadella-bets-heavily-on-delve-2014-7

Microsoft is about to release a new kind of search tool that it's been working on for years: Delve.

Delve is centeral to CEO Satya Nadella's new vision to turn Microsoft into a "productivity and platform company."

That means less focus on devices, more focus on what people do with the devices.

He describes a world where your phone/tablet/PC/TV knows you, understands you, and caters to your needs even before you issue a command. (We're reminded of that scene in the movie "Her" where Samantha, the smart operating system, organizes Theodore's email and later submits a collection of his work to a book publisher, unbeknownst to him.)

Nadella named a number of Microsoft technologies that will bring this vision to life. Here's what he said in his memo:

As a result, people will meet and collaborate more easily and effectively. They will express ideas in new ways. They will experience the magic of ambient intelligence with Delve and Cortana. They will ask questions naturally and have them answered with insight from Power Q&A. They will conquer language barriers and change the world with Skype translator.

Cortana is Microsoft's answer to Siri and is part of the latest version of Windows Phone.

Skype translator is a real-time translation tool for Skype users expected to be available before the end of the year. Speak and it will translate.

Power Q&A is an add-on cloud service for Office 365 customers, the version of Microsoft Office that runs in the cloud. It's a data analysis tool. You type in a question and it searches through corporate documents stored in SharePoint and Excel and gives you an answer, maybe complete with chart. (This kind of natural language analysis is the next-generation tech for "business intelligence" software, the kind of software used to predict things like quarterly sales, etc.)

But Delve could be one of the most interesting of all. Delve, previously code-named Oslo, is Microsoft's version of Google search. The company has been working on it for years. It doesn't search the Web, it searches your emails, social networks, and corporate documents stored in Office 365.

Delve uses "machine learning" and artificial intelligence to show you the documents,  messages, and people you don't know you need to see. Microsoft describes it as:

Delve highlights key information of interest to you, based on what you are working on and the actions of people in your network.

It's like Google Now or Cortana, but for your work life.

Although Microsoft has been showing Delve off since March, it will be formally announced at Microsoft's 2014 Worldwide Partner Conference next week in Washington, D.C., and  available to Office 365 customers later this year, Microsoft says.

If Delve proves a hit with businesses users! , organi zing people's work lives, it will go a long way toward validating Nadella's vision.

Here's a glance at a Delve search page:

Here's the full demo of Delve that Microsoft did in March. Skip to 4:05 to go straight to the demo.

SEE ALSO: 22 of the most powerful women engineers in the world

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Electric Objects wants to put the digital art world on your wall

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/09/electric-objects/

Digital photo frames are one of those product categories that seemed like a good idea at the time. As it turned out, no one really wanted a low-resolution LCD screen in their living room that needed to be plugged into a chunky power brick just to display pictures of their kids. New York-based startup Digital Objects believes it's fixed that problem with the EO1, "a framed high-definition screen and integrated computer that hangs on your wall and brings art from the Internet into your home." Or, as founder Jake Levine calls it, a screen that doesn't "make you feel like shit."

The EO1 is a 23-inch HD matte display that runs off an Cortex-A9 processor, more than enough to handle animated GIFs and javascript visualizations. You can load any image you want off the web, but the EO1 is really meant to be used with a digital storefront that offers images from both cultural organizations like the New York Public Library and the Museum of the Moving Image, and digitally native outlets like Digg, to.be and Giphy. But unlike previous attempts at creating a frame for digital art you can't take images off an SD card or load them via USB. You can't even connect a keyboard or mouse -- the EO1 is meant to be accessed via the company's iOS and Android apps.

As to whether the EO1 makes you feel like shit, it's hard to say -- the early prototypes we saw at Electric Objects' office still laid bare the inner workings of the device, with the earliest versions running Android on a Raspberry Pi. But the final version will tuck that all away, and the thick black plastic frame and matte finish wouldn't be out of place in an art gallery -- or suburban living room. It's a bit too heavy to hang on a single nail, though, and you're still going to have to plug it in, albeit with a cord resembling the one from the Macbook Air.

So while we're still not itching for a way to put our favorite GIFs on our office walls, apparently someone is -- the Electric Objects Kickstarter campaign has blown through its goal of $25,000 with over $200,000 in pledges in the first day. Some have even bought into the tier where you receive five EO1 units -- and we doubt they're buying them to show off the best Oprah GIFs.

Filed under: Displays

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Source: Electric Objects, Kickstarter

'Watch Dogs' web app turns real data into a virtual surveillance state

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/09/watch-dogs-we-are-data-visualizations/

It seems like there's even more truth to developer Ubisoft's ode-to-hackers, Watch Dogs, than we first thought. Like we've previously reported, the game's depiction of a smart city that connects drawbridges, traffic lights and its population's smartphones (among other things) all to a single operating system is closer to fact than science-fiction, but the game studio has taken the notion one step further. With the We Are Data web app, you can wade through maps of publicly available geo-location information like tweets, Foursquare check-ins and even traffic light and CCTV camera placement -- all stuff you can find in the game's Chicago. As of now, you can only live out your Aiden Pearce fantasies with info from neighborhoods in London, Berlin and Paris, but there's quite a bit to click on should you be so inclined. The available datasets aren't nearly as extensive as, say, something like Urban Observatory's, but it's pretty neat nonetheless. If searching for public restroom-locations from your desk isn't quite your cup of tea, you could always leave the browser tab open in the background -- its ambient city sounds are oddly calming.

Filed under: Gaming, Internet, HD

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Source: We Are Data

drag2share: Supreme Court said Aereo is a cable company, so now it wants to be treated like one

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/09/aereo-survival-strategy/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

Despite Aereo's best efforts, the Supreme Court decided that its service was too much like cable TV and therefore its unlicensed streaming of TV broadcasts were illegal. Now, after putting its service on pause, Aereo has filed a letter with the US District Court saying that since the Court said it's like a cable system, it is entitled to the same statutory license that cable companies pay broadcasters. CEO Chet Kanojia sent a message to users and supporters explaining "The Path Forward" with a link to the letter, but hasn't laid out a timeline for the service's return. That's one of the reason's broadcasters are still fighting the new move, saying (in the same letter) that it's "astonishing for Aereo to contend the Supreme Court's decision automatically transformed Aereo into a 'cable system' under Section 111 given its prior statements to this Court and the Supreme Court."

[Image credit: AP]

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LG has a very flexible 18-inch display, promises 60-inch rollable TVs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/09/lg-roll-up-tvs-flexible-oled/

It's been a while since we've seen any new curved or flexible displays following LG's G Flex and Samsung's Galaxy Round smartphones. LG Display is thinking bigger now. It's announced that it's been able to create an 18-inch OLED panel that has enough give and flexibility to roll into a tube that's a mere 3cm across. The prototype currently has a resolution of 1,200 x 810, while it's a new polyamide film on the back of the panel (instead of the typical plastic) which offers the panel substantially more flexibility -- and it's also even thinner.

Alongside the flexible demo, LG's also crafted a transparent OLED panel which has triple the transmittance of existing see-through LCD displays -- that means the picture looks much better and less hazy. According to LG Display's SVP and Head of R&D, In-Byung Kang, he's confident that "by 2017, we will successfully develop an Ultra HD flexible and transparent OLED panel of more than 60 inches." Crank up that resolution and bring on the roll-up TVs.

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, Science, LG

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Silent Circle expands its encrypted calling service to 79 countries

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/10/silent-circle-out-circle-expansion/

Silent Circle's mobile apps have helped make calls, messages and storing contacts more secure, but to enjoy its encryption benefits other people would need to use the same service. That could no longer be a problem for some, after the company announced its expanding its Silent Phone service to let users make truly private calls to non-Silent Circle members worldwide. While some users have been able to use the iOS and Android apps to make calls to standard mobile and landlines, like you would with Skype or Viber, Silent Circle's encrypted "Out-Circle" calling service was limited to users in a select number of countries. From today, subscribers enrolling in the service will be given a unique ten-digit Silent Phone number to make and receive calls in 79 countries without a roaming charge in sight. If you've ordered the Blackphone, you will, of course, be pre-subscribed to Silent Phone (although you'll have to set up Out-Circle separately) and the company's other anti-surveillance services. Starting at $12.95 for 100 minutes, Out-Circle isn't the cheapest package out there, but you can't put a price on privacy, right?

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

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Source: SIlent Circle: Out-Circle

Visit Barcelona with this beautiful hyperlapse

Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-is-the-best-executed-hyperlapse-i-have-ever-seen-1601630421/+caseychan

This "flow-motion" hyperlapse by photographer Rob Whitworth uses 26,014 photos taken over 363 hours of work in total. Impressive work.

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MOSS Robotics Toy Review: The Easiest Way To Build Your First Robot

Source: http://gizmodo.com/moss-robotics-toy-review-the-easiest-way-to-build-your-1601317868

When reviewing a building toy it's impossible not to make comparisons with Lego. Not only are its bricks able to build everything from dinosaurs to X-wings, Lego also offers robotics sets that have been used to make some truly impressive autonomous creations . And in that latter category, it finally has some competition.

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