Monday, June 08, 2009

Wordnik Shows What the Web Knows About Words [Dictionary]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/66Aqh36LqrU/wordnik-shows-what-the-web-knows-about-words

Dictionaries and their online counterparts can give you the straight-up meaning, and maybe sentence context, of a word you're fuzzy on. The Wordnik site wants to show you all the conversations, pictures, and other talk about your word.

Not that Wordnik doesn't give you multiple dictionary definitions, etymologies, and even pronunciation sound files for your look-ups. Its value service, however, is the extra context provided by highlighted Twitter posts, Flickr photos, related tags, and other multimedia on the results page. It's all spread out on a single multi-column page, but you can hit the sub-menus near the top to get a full page of any of them. Statistic geeks can also see how often words are being used online and the number of look-ups on Wordnik for a word. The site could be helpful for when you've got to get up to speed on something quickly and get a bit deeper than just a brief explainer.

Wordnik is free to use; signing up and logging in lets you track select words and history.



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New Bar Codes Designed to Help Avoid Expired Foods [Eat To Live]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/3d1LVpifYAc/new-bar-codes-designed-to-help-avoid-expired-foods

The New York Times wrote recently about new GS1 DataBars that are making their way to supermarkets and stores near you. According to the article, the bar codes will offer shoppers a better way to save cash and avoid expired goods.

Photo by Pasukaru76.

One of the more interesting benefits that the new GS1 DataBars have over traditional bar codes is that they can help prevent shoppers from purchasing expired goods.

A poultry DataBar, for example, might contain not only the price and product category, but also a sell-by date. If a consumer chose an outdated package, the label would alert the cashier at checkout.

Customers will also soon be able to scan their coupons directly from their mobile phones. Once they are used at the supermarket, the coupons will be erased.

Until the new GS1 bars become standard fare, check out previously mentioned CardStar and KeyRingThing to better streamline your shopping needs.



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JVC's 32-inch GD-32X1 LCD is 6.4-mm thin, nearly makes OLEDs jealous

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/08/jvcs-32-inch-gd-32x1-lcd-is-6-4-mm-thin-nearly-makes-oleds-jea/

OLED displays are synonymous with being impossibly thin. But Samsung's 8.9-mm thick "production-ready" 31-inch OLED TV was just trumped by this 32-inch LCD monitor from JVC measuring just 6.4-mm at its thinnest point. Oh right, thinnest point, we get it, all the processing circuity (Genessa Premium) and jacks (2x HDMI, RGB, component, composite, and more) are bundled into a brick riding the lower-half of the Full HD (1920 × 1080) monitor resulting is an unsightly pear-shaped pudge measuring a full 22.5-mm (0.89-inches) -- eww. You'll also be giving up the million-to-one contrast ratio of OLEDs for the relatively weak 4,000:1 contrast (on 400nits of brightness) found in the GD-32X1's LCD panel. No worries, with JVC dropping out of the consumer display business, these panels are targeting business-use anyway, so you can save your cash when these start shipping in August.

[Via Impress]

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JVC's 32-inch GD-32X1 LCD is 6.4-mm thin, nearly makes OLEDs jealous originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New mass-production technique for flexible OLEDs could make them cheap

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/08/new-mass-production-technique-for-flexible-oled-could-make-them/

New mass-production technique for flexible OLED could make them cheap
Getting tired of flexible OLED prototypes that are about as ready for retail as that cold fusion reactor your uncle Harry is building in his garage? Yeah, we are too, but it seems the industry is getting a little closer to reality, the latest step coming courtesy of Arizona State University's Flexible Display Center and Universal Display. Researchers at the pair have managed to produce flexible OLED displays using the same production techniques used to create standard, rather less bendy LCD displays, enabling the transistors that control the pixels to be applied to plastic, rather than the glass they typically find themselves embedded within. They glue a piece of plastic onto glass, feed it through the LCD manufacturing process, then peel the two apart like a high-tech Fruit Roll-Up. That technique was used to create the 4.1-inch monochrome display shown above -- which is for now just another prototype that won't be showing up in any devices any time soon. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via Technology Review]

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New mass-production technique for flexible OLEDs could make them cheap originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Freescale netbook and Android-powered smartbook debut

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/08/freescale-netbook-and-android-powered-smartbook-debut/


We knew good and well that Freescale wouldn't let Qualcomm go and have all the fun with these newfangled smartbooks, and already we're seeing a few new devices powered by Freescale-branded semiconductors. In the video posted just after the break, the company's own Steve Sperle sat down to talk about a new Pegatron netbook (which handles 720p video playback with ease) as well as an Inventec "smartbook" which is just marginally larger than your average smartphone. In fact, we're rather impressed with the layout: a larger-than-average 4-inch display, a slideout QWERTY keyboard and Google's Android OS. Unfortunately, Mr. Sperle would only stick close to the "later this year" launch time frame that we'd already heard about, but so long as these smartbooks end up looking like overpowered smartphones, you can certainly consider our interest piqued.

Continue reading Freescale netbook and Android-powered smartbook debut

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Freescale netbook and Android-powered smartbook debut originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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