HTC Leo Bares All: Huge 4.3-Inch Screen, 1GHz Snapdragon [HTC Leo]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/sFNkrfDiVSc/htc-leo-bares-all-huge-43+inch-screen-1ghz-snapdragon

Remember that gloriously powerful, oddly fake-looking HTC Windows Mobile 6.5 phone from a while back? Well, it's real, and it's huge. For reference, the phone pictured next to it has an already impressive 3.6-inch screen—this thing breaks 4.

All we've got here are a few images, but they confirm a lot: First of all, this thing does have the 1GHz Qualcomm 8250B processor, 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, and will be running Windows Mobile 6.5, otherwise known as Windows Phone. It's thinner than you might expect for such a powerful handset, apparently fulfilling earlier leaks' promises of 11mm thickness. And hey, that weird, un-HTC-like "Pro.Three" branding, complete with "Lorem Ipsum" filler text, is there too. That's one way to designate a prototype, I guess.

What can't really be confirmed from the pictures are some of the juicier specs, like the fact that the alleged 4.3-inch screen is capacitive glass, unlike most of HTC's larger phones, and that the battery is worryingly low 1230MaH unit—a potential dealbreaker for a phone with such a massively huge ! display to backlight. In any case, the Toshiba TG01 finally has a competitor in the Windows Mobile hardware porn category, so if that's your thing, there are a few more photos at the source. [PDA.pl via WMPoweruser]

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INQ picks Android for upcoming touchscreen handsets

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/14/inq-picks-android-for-upcoming-touchscreen-handsets/

We've enjoyed seeing what INQ is bringing to the featurephone space, most recently with the Facebook and Twitter-centric INQ Mini 3G and INQ Chat handsets (which still haven't been announced for the States), but things are getting a lot more interesting on word that INQ is going to be using Android for upcoming touchscreen smartphones. We're guessing INQ will be blending its Synergy-style blended social networking capabilities with traditional Android goodness, much in the way HTC and now Motorola are approaching Android. So far all INQ is saying is that Android hasn't done well against the iPhone so far, and that "you need to get the experience better," promising "cool things" in response to this self-defined challenge. You know what else is a "cool thing"? America.

Filed under: Cellphones

INQ picks Android for upcoming touchscreen handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Find Spammers Who Are Following You On Twitter

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-twitter-spam-followers/9686/

If that large follower base (count of people following you) on Twitter gives you a high, here’s a tool that might break your heart, a little bit at least.

Most of these Twitter users are @spam

Called TwitBlock, the tool will scan profiles of everyone who follows you on Twitter and it will then prepare a list of Twitter accounts that may be fake or have been created with the sole purpose of spamming Twitter.

The tools doesn’t require you password but since it uses Twitter’s OAuth to initiate the scanning process, you can’t use TwitBlock to determine spammers that be following another Twitter user.

For my Twitter account, the tool flagged some 354 accounts (or about 6%) – a lot of these accounts are spam for sure but there are some real people (human beings) and legitimate bots in the list as well so be a little careful before you block any user. Here’s the full spam report generated by TwitBlock.

For more tools like these, check The Twitter Guide.

Hat tip: Prem Kumar Aparanji (via FB)

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How to Embed Facebook Videos in your Web Pages

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/embed-facebook-videos-in-web-pages/9715/

Anyone can upload video clips to the Facebook site but unlike YouTube and other online video sharing sites, Facebook doesn’t (officially) provide an embed code for their videos. That’s a problem for two reasons.

#1. You found a very interesting video on Facebook but how you do share it with your blog readers since there’s no code to embed that video into your site.

#2. You can watch video clips on Facebook only if you are logged into your Facebook account. How do you share these video clips with people who aren’t members of Facebook?

How to Add a Facebook Video to your Web Site

Here’s a simple trick that will let you embed any Facebook video into your web pages.

Every video uploaded on Facebook has a unique ID that you can find in the browser’s address bar (look for the value of parameter "v").

Copy that number and replace it with xxx in the code below.

<object width="400" height="224" >  <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />  <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />  <param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/xxx" />  <embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/xxx" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"    allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="224">  </embed> </object> 

Now you can put that code on any web pages and the video will play just fine.

For instance, here’s a Facebook video uploaded by the founder himself – you can watch it here itself without having to become a Facebook member.

Related: How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

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Layar Brings Semi-Augmented Reality to Your Android Phone [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/6WAG6t9yeNI/layar-brings-semi+augmented-reality-to-your-android-phone

Android: "Augmented Reality" is a buzz phrase gaining a lot of notice lately. Free Android app Layar, one of the first full-featured AR apps for Android, layers helpful, location-specific data on top of whatever you're looking at through your device's camera.

In a true-to-form augmented reality app, a phone's camera would be used to provide a live video stream, and the application would analyze objects in that stream and interact with them in some way. This video demonstrates what the future will likely hold for motion-sensitive, GPS-enabled, decent-camera-toting phones—with zombies:

Until phones catch up to developers' ambitions, we have half-breed apps like Layar that pull in geographic data from your phone's GPS location, check it against web databases, and then show the locations of nearby subway stations, restaurants, and more overlaid on the image of your surroundings from your phone's camera. Android phones allow apps to access the video stream for overlays, while the iPhone 3GS picked up that ability with the 3.1 firmware update, as ReadWriteWeb details. Here's how Layar's developers demonstrate the app in their native Amsterdam:

For a real-world, smaller-city test, I grabbed a T-Mobile G1 and headed to Buffal! o's Elmw ood Avenue commercial strip, with a side venture to Main Street, to see what Layar could show me. The app has a single view and function that pulls in your camera's video stream, but you can switch up what "layer" you see over it on the fly. The layers, listed at Layar's web site, come from web services with big geographic data piles, like Wikipedia, review site Yelp, real estate finder Trulia, and sites that mash up social apps like Flickr and Twitter. Yelp and Flickr (pulled in as "FlickAR" in this app) are, as you might imagine, the most densely packed of the apps I tried. You normally turn your camera, or yourself, to get thumbnail data on any "blips" that come up in Layar. When you come up with clusters of results in layers like Yelp, though, you'll end up switching to the less impressive list view, because trying to pinpoint individual finds will have passersby wondering why it looks like you're trying to rotate the world with your phone.

I didn't get any results for local tweets or Trulia real estate findings, but an architectural society layer and Wikipedia yielded a few fun surprises. If you were new in a city and looking for something to check out, Layar might well be worth the time (and battery drain) to check out. Who wouldn't want to check out the spot where President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, or the seriously creepy spires of the H.R. Richardson "State Lunatic Asylum"? Layar is neat stuff, and will probably get better as more developers buy into it.

Layar is a free download for Android phones only. If you've used the app for something useful, fun, or something in-between, tell us about it, and post pictures, in the comments.

Layar

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