Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Aviary Extension Brings Snappy Web Image Editing to Chrome [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/cYNaRYJ8BFc/aviary-extension-brings-snappy-web-image-editing-to-chrome

Chrome/Chromium: If you're running a daily build or development version of Chrome that can install extensions, online editing suite Aviary has a really handy one. It takes snapshots of web pages and transports them to its online editing tools.

Aviary's online image editor, Phoenix, is a favorite of Lifehacker readers, and their other tools, like the Myna audio editor, are none too shabby, either. Aviary's Chrome extension makes it easy to push that image to its markup, image, color, effects, or vector editor, and there's a link to Myna included for good measure. Once the image is in Aviary's editor, it's easy to download it, broadcast it to Twitter or Facebook, or perform any of the other tasks Aviary's apps offer.

The Aviary extension is a free download, and should install wherever Chrome extensions can—generally, that means daily builds on Mac and Linux systems, and the Dev version on Windows.

Aviary releases Google Chrome screen capture extension! [Aviary via Download Squad]

Asus O!Play Review: Best-Priced HD Video Player Is the New Champ [Review]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/kbuT9xlzNpo/asus-oplay-review-best+priced-hd-video-player-is-the-new-champ

Battlemodos give you a clear sense of what's good and bad in a gadget category, but there's no way to include everything. Consider the $99 Asus O!Play the new champ of HD video players—better late than never.

The Old Champs

If you remember the HD media player battlemodo, I awarded WDTV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ the two top spots. The WD is still best for people who want a smooth interface and a hopefully increasing number of online services for streamed media. (YouTube and Pandora now, who knows what else?) It's actually the Seagate that gets KO'd by Asus.

The New Buttkicker

More functional than frilly, both the O!Play and the Theater+ handle every video file I could throw their way, they both read Mac- and PC-formatted drives, they both browse the local network well, they both read DVD menus from ripped ISO files, they both have superb video output—and they both suffer from having stupid punctuation characters in their name. But one costs $30 less than the other, according to Amazon's current prices. Not only is the O!Play cheaper, but its second USB jack is also an eSATA port which might come in handy when you start getting 1080p rips of all your favorite movies, and it has a file-copy function that lets you dump stuff from one drive to another, or to drives on the network.

I had only one major complaint with the Asus: Every time I watched a v! ideo rip ped from DVD, it showed chapter numbers in a big white font for an extended period, about 15 seconds. Not only did pushing every single button I could think of not help this, but I couldn't even advance from one chapter to another by using the skip-forward button, so why do I need to know what chapter it is in the first place? A shame, but probably a bug that can be fixed really easily.

The Final Score

As I said in the battlemodo:

• If you want a full-on pirate kit, with torrent client built-in and everything, go with the Popcorn Hour (or the cheaper, quirky Patriot Box Office).
• If you want something with a nice interface and Pandora streaming music, go with WDTV.
• If you're choosing something to work with your iTunes collection of music and video, or something for your parents, probably still better to pick Apple TV—and tell them to buy or rent all their videos.

But if you want something that can play a ton of home-ripped video, or stuff you've acquired in some other high-bandwidth way, Asus is a better deal than Seagate—just as tough to stump in my battery of file format tests, with a few extra nice features. That's my best and final recommendation for HD video file playback—at least until Roku figures out what the USB jack on the HD-XR is really for. [Asus]

Great price for a high-def HDMI video player

Plays every video file I could throw at it, including DivX 7 MKVs, high-def H.264, even obscure home movies from out-of-date cameras

A bit larger than some products out there, but not by much

No streaming internet services

Annoying bug that shows chapter numbers in a large white font as you watch movies ripped from DVD

HP, Dell, and Lenovo Adding SDXC Card Readers to New Laptops? [Sdxc]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/eRrc4llH7ec/hp-dell-and-lenovo-adding-sdxc-card-readers-to-new-laptops

The new SDXC standard (which theoretically tops out at 2TB) replaces SDHC in 2010, and according to DailyTech, some of the bigger laptop makers may add SDXC support to their upcoming laptops with 32nm Core i5/i7 processors.

Toshiba's long had 64GB SDXC cards in the works, and with claimed read speeds of 60MB/s (yep, megabytes) and write speeds of 35MB/s—upgrading your storage is about to get a whole lot easier. [DailyTech via Electronista]

Nokia asks own blog readers what their favorite part of the X6 is, gets funny answer

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/01/nokia-asks-own-blog-readers-whats-their-favorite-part-of-the-x6/

It's odd, because we were under the impression that Nokia was doing just fine shunning capacitive touch all these years, but apparently one in three readers of Nokia Conversations find the capacitive touchscreen to be the number one feature of the new X6 handset. Sure, Nokia uses some of the greatest resistive screens in the business, but we've always maintained that capacitive is simply the best when it comes to a finger-based touchscreen interface, and hopefully the Nokia X6 can usher in a new era of peace, understanding and higher-than-average WPM scores for all mankind. Oh, and perhaps some proper it's / its differentiation.

Nokia asks own blog readers what their favorite part of the X6 is, gets funny answer originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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