Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/orange-hd-voice-service-and-handsets-go-live-in-the-uk-we-go-ea/

Good news for UK mobile addicts: Orange's long-anticipated HD Voice service has officially made it to the Land of Hope and Glory. Starting today, British customers can pick up a HD Voice-enabled handset -- including the Nokia 5230, X6, E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro at launch -- from Orange, and start buttering their ears with "crystal clear" phone calls while within the carrier's 3G coverage. Prior to the launch, we were fortunate enough to try out the new service on a couple of Nokia E5 prototypes in Piccadilly Circus, and boy, that was some pretty impressive stuff there -- the wider speech bandwidth really added a lot of clarity to the caller's voice, and additionally, the noisy traffic from the caller's end was well suppressed at where it'd otherwise crackle over a normal call. Perhaps the easiest way to put it is that this is much like jumping from a bad FM radio broadcast to some sweet CD audio, thus making conversations a lot easier to interpret, even if the recipient is in a noisy environment or has hearing problem (as proven by Orange's public trial). As always, hearing is believing, so do check out our sample audio clips after the break.

While Orange remains a dominant driving force behind this mobile revolution, the carrier assured us that it expects other companies to pick up this open standard. That said, it's rather disappointing that current owners of the aforementioned handsets won't be getitng a software patch for the HD upgrade (we were told that no extra hardware is involved), but we can understand -- the manufacturers do need to sell new phones to stay alive in this rapidly changing market. Anyhow, here's hoping that the forthcoming flagship Android and Windows Phone 7 devices will also get a taste of this crystal clear call quality.

Continue reading Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video)

Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XF105 and XF100: Canon's smallest professional camcorders yet

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/xf105-and-xf100-canons-smallest-professional-camcorders-yet/

Be clear on this, Canon's XF105 and XF100 camcorders are for professional videographers. Sure, they're compact enough to temp any new father... just as long as he's interested in recording his princess' first steps to hot-swappable Compact Flash cards in either 1080/60i/30p/24p or 720/60p/30p/24p using Canon's MPEG-2 4:2:2 50Mbps XF codec. Although crowned Canon's smallest professional camcorders, both manage to feature infrared and stereoscopic 3-D shooting capabilities (using OIS Lens Shift to optically align a pair of XF105 or XF100 shooters), a DIGIC DV III Image Processor, and a Full HD CMOS sensor for native 1920 x 1080 HD video. The two models differ only in support for HD-SDI output: the XF105 has it, the XF100 doesn't. Look for them at retail sometime in the first quarter of 2011.

Continue reading XF105 and XF100: Canon's smallest professional camcorders yet

XF105 and XF100: Canon's smallest professional camcorders yet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG teases world's thinnest (2.9mm) OLED television, other goodies ahead of IFA

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/lg-teases-worlds-thinnest-2-9mm-oled-television-other-goodie/

We didn't catch any glimpses of an Optimus Pad or anything even close to the monstrous 180-inch plasma we've been hearing about, but a quick stroll through LG's still-under-construction facilities at IFA today revealed the kiosk for its insanely thin 31-inch 3D OLED television, whose price (if it ever even hits retail, that is) is likely to make even Black Card holders squirm. All told, LG's booth consumes an entire floor of one of Messe Berlin's many halls, so it's a big one; the emphasis is clearly on its flat panel TVs, though there are dedicated areas for its Blu-ray gear and store kiosk solution as well. More on all this after the show opens on Friday, no doubt!

Gallery: LG teases world's thinnest (2.9mm) OLED television, other goodies ahead of IFA

LG teases world's thinnest (2.9mm) OLED television, other goodies ahead of IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Turn On Hardware Graphics Acceleration in Chrome 7 [Chrome]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5625256/turn-on-gpu-acceleration-in-chrome-7

It's only available in the Dev and Canary builds of Chrome, and very few pages support it—for now. But if you want to get hardware acceleration running in Google's browser, it's just a simple command line switch away.

ZDNet's Googling Google blog points out that getting GPU acceleration going in your Chrome Dev version is simply a matter of right-clicking your Chrome shortcut and adding a parameter to the end, just as we've explained in the power user's guide to Google Chrome. In this case, that parameter (or "switch") is --enable-accelerated-compositing.

Where can you try out your new graphics-card-assisted browsing and rendering? Oddly enough, at Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 Testdrive site. There will be, assuredly, other sites that support GPU acceleration in the near future, but for now, it's neat to see how fast you can get your browser going.

Chromium Graphics Overhaul [Chromium Blog via Googling Google/ZDNet]

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Entri Creates Controlled Collaboration Spaces for Text Work [Collaboration Tools]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5625284/entri-creates-controlled-collaboration-spaces-for-text-work

Got an article to write with a fellow classmate? Need some feedback on a blog post you're putting together? Entri lets you write with a good editor, grab the link, then share it with friends to chime in.

It's not a real-time collaboration tool, like Etherpad and its clones or other great picks, but that's probably a good thing if you're looking for a specific kind of back-and-forth. You can save your changes manually, or let auto-saving do the job. When you're done with what you're writing, you can offer your text up by sharing the URL to your "Entri," and letting your friends sign in through Twitter or as guests. If you're ready to move ahead, you can lock your text while you work on something else or pull your research.

Entri is a free app to use, and promises more APIs, WordPress integration, and more to come in the near future.

Entri

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