Wednesday, May 04, 2011

ASUS planning quad-core Tegra 3 tablet, yet another Intel slate

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/04/asus-planning-quad-core-tegra-3-and-intel-based-tablets/

The Eee Pad Transformer may be wowing tablet lovers with its unbeatable price-to-features ratio today, but ASUS looks to have its sights set on even mightier devices for the future. DigTimes reports that the Taiwanese company is hard at work on a Tegra 3 tablet -- built around the spectacular Kal-El quad-core SOC that we saw demonstrated at MWC 2011 -- as well as another one running an Intel CPU. As far as the Intel slate is concerned, we're probably looking at the tablet-centric 1.5GHz Atom Z670, which promises 1080p playback and great battery life. You'll forgive us if we reserve our excitement for the Tegra 3-powered tablet, however, which should be able to churn through quite a few more pixels than regular old 1080p. There's no indication on when ASUS intends to deliver it, but NVIDIA's roadmap for devices with the quad-core chip expects to start appearing in August. Video of that awe-inspiring MWC demo follows after the break.

Continue reading ASUS planning quad-core Tegra 3 tablet, yet another Intel slate

ASUS planning quad-core Tegra 3 tablet, yet another Intel slate originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 04:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Isis mobile payment system to work with Visa and MasterCard, shelving plans for its own network

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/04/isis-mobile-payment-system-to-work-with-visa-and-mastercard-she/

When AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon came together to create the Isis mobile payment system, they touted a standalone service, powered by Discover's payment network, that would revolutionize the way we make small purchases on the move. Well, the revolution is still on schedule, apparently, but the big trio is now being said to have made a concession in reaching out to the incumbent leaders in this field, Visa and MasterCard. The Wall Street Journal cites multiple sources in reporting that Isis has turned into a less ambitious "mobile wallet" project that would seek to let you use your Visa or MasterCard account via your NFC-capable smartphone. As far as the consumer is concerned, it's still the same swipe-to-buy proposition, but the move was apparently necessary for Isis "to avoid falling further behind" in the race to corner this developing market. We'd say it's encouraging to see these guys showing a bit of swiftness -- it's about time the rest of the world caught up to Japan.

Isis mobile payment system to work with Visa and MasterCard, shelving plans for its own network originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 06:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Wuala Is a Powerful, Cross-Platform File Syncer (With Lots of Tricks for Extra Free Space) [Video]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5798179/wuala-is-a-powerful-cross+platform-file-syncer-with-lots-of-tricks-for-extra-free-space

Windows/Mac/Linux and iOS/Android: If you have more than a few gigs of files to sync between computers, Wuala is a great cross-platform tool that syncs, shares, and saves multiple versions of your files, for a low (or free) price.

We've mentioned Wuala before, long ago, but it's recently become a bit more popular, no doubt due to its great prices and recent iPhone and Android apps. It's now positioned as a real Dropbox contender, as it syncs files between all your computers, from different folders, and at great prices—in fact, some of the best prices we've seen yet.

Wuala Is a Powerful, Cross-Platform File Syncer (With Lots of Tricks for Extra Free Space)Wuala's a good deal cheaper than competitors like Dropbox (Only $79 a year for 50 GB), and offers more tiers than its competitors. If you only need 10 GB, you can grab that for $29, or 25 GB for $49. If you're looking to pay for large amounts of space, Wuala's got prices that are pretty hard to beat.

Even better than that, though, are their other methods for getting free space. Like Dropbox, you can invite your friends and get a bit of extra space, but the best way is to "trade" local space on your hard drive for extra Wuala space. If you have extra space on your hard drive you aren't using, you can let Wuala use it as extra space for their caches, and get free cloud space with them in return. It isn't an exact 1:1 ratio, though; it multiplies the space you trade by how often your computer is connected (since they need you to be connected to use the space). So, if you trade them 100 GB of your local space and your computer is connected 70% of the time, you'll get 70 extra GB of cloud space to sync your files.

In addition, you can grab coupon codes for Wuala over at RetailMeNot. While there are a lot of great ways to increase your free space on Dropbox, if you really need a large amount of space, Wuala's got you covered in quite a few ways, including just plain lower prices. The downside, I've found, is that Wuala's a tad more difficult to use. Syncing files isn't quite as straightforward as Dropbox, but you can also sync files from anywhere on your computer, and sync them to any location on your other computers, making it a bit more powerful than Dropbox's more all-or-nothing method. And, if you're a little confused, they offer a lot of tutorial videos on their site to help you get started.

Overall, if you need some serious cloud space for syncing files, I highly recommend checking out Wuala. And, of course, if you already have a favorite file syncing service, there's no reason you can't use them alongside one another for free and organized backup.

Wuala is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. You get 1 GB to start with, and it doesn't come with file syncing and sharing by default—just cloud storage. However, by trading up local space or buying extra space directly, you automatically get a Pro account, which brings in all the advanced features. Check out the video above for more info. Thanks, Bill!

Wuala Is a Powerful, Cross-Platform File Syncer (With Lots of Tricks for Extra Free Space) Wuala


You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
 

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Amateur Astrographer Creates Largest-Ever Night Sky Panorama [Photography]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/#!5798294/amateur-astrographer-creates-largest+ever-night-sky-panorama

Amateur Astrographer Creates Largest-Ever Night Sky Panorama One day, Nick Risinger, a 28-year-old marketing director in Seattle, felt like he needed a change. So he quit his job, packed up six professional astronomical cameras, and hiked 60,000 miles through western United States and South Africa, taking 37,000 color pictures of the night sky.

The result? This 5000-megapixel interactive, zoomable map showing our full Milky Way galaxy, stars, planets, and the nebulae surrounding it. It's the largest-ever, 360 degree panorama of the heavens—all created by this first-time astrographer. What's even more remarkable is that it's considered better than previous professional sky surveys—like the Digitized Sky Survey of the 1980s—which were shot only in red and blue.

According to the Risinger, his aim was to create an image that had more real feeling: "I wanted to create something that was a true representation of how we could see it, if it were 3,000 times brighter," he said And lucky for us, he's made it freely available to the public. You can see the incredible Phototopic Sky Survey right here: [Sky Survey via Wired]

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LG Optimus Black vs. Galaxy S II and Xperia Arc... fight!

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/03/lg-optimus-black-vs-galaxy-s-ii-and-xperia-arc-fight/

It's time for us to welcome yet another contender in the battle for world's slimmest Android phone: the LG Optimus Black. This 9.2mm-thick handset made its debut to oohs and aahs of admiration at CES earlier in the year, and is now on the very precipice of a global release. Admittedly, it's not quite slender enough to knock the 7.7mm-thick NEC MEDIAS N-04C off its perch as the absolute thinnest, but it is sufficiently slender to give Samsung's Galaxy S II and Sony Ericsson's Xperia Arc a good fright. That pair of smartphones offer thinner proportions on the spec sheet, but when rested on a flat surface they sit ever so slightly higher than the Optimus Black. This is because, unlike its tricky contemporaries, the Optimus Black keeps to the same thickness along its full length (don't laugh), which, technically speaking, makes it the thinnest Android handset on the European market. Check it out in the gallery below or video after the break -- and hold tight, we'll have a full review for you in the coming days!

Continue reading LG Optimus Black vs. Galaxy S II and Xperia Arc... fight!

LG Optimus Black vs. Galaxy S II and Xperia Arc... fight! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 May 2011 12:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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