This week baseball’s World Series continues, after splitting the first four games evenly it all comes down to a best of three between the Rangers and Cardinals. Of course, that’s not all coming to our TVs this week, as several new series premiere, along with some Halloween-themed programming. The biggest surprise however is the 90s-throwback feel of this week’s roundup, find out why in the highlights below, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames

Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy
When the first flick debuted in 1993, it brought Michael Crichton’s book to life with an unprecedented new level of special effects. Of course, that meant the Jurassic Park trilogy’s strength was never its story, which regressed further in subsequent films. Still, you can celebrate some of the best in ’90s cinema this week with the new triple pack that includes the movies and all new behind the scenes information. You can also get your dinosaur fix every week with Terra Nova, but we wouldn’t recommend it.
(October 26th, $48.99 on Amazon)

Beavis & Butt-head
Mike Judge’s animated duo make their return to the small screen after a 14 year layoff Thursday night, and for better or worse, it doesn’t appear that much has changed. Of course, the internet has opened up a whole new source of bad music videos for the pair to display and dissect, but since they’re on the internet, its much more likely that you’ve already seen them. We’d rather have Daria or Aeon Flux back instead, but we’ll check this out for nostalgia’s sake.
(October 27th, MTV, 10PM)

Grimm
The other new fairytale based TV show makes its debut on NBC this week, with a very Supernatural / Fringe type of take on the old stories. This time around the Grimm brothers are homicide detectives that chase down all those supposedly mythical creatures in the very real world of Portland, Oregon. We’ll see if it’s worth watching as it takes on Fringe in the same time slot Friday night — check after the break for a preview.
(October 28th, NBC, 9PM)

Continue reading Must See HDTV (October 24th – 30th)

Must See HDTV (October 24th – 30th) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Amped Wireless gives your WiFi 1.5-mile range: never lose signal in the garden again

Amped Wireless gives your WiFi 1.5-mile range: never lose signal in the garden again originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s taken a long time for Nokia’s MeeGo-packing N9 to make its way into our top secret labs (the N9 moniker was first applied to early E7 prototypes), but it’s here in our dirty little hands, at last, and it’s glorious — well, as glorious as a stillborn product can be, anyway. The N9 is the latest and greatest in a long line of quirky, interesting, yet ultimately flawed touchscreen experiments from Nokia that includes the Hildon-sporting 7710, a series of Maemo-based “internet tablets” (770, N800, N810, N900) and most recently, the N950 MeeGo handset for developers. What makes the N9 special is that it represents Nokia’s last flagship phone as an independent player. MeeGo is already dead, and future high-end devices from the manufacturer will run Windows Phone and use Microsoft’s services. So, is this the company’s final bittersweet hurray? Did MeeGo ever stand a chance against Android, iOS and Mango? In its attempt to stay relevant, is Nokia throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Most importantly, how does the N9 fare in today’s merciless dual-core world? Find out after the break.

Continue reading Nokia N9 review

Nokia N9 review originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It wasn’t that long ago that Myriad gave us an exclusive sneak peek at its platform agnostic Android app emulator, Alien Dalvik 2.0. While we were there, the company gave us a glimpse of another project, called Remarkz, that piqued our interest. Remarkz is a slick little HTML 5 application that lets users annotate web pages with text and drawings and share the marked up pages via email, Facebook and Twitter. As opposed to using screen grab programs like Skitch or Jing, Remarkz keeps the web page links live and only requires adding a bookmark to get started. Additionally, a timeline feature lets you see when new notes are made on a page and who made them — giving it greater potential for use as a collaboration tool. True to Myriad form, it works on any platform (tablets, PCs and Macs) using any browser that supports HTML 5. It’s still in beta for now, but the app works pretty well despite a small bug here or there. Plus, given its egalitarian nature, Myriad hinted that we may see it on more screens (think big) in January at CES, which would up its cool quotient considerably. Interested? Check out a video walkthrough of the app after the break, and hit the source to start using it yourself.

Continue reading Myriad’s Remarkz HTML 5 web annotation app hands-on

Myriad’s Remarkz HTML 5 web annotation app hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ThinFilm and the legendary PARC (of mouse and GUI fame) announced they have produced a working prototype of a printable circuit that incorporated organic, rewritable memory and transistors. The resulting integrated circuits are essentially CMOS “chips” that can be printed on large rolls at extremely low cost. The most obvious application of the technology is in NFC chips, but the small price and size could find the printable circuits turning up as everything from price tags to freshness sensors on food packaging. Sure, the idea of an “internet of things” sounds a bit cheesy, but there’s no denying the allure of a world where practically everything is “smart.” Check out the full PR after the break for a few more details.

Continue reading ThinFilm and PARC demo printable, organic CMOS circuit, inch us closer to an ‘internet of things’

ThinFilm and PARC demo printable, organic CMOS circuit, inch us closer to an ‘internet of things’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It was exactly seven years ago today that Warty Warthog, the very first release of Ubuntu (despite its 4.10 version number), hit the Internet and became and almost instant success. In those years Canonical has built the world’s most popular desktop Linux distribution and a powerful presence in the server industry thanks to its LTS (Long Term Support) releases. With Oneiric Ocelot in the books, it’s time for the team to set its sights on yet another enterprise-friendly and super stable release, 12.04 LTS — Precise Pangolin. Don’t expect any big new features or drastic UI changes, the LTS releases are all about fine tuning what’s already there. Hit up the source for a few more details on Pangolin and the more coverage link for the original Ubuntu announcement.

Ubuntu turns 7, Canonical gets to work on Precise Pangolin originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s President of Windows Phone, Mr. Andy Lees, just wrapped up a diverse interview with Ina Fried at AsiaD, in which he took the chance to gloat on Nokia’s behalf about the impending launch of its wide array of WP7-based smartphones. Moreover, he proudly responded to claims that WP7 sales have been suboptimal by clarifying that Windows Phone 7 sold more in its first 12 months on the market than did Android. Granted, the smartphone market was entirely more prepared for another entrant when Microsoft arrived, but we digress. He also held no punches when asked to opine on Andy Rubin’s swings at Windows Phone from last night’s interview, noting that “Android is very techy,” and that it’s a great OS for a certain population. He stated that Android hits you “with a grid of apps,” instead of taking a “people approach,” which WP7 presumably has. Of course, we all know how The Social went over…

All jesting aside, he responded to Ina’s questions surrounding hardware choices with this: “We wanted to stop problems with fragmentation, so we’ve locked a lot of things down. We want partners to add value, but not in a way that’s chaotic. As an example, we do hardware acceleration of the browser — no matter which WP device you choose, it all works in a consistent way. Some things in 2012 will extend that.” Moving on to more competitive questions (surrounding Siri, mostly), he affirmed that users can indeed talk to their Windows Phone handsets, but that the kind of implementation seen in Siri isn’t “super useful.” He also — oddly, we must say — noted that WP7′s voice implementations rely on Bing, which harnesses “the full power of the internet, rather than a certain subset.” Last we checked, Siri and Wolfram Alpha were connected to the internet, but we get his point — in theory, at least. He confirmed that speaking to one’s phone was practical in places like motorcars, but he seemed to imply that barking commands to a phone in public wasn’t something that Microsoft was inclined to ask its users to do.

On a hardware-related note, Andy affirmed that NFC chipsets will indeed ship on WP7 devices within the next year, and while Microsoft’s not interested in competing with Google and the like from a platform standpoint, it’s more than happy to enable mobile payments via services that already exist. To quote: “Microsoft is providing technological building blocks so payments can be done on the phone — we aren’t competing with other people providing services. We’ll have a platform approach.” Finally, he also alluded to the inclusion of LTE as the infrastructure behind WP evolves, leaving us to wonder if it’ll be Apple (or someone else entirely) as the final 4G holdout.

Microsoft’s Andy Lees: talking to your phone isn’t super useful, NFC coming soon to Windows Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Al Gore first created the internet (hard wink, everybody), we’re pretty sure the plan was for Big Brother to collect your data, not Silicon Valley titans. Now Google, the company that mainly tends the gates to the web’s vast array of information, is stepping up to its “Do No Evil” motto, and making encrypted search the norm — for account users. While Gmail’s long had SSL set as a default login, good ol’ Joe Public’s had to specifically access Mountain View’s dedicated encrypted search page for anonymous surfing privileges. No longer, as Gmail users signed in to Goog’s suite of web services will be automatically redirected to https://www.google.com where their searches and results will be hidden from prying eyes. The protection doesn’t extend out to web advertisements, so those specific clicks will deliver the same metric-relevant info that helps marketers optimize their hyper-targeting. Any of that put you conspiracy theorists at ease? Good, now you can open those curtains again.

Google encrypts search for users, paranoiacs unsure how to respond originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Street View takes to the rails in Switzerland originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus gets official: Android 4.0, 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED display (video)
• Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus launches in November on NTT Docomo, Verizon, and more
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Droid RAZR by Motorola: the tale of the tape
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus with Ice Cream Sandwich hands-on (video)
• Google confirms Nexus S will get Ice Cream Sandwich — for real this time (Gingerbread devices, too)
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Galaxy S II, Nexus One and Nexus S (macro hands-on)
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus camera and 1080p video samples
• Samsung: the LTE version of the Galaxy Nexus will be ‘a little’ thicker

• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now official, includes revamped design, enhancements galore
• Roboto font and the new design philosophy of Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich
• Android Ice Cream Sandwich adds Face Unlock feature
• Ice Cream Sandwich revamps Android camera and gallery features
• Google announces NFC-based Android Beam for sharing between phones (video)
• Google Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0): a hands-on screenshot gallery
• HTC: We’re reviewing Ice Cream Sandwich and determining our plans
• Ice Cream Sandwich face unlock demo (video)
• Android Beam takes us to the future of close-proximity data exchange (video)
• Google’s ‘very close’ to launching a digital download store with ‘a little twist’

Galaxy Nexus, Ice Cream Sandwich roundup: specs, details and insight, oh my! originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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