Archive for October, 2011

What phone has a second screen and split keyboard and is likely to make its debut on October 26th? Why yes, it’s the LG DoublePlay, one of T-Mobile’s latest oddballs. Of course, this is just a screenshot that likely indicates a release later this week (with retail outlets receiving units on November 2nd), so we can’t say with an absolute certainty — though this date would coincide perfectly with the beginning of the National Texting Championship. No word yet on its pricing, and its unique form factor and functionality keeps us from taking any wild guesses. Hopefully we’ll know in less than 48 hours.

LG DoublePlay likely to see single release for T-Mobile on October 26th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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China’s BYD Motors has been edging its way into the North American auto market for some time, but it’s now firmly planted itself here by opening its new headquarters in Los Angeles. That bit of news also just so happens to coincide with the announcement of a new partnership with Hertz Car Rental, who will be using BYD’s all-electric, long-range eBUS to shuttle passengers at Los Angeles International Airport — BYD’s cars will also eventually find their way into Hertz’s LA rental fleet. The press release is after the break.

Continue reading BYD opens North American HQ in LA, electric bus headed for LAX

BYD opens North American HQ in LA, electric bus headed for LAX originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that Netflix has revealed exactly how many subscribers it has lost over the last few months, we’re wondering what’s next for the video service and its competitors like Amazon. In other pay-TV news, we have an upgraded UI on the way from DirecTV and new social media hooks from AT&T that could signal a change in the way we watch TV. Before closing things out with our picks of what to watch this week, we even had some time for new ultra HDTV standards, mobile app consolidation for FiOS and Sony’s PlayStation 3D Display.

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16:18 – Netflix US subscriber count drops by 800k in Q3, 21.45 million still streaming
18:24 – Netflix to expand to UK, Ireland in ‘early 2012,’ looks to challenge Lovefilm
24:19 – Amazon Prime Instant Video expands its library with even more video from PBS
27:23 – BBC’s global iPlayer app adds AirPlay streaming, should just be on Apple TV
30:00 – DirecTV shows off its new HD UI with a website and trailer, still no release date
33:55 – U-verse TV gets social with help from Miso, TV Foundry, Wayvin and BuddyTV Guide
40:00 – Verizon’s My FiOS app puts your entire living room under one Android roof
42:39 – Playstation 3D Display hits shelves November 13, Sony answers your burning questions
44:50 – Ultra HDTV technical standards agreed on, more pixels is a good thing
52:30 – Must See HDTV (October 24th – 30th)

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Engadget HD Podcast 271 – 10.25.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It might be a stretch to suggest that there’d be no AI without John McCarthy, but at the very least, we’d likely be discussing the concept much differently. The computer scientist, who died on Sunday at 84, is credited with coining the term “Artificial Intelligence” as part of a proposal for a Dartmouth conference on the subject. The event, held in 1956, is regarded as a watershed moment for the subject. Early the following decade, McCarthy pioneered LISP, a highly popular programming language amongst the AI development community. In 1971, he won a Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery and 20 years later was awarded National Medal of Science. A more complete obituary for McCarthy can be found in the source link below.

[Thanks, Jason]

John McCarthy, AI pioneer, dies at 84 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That Siri gal is certainly making the rounds these days. When she’s not answering your questions on a 4S, she’s showing up on iPads and elder iPhones. Not one to play favorites, Siri’s now lending her considerable talents to an iPod touch. Two enterprising young hackers, euwars and rud0lf77, are the ones who put Siri on the iPod, and you can see the results of their labor in the video after the break. Of course, Apple’s servers still aren’t as friendly as the virtual voice assistant, so Siri’s latest cameo remains a silent one — but some Siri’s better than none, right?

Continue reading Siri shows up on an iPod Touch, no longer plays favorites in the iOS family

Siri shows up on an iPod Touch, no longer plays favorites in the iOS family originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon pulled back the financial curtain for Q3 2011, revealing $10.88 billion in net sales for the quarter, a 44 percent jump over this time last year. Net income, on the other hand, decreased 73 percent year over year, down to $63 million. The quarter also saw the company’s “biggest order day ever for Kindle,” according to CEO Jeff Bezos — September 28th, the introduction of three new reader devices from the company. The company’s Q4 report will likely be affected by the coming launch of the Kindle Touch and the long-awaited Fire tablet.

Continue reading Amazon net sales up, net income down for Q3 2011

Amazon net sales up, net income down for Q3 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Freescale CPUYou may have noticed a trend recently — pairing slightly less powerful cores that sip power, with more robust ones that can chug through demanding applications. NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 will be packing an underclocked fifth core, while ARM’s big.LITTLE initiative matches a highly efficient 28nm A7 with the beefy A15. Now Freescale is planning to use the same trick, but you won’t find its asymmetrical CPUs in your next tablet or smartphone. Its platform, which marries a Cortex M4 to a Cortex A5, isn’t meant to compete with the latest Snapdragon. These chips will find homes in factories and in-dash infotainment systems which have increasingly sophisticated UIs, but don’t need to push thousands of polygons. Software development tools will land before this quarter is out and the first batch of silicon will be announced in Q1 of 2012. Looks like the era of “dual-core” meaning two identical cores has officially come to an end.

Continue reading Freescale joins ARM A5 and M4 cores at the hip for performance and power savings

Freescale joins ARM A5 and M4 cores at the hip for performance and power savings originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Virginia Rometty and Samuel Palmisano

IBM’s board of directors have announced that Virginia M. Rometty will be taking over as CEO of the company in 2012, succeeding current chief Samuel Palmisano. Palmisano will stay on as chairman of the board, but at the end of the year will hand over the reins to Rometty who will become one of a few, but growing number of female chief executives (alongside Meg Whitman) in the tech industry. During her roughly decade long tenure with the company she has spearheaded the push into the services industry and in 2009 became senior vice president of sales, marketing and strategy, leading the charge into markets like China and India. The 54-year-old Rometty will look to continue Palmisano’s success, which has seen IBM become the second most valuable tech company in the world, just ahead of Microsoft and right behind Apple. Check out the full PR after the break.

Continue reading IBM announces Virginia Rometty as new CEO

IBM announces Virginia Rometty as new CEO originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today’s Amazon earnings were decidedly split — the company revealed both a 44-percent increase in net sales and a 73-percent decrease in net income. So, why the discrepancy? It may at least partially be due to the much discussed suggestion that the company actually loses money for each Kindle sold — a trend which, if true, has likely only been compounded by the release of the uber-cheap ad-supported version of the device. The company addressed the matter in part, suggesting that it is focused on “the lifetime value [of the Kindle], not just the economics of the devices and accessories.” The total economic picture of the Kindle includes the device itself, accessories, downloaded content and ad-revenue.

Things are apparently looking up for the company, as well, with Amazon anticipating “a record quarter in terms of device sales” for Q4. The positivity is a reflection, in part, of greater than anticipated Kindle pre-orders. Says CEO Jeff Bezos, “In the three weeks since launch, orders for electronic ink Kindles are double the previous launch. And based on what we’re seeing with Kindle Fire pre-orders, we’re increasing capacity and building millions more than we’d already planned.”

Amazon focusing on ‘lifetime’ Kindle revenue, anticipating record device sales for Q4 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this month, we found out that after a software update HTC’s Android handsets had a serious security flaw — any app could gain access to user data, including recent GPS locations, SMS data, phone numbers, and system logs. To its credit, HTC responded quickly to the security issue, and now an OTA update with the fix is going out to those on the Now Network. Sprint users with an EVO 4G, 3D, Shift 4G, Design 4G or View 4G can get the download, as can Wildfire S owners. The patch available now for a manual download, and more info on the fix can be found at the source below.

[Thanks, Korey]

Sprint issues OTA fix for HTC Android handset vulnerability originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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