It appears Yahoo-owned Flickr has suffered the first significant outage after its major revamp. People online are reporting the site going down, with some tweets marked as early as 5:30PM PDT, says TNW. That was about six hours ago, at time of writing. Flickr also tweeted its acknowledgement of the site going down, about two hours ago. Experiencing slowness or having trouble accessing the site? We’re on it, and are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible. #badpanda — Flickr (@Flickr) May 24, 2013 TNW reported the site flashing the #badpanda image when it went down, but I only managed to see it once. The site was otherwise completely unresponsive the other times I tried loading it. Flickr’s revamp, launched just four days ago, overhauled the photo site’s interface with large, high-res photos. This pairs with a recent update of Flickr’s apps on both iOS and Android. Flickr has said that the updated iOS app yielded 25 percent more uploads. The additional load placed on Flickr’s systems by all the high-res flood coming in is likely to have taken its servers down. Flickr has about 89 million users. The new revamp bumped up each user’s upload quota to a whopping 1Tb. Not everyone’s going to be rushing to reach the quota, but it’s undoubtedly revived a lot of interest from users who have fallen by the wayside in recent years.
TechCrunch
Tag Archives: Days
Flickr Suffers Outage Four Days After Major Revamp
Java developer says he built, launched basic open source office suite in 30 days
A freelance Java developer claims it took him only 30 days to build and launch a basic open source office suite that runs on multiple OSes.
Computerworld News
Urban combat hits three states over nine days
PayPal’s chief information security officer says passwords’ days are numbered
Recently speaking at the Interop IT conference, PayPal’s chief information security officer, Michael Barrett, stated that passwords and PINs were operating on borrowed time. Barrett hopes to replace online security keys with a setup that’s a blend of software and hardware-based identification. He also serves as president of the Fast Identity Online Alliance (FIDO) — the organization’s focus is to combine an effective mix of software (passwords and plugins) and hardware (USB drives and fingerprint scanners) for user authentication.
PayPal’s technology boss didn’t allude to his company adopting these new types of security systems for its customers anytime soon. Instead he announced that FIDO-enabled devices will be hitting the market sometime this year. Progress, yes, but until this hardware becomes more widely available, it’s likely that you’ll be spending more time getting acquainted with two-step logins.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Via: SlashGear
Source: Macworld
The Days of Cheap, Subsidized Phones May Be Numbered
In the U.S., subsidized phones are the norm: for post-paid, long-term contract use, getting a low up-front price on a phone is one of the few upsides. New submitter Apptopia writes “After T Mobile mostly did away with subsidized phone plans, the other major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint) are paying attention. Carriers lose money with phone subsidies for high-end smartphones (particularly Apple’s iPhone). If they do away with the subsidy, you will have to pay full retail price for phones, but your monthly bill will be lower.” If people had a better idea what they were paying for, though, manufacturers might fight harder on price. There are lots of well-reviewed, multi-band, unlocked phones on Amazon and DealExtreme from lesser-known companies, and Nokia’s new Asha 501 (though limited in many ways, including availability, having just launched in India) shows that the “smartphone” label can apply even to a sub- $ 100 phone.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Injectable Nanoparticles Maintain Normal Blood-sugar Levels For Up To 10 Days
cylonlover writes “Aside from the inconvenience of injecting insulin multiple times a day, type 1 diabetics also face health risks if the dosage level isn’t accurate. A new approach developed by U.S. researchers has the potential to overcome both of these problems. The method relies on a network of nanoscale particles that, once injected into the body, can maintain normal blood sugar levels for more than a week by releasing insulin when blood-sugar levels rise.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Facebook Home Hits 500K Downloads In Five Days, Pales In Comparison To Instagram’s Android Shift
It would appear that Facebook Home has just surpassed 500k downloads on Google Play since launching on the platform five days ago on April 16. The app’s Google Play listing notes the milestone, and Ben Evans confirmed on Twitter.
Facebook Home isn’t so much of an app as a user interface for the phone, putting Facebook smack dab in the center of Android user’s smartphone experience. Users with Facebook Home can post status updates and view the newsfeed straight from the lock screen, and conduct messaging without ever being interrupted thanks to Chat Heads.
TechCrunch
Microsoft Reminds Windows XP Users They Only Have 365 Days Left Before It’ll Stop Supporting Them
If you are still using Windows XP – or you know somebody who does – Microsoft would like you to remember that you only have 365 more days before the company will end all support for the operating system it launched in New York on October 25, 2001. Both Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will go out of support on April 8, 2014 and XP users will stop receiving any new security updates, hotfixes and support (free or paid) from Microsoft. Worldwide, just under 40% of all desktops and laptops still use XP today according to the latest data from Net Applications’ NetMarketShare. Microsoft already ended mainstream support for Windows XP back in April 2009, but continued to offer extended support for commercial customers and security updates for all customers. After April 2014, Microsoft writes, using XP is an “at your own risk” situation for “any customers choosing not to migrate” and migrating will likely become costlier the longer a business stays on XP. In its announcement today, Microsoft reminds the stragglers who still use XP that it takes the average enterprise 18 to 32 months to go “from business case through full deployment.” You’d think making a business case for moving to Windows 7 or 8 would be easy at this point (though Windows 8 is arguably a harder sell), but there are clearly still quite a few companies that haven’t made the move to a modern operating system yet. Of course, the fact that there is no direct upgrade path from XP to Windows 7 makes this move even harder for smaller businesses that don’t have technical support staff. For Microsoft, of course, the end of Windows XP is also a chance to remind potential users of the “advantages” of Windows 8, which, the company writes “is the modern OS for modern businesses, building on Windows 7 fundamentals like speed, reliability and security, while creating a modern platform designed for a new generation of hardware options.” Windows 8 currently has a worldwide market share of just over 3%. Microsoft, however, also acknowledges that for some businesses, “moving their full company to Windows 8 will be the best choice, and for others it may be migrating first to Windows 7. Still, for many, it will be deploying Windows 8 side-by-side with Windows 7 for key scenarios, such as Windows 8 tablets for mobile users.” To get people to
TechCrunch
WordPress.com Has Imported 15M Posts In The Last 30 Days, Remains A Top Safe Haven For Nomad Bloggers
Here’s a familiar scenario: You’ve become bored with the current blogging platform you’re on or it decides to shut down like Posterous did after Twitter acquired it. What do you do with all of your posts? Sure, you could hop from one platform to the other, but you need a safe and trustworthy place to store all of your important thoughts. I spoke with Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg yesterday about the topic, and he gave me some insight on how WordPress.com provides a consistent and simple import process for a lot of the popular publishing platforms out there. And it seems that WordPress, after all these years, is still the place people come to with their content. In the past 30 days alone, 15 million posts have been imported into the platform. The top two services that tend to migrate to WordPress are Blogger and Tumblr, Mullenweg tells me. And then there is Posterous. As soon as Twitter announced Posterous’ shutdown date, the Posterous founders jumped into action with a service called Posthaven, promising to keep it alive forever. The new service has since seen 850K posts imported. However, there has been a spike in Posterous imports to WordPress.com in the last few weeks and 2 million total since WordPress began supporting the platform in July 2010. Mullenweg discussed why WordPress is an important and longstanding platform in the blogosphere and how the freedom is really in your hands. TC: When did you start seeing a lot of activity coming from Posterous? Matt Mullenweg: We’ve seen two big spikes: in March 2011 when they de-emphasized blogging to focus on group sharing and events, and in March 2012 when they were acquired by Twitter. The latest spike started in January but wasn’t as big as those first two. TC: As far as importing, what are the other services that you get content brought in from the most? Matt Mullenweg: The top two by far are Blogger and Tumblr, with residual amounts from Movable Type and LiveJournal still. In the past 30 days we’ve imported over 15 million posts. Tumblr and Blogger are always the two highest because they’re both good at introducing people to blogging, and in Blogger’s case they get huge promotion and integration from Google, but people quickly run into their limitations and look for a more flexible platform. TC: How many Posterous posts all time have been imported and how many have been imported since the April 30th shutdown
TechCrunch
One Notion Under Jobs: Newly Unearthed Videos Show 1984 Steve Wozniak Speaking On Pranks, Probation, And Apple’s Early Days
Damn it, Internet. I had things I needed to do this afternoon.
So much for that. A VHS recording of a 1984 Apple enthusiast meetup was recently rediscovered, and it had at least one very special gem tucked inside: footage of a 34-year old Steve Wozniak giving a speech on just about everything you’d want to see 34-year old Steve Wozniak talking about. Pranks. The decision to quit everything and start Apple. Changing the friggin’ world.
TechCrunch
GitHub Hit With Another DDoS Attack, Second In Two Days, And “Major Service Outage”
Services on code-sharing site GitHub have been disrupted for over an hour in what started as a “major service outage” because of a “brief DDoS attack.” This is the second DDoS attack in as many days and at least the third in the last several months: Yesterday, GitHub also reported a DDoS incident. And in October 2012, the service also went down due to malicious hackers.
Apple slashes iMac shipping delays to 1-3 days
Over the weekend, Apple improved supplies of its new iMacs in the U.S. and several other markets.
Computerworld News
A New Version of MS Office Every 90 Days
Billly Gates writes “It appears Microsoft is following Chrome’s agile development model like Mozilla did. At a recent tech conference, Kurt DelBene, president of the Office division, said they have mechanisms in place to update Office on a quarterly basis. Of course to get these new wondrous features and bugfixes you have to have a subscription to Office 365. Are the customers who most prefer subscriptions (corporate) going to want new things in the enterprise every 90 days? It is frustrating to see so many of them still on IE 7, XP, and Office 2003, which hurts Windows and Office sales and holds back innovation. At the same time, the accountants notice significant savings by keeping I.T. costs down with decade/semi decade updates to their images, while I.T. only puts out fires in between. Will this bring change to that way of doing things, or will Microsoft’s cloud offerings with outsourced Exchange and Sharepoint make up for it using cost savings and continually updated software in the enterprise?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft: We can update Office-by-subscription every 90 days
Microsoft may upgrade Office 2013 as often as four times a year, the company’s top Office executive said this week, a massive change from decades of more measured development.
Computerworld News
Curiosity rover to stay in ‘safe mode’ for days while NASA tackles glitches
NASA’s Curiosity rover has mostly had smooth sailing since it touched down on Mars last year. Unfortunately, it’s in a more precarious position as of this past Thursday. After noticing corrupted memory files on the robot’s primary computer, overseers have kicked Curiosity into a “safe mode” with a backup computer while they determine what’s wrong and deliver any viable fixes. Don’t think of this like you would the Safe Mode on a Windows PC, though. While the backup can serve as a replacement for the main computer, project manager Richard Cook warns Space.com that it will likely take “several days” to supply enough information that the failsafe can take over. NASA will switch back to the main computer if and when it’s ready; if it is, the agency hopes to harden the code against future flaws. Curiosity will effectively stay on ice in the meantime… and not the variety it might want to find.
Filed under: Robots, Science, Alt
Source: Space.com
Ten Days After Private Beta Launch, Snapchat Officially Brings Video To Android
It was just ten days ago that Snapchat launched a private beta version of its Android app, updated to include the video capture feature we’ve come to enjoy on iOS.
Today, however, the company has turned it around, making the Snapchat with video application officially available in theGoogle Play</a. Store. Co-founder Evan Spiegel mentioned to us earlier in the month that developing Snapchat for Android can be difficult, since Snapchat's video feature needs to be compatible across a number of different processors, screen sizes, etc.
TechCrunch
Qwiki’s New Storytelling iPhone App Was Downloaded 125K Times In Six Days
Startup Qwiki launched a new iPhone app a little more than a week ago, and it now says that the app was downloaded 125,000 times in the first six days, with 27,000 Qwikis created.
What is a Qwiki? Basically, it’s a slideshow-style video automatically assembled from a user’s photos, videos, and music. It still shows the company’s roots as a multimedia search engine, building a video presentation around any topic that you want to look up — it was in that form that Qwiki took the top prize at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in 2010 — but the technology has been redirected towards personal storytelling rather than information consumption.
TechCrunch
Former Head Of Google China Kicked Off Sina & Tencent Weibo For Three Days
Kaifu Lee, former head of Google China and founder of Bejing-based startup incubator Innovation Works, said on Twitter yesterday (h/t Sinocism) that he has been banned from posting on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo for three days.
Twitter’s Vine Experiences Its First Service Outage 5 Days After Launching (Update: And We’re Back)
Vine, Twitter’s latest foray into video sharing, seems to be having some service issues at the moment. We’ve been trying to access and use the app here at TechCrunch with no progress, and Vine has tweeted to confirm the service issues. Vine launched last Thursday and has had a whirlwind of a week. Though relatively buggy for an app launched by a major company like Twitter, Vine was welcomed by the tech blogosphere as the next Instagram, as it lets you share six-second looping videos (with or without sound) to all your favorite social networks. However, the fun ended quickly as users noticed a slight porn problem on the app. A porn clip called “DildoPlay”, which showed up on the app’s Editors’ Picks section on Monday, made matters even worse. Twitter claims that the clip was chosen because of “human error.” Then, Apple removed Vine from the App Store’s Featured section, presumably after seeing that a porn clip had been featured within the app. Vine has since started censoring the app, filtering out searches for various porn-related search terms. Today, the string of obstacles gets a bit longer with the reported service outage. Vine is experiencing a temporary service interruption. Thanks for your patience. — Vine (@vineapp) January 29, 2013 Is everyone looking for the newly-hidden pr0n on Vine all at once, because the service appears to be down. — Eric Zeman (@phonescooper) January 29, 2013 We’ll be sure to update the post as soon as Vine is back up and running. Stay tuned. Update: It looks like service is back up for a few users, but Twitter has not confirmed that we’re at full stability yet.
TechCrunch
Perl’s Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn’t Going Anywhere
snydeq writes “Deep End’s Paul Venezia waxes philosophical about Perl stagnancy in IT. ‘A massive number of tools and projects still make the most out of the language. But it’s hard to see Perl regaining its former glory without a dramatic turnaround in the near term. As more time goes by, Perl will likely continue to decline in popularity and cement its growing status as a somewhat arcane and archaic language, especially as compared to newer, more lithe options. Perhaps that’s OK. Perl has been an instrumental part of the innovation and technological advancements of the last two decades, and it’s served as a catalyst for a significant number of other languages that have contributed heavily to the programming world in general.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AT&T’s U-verse blacks out for days in several U.S. states
As users turned on their TVs or went online earlier this week, they realized they couldn’t. Apparently, the carrier is experiencing a massive outage due to a faulty software upgrade. [Read more]
CNET News
Google updating Image Search over the next few days, promises faster results
Google Image Search is about to under go another change, with the company announcing that it will be rolling out a new update over the next few days. While the update will provide multiple changes, the biggest one of relevance to the everyday Internet surfer is faster speeds with less clicking. After the update, web
Temple Run 2 downloaded 20M times in first four days
The sequel to the popular endless action video game skyrocketed to the top free app in its first eight hours on the Apple App Store, Imangi Studios says. [Read more]
CNET News
RIM attracts 15,000 apps for BlackBerry 10 in two days
It's starting to look like the BlackBerry store will be well stocked with apps when Research In Motion launches BlackBerry 10 at the end of this month.
Computerworld News
Wikimedia Foundation Raises $25M In Donations Over 9 Days
Wikimedia Foundation announced today that it raised $ 25 million from more than 1.2 million donors during its 2012 fundraiser, which ran on English-language Wikipedia in five countries (the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand) for nine full days, a decrease in time from Wikipedia’s 2011 fundraiser, which was 46 days and raised $ 20 million. Another donation drive will be launched in April.
The Twelve Days of Christmas Gadgets
Hugh Pickens writes writes “If you still have some last minute Christmas shopping to do and are looking for cool gifts for the tech nuts in your life David Pogue has put together a list of twelve cheap tech gifts and gadgets that real-world people can give to real-world friends, bosses, employees and family members — nothing over $ 100. How about a Zapped edition of Monopoly for $ 25 where there is no paper money in the game. You put your iPhone or iPad in the middle of the Monopoly board — and each player gets a fake credit card. You pay or collect money from the bank electronically, just by placing your card briefly on the touch screen. Or how about a Sound Oasis Sound Therapy Pillow for $ 38? The speakers are in the pillow, you don’t feel them, and you can drift to sleep with music playing without disturbing whoever is trying to sleep next to you. Then there’s the Tagg Pet Tracker ($ 100, plus $ 8 a month after three months) that snaps onto your dog or cat’s existing collar. You can use the pettracker.com Web site to find your pet on a map, using your phone or computer. Our favorite is the Cirago iAlert Tag for $ 50. If you walk away from your smartphone (iPhone, Android phone or BlackBerry), your key chain beeps to alert you and it works the other way, too. If you leave your keys somewhere, the phone beeps to alert you as you walk away! But the weirdest and most memorable of the suggestions are the Necomimi Brain-Powered Cat Ears for $ 100. It’s a headband with fluffy white cat ears attached that perk up, flop down and otherwise turn, cutely and catlike, in sync with your brainwaves. There’s a good deal of debate online about just how much the ears’ motion is, in fact, governed by your brainwaves but one thing the Necomimis do extremely well is get attention, start conversations and make your holiday gift memorable. Now go start wrapping.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Your Facebook Pokes Are Stored For Two Days, Then Their Encryption Keys Are Deleted
Facebook Poke messages self-destruct after a few seconds. but is Facebook saving these potentially embarrassing photos and videos? No. It’s deleting them. Pokes are encrypted, and Facebook deletes the encryption keys two days after they’re read so they’re unreadable. Key backups are destroyed within 90 days, making a poke completely inaccessible. So send those silly, racy messages with confidence.
TechCrunch
Four days ’til doomsday? Not really
As Retail E-Commerce Sees Three Billion Dollar-Plus Days In The Past Week, Online Holiday Sales Jump 15 Percent To $20.4B
We’ve been wowed by the record breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending data, but it looks like consumers are continuing to spend online for holiday shopping. comScore says that retail e-commerce spending for the first 30 days of the November–December 2012 holiday season amounts to $ 20.4 billion, which is a 15 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.
TechCrunch
Ten days with the LTE iPad Mini
Adding cellular to the iPad Mini isn’t the most affordable proposition, but it has some serious benefits. Trying it out over the last week and a half, here’s what impressed me most. [Read more]
CNET News
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: Twitter Sees A Billion Tweets Every Two And A Half Days; Users Can Download Their Entire Archive By Year-End
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has once again promised that Twitter users will, indeed, be able to download a full archive of their tweets in just a matter of weeks. This latest announcement was delivered in response to an audience question during a talk at Costolo’s alma mater, University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, where the CEO discussed Twitter’s role in the future of global communication and democratized access to information.
Windows XP countdown clock ticks under 500 days
The Windows XP operating system will exit support April 8, 2014, when Microsoft serves users with their final security updates.
Computerworld News
Just Days After Release, Google’s Nexus 4 Has Already Been Rooted
An anonymous reader writes “Google’s Nexus 4 sold out around the world very quickly this week, and while there was talk of very limited supply, apparently some key people managed to get their hands on it. That’s right: the Nexus 4 has already been rooted.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon.com begins taking orders for larger, 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD 5 days early
Microsoft Surface Touch Cover ‘Splits Within Days’
An anonymous reader points out a report at the Guardian of a potential problem for early adopters of the Microsoft Surface tablet. The Touch Cover is one of the available protective covers for the device; it acts as a keyboard, and has both a gyroscope and an accelerometer on board. Unfortunately, some users have found that the edges of the Touch Cover have split open after only a few days of use. “The defect is identical in each case: the cover … begins to split at its seam where the device attaches magnetically to the main computer. [One developer] was told to return his Touch Cover to Microsoft for a replacement, and Microsoft has been swapping faulty covers for users where it has retail stores. It’s unclear whether the problems that people have encountered are due to a faulty batch or are a subtle problem that will become more apparent as more people use it for longer — but the fact that users in the US and the UK have reported the problem suggests that it is not isolated to a single manufacturing batch.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
iPad Mini, iPad sales crack 3M over three days
Apple today said it sold 3 million iPad tablets during the opening three-day weekend of sales of the Mini, the same number it boasted it had dealt out in March for the then-new full-sized iPad.
Computerworld News
Five iPhone 5s in five days: win a black Verizon iPhone 5 and two cases, courtesy of Seidio!
Whether or not you’re having a case of the Mondays, you have to admit that this is a pretty solid way to start off the week. Amidst the swarm of tech news coming out today, we’re kicking off a full week of iPhone 5 giveaways! Seidio is here to get things going the right way, offering a black 16GB Verizon iPhone 5 and two of its rugged cases: the ACTIVE, complete with metal kickstand, as well as the CONVERT Combo. As you may have already guessed, Seidio produces a full ecosystem of premium accessories like the ones you see above. Head to the link above (and the Facebook link below) to see more options if you’re still on the lookout. And while you’re on the lookout, keep an eye out for the rest of the iPhone 5s we give away this week!
Remember folks, we’re extending the life of each contest to five days, which means you have until Friday night to submit your entry — all you have to do is leave a comment below!
Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile, Apple
Five iPhone 5s in five days: win a black Verizon iPhone 5 and two cases, courtesy of Seidio! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Introducing Engadget’s next giveaway: Five iPhone 5s in five days!
A lot of you out there have been anxiously awaiting the holidays, and — more importantly — an excuse to get your hands on the latest iPhone. In fact, the demand is so high that Apple is still experiencing inventory shortages. We don’t want that little niggle getting in your way, of course, so we’ve teamed up with five different companies to get you set up with an iPhone! So here’s the deal: beginning Monday, we will begin one new iPhone 5 contest every day through Friday. Some of the contests will feature the actual phone (carrier branding may vary), while others will offer an Apple Store gift card to cover the cost of buying one without a contract.
You can enter each individual contest once, giving you five separate opportunities to win over the course of the next week. So be on the lookout starting Monday, and make sure you come back every day to increase your chances of winning! Below you’ll find the companies involved, so that way you know exactly who to thank for your new toy. This post is not a contest, by the way, so leaving a comment here won’t enter you to win. Just make sure you’re back here bright and early on Monday — believe us, there will be plenty of other awesome news to check out that day while you’re here.
Note: this next week is going to be a pretty hectic one, so we’re going to keep each contest open for five days rather than the usual two.
Continue reading Introducing Engadget’s next giveaway: Five iPhone 5s in five days!
Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile
Introducing Engadget’s next giveaway: Five iPhone 5s in five days! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 11:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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AT&T cutting returns and service cancelation period from 30 to 14 days, starting tomorrow? (update: confirmed)
Prone to bouts of buyer’s remorse? Well if you were planning an AT&T flavored purchase, you might want to start the car. A tipster has sent in what appears to be a notice to staff advising that the returns period for equipment and service cancellations will be shrinking from 30 to 14-days — effective tomorrow. Purchases made today would benefit from the longer period, and our tipster claims that there may be a grace period until November where returns could be processed as if still under the original scheme (what sounds, to us, like a courtesy for those who didn’t read the fine print). We don’t have all the fine print, but head past the break for a little more on the specifics.
[Thanks, Anonymous]
Update: AT&T has confirmed the policy change to us, noting that it’ll indeed go into effect tomorrow, but won’t affect certain business customers. You’ll find the full response after the break, while we’re getting word on how this will work in California, where 30 return periods are required by law.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, AT&T
AT&T cutting returns and service cancelation period from 30 to 14 days, starting tomorrow? (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Fraunhofer develops extra-small 1Gbps infrared transceiver, recalls our PDA glory days
Our 1997-era selves would die with envy right about now. Fraunhofer has developed a new generation of infrared transceiver that can transfer data at 1Gbps, or well above anything that our vintage PDAs could manage. While the speed is nothing new by itself — we saw such rates in 2010 Penn State experiments — it’s the size that makes the difference. The laser diode and processing are efficient enough to fit into a small module whose transceiver is as large as a “child’s fingernail.” In theory, the advancement makes infrared once more viable for mobile device syncing, with room to grow: even the current technology can scale to 3Gbps, lead researcher Frank Deicke says, and it might jump to 10Gbps with enough work. Along with the usual refinements, most of the challenge in getting production hardware rests in persuading the Infrared Data Association to adopt Deicke’s work as a standard. If that ever comes to pass, we may just break out our PalmPilot’s infrared adapter to try it for old time’s sake.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Mobile
Fraunhofer develops extra-small 1Gbps infrared transceiver, recalls our PDA glory days originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 01:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sick Babies Could Have Genomes Sequenced in Days
Whole genomes can now be sequenced and analyzed in about two days, which could greatly benefit newborns in a medical crisis.
In a study that shows how whole-genome sequencing could be used in life-or-death medical situations involving newborns, researchers at a hospital in Kansas analyzed the entire genomes of seven babies that died near birth, accurately diagnosing five of them with critical conditions within about 50 hours each—fast enough to be meaningful to their care.
iPhone 5 matches monthlong sales figures for 4S in just 3 days
ComScore report says the first three days of online preorders for the iPhone 5 matched the earlier Apple record set by the iPhone 4S over the course of a month.
[Read more]
CNET News
Three Days After iPhone 5 Drops, Samsung Desperately Leaks Galaxy S IV Debut Date
Put yourself in Samsung’s shoes.
You’ve just lost more than $ 1 billion in a very public patent trial. Your shining star, the Galaxy S III, was just blown out of the water by a brand new iPhone — Apple sold 2 million iPhone 5 units in 24 hours, whereas you are at a pace to sell 200,000 every 24 hours. And now you’re scraping to steer people away from the new iPhone and toward your flagship, even with entirely misleading ads (like the one below).
Quick! What do you do?
TechCrunch
Samsung blasts through 20m Galaxy S III sales in 100 days
Samsung has announced global Galaxy S III sales of over 20,000,000 units in just 100 days, making it the company’s fastest-selling smartphone so far. The Android star has been maintaining a steady pace, too, with demand showing no signs of slowing according to Samsung: the 10m sale mark was hit after 50 days, which suggests growth
There’s just four days left to enter our back to school sweepstakes with nearly $50,000 in prizes!
During the month of August, we published 14 back to school guides, covering product categories ranging from cameras and printers, to smartphones and ultraportables. With each post, we offered a selection of gadget must-haves, but we also gave you an opportunity to enter our massive back to school giveaway, including 15 identical bags stuffed to the brim (and far beyond) with some of the hottest devices of the season. You want these gadgets, and we want to help! The contest runs through noon (ET) on Friday, September 7th, so there’s still plenty of time to enter — simply leave a comment at each of our category pages, along with the giveaway post, to secure 15 chances to win. And to make things even easier, we’re including links to all of our posts just below. Good luck, and have a fantastic semester!
- Engadget’s back to school 2012 sweepstakes: win one of 15 gadget-filled bags!
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: smartphones
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: tablets
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: ultraportables
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: e-readers
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: mainstream laptops
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: gaming
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: HDTV
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: digital cameras
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: portable audio
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: accessories
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: docks and clocks
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: bags and cases
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: printers
- Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: fun stuff!
Filed under: Announcements
There’s just four days left to enter our back to school sweepstakes with nearly $ 50,000 in prizes! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Zune’s last days: Microsoft pulling Zune HD apps, select features on August 31st
Microsoft’s oddly named music service put its official resignation in earlier this summer, but the Zune brand isn’t in its coffin just yet — although Redmond is certainly driving in the nails. Zune Pass subscribers, for instance, are now receiving word that the service’s Mixview playback and channel playlist features will be discontinued on August 31st, along with music video streaming from the Zune desktop software. User licenses to previously purchased music videos are being reworked as well, cutting off user access to old content on new machines. The service’s once heavily touted social aspect seems to be making way for Xbox Music as well: users will no longer be able to send or receive messages, invite friends or share songs, playlists, and play history. Last, but not least, the company is dealing its old hardware one final blow by discontinuing Zune HD apps — not that there were many to kill off. Microsoft has little else to say in the brief email, but promises to share more information about Xbox Music soon. Check it out for yourself after the break.
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Engadget
Power Problems Force Seattle To Throttle City Data Center For Days
Nerval’s Lobster writes with an except from sister site SlashDataCenter: “On Aug. 23, Mayor Mike McGinn of Seattle informed residents that the city would partially shut down its municipal data center for five days including the Labor Day weekend. As a result, city residents will be unable to pay bills, apply for business licenses, or take advantage of other online services. In a Webcast press conference, McGinn isolated the issue as a failure in one of the electrical ‘buses’ that supplies power to the data center. Because that piece of equipment began overheating, the city had to begin taking servers and applications offline to prevent overloading the system. The maintenance will cost the city $ 2.1 million of its maintenance budget. A second power bus will remain operational, supplying enough electricity to power redundant systems for critical life and fire safety systems, including 911 services and fire dispatch. The city’s Web sites should also be up and running in some capacity.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Marissa Mayer’s First 30 Days
During the regrettable 5-month reign of Scott Thompson, Yahoos rarely saw him on campus. Contrary to her predecessor, Marissa Mayer is often spotted in the cafeteria and at FYI (happy hours) every Friday when execs showcase their products.
On my last visit to Yahoo at end of July, it was as if a dark cloud had been lifted. Employees enthuastically lined up to enter the cafeteria in the first week of “Free Lunch”. URL’s, Yahoo’s main cafeteria, was more packed than a typical Tuesday. Many expressed how excited they were about the future of their company.
TechCrunch
App.net hits $500K funding goal nearly two days early
Alternative social network achieves crowd-funding goal after a last-minute push for pledges from new sponsors.
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CNET News
Ask Slashdot: Are The Days of Homebrew Gaming Over?
Croakyvoice writes “A few years ago the Homebrew community went from one console to another releasing some excellent software, from the Days of the Dreamcast the first breakthrough homebrew console, to the PSP which gave us the first handheld Nintendo 64, GBA and PSX emulators on a handheld. The last few years we have seen Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Apple all bring out means to thwart homebrew development. The app store on both Android and iOS have taken many homebrew devs over to try and break the market. The major consoles have so many firmware updates that the days of Homebrew seem to be numbered, is there a way back for the Homebrew Community?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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