The Gadget Geek

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 now officially available for download

Well look at that — Adobe’s now officially serving up Flash Player 10.1 on its download pages. If you’re anything like us, you’ve been running 10.1 since it hit Release Candidate status a couple months ago, but if you’ve held off the upgrade brings some much-needed hardware acceleration to the mix, as well as other assorted performance enhancements and improvements. We’re curious to see if the various issues with Broadcom Crystal HD netbooks have been resolved in this final version, and Mac users will have to wait for the “Gala” update to see any hardware-powered boost on their systems, but it’s nice to finally see Adobe ship this thing. Let us know how it goes in comments, yeah?

Update: Sorry folks — contrary to reports, it doesn’t look like the Gala hardware acceleration code was secretly included in the OS X build, as we just tried it on a new MacBook Pro and the graphics didn’t switch over to the discrete chip. What’s more, the Gala project page is still alive and kicking with a release date expected “following the release of Flash Player 10.1.” We’ll just have to be patient, we suppose.

[Thanks, Neal and Sam]

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 now officially available for download originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm Pre Smartphone
Palm Pre Smartphone
Beautiful Minimal Bike Basket Built Into Handlebars
This bike basket is so sleek and minimal you could probably bolt it to your fixed-gear bike and nobody would even notice. I’m kidding, of course, but it’s certainly a great-looking way to add carrying capacity to a bike without racks and other screw-on extras. The Bike Porter, from Copenhagen Parts, is a combination of handlebars [...]
No Motion, No Electricity ? Cutie!
I’m not calling your face attractive, I’m talking about the the BugPlug! It’s a power device that’s cute as a button! I’m sure you’re quite nice looking though, that’s why BugPlug has it’s eyes on you! It detects when you’re in the facility and keeps your devices powered. When you’re …

Palm loses webOS notifications architect to Apple

Rich Dellinger might not be a name you instantly recognize, but he is the dude credited with bringing about the unintrusive banner notification system that forms part of webOS‘ widespread appeal. And, as of today, he’s also in the employ of one Steve Jobs. The new Senior UI Designer at Apple, Inc looks to have made his way through Palm’s exit doors in the immediate aftermath of the HP takeover announcement, and joins Matias Duarte on the list of significant talent departures from the webOS design team. We expect Rich will be getting his teeth stuck into the iPhone’s admittedly tired and obtrusive notifications, and hopefully sprinkling some of that webOS fairy dust into the next iteration of Apple’s iOS. Let’s be honest, who here hasn’t dreamt of an iPre?

[Thanks, Tal]

Palm loses webOS notifications architect to Apple originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mio Moov 310 GPS
Mio Moov 310 GPS

Motorola Milestone XT720 announced: 8 megapixel cam, 720p video, and Droid heritage (update: video!)

Motorola has just outed a Europe-bound Milestone XT720, a handset intended to grab the attention of camera lovers with an 8 megapixel sensor, 720p / 24fps video and — a first for Android handsets — a xenon flash. Speaking of Android, this will come loaded up with version 2.1 when it launches later this month. Plans for 2.2 upgrades are, as usual, not yet formalized and not under discussion. Other specs include a 3.7-inch, 480 x 854 screen, a 550MHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU, and a promised 9 hours of talk time and 320 hours of standby time. It looks very much like Moto’s selection of Droid-esque handsets that have been prowling the Chinese market, and it seems the company has enjoyed success with the keyboard-less form factor and is pushing it out to Europe. US release plans are also not being discussed — it might happen and it might not, seems to us like it’ll depend on the Euros’ reaction. We’re just getting to grips with the handset right now, and will furnish you with video of it as soon as we can.

P.S. We’re told this handset is closer to the Motoroi than anything else, Motorola describes them as sister devices. We also spotted a network update from Orange on the demo handset, implicating it as a possible carrier for the XT720 in the UK.

Update: We’ve now got Motorola’s full press release plus a promo video after the break, as well as some comparison pics between this new handset and the original Milestone in the second gallery below.

Update 2: And we’ve just added our hands-on impressions and video, you know where to find them.

Continue reading Motorola Milestone XT720 announced: 8 megapixel cam, 720p video, and Droid heritage (update: video!)

Motorola Milestone XT720 announced: 8 megapixel cam, 720p video, and Droid heritage (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nextar I4-BC GPS
Nextar I4-BC GPS

AMD in no rush to build tablets, says netbooks are priority one

According to DigiTimes, processor vendor AMD isn’t terribly concerned about powering the next iPad or even a would-be assassin; the company’s still waiting to see if the tablet market even takes off. The silicon firm will still work on desktop PC products and graphics cards, but is currently focused on graphically potent ultraportables; according to the publication, they’re also not terribly interested in following in competitor Intel’s smartphone footsteps. Of course, that’s the same basic thing AMD execs said in 2008, right before Intel ate their lunch. We reached out to a company spokesperson this afternoon, and received the following statement:

Our current generation of notebook platforms has not been designed for tablets. Our focus continues to be on ultrathin and mainstream notebooks which address the vast majority of the PC market opportunity.

AMD in no rush to build tablets, says netbooks are priority one originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry Curve 9300 fixing to replace the 8500 series?

It death of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 on T-Mobile (you can still get it on AT&T, by the way) bummed us out for the simple reason that it was perhaps the best-looking BlackBerry every made. The Curve 8500 series that followed it just didn’t have the same sort of sleek, high-end air about it, so we’re happy to see that the 8500′s follow-on should go a little ways toward closing the gap. What we’re apparently looking at here is the Curve 9300, a phone that carries over the now-standard optical pad from the 8500 but uses a decidedly 8900-esque chrome surround while adding 3G and support for 802.11n, a feature it shares with the Pearl 3G. What keeps the 9300 on the low end of the spectrum, though, is its screen — it’s apparently just QVGA, and we’re a little discouraged that the leaked unit here isn’t running BlackBerry 6 — but you get what you pay for, right?

BlackBerry Curve 9300 fixing to replace the 8500 series? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hitachi P50S601 50-in Plasma TV
Hitachi P50S601 50-in Plasma TV

Intel ‘Canoe Lake’ prototype netbook preview

Tablets may be attracting all of the attention right now, but it’s clear that Intel‘s keeping a broad focus on mobile computing. During today’s PC Client keynote at Computex, the company took a moment to talk up Canoe Lake, an experimental platform that’ll enable 720p video playback on a machine that’s barely thicker than a couple of envelopes stacked together. We got a chance to peek the prototype on hand in Taipei, and we were told that Intel designed the device you’re peering at above completely in-house as a way to sell PC makers on the idea. They also affirmed that a GMA 3150 GPU was inside, and that the platform was capable of handling high-def multimedia. The machine was indeed functional, but few tricks were shown — the 10-inch display looked suitable enough, though it would certainly take us a few days to stop noticing that monster gap between the keyboard and LCD. But hey, you’ve got to cram those components / battery / fairy dust somewhere, right? Look for a plethora of Canoe Lake-based systems (probably fashioned like the gapless netbook at the tail end of the gallery below) to start shipping in “the second half of this year” from companies that Intel simply can’t name as of yet.

Intel ‘Canoe Lake’ prototype netbook preview originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Jun 2010 05:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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