India Mobiles

Wireless power may still be on the drawing board, but wireless data is here today, and a UK defense contractor has figured out a way to pipe the latter through several inches of steel. Using a pair of piezoelectric transducers on either side of a watertight submarine compartment, BAE’s “Through Hull Data Link” sends and receives an acoustic wave capable of 15MHz data rates, enough to transmit video by essentially hammering ever-so-slightly on the walls. BAE impressed submarine commanders by streaming Das Boot right through their three-inch hulls, and while metadrama is obviously the killer app here, the company claims it will also save millions by replacing the worrisome wiring that’s physically routed via holes in a submarine’s frame. See the company’s full US patent application at our more coverage link.

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UK defense firm pumps data through solid submarine walls

It’s time for another episode of Cooking in the Kitchen with Vader and Leia. Today’s special: Bantha over toast points with a side of JarJar. At least that’s what we think some of the delicacies should be in any kitchen where you wear one of these amusing new Star Wars aprons, fresh off the shelves of the Star Wars Shop . Leia can be found cooking in her Jabba the Hutt slave outfit, while Vader is making his grub in his standard black get-up

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darth vader and princess leia aprons: force cookin’

A team of Italian engineers is gearing up for a high-tech road rally that should impress even the outside-the-box dreamers over at DARPA: an 12,875km journey from Italy to China, with nobody behind the wheel. (more…)

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Two Driverless Cars Have Begun 12,875km Journey From Italy To China

For anyone hoping that the Standing Committee of Attorneys-Generals would be reviewing the need for an R18+ games classification this month, prepare for disappointment – David over at Kotaku brings us word that the discussion has been delayed yet again. (more…)

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Adult Games Classification Discussion Delayed Again

It’s funny to think, even after reviewing the device ( thrice , at this point ), that we still don’t have a US release date for Dell’s Streak . The company’s been uncharacteristically coy, but the stateside product page does offer this tantalizing tidbit: “available for purchase in late July.” That gives us a good 10-day window, so if you’ve been eyeballing that pre-sale button with intent to click, now might be the time jump on the list. Dell Streak available for purchase ‘in late July,’ says US product page originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:00:00 EDT

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Dell Streak available for purchase ‘in late July,’ says US product page

Dell has announced via its website that its Streak Android powered smartphone, which features a huge 5-inch touchscreen display, will go on sale later this month. Those that sign up now can take advantage of a pre-sale event. Read the full story here.

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Dell Streak 5-inch display Android smartphone to be available in the U.S. this month

It’s still a pretty big window, but Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has narrowed down the time until we can expect a disc-free streaming experience on our PS3s from ” later this year ” to some time before its next earning call, which should happen around October 21. Other notes from the Q2 highlights included a shoutout to Hulu Plus , where Netflix “plans to learn what customers like about Hulu Plus” and use that to enhance its service, as well as the upcoming launch of a streaming service in Canada , and how the lessons learned may be applied to other “pure streaming” offerings internationally in the future. Investors aren’t too happy the company missed earnings projections, but we’re figuring once they close the ETrade window and pick up a Shockaxis they’ll start to get over it. Netflix plans discless Watch Instantly on the PS3 by late October, more ‘pure streaming’ worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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Netflix plans discless Watch Instantly on the PS3 by late October, more ‘pure streaming’ worldwide

Facebook confirmed on Wednesday that the social network has 500 million active users, a figure that puts MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, and even Twitter to shame. Facebook continues its impressive growth, adding 100 million users since February and boasts of the following the statistics: 500 million active users 50% of users login on any given day People spend 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook More than 25 billion pieces of content (links to news stories and blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each month More than 100 million active users currently acces Facebook through their mobile devices Whether you like Facebook or not, those stats are undeniably impressive and assure Facebook its title of social networking king for the foreseeable future.  Though its #1 position is solidified, the next six months will be interesting to watch. Will Facebook continue its exponential growth to one billion and beyond, or has it reached its plateau? While we wait to find out, you can spend some of those 500 billion monthly minutes checking out BGR’s Facebook page .  Read

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Facebook hits 500 million user milestone

If you’re familiar with OtterBox you know that their flagship case, the Defender, provides an paralleled level of protection for whatever device you choose to place inside it. However, that amount of protection doesn’t come without a price. The Defender is big, some might even call it bulky. It’s for this reason that OtterBox first offered the Commuter Series Case for the iPhone 3Gs and they’ve now released it for the iPad. The Commuter Series is sort of like the Defender’s little brother

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OtterBox Commuter Case for iPad: Sleek & Slender But Still Tough

Man, if you thought the lawsuit action in the mobile space was crazy before, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet — Motorola just sued Huawei and over a dozen former employees for conspiring to steal its wireless trade secrets and other proprietary technology over a period of years starting in 2001. Yeah, it’s crazy. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2008 against four former Motorola engineers and a company called Lemko, all of whom Motorola accused of conspiring to stealing trade secrets related to wireless technology. After years of discovery in the case, it appears that Motorola realized the conspiracy went much deeper than it originally thought, leading the company to file a new complaint on July 16th, in which it named Huawei and nine additional former employees, who allegedly schemed to steal plans for a 3G base station called the SC300

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Motorola sues Huawei and several former employees for stealing wireless trade secrets

Apparently a Mr Jeff Williams has earned a new position at Apple. He is now the Senior Vice President of Operations and dedicated to making sure that Apple’s products meet “the highest standards of quality”. Apple Insider speculates that the reason he is being promoted to this position is because he is being groomed for an even better gig: (more…)

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Apple Has A New Senior Vice President Of Operations Dedicated To Product Quality

Not interested in Samsung’s newfangled DualView cameras ? Don’t worry, the company is still cranking out plenty of regular point-and-shoots as well — like this just-announced PL200 model. Coming in at a reasonable $179.99, this one packs a 14.2-megapixel sensor, a 7x optical zoom, a 3-inch LCD ’round back, 720p video recording, and dual optical and digital image stabilization, among other standard features.

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Samsung rolls out budget-minded PL200 point-and-shoot

Apparently Potsdam University (south of Berlin, Germany) has just started offering a collegiate course in flirting for its computer-related master’s students. *facepalm* IT SHOULD BE AN UNDERGRADUATE COURSE. The 440 students enrolled in the master’s degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection

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Yeah, That’s Not Gonna Help: College Course Designed To Help Geeks Learn How To Flirt

When I was a teen, I was fascinated by alchemy — not so much the whole turning lead into gold part or trying to play God and create tiny little humans in a jar. I was really attracted to the labware, the furnaces, the study of the physical and natural world and its processes — basically, the parts of alchemical practice that lead to modern chemistry. Professor William Newman, a historian of science at Indiana University, was equally fascinated by the lab procedures of alchemists. So much so, he created a 17th century alchemy lab at his home, including a replica of Sir Isaac Newton’s alchemical furnace in his back yard. He used their notebooks to recreate many of their experiments

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Dabbling in alchemy

While its name suggest that it helps you send SMS while driving, the Text’n Drive iPhone app actually reads your email out loud and allows you to send out voice messages without touching your iPhone very much. Clever, but peculiar. (more…)

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Text’n Drive iPhone App Keeps You From Rear-Ending Another Driver

Several days ago, Mozilla announced that it would pay developers and hackers $3,000 for every reproducible, critical security flaw found in its FireFox web browser. Yesterday, Google has announced that it will pay $3,133.70 for critical security bugs found in its Chrome web browser. Bravo to Google for their ability to sneak 31337 (eleet) into their bug bounty payout. Google’s pay-per-bug program looks like this: The maximum reward for a single bug has been increased to $3,133.7. We will most likely use this amount for SecSeverity-Critical bugs in Chromium

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Google says “me too,” offering $3,000+ bounty for Chrome bugs

MAKE Managing Editor, Keith Hammond, sent us the link to this 60s robot Pavlovian dog simulator, created by Fred Chesson, and done with relays! The robot dogs shown in the photograph were developed by the author in the early Sixties, when the teaching-machine “fad” was approaching its heady zenith. At the time of the design, relay logic still had a cost advantage over the contemporary RTL gates, but some transistors were employed for the “eyes” and “ears” of the automated canines.

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Pavlovian "Robot Rovers" from the 1960s

It seems like everyone is cooking up their own touch-free gesture-based control technology , just like every blogger is destined to refer to it as ” Minority Report -like” or ” Minority Report -esque,” or “Tom Cruise-tastic!” Fraunhofer’s FIT, the newest such project, has recently appeared on the YouTubes, where we must say it looks pretty darn good. Not only does it not require special gloves or markers, this thing also works in real time and can support multiple users (and multiple fingers). The researchers hope to use this for working with complex simulation data and in education, although there are some kinks to be worked out: currently elements like the reflections caused by wristwatches and the orientation of the palm confuses the system. That said, the demo is pretty rad! See for yourself after the break. Continue reading Fraunhofer FIT touch-free gesture-control for multiple users (video) Fraunhofer FIT touch-free gesture-control for multiple users (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:01:00 EDT

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Fraunhofer FIT touch-free gesture-control for multiple users (video)

I’m a mayor of a few locations on Foursquare , but I gotta be honest – I’m a big boss on Loopt Star . It seems that even though Loopt Star offers way more actual rewards than Foursquare (and adding more discounts at various locations every day), everyone is hooked on the latter. Obviously, I love Foursquare (since that’s where all my friends are), but I use more than one geo-location app to maximize my rewards potential

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Which Geo-Location App Do You Use?

We knew that Bing was the default search engine for Windows Phone 7 handsets, but earlier information about the mobile OS suggested that carriers and OEM’s could change the search engine as part of the allowed customizations.

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Bing to be the one and only search engine for Windows Phone 7

We’ve heard this song and dance before, but DigiTimes has it that MSI is on pace to shove out a 3D laptop this September. Before you open that jaw and feign a yawn, you should know that the company is purportedly not following convention by integrating NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology; instead, it’ll rely on Dynamic Digital Depth’s (DDD’s) TriDef 3D software for transferring 2D images to 3D. This means that users will be able to use cheap-o polarized glasses rather than the more expensive (and battery draining) active shutter variety. Somehow or another, the whole thing is supposed to launch at under a grand, so we’ll be poking around on the IFA show floor hoping that this one comes to fruition. MSI rumored to have TriDef 3D laptops on deck, no active shutters required originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:26:00 EDT

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MSI rumored to have TriDef 3D laptops on deck, no active shutters required