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Alienware officially updates the M11x

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 05:00 AM PDT

When we ran our review of the Alienware M11x a few months back, there were a couple of things that really didn’t sit well with us. They had decided on the older Nvidia chipset (which forced you to basically shut everything down to change from discrete to active video) and you were somewhat limited in what CPU options were available. Well, no longer.

Alienware announced today that they are switching to the new(er) Nvidia Optima chipset which allows for seamless transitions from discrete to active graphics, and also added the option to choose either the Intel Core i5 or Core i7 to the custom build. You can also choose up to 8GB of RAM, and anywhere from a 250GB to 500GB 7,200 rpm drive, or a 256GB SSD option. This makes the M11x one of the most powerful netbook style systems on the market, and definitely the choice for a gamer looking for a portable system. One item of note however, in order to be able to fit the Core i5 or i7 CPU choices, Alienware did have to remove the VGA port from the side of the machine. The rest of the ports (USB, HDMI, media card reader, etc.) are still there, but you won’t be able to connect a standard VGA connection to the M11x.


Panasonic Japan announces two 3D plasma TVs

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 04:38 AM PDT

And yet another 3D news item from Japan. This time, it’s Panasonic, which today announced [JP] two new 3D plasma TVs, the 42-inch TH-P42VT2, and the 46-inch TH-P46VT2. Both VIERAs require active shutter glasses to view images in 3D and both feature full HD resolution.

Spec-wise, buyers can expect a native contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1, DLNA support, Skype compatibility, video-on-demand support, 16×4cm×2 full range speakers, Ethernet, an SD/SDXC slot, and four HDMI interfaces.

Panasonic plans to start rolling out the 3D TVs on the Japanese market on July 30. Prices:$3,300 for the 42-inch model, and $3,800 for the 46-inch VIERA (one pair of glasses is included in these prices).

You can now send Google Maps directions to your Ford Sync-equipped vehicle

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 04:30 AM PDT

Oh, a car story written by Nicholas. This is sure to be riddled with errors! (Kidding&mdas;or am I?) Ford Sync, which Matt has talked about for some time, now works with Google Maps. That is, from Google Maps on your computer or mobile or whatever, you select a destination then send it straight to your car. That way, when you hop in the saddle—cars have saddles, right?—your destination is all marked out for you. Pretty neat.

Ford makes it seem pretty easy to handle. On Google Maps, again, either on your computer or mobile device or however you want to access Google Maps, you select a destination. Let’s say you want to drive from New York City to Six Flags Great Adventure. You search for “great adventure” on Google Maps, then pull down the Send menu. Then off you go.

You will need Ford’s traffic, directions, and information dealie for everything to work.

I think that’s it.

Daily Crunch: The Mirror Has Two FaceTimes Edition

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 12:00 AM PDT

Adobe releases Lightroom 3

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 08:58 PM PDT


Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 3, the popular photo manipulating and management tool. It’s been in beta for a while, so none of the features will be particularly shocking, but the final version being made available today does have a few tricks up its sleeve. We’ll take a quick look tonight, but I have a copy on my hot little hard drive, and want to give it a good week or two of use before publishing a full review.

For those who aren’t familiar with Lightroom, it’s a tool under the Photoshop umbrella intended for photographers who want robust RAW image editing as well as a powerful organizational tool for keeping track of thousands of shots. If it sounds a bit like Aperture to you, it is — but both products are relatively new (compared with oldsters like Photoshop and Office), so it’d be just as fair to say that Aperture sounds a bit like Lightroom. I happen to use Aperture, but I found the latest update slightly disappointing, and may just switch to LR permanently.

But what about the update? Well, if you’re in the beta, you’re probably familiar with some of these features. But there’s new stuff for you guys, too. So let’s see here. Apologies if it seems like I’m reading off the press release, it’s hard to remember all this stuff from the demos.


Lens correction and profile gallery: This is handy. If you’re worried about distortion from the wide end of a lens or just want to reduce it a bit, Adobe provides a huge amount of lens profiles with which you can lower or exaggerate the distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. They’re independently adjustable and different for every lens. LR is shipping with a bunch of the more popular Canon and Nikon lenses already profiled, but you can create your own by shooting a printout and letting it crunch the numbers.


Perspective correction: Here’s a tool most of us would just run into Photoshop to do, but which is handy to have at your fingertips. It’s basically just adjusting the angle you’re shooting from, within reason of course. Handy for situations where you really need something to be parallel with the edges of the photo, but you couldn’t get at the right angle when you were shooting.

Improved noise reduction and sharpening: If you’ve tweaked your photos at all, you’ve probably seen what can happen when sharpening gets out of hand. The new LR sharpening algorithms try to avoid that weird effect that happens when you push the sharpness too far. Noise reduction is more intelligent as well, and tries to avoid losing color and detail when reducing noise, which can be quite difficult when the details are the same size as the grain.

Streamlined importing: tagging, renaming, and organizing rolls is now apparently easier, and it certainly looked like it when they showed off creating an import preset.

Streamlined publishing: the Flickr integration they showed off was really quite impressive. You can manage all kinds of stuff, from ratings and comments to privacy settings, via the in-app plugin. There are other plugins as well, and their API is available for people who want to make new ones. Drag-and-drop publishing and easy sharing are something they are having to push real hard for, since Aperture 3 made sharing one of its top priorities.


Tethered capture: seemed to work fine in the demo. Definitely nice to have, and you can adjust settings on the fly to be applied to shots coming in.

Video support: still pretty rudimentary right now, but it’s good to at least be able to keep your videos in the same containers as your shots.

Easy slideshows: if you like making slideshows, it’s easier now. Sync the length to a piece of music, add intros and outros, export to video… what you’d expect. Aperture had the jump on them in this, I believe, but they’ve leveled the playing field again.

New adjustment preset system: If you create a “look,” or “development setting,” or whatever you want to call it, that you like, it’s super easy to drop it onto another photo or to apply it to multiple photos at once. Mass rotation is also handy if you choose not to include orientation data in the EXIF like me. Another thing they’ve gotten even with Aperture with — though from what I saw, I think I like LR’s style better. Their curves system was also way more convenient. The ability to grab any luminance level straight from the preview and just drag it up and down is nice.

That’s pretty much all she wrote. I’ll be using LR throughout E3 and hopefully I’ll have the full review afterwards. I know there are a lot of fanboys highly opinionated experts on both sides of this particular feud, so I have to step carefully.

For more information, or to buy ($299 or $99 upgrade from LR2), head on over to Adobe’s site.

iPhone palate cleanser: the “Cuban Polaroid”

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 06:20 PM PDT


Need a break from Apple news? You and me both, my friend. So please: revel in this low-tech “instant” print camera/darkroom. A piece of photo paper is exposed directly as a negative, and then developed right there in camera. This negative print is then photographed again, and the resulting print is a positive, ready to be sold to a thoroughly charmed tourist. More at Make.

Ahhh…. much better. I’m going to close my eyes and think of anything but iPhones.

It’s official: Safari 5

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 05:47 PM PDT


The rumors were true. Apple announced the update to Safari 5 and Apple is ambitious about trumping Chrome and Firefox in the browser wars. Just as reported over the weekend, Safari will gain some major backend updates to add speed and functionality to Apple’s browser juice.

Here’s what’s new:

Safari Reader
Safari Reader removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. So you get the whole story and nothing but the story. It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you're on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view. You see every page of the article — whether two or twenty. Onscreen controls let you email, print, and zoom. Change the size of the text, and Safari remembers it the next time you view an article in Safari Reader.

HMTL5 Support – Speedier HTML 5 support

Bing support – Apple loves Bing!

Improved Web Inspector
The new Timeline pane in the Web Inspector lets you view how Safari interacts with your website. Loading, scripting, and rendering timelines show you how and when Safari parses HTML, executes JavaScript, and performs other operations with your web application. Additional improvements to the Web Inspector make it easy for you to pinpoint areas for optimization.

You can download it here

Hey, what about OS X?

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 05:40 PM PDT


It’s interesting that this WWDC keynote was all about mobile. Obviously he had a big reveal this year – last year was all about the 3GS and Snow Leopard – but there was a decided lack of desktop talk this year.

iOS looks like the horse Apple is betting on, at least this year. The uptake in terms of programming for the iPhone far surpasses that of OS X. After all, you’re not going to make a mint writing for Mac desktops and laptops. With 10 million phones and iPads in the pipeline and $1 billion in app sales, the economics of iOS are staggering.

My hope is this: that OS X moves in the direction of the iPad with clever integration of touch on laptops and iMacs. Now I’ve been against touchscreen PCs for years now and I doubt things can get much better on that front but that’s what I used to say about tablets. Apple can redefine a few things, tweak some more, use the Darwin core, and please everybody all of the time.

Apple will never sell as many laptops and desktops as it does iPhones. Ever. The market share it enjoys in phones is not transferrable and it’s clear Apple knows where it should point its engineers and designers. My worry is that OS X will lie fallow while iOS takes off. It’s not a fear, however, as much as a knee-jerk concern.

Thoughts?

iPhone 4 coverage cavalcade

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 05:16 PM PDT

iPhone 3G vs iPhone 4: Just how much better does the iPhone 4’s display look?

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 05:08 PM PDT

Man! Just minutes ago, I was having trouble explaining just how damned good the iPhone 4’s display looks in person. Then I remembered this shot.

Can you guess which is which? Bet you can!

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

GoldenEye remake is happening for reals

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:35 PM PDT


Your wish is granted, children. GoldenEye is getting a remake for the Wii and DS. It should be announced at E3 and released sometime in November. It’s actually unclear just how much of a remake we’re looking at; straight port? Graphics boost? A “reimagining” even? No one can say for sure, but whatever it is, it’s on its way.

[via GoNintendo and VGChartz]

Is the Sun about to destroy every single piece of electronics you own?

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 03:00 PM PDT

We, and by “we” I mean all life on Planet Earth, owe our very existence to the Sun. It’s nothing more than a typical star, really, but without it, this planet would be as barren as the day is long. (CG: Your home for old-timey phrases.) With that in mind, here’s what could become a pretty important story as we move forward. NASA now believes that, for much of the modern era, the Sun has been, for lack of a better term, “asleep.” What happens, then, to our electricity-based infrastructure when the Sun “wakes up”? The Solar Wind has already blown away the atmospheres of planets lacking a magnetosphere, so what else does the Sun have up its sleeve?

The Doomsday Scenario is as follows:

The Sun wakes up—think increased solar flares, sun spots, you name it. All these things can have a direct impact on the electrical systems here on Earth. Anything that uses electricity, then, could be at risk. Your iPhone. Your Nintendo DS. Your bank’s computer servers, GPS. Air travel. Traffic lights. All of these things could be completely knocked offline. We don’t really know how large, or how small, the impact of a proper solar storm because we haven’t seen one in the modern era.

We could potentially be looking at a scenario where our already teetering economic system could be subjected to a jolt that twenty times worse than Hurricane Katrina.

What a time to be alive!

Will Billy Elliot be Peter Parker?

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 02:00 PM PDT

Word on the street (read: Bleeding Cool) is that Jamie Bell, the actor who played Billie Elliot back in the day, has been selected by Sony to be Peter Parker in the new Spider-Man movie. Because that’s what you want: the movie studio selecting the star of a film, not like the director or anything. It’s not official so don’t freak out yet, but this is still a fine place to channel your nerd-outrage.

You already know that the movie, presumably entitled Spider-Man 4, has been in development hell for quite some time. The director of the previous films, Sam Raimi, left/was forced out, and Toby McGuire was given the boot because Sony wants to “freshen up” the franchise. The idea, at least as of a few months ago, was to bring the series back in time a bit, to when Peter Parker was nothing but a high school student. We can assume it will be in 3D.

The movie will be directed by Marc Webb, the director of 500 Days of Summer, which wasn’t a bad little film. It’s a totally different type of movie from a summer popcorn blockbuster, however.

And here’s something I’ve noticed: if this Jamie Bell story is true, that makes the second American superhero to be played by an British gentleman. Batman is played by Christian Bale, who was born in Wales (but of English parentage), and now we’ve got Jamie Bell, born in the North-East of England. American actors for American superheroes!

(That’s a joke.)

via TECHLAND~!

By The Numbers: The iPhone 4 vs EVO 4G

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 12:37 PM PDT

The Android vs iPhone fight is officially on. The EVO 4G fired the first shot last Friday when it launched nationwide on Sprint. The Android nation rallied behind the 4G super phone, which finally gave them a reason to be proud of their mobile platform of choice. They loudly pointed out all the EVO 4G’s iPhone-killing specs: huge 4.3-inch screen, 4G hotspot mode, dual cameras, and cheap mobile plans.

But the new iPhone is finally official after months of leaks and it’s ready to fight although it’s not exactly fair. The fourth generation iPhone isn’t just going up against one phone. Nope, the EVO 4G is just Android’s flavor of the month. A more powerful and sexy Android handset will likely steal its attention by the end of the summer and the iPhone 4 will have to stand against that model as well.

Here we are anyway, though. It’s time to let the two hottest phones on the planet stand toe-to-toe on specs and capabilities. Forget the user experience and all that nonsense. This is about screen resolution, network access, megapixels and all the fun stuff that forum users will be spouting off about for months.

Sorry for all the Apple news..

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 12:33 PM PDT

Yes this is WWDC week all over the internets. We would just like to take a second and apologize for bombarding your feeds with Apple updates, unless you’re into that sort of thing. To take your mind off it, check out this Ronald Jenkees video and have some “crunchy” fun.

Everything you need to know about the iPhone 4

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 12:19 PM PDT


As expected, the iPhone 4 was announced today during Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Its flagship features are, of course, the extremely high resolution screen, video chat capability with FaceTime, and the sexy new form factor. But there’s more to the 4 than that, and even those seemingly self-explanatory new features deserve a closer look. Let’s see just what Apple’s done here with its biggest update to the iPhone since the original.

Continue reading…

Shares of AAPL down after the Stevenote

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 12:18 PM PDT

During the WWDC keynote today, shares of AAPL retracted lower as investors showed mixed feelings about the announcements. As of this story AAPL is down nearly 3 points, but not as bad as a few years before.

With most of the major highlights to the keynote already in the wild, what else was left to impress? Even as people were filing into Moscone Apple reps were saying that today would be “magical”. Apple needs to keep a tighter lid on their next product released if they want to keep up the excitement for the WWDC keynote.

Were you as disappointed as Wall Street? Add your comments below.

So are you upgrading to iPhone 4?

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 11:47 AM PDT

The “one more thing” wasn’t a move to Verizon, but it was pretty cool: FaceTime, Apple’s new video call service. But is it worth the upgrade? You tell us.

Steve Jobs makes a video call

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 11:40 AM PDT


The future has officially arrived, ladies and gentlemen: El Steve just made a video call to Jony Ive as part of his famous “One more thing” sequence of the Apple WWDC.

The new feature is called FaceTime, and currently only works on WiFi connections. You can video chat (or “get some Face Time”!) in portrait or landscape mode using the front or rear iPhone 4 cameras.

Word just came in that Apple plans to make FaceTime an open standard. Kudos to them for that!


FaceTime will work over WiFi only for 2010; the audience was rather disappointed at that, but let’s be honest here: AT&T can barely keep a regular call going, much less a video call. Right now it’s also only iPhone 4 to iPhone 4, but Steve referred to “FaceTime devices,” implying this functionality will shortly be available on other gadgets. iPod touch? iPad? Mobile-to-desktop? The possibilities are… well, those.

It uses either the front or rear camera, with a handy switch button so you can say “Ladies, look at this! Now look at me.” You know, like the guy in the Old Spice ads. The front camera is VGA, so I’m guessing the rear camera sizes down to that as well when broadcasting. Mr. Jobs said it takes no setup and just works, as long as there aren’t literally 500 Wi-Fi points interfering with your signal.

There’s a video up at Apple’s site if you feel like watching.

iOS: Apple once again picks a Cisco name for one of its products

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 11:30 AM PDT

This is nothing that a fat cheque won’t solve, but Apple has changed the name of iPhone OS to iOS. IOS is a named owned by Cisco Systems. You’ll recall that the name iPhone was also owned by Cisco. Is Apple so wealthy that it can go around taking trademarked name, paying the owners for the rights, or is the person in charge of coming up with names just a silly goose? Probably the former: Apple has money to buy whatever it wants these days.


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