Calling this Rachael UI an Android "skin" is like calling Windows 95 a "DOS skin," but that's not to say there's nothing to love about it. In fact, we're rather relieved that Sony Ericsson seems to be addressing Android's incredibly lackluster media playback interface, the SE "mediascape" version of which dominates this particular video -- a sequel to the first Rachael UI tease we got back in July. You know what else is great? The video title name drops the same luscious screen resolution as the DROID, 480 x 854, which spells all sorts of good things for SE's first Android entry. Video is after the break, and if that doesn't do the trick for you, the Rachael hardware is being teased over on this end of the internet.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading New Sony Ericsson Rachael UI video hits, still looks nothing like Android

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

New Sony Ericsson Rachael UI video hits, still looks nothing like Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

I completely forgot that I get an extra hour of that precious, precious thing called sleep tonight. Since I'm probably not the only forgetful Lucy around, here's a reminder to set your clocks back and snooze a bit longer.

Technically, the moment to hop back in time is whenever 2 a.m. strikes in your time zone (or sometime last week if you're in Europe), but if you're getting ready to snuggle up in bed then you might want to take care of the clocks first.

Now let's be open and honest with each other. What are you doing with your extra hour? Will it be spent spooning, snuggled up with a loved one? Getting a head start on the next month? Recovering from chocolate overdose? Reading through Gizmodo comments? [Thanks for the DST reminder, Jrsy Devil's Advocate®!]

Photo by Robbert van der Steeg

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of airport security, is the hassle of having to take my laptop out of my bag and putting it into one of those cold hard plastic containers to be scanned. I can’t help but get nervous that my laptop is going to get scratched or bumped around in those nasty gray containers. With Speck’s new line CorePack Fly, these TSA approved bags let you carry your laptop through security without unpacking it for a hassle free travel experience.

The bag comes in two colors: Restart Greyscale Pixel (a cute checkerboard pattern) and Speakeasy Grey Pinstripe. With two sections, one is a main compartment and one is a smaller laptop compartment. The thinner side is designed to house your 15″ laptop (or smaller), and the thicker side acts as your carry-on luggage for makeup, papers, books, or whatever you would normally pack. Everytime I travel, I have to lug a laptop case along with my carry-on bag, which usually results in stress and a backache. What I liked about this bag is that it’s a laptop bag and carry-on in one. I don’t have to carry an extra bulky laptop bag along with my regular carry-on – it’s combined.

The bag looks like two bags stuck together. When you’re ready to go through security you unsnap the two Velcro sections and lay it flat on the conveyor belt. This allows TSA security to clearly view what’s in your bag and laptop back at the same time. When the compartments are snapped together, you can carry the bag as a briefcase or zipper the handle into the bag and attach the included strap to carry it as a messenger bag. The super cute bag has a patterned outside and a quilted compartmentalized interior. On the inside of the bag, the laptop case zippers shut and is padded with micro-fleece to keep your laptop warm, snuggly, and protected. The carry-on side is lightly quilted to protect your valuables and the material seems like if something exploded your laptop wouldn’t be ruined forever. The inside of the bag has special compartments for your mp3 player, a water bottle, cell phone, etc. so you can easily access important things like passports when going through security. Always convenient so you’re not digging through bag looking for your passport.

Conclusion:
The Speck CorePack Fly is beautifully made, cute, and durable. I felt confident carrying my laptop and valuables in this well crafted bag. The problem? It’s really bulky. Yes, it is a laptop case and carry-on bag in one. Overall, this well made bag is perfect for airport travel where a little extra bulk is acceptable. It decreases the stress and hassle of going through security with multiple bags and it’s literally an all-in-one carry-on and laptop bag for convenience. As a regular laptop case for carrying your bag to work or the library, this bag isn’t ideal. But for only $90, this bag is worth it for airport travel alone.

The Good: An all in one case that carries your laptop and additional accessories and some clothes for a quick trip, TSA friendly, lots of pockets!

The Bad: Bag is very bulky and could become heavy if you load it up with lots of stuff.

Check out our review of Speck’s TuckPack and AftPack.

And now... fighting out of the red corner, weighing in with two Evergreen GPUs, and wearing black trunks and red trim, it's the Radeon HD 5970. ATI's latest challenger for the title of undisputed graphics champion has been snared in the wild, and its photo shoot reveals a suitably oversized beast. Measuring in at 13.5 inches and requiring both an eight- and six-pin power connector, the pre-production sample can fit inside only the roomiest and best-powered rigs around. It's named somewhat confusingly, with AMD dropping its X2 nomenclature for dual GPU setups, but it features two HD 5870 chips running in onboard Crossfire on the same PCB, and foreshadows a HD 5950, which will combine a pair of the more affordable HD 5850s. Performance figures available earlier have been pulled, at the behest of AMD, but we've got plenty of eye candy to admire, and there's also no price tag in sight to spoil our daydreaming pleasure.

[Via PC Perspective]

Filed under: Desktops

ATI's dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 pictured in the wilderness originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

I like Android and all, but one thing the iPhone absolutely kicks every other smartphone's ass at is media playback—until now. This video of Sony Ericsson's "Rachael" Android UI shows its media capabilities, and it looks un-freaking-believable.

Looks like Sony Ericsson borrowed heavily from the Zune HD playbook for this one, but we're not complaining—the Zune HD has the only media UI that's capable of competing with the iPhone's. Let's count the influences: First is the homescreen, which has a layout very similar to the Zune HD's QuickPlay menu. Instead of just giving you a boring list of Artists, Albums, and Snoooore, it shows Favorites (like the Zune HD's Pins), Recently Added and Recently Played, not-so-coincidentally the exact same options in the Zune HD menu. Below that you get two options from PlayNow, a kind of Pandora-like Sony store, including Top 30 and Recommendations. This stuff is super useful for anyone with a large, frequently-updated media collection.

At the bottom of every screen is a crossbar much like the Zune HD's, but that one's legitimate Sony—they pioneered that UI with XMB on PS3 and PSP. It's a great idea, so we're glad it shows up here as well. Other Zune HD influences? How about the art on the artist and album pages? When selecting Kanye West from the artist list, a photo of his smug little chipmunk face shows up on the top of the list of albums, and when selecting his album The College Dropout, the album art pops up above the tracklist—just like on the Zune HD.

Of course, a warning before the video says that this is for conceptual and internal use only (whoops!) so for all we know, Rachael's media playback won't look anything like this. But we hope it does—Android's music playback software is embarrassingly dated and this video shows a level of gloss that frankly blows me away. We could be seeing the first smartphone featuring Rachael very soon, too: Like, four days from now soon. We've got no idea on carrier, price, capacity, or any other hard details quite yet.

In case that was all too long for you? I want this thing. Right now. [SE-Blog via SE-Nse, thanks Scotsboyuk!]

Since I'm feeling festive evening, I thought I would leave you with some of our Halloween posts. OK, really I just can't pass up a chance to put up these masks of Chen and Blam again. Happy Halloween everyone!

• This Is Why You Shouldn't Put Drunk Ewoks On Live TV
• Next Year, I'm Time Travel Trick or Treating
• Scientifically Haunted Room Shows That Ghosts Are Only In Your Head
• Twelve Beautiful Jack-o'-Lanterns
• Ghostbuster Proton Pack Uses Real Lasers, Can Probably Hunt Real Ghosts
• 10 Of Your Geekiest Halloween Costumes
• A Spider-Bot Pumpkin Is the Scariest Way To Dispense Candy On Halloween
• Build The Spirit Radio That Creeped Out Tesla Himself
• The iMac Cylon Mask Is Both Trick and Treat
• "Working" Apple iPhone Costumes Just Plain Win
• Craigslist Ad By A Horrid Excuse for a Human Being
• Sword Illuminates a Pumpkin by Impaling It
• Ideas for Tech-Themed Halloween Pumpkins
• 10 Robot Halloween Pumpkins Provide Artistic Inspiration
• Scare the Crap Out of Trick-or-Treaters With a Rovin' Pumpkin
• Ruin Halloween For Everyone by Going as Brian Lam or Jason Chen

And please, be safe!

Why confine your nerdy sloth to your living room, where large robots mime fake guitar and serve you sloppy mixed drinks? Take that zest for the sedentary life with you on the road by having one of your robot ninjas steal this iPhone Rock Band robot from its ingenious creator, Joe Bowers. The Arduino-based device uses ambient light sensors to detect the falling notes and then taps out the music with some conductive foam attached to some squeaky fake fingers. Joe did a fairly detailed write-up, and even uploaded his code, so there's presumably nothing stopping you from actually doing something with your life and building one of these with all that free time you've saved up by hacking your way through all the console-based guitar games. Video is after the break.

[Via Daily Mobile]

Continue reading Laziness on the move: robot plays Rock Band on the iPhone

Filed under: Cellphones, Robots

Laziness on the move: robot plays Rock Band on the iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Royal Caribbean's record-setting $1.5 billion, 1200-foot-long, 16-deck-high, 220,000-ton, Tower-of-Babel-on-sea luxury cruiser has finally set sail from Finland to Miami. I hate to be the one to ask but, um, there aren't any icebergs on the way, right guys?

Royal Caribbean named this affront to god the "Oasis of the Seas," which, yeah, is a super cheesy name, but it's not like there's anything subtle about a god damn 1200-foot-long boat. It'll operate out of Miami and begin offering cruises in December. The Oasis of the Seas has a maximum capacity of around 6,000 people, which for the record is larger than the population of MY ENTIRE HOMETOWN. It's about 50% bigger than the current frontrunner in the "Titanic 2/Icarus" competition, the Queen Mary II, so now you can all feel free to hop on board that ship, since the Oasis of the Seas (really, you guys had to brag about the several seas in which this ship will be an oasis? It's really annoying, grammatically) is sure to be the one to sink in a blaze of indoor amphitheatres and miles of buffet lines. [Oasis of the Sea via BBC via The Awl]

The iPhone is one of the most wildly popular phones the world has ever seen, while Windows 7 is well on its way to becoming the globe's most ubiquitous OS. So compatibility between the two would be kinda sorta important, right? Tell that to Intel's quality control team who seem to have somehow missed an issue between Apple's app carrier deluxe and the P55 Express chipset's USB controller. Consistent (and persistent) syncing issues have been reported on Apple's support forums, wherein iTunes on Windows 7 machines recognizes the iPhone, but spits out an "error 0xE8000065" message whenever the user attempts to sync. While some have found limited success with using PCI-based USB cards (and bypassing the chipset), this is clearly a major issue and something Apple would expect to be fixed before shipping its Core i5 / i7 iMacs, which are likely to sport the chipset. Hit the read link for the original thread of sorrow and regret, and do chime in with your own experience in the comments.

[Via The Register]

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops

iPhone and Windows 7 don't play nice, Intel P55 chipset to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

id's classic shooter has finally been (officially) ported to the iPhone. And thanks to oversight from John Carmack himself, there are a number of improvements that make it worth a purchase even for Jailbreakers.

In a blog post from May, Carmack says he loves that players port Doom to every device imaginable, but he's disappointed that there's rarely any real effort to build a new, functional control scheme on platforms without a keyboard and mouse. In other words, he'd rather that instead of everyone stopping at "Does it run Doom?" they ask "Does it play Doom?"

That's why he personally developed the controls for the iPhone version, and according to early reviews, the iPhone can now play Doom. Users are saying controls as good as you would expect from Carmack. Not to mention the other enhancements like 24-bit lighting.

Sure, you might have put the game on your jailbroken iPhone years ago, but graphical upgrades and tighter controls might make it worth the $6.99 admission price. [Recombu]