Apple TV vs Roku HD... fight!

Two tiny black 720p boxes, two interesting choices. The $59 Roku HD will put Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand and Roku's 75 other content channels on your TV quickly and easily, while the $99 Apple TV offers up iTunes rentals, Netflix, and eventually AirPlay streaming from your iPad or iPhone. (You could step up to the Roku XDS with 1080p support for $99, but we don't think the extra money will be really worth it until the USB playback channel is released and / or there's more useful 1080p content available.) It's a tough decision, so check out our Apple TV review, our Roku XDS review, and our in-depth comparison chart to just try to make up your mind. Then again, you could grab 'em both and still not break the bank.

Gallery: Apple TV vs Roku HD... fight!

Apple TV vs Roku HD... fight! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

METHODE ELECTRONICS MENTOR GRAPHICS IMS HEALTH IMATION IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS

Oracle's New Kernel: Custom Tuning or Proprietary Lock-In?

Ever since the recent OpenSolaris and Java lawsuit incidents, Oracle has not been high on most FOSS aficionados' lists of favorite companies. So when the company announced earlier this month that it was abandoning RHEL in favor of its own, homemade Linux kernel -- the "Unbreakable" Linux Kernel -- it wasn't surprising that the skepticism was palpable.

ZORAN ZIONS BAN YAHOO YAHOO XILINX

Bookmarklet lets you destroy Web pages one element at a time, Asteroids style!

Filed under: Fun

AdBlock is so lame. I mean, all it does it prevent ads from being displayed on Web pages. Where's the sport? Where are the explosions? I want some satisfaction from my advert eradication! Satisfaction like the kind you can only find in vintage arcade games.

Thankfully there's this incredibly practical bookmarklet that turns any website into a search-and-destroy mission. Click your button, and the ship appears. You're then free to fly around and blast any element to pieces. So long, Eric Schmidt! Take that, Evony banner!

And no, I don't actually expect anyone to replace AdBlock with this. At least not until it comes with its own retro soundtrack and pew-pew noises...

[via Geek.com]

Bookmarklet lets you destroy Web pages one element at a time, Asteroids style! originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

IMS HEALTH IMATION IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS IDT IBASIS

GameCrush -- where you pay to play video games with hot girls -- opens its doors

Filed under: Games, web 2.0

GameCrush is just like prostitution, but with boys buying game time rather than sexy time from a dizzying array of cute, gamer girls. The service, which has been privately beta testing since the start of the year, launches today around 3PM Pacific time. 'Lots of girls have already signed up,' an internal source told us earlier, while we enjoyed a game of topless Call of Duty.

Just like prostitution, some of the girls are cuter than others -- and some are better at what they do, too -- but they're all available as potential PlayDates (seriously). All you have to do is whip out your credit card (it's $0.60 per minute), grab your joystick and game. Every girl has a camera, and I'm told by an inside source that many of the girls are quite, er, accommodating. Understandable, considering a good girl can earn more than $20 per hour if she behaves well.

According to the press release, any game works with their system -- but in fact there are only specific games at launch that will be playable with a companion. If you prefer one-handed, left-hand-stretched-over-to-the-mouse gaming, there's also a bunch of casual, browser-based games that you can play with your PlayDate.

Finally, in case you were wondering (because I know I was) guys can also sign up. I've already done so! Girls can pay to play with me. What an awesome world we live in, gentlemen.

GameCrush -- where you pay to play video games with hot girls -- opens its doors originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

MOODYS MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT MICROSEMI MICROS SYSTEMS

New York's Subway May Not Survive Tropical Storm Nicole [Impending Disaster]

There's a massive tropical storm headed to New York, one that may flood the subway. What most people don't know is that we depend on just 700 fragile water pumps to keep the tunnels dry—some a century old. More »

SIEMENS CDW CHINA MOBILE CISCO SYSTEMS COGNIZANT TECH SOLUTIONS

Direct3D 10 and 11 API now natively supported by Linux via Gallium3D

Filed under: Developer, Games, Linux, Microsoft

In one fell swoop, it seems like proper, contemporary 3D gaming could be coming to a Linux distro near you.

Unlike Wine, this implementation of Direct3D under Gallium3D is an actual, native port of the DirectX APIs. There's no emulation involved -- Gallium3D just acts as a 'very thin wrapper,' allowing developers easy access to Direct3D's goodies.

Luca Barbieri, the developer behind this new code commit, has a lot to say about Direct3D versus OpenGL, which might pain some open source advocates: "Thanks to a very clean and well-though design done from scratch, the Direct3D 10/11 APIs are vastly better than OpenGL and can be supported with orders of magnitude less code and development time."

Then speaking about why Direct3D will be the graphics API of choice, when developing for Linux, Luca continued the barrage: "A mature Direct3D 10/11 implementation is intrinsically going to be faster and more reliable than an OpenGL implementation, thanks to the dramatically smaller API and the segregation of all nontrivial work to object creation that the application must perform ahead of time."

As I understand it, Wine can't yet take advantage of this new development -- but as it stands, you can now leap right in and start programming a 3D Linux application using Mesa and the Direct3D state tracker.

Direct3D 10 and 11 API now natively supported by Linux via Gallium3D originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

SONUS NETWORKS SONIC AUTOMOTIVE SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS SILICON LABORATORIES SI INTERNATIONAL

eBuddy?s Mobile Apps: 100 Million Downloads And Counting

eBuddy, the swiss army knife of web and mobile instant messaging services, this morning announced that it has achieved over 100 million downloads of its mobile applications since its 2007 debut, thus stepping in the footsteps of the likes of Facebook, Google (Maps), and Opera (Mini) when it comes to the number of app downloads reached. In case you're not familiar with eBuddy, the service basically enables users around the world to chat for free in one, aggregated interface across most major IM networks, including AIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.

MENTOR GRAPHICS IMS HEALTH IMATION IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS IDT

Barry Diller: Everyone Needs To Stand Up And Protect Net Neutrality ? Unleash The FCC!

Today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, IAC CEO Barry Diller took the stage for a fireside�chat�with our own Michael Arrington. They covered a lot of topics, but the first thing Diller keyed in on was the most important: net neutrality. "All of you have to get out there and start arguing for this strongly," Diller emphatically said. He clearly feels very strongly about this topic. "It is the lives of you all and the people coming after you -- we have to protect that," he continued.

COMMSCOPE COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS COMPAL ELECTRONICS COSMOTE MOBILE TELECOM DLINK

Epic 4G hidden menus and more? [From the forums]

We all know we love Android so much because the development community rocks, and people are always finding new ways to make it even better. Our forums members are always finding great new tricks and fun things to do with their devices, and egg_head has discovered that Samsung devices seem to have quite a string of hidden menus. Now, these menus are apparently found on all Samsung devices, just not in the same location, but they can sure do some nifty things. Ranging from a full device shut down by holding the end key button to various different audio settings these additional menus can allow even more customization then we had even imagined. For more information be sure to jump in the forums and read up on the various menus! [Android Central Forums]

Posted originally at Android Central

Sponsored by Android Cases and Accessories

EPICOR SOFTWARE EMULEX EMS TECHNOLOGIES EMC ELECTRONICS FOR IMAGING

Daily Crunch: Deal Edition

Own Tony Stark?s Iron Man Briefcase But Of Course Without The Iron Man Suit Part Seagate Stuffs 12TB Into The 4-Bay BlackArmor NAS 440 From The Google Developer Day Tokyo: ?Life-Size? Android Robot (Video) Review: Powertel 500 Cordless Phone For The Hearing Impaired Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch!

DLINK DIGITAL CHINA HOLDINGS DIRECTV GROUP ELPIDA MEMORY EMC

Clear WiMAX router passes the FCC without a scratch

The world is not suffering from a dearth of WiMAX routers, but Clear has just a bit of room in their stable: while they offer 4G modems that plug into your computer over USB or Ethernet, along with battery-powered WiFi hotspots, they don't offer any home routers that do the WiFi thing, router thing, and WiMAX thing all-in-one. If this sounds like soft spot in their lineup to you, you'll be happy to know that an honest to goodness plug-it-into-a-wall 802.11n router with WiMAX, Clear branding, and possibly even a VoIP plug has just passed through the FCC. Will it change everything? Maybe.

Clear WiMAX router passes the FCC without a scratch originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear  |  FCC  | Email this | Comments

SHAW COMMUNICATIONS SIEMENS CDW CHINA MOBILE CISCO SYSTEMS

OCZ Ibis touts 2GBps High Speed Data Link, vanquishes SSD competition

What's after ludicrous speed? If you ask OCZ, the answer is HSDL speed, which is the company's new interface idea for bypassing the bandwidth limitations of standard SATA/SAS interconnects. Using a high-quality SAS cable to hook up its new Ibis drive to a PCI Express host card, OCZ has managed to deliver a cool 2GBps of total bandwidth -- that's one gigabyte up and one gigabyte down... every second. In order to feed this massive data pipe, the company's gone and stacked four SandForce SF-1200 controllers inside the Ibis and RAIDed them together for good measure too. The upshot isn't too dramatic for desktop applications, where'll you'll see performance that's merely world-beating -- reading at 373MBps and writing at 323MBps -- but if you throw in some deeper queues and enterprise-level workloads you'll be able to squeeze out 804MBps reads and 675MBps writes. Needless to say, the Ibis scooped up many a plaudit in early reviews, and though it may be expensive at $529 for 100GB, it still seems to represent good value for those who have the workloads to saturate its High Speed Data Link.

OCZ Ibis touts 2GBps High Speed Data Link, vanquishes SSD competition originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AnandTech, PC Perspective, Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments

IDT IBASIS HYPERCOM HEWLETT PACKARD CO HEARTLAND PAYMENT SYSTEMS

Google Docs adds better data import options to spreadsheets

Filed under: Office, Google

Power users (like our own Erez Zukerman) will tell you that Google Docs Spreadsheets don't have nearly the same chutzpah that Excel does -- not for really complex work, anyway. Still, Google keeps plugging away and adding features... Like better import options!

Docs now supports custom delimiters and an inline preview pane for imported data. While you may not find the addition useful, it's the kind of functionality advanced users would definitely miss if they were trying to make the jump from Excel.

You can also now choose whether you want to import your new data into the current sheet, a new sheet in your current workbook, or into an entirely new workbook.

Google Docs adds better data import options to spreadsheets originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

GOOGLE GRUPO IUSACELL HARRIS HCL TECHNOLOGIES HEWLETTPACKARD

Google Docs adds better data import options to spreadsheets

Filed under: Office, Google

Power users (like our own Erez Zukerman) will tell you that Google Docs Spreadsheets don't have nearly the same chutzpah that Excel does -- not for really complex work, anyway. Still, Google keeps plugging away and adding features... Like better import options!

Docs now supports custom delimiters and an inline preview pane for imported data. While you may not find the addition useful, it's the kind of functionality advanced users would definitely miss if they were trying to make the jump from Excel.

You can also now choose whether you want to import your new data into the current sheet, a new sheet in your current workbook, or into an entirely new workbook.

Google Docs adds better data import options to spreadsheets originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

DLINK DIGITAL CHINA HOLDINGS DIRECTV GROUP ELPIDA MEMORY EMC

More TV Coming to TiVo and Roku This Fall with Hulu Plus

Roku’s streaming media players can shake off the “Netflix box” tag once and for all. TiVo, too, keeps its spot high in the set-top food chain. Both Roku players and TiVo’s Premiere and Premiere XL boxes will be able to stream network shows with Hulu Plus this fall.
Hulu Plus, a $9.99/month subscription service that offers [...]

NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS NOVELLUS SYSTEMS NOVELL NETWORK APPLIANCE NETGEAR

evercookie: the one cookie that you... just... can't... DELETE!

Filed under: Security, Browsers

Limping and dripping from the maws of incorrigible security bod Samy Kamkar comes evercookie. As the name suggests, deleting an evercookie isn't easy -- in fact, once you've taken a nibble, that's it: you can't delete it.

Of course, no benevolent person would ever use evercookie -- you'd have to be a nefarious money-grabbing megalomaniac! -- but the sheer number of clever hacks, cheap tricks and snarky ingenuity employed to make evercookies invulnerable makes this project very interesting indeed. All told, evercookie uses eight different storage locations for its cookie, ranging from HTTP and Flash cookies through to HTML5's new storage methods and 'RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out' (really!).

If the cookie can be found in any one of those locations, it can be rebuilt (and then stored in all eight places again!) Basically, unless you know exactly what you're doing (and you have a lot of spare time to hunt down all of the cookies), you can forget about ever deleting an evercookie.

It's horrible, really, but I feel I must bring this project under the scorching eye of public scrutiny. This is, after all, the work of a security expert -- rather than thinking of this as an evil piece of code that will be bent to the evil, omnipresent will of Google, think of it as the inoculation that strengthens us for what will surely follow. As it stands, evercookie could be deployed on any server.

Evercookie is open source, and I encourage anyone that values their privacy to see exactly how and where it stores its cookies. For now it's only in eight locations, but Samy already has plans for two more: Silverlight Isolated Storage and a Java method based on your NIC's details.

The worst thing is, such a cookie implementation might already be in the wild. Samy might not be the first person or corporation to try such a crazy, but fundamentally brilliant, idea!

evercookie: the one cookie that you... just... can't... DELETE! originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

NETWORK APPLIANCE NETGEAR NCR NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

Apple TV teardown reveals 8GB flash storage, 256MB RAM, leftover iPad parts

"Of course the new Apple TV gets a teardown, silly," is what we would tell you should you have the audacity to question its inevitability. But alas, we're too busy analyzing every photo of iFixit's gallery to even dignify your raised eyebrow with an unprovoked response. Here's the big takeaways we're seeing so far: 8GB of storage provided care of a Samsung K9LCG08U1M NAND Flash chip, and the same one found in the iPad. Speaking of which, there's also the exact same markings on its Apple A4 processor as the iPad and iPhone 4, K4X2G643GE (not the same as the latest iPod touch, as it turns out), the exact same Broadcom BCM4329XKUBG 802.11n WiFi / Bluetooth / FM chip as the iPad, and at 256MB, the same amount of RAM. Also interesting and of note are the solder pads near the side of the logic board, which look to be a perfect fit for an Apple dock connector. At any rate, with all that's under the hood, we expect the jailbreak community to have an absolute field day.

Apple TV teardown reveals 8GB flash storage, 256MB RAM, leftover iPad parts originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  iFixit  | Email this | Comments

MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT MICROSEMI MICROS SYSTEMS MICRON TECHNOLOGY

Denon RCD-N7 loves a wireless party, AirPlay too after $49 update

Denon's got the Apple AirPlay bug and bad. The company was showing off several AirPlay compatible 2010 receivers (models ending with "11") at the CEDIA show last week including this new RCD-N7 CD jobbie. The $599 unit coupled with a pair of $199 SC-N7 speakers features an iPhone dock (or USB jack) for local music sourcing. Otherwise, it'll stream audio from the likes of Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora and Last.fm. Better yet, the receiver also features a Party Mode Plus setting for a five-system multi-zone setup scattered throughout the home, all managed by Denon's new iPod / iPhone / iPad Remote App. Look for it to hit shelves in October along side Denon's $49 AirPlay update. That's right, it's no freebie -- an unfortunate precedent for anyone hoping to update their existing audio gear.

Denon RCD-N7 loves a wireless party, AirPlay too after $49 update originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 06:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Akihabara News  |  Big Picture Big Sound (1), Big Picture Big Sound (2)  | Email this | Comments

MOODYS MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT MICROSEMI MICROS SYSTEMS

Twitter aware of onMouseOver hack for months, claims 17-year-old who exposed it

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

A 17-year-old schoolboy from Australia has taken the blame for the onMouseOver JavaScript Twitter exploit that caused havoc for a few hours on Wednesday.

Disclaiming innocence, Pearce Delphin -- who has the coolest name in the world -- says that he only discovered the vulnerability. "I did it merely to see if it could be done ... that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet," he told AFP via email. The self-replicating worm came later, with the Guardian reporting that it was originally crafted by Masato Kinugawa and refined by Magnus Holm. Within hours, many mutations appeared -- shortly after, the Twitter offices in San Francisco groggily awoke, and the exploit was swiftly fixed.

Most importantly, however, Pearce says that Twitter knew about the problem for 'months.' It's not clear whether Pearce is talking authoritatively -- he might simply be stealing someone else's thunder -- but I'm sure Twitter will be quick to respond if he's wrong.

Update: Twitter actually fixed the bug last month, but seemingly made another change recently that brought it back.

Twitter aware of onMouseOver hack for months, claims 17-year-old who exposed it originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

INVENTEC KDDI KLATENCOR KONINKLIJKE KPN LAM RESEARCH