Sony's Xperia Ice Cream Sandwich rollout pushed to mid-April (and beyond)

To be fair, things have... changed a bit since we heard back in November that the Xperia handset line would be getting Ice Cream Sandwich by March of 2012. Specifically, Sony Ericsson is no more, and it's up to Sony Mobile alone to continue the torch carrying. At any rate, the outfit has made clear today that it'll be mid-April at the earliest before any of the Xperia smartphones see an Android 4.0 update, with the Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V and Xperia Ray amongst the first on deck. We're told that the updates will start hitting that trio in the middle of next month, with every last owner to be gifted in the four to six weeks following. Beyond that, the Xperia Play, Xperia Neo, Xperia Mini, Xperia Mini Pro, Xperia Pro and Xperia Active will start seeing ICS "from the end of May / early June." You know, pretty much right when Android 5.0 will be unveiled.

Sony's Xperia Ice Cream Sandwich rollout pushed to mid-April (and beyond) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/30/sony-xperia-android-ice-cream-sandwich-ics-update-details/

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Cloud Girlfriend will use a swarm of females to satisfy men

Cloud Girlfriend, despite what it sounds like, doesn't really have anything to do with cloud computing. Rather, it uses a cloud of women to pose as your girlfriend on Facebook, or your favorite social network of choice. The service is scheduled to launch 'soon,' and there's no indication of how much it will cost.

With the tagline 'The easiest way to get a girlfriend is to already have one,' Cloud Girlfriend promises to be a very interesting startup indeed. The brains of the operation, David Fuhriman, speaking to CNET, says it's all about fulfilling Maslow's hierarchy of needs. "CloudGirlfriend.com can fulfill Maslow's higher needs, even though the users know that the interaction is virtual. They will interact with a real person and see real profile images of the girl with whom they interact. This interaction can build confidence and esteem as well as provide real training experiences in navigating a friendship and a relationship."

Our concern, of course, is that it's very nearly April 1. We're also worried by the fact that Fuhriman has a name that sounds ominously like a social subculture that we've grown strangely attracted to here in the Download Squad bunker.

Finally, just stop and think about it for a second. Because your cloud girlfriend will be entirely virtual, she could be based anywhere. She could be underage -- or overage -- or she might be someone who you know in real life. She could even be a relative of yours, and you'd never know.

Let's not forget this is the Internet we're talking about, folks. Worst case scenario, she could turn out to be a hairy, male truck driver from Texas. Such as... your dad, perhaps?

Cloud Girlfriend will use a swarm of females to satisfy men originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/30/cloud-girlfriend-will-use-an-army-of-females-to-please-lonely-me/

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Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight

So this professor comes up with a new toilet cleaner that works by "eating" the dirt; or so he thinks. That's how the plot starts for Tasty Planet. You play the role of the toilet cleaner, but you're not really a toilet cleaner after all -- you're a blob of gray goo that can eat anything that's smaller than yourself.

As you chomp away, you grow -- and as you grow, you can eat bigger and bigger stuff. The first level pits you against microscopic particles; by the time I stopped playing, I got all the way to eating cats and dogs. I know that sounds disturbing, but it's a really cute game, and there's no gore or anything like that.

Supposedly you keep growing and growing until you're able to eat whole planets (hence the name). The challenge factor comes when you realize you can't touch any critter larger than yourself - you'll get "bitten" and become smaller. In the beginning you're so small, that a single touch can kill you. Later on, you're big enough that touching larger animals doesn't kill you on the spot, but it does reduce your size. Each level is timed, so if you're not large enough by the time your clock runs out, you need to start again. As long as you don't touch the larger animals, you should be fine.

All in all, a fun, addictive little game. It's available for iOS, too.

Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/08/tasty-planet-is-a-fun-flash-game-where-you-eat-everything-in-sight/

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Engadget Podcast 287 - 03.29.2012

You know those shows where we're all iPad this, iPhone that? This isn't one of them. Today we're doing it all, heading to the department store of consumer electronics news categories and picking random stuff off the shelves of all ten floors to chat about until someone from the UK calls or tweets @us to distract us into talking about something else. And yes, we did stop by the Apple floor for a few minutes too. So sue us (lawsuit joke).

Host: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater
Guests: Dana Wollman, Dan Cooper, Richard Lai
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Orbital - Never

00:02:55 - The Engadget Show 31: Douglas Rushkoff, Sony, iRobot, MWC and air combat
00:04:58 - Sony pulls another game from PlayStation Store after new Vita exploit found
00:09:43 - Best Buy to close 50 big box US retail stores, open 100 Mobile stand-alone outlets in 2013
00:18:15 - Samsung ships five million Galaxy Notes in just five months
00:25:45 - RIM putting BlackBerry 10 test units in developers' hands in May
00:29:58 - Apple offers refund over Australian 4G iPad confusion
00:33:25 - Tim Cook pays a visit to a Foxconn factory, smiles for the camera
00:37:35 - Nokia unveils the Lumia 800 in China, calls it the 800C
00:42:39 - US Judge rejects Hasbro / ASUS sales ban, Transformer Prime prevails
01:03:46 - Boston Dynamics lies down with BigDog, gets giant fleas (video)

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Engadget Podcast 287 - 03.29.2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/G_GN8WzByC0/

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The Nimble Empire: In Defense of Cable [Cable]

One of the most fascinating stories of the last year has been the evolution of Amazon Prime. In exchange for a recurring fee, you get access to a huge, varied media library: movies, TV shows and books. And yeah, some of that content isn't all that great, and even more isn't stuff I would choose, but a lot of it is amazing. And yeah - I can't access all of that content on any device I want, but most of it I can, and the range of those devices, especially for digital video, is growing. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/rApDrNZN-zk/the-nimble-empire-in-defense-of-cable

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Google Latitude check-in deals now available across the US

Recently, Google has been busy beefing up Latitude to make it more competitive with other location apps -- and more fun to use. Location history was added recently, iOS users can post check-ins via Latitude, and now Google has begun rolling out location-based deals which are tied to the service.

If you're in the U.S., you can now score local savings at participating merchants by checking in with Latitude. Google will also be offering "status deals," which users can unlock by visiting a particular merchant on a regular basis. Mashable notes three status levels: regular, VIP, and guru -- though partners can apparently customize those titles if they choose.

Right now deals are available from merchants like American Eagle Outfitters, Arby's, Finish Line, Macy's, Quiznos, and RadioShack.

Google Latitude check-in deals now available across the US originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/08/google-latitude-check-in-deals-now-available-across-the-us/

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Zen Coding high-speed HTML shorthand plug-in updated

Zen Coding made quite a splash when we first covered it almost a year ago. For those who aren't familiar, Zen is a fantastic form of shorthand for quickly hand-coding HTML. And today, a new version is out!

Here are some of the goodies version 0.7 brings to the party:

• Text nodes: Writing something like a[href=/]{Click here} now works, and puts "Click here" within the link.
• New actions added: Increment/decrement number under cursor, evaluate math expressions, and more.
• Wrap with Abbreviation was upgraded.

There are several other improvements but they're all rather technical. If you use Zen Coding (or are intrigued by the concept) go ahead and read the release notes for this new version.

Zen Coding has official implementations for a ton of editors, including TextMate, Apatana, Coda, E2, Komodo, Notepad++, PSPad, and more. It also has unofficial builds for Vim, UltraEdit, Visual Studio and more.

If you want to play with Zen Coding without installing it, you can use the online demo to see some of its magic in action.

Zen Coding high-speed HTML shorthand plug-in updated originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/15/zen-coding-high-speed-html-shorthand-plug-in-updated/

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Late-night poll: How much internal storage is enough?

Since the Samsung Nexus S, phones shipping without an external SDcard slot have caused controversy. We've got a trio of new phones right around the corner from HTC that are shipping without. We hear, and understand, both sides of the issue. Not everyone wants to stream and use cloud services, so they need the flexibility that a huge amount of storage can give. On that note, if manufacturers want to get rid of the SDcard, they need to give people enough internal storage. Which leads us to tonight's poll.

How much is enough? I'm all in the cloud, and it's too late for me to turn back. I get by fine with 16GB, and could probably never miss a beat with only 8GB. Many of you are the opposite -- don't care for the cloud and want to store their stuff on their device. They need a lot more storage than I do. Where do you fall? Let us know in tonight's poll.

 

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/-H2Eq1Q432g/story01.htm

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Netflix snags DVD.com domain, invests in the future of optical media

Looking for a shortcut to Netflix's home on the web? Try hitting up DVD.com -- it'll take you there, for now. The latest address to join the family of Netflix redirects actually brings you to a subdomain -- dvd.netflix.com -- suggesting that the company could once again be planning to split its streaming and physical media services, at least from an access perspective. A shareholder letter lists the company's U.S. DVD subscriptions at 11.17 million at the end of Q4, bringing in a total of $370 million in revenue, with a profit of $194 million. Compare this to domestic streaming, which represents $476 million in revenue with a mere $52 million profit, and it's clear that the DVD rental market is still quite strong. So what could this latest domain acquisition mean for snail mail subscribers? DVD-only customers may soon have a new site to call home, with focused content and perhaps an upsell opportunity or two. At the very least, it certainly can't hurt when it comes to SEO.

Netflix snags DVD.com domain, invests in the future of optical media originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/30/netflix-dvd-com-domain/

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Check Out Cutting-Edge TMNT Robotics Circa 1992 [Video]

1992 was a simpler time. Bill Clinton was elected, The Bodyguard came out, Windows 3.1 was released. It was also a time when puppetry and animatronics still had a place in fantasy films. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/59bGMCwCTEU/check-out-cutting-edge-tmnt-robotics-circa-1992

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Gyroscope – Geeky Spinning Fun

When I was a kid, there were no iPads, video games, or the Internet. When I wasn’t reading books or taking apart broken appliances to salvage magnets, I was playing with yo-yos and gyroscopes. I hadn’t thought about gyroscopes in years till I happened upon an entire site dedicated to selling them. Gyroscope.com offers several gyroscopes, [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2012/03/29/gyroscope-geeky-spinning-fun/

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Shooting Challenge: Spring [Shooting Challenge]

I know, not all of you have spring right now. Some live in different climates. Some of you just feel like spring happened a month ago. Regardless, for this week's Shooting Challenge, try to capture the feeling of spring, again. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Wnem7WXnwEg/shooting-challenge-spring

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