Director of National Intelligence says major cyber attack could wreak havoc on the U.S. of A.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the National Intelligence Committee that the United States is at risk of a “crippling” cyber-attack, and without the proper tools to defend against such an attack. Blair counseled the US to “deal with that reality,” saying that catastrophic consequences would result if it did not deal with said reality. Specific problem areas he cited include the fact that more and more, foreign companies supply both the hardware and software for private businesses. Blair also noted the fact that the net has served as a breeding ground for “homegrown radicalism.” You don’t say? Hit the source link a fuller detail of yesterday’s proceedings.

Director of National Intelligence says major cyber attack could wreak havoc on the U.S. of A. originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba to deliver 60GHz wireless products in 2H 2010

Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba to deliver 60GHz wireless products in 2H 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox for Mobile makes Maemo its first home

As if you needed any more evidence of the tech supremacy of your Nokia N900 or N810, here’s Firefox making its official mobile debut on the most righteous Maemo OS. Available for download right now, version 1.0 will come with a pretty sweet feature named Weave Sync, which harmonizes your bookmarks, tabs, history and passwords across devices, making for a seamless transition between your desktop computer and your mobile one. We reckon we could get used to that. Alas, Flash support is still somewhat shaky, and does not come enabled by default, though you’re free to flip the switch and ride the lightning as it were. We’re sure Mozilla will appreciate any crash reports you might want to throw its way as well. So come on already, download the darn thing and let us know if it improves on the already spectacular browsing experience of the N900.

[Thanks, Ross M.]

Firefox for Mobile makes Maemo its first home originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clear WiMAX USB modem impressions

Clearwire (along with Sprint and Comcast, just to name a couple) has been fiercely expanding its WiMAX network across America for months on end now, and while select citizens in select cities have had access to the 4G superhighway for just over a year, we haven’t actually had the opportunity to find ourselves in one of those locations for any amount of time. Until recently, that is. The Clear 4G service was lit up in Las Vegas late last year, which gave the Engadget squad just enough time to scrounge up a gaggle of Motorola 4G USB sticks and really test out the network while at CES. Meanwhile, the North Carolinians among us were also able to test the boundaries of the 4G patches that have been setup here, and we’re finally ready to dish out a few opinions on the fourth generation of cellular data. Eager to know if it’s the best thing since sliced bread the invention of the MP3? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Clear WiMAX USB modem impressions

Clear WiMAX USB modem impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pentax Optio H90 and Optio L10 cameras briefly leak out

Looks like the color-crazy engineers in the Pentax labs are brewing up some new goodies: these images of a new Optio H90 and new orange-topped Optio L10 were briefly up on a retailer site today, and Photorumors managed to retrieve the images from Google’s cache. There’s also an entry for a third Optio, but there was no associated image or info, so there’s at least one surprise left in this world.

Pentax Optio H90 and Optio L10 cameras briefly leak out originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crapgadget: ‘no rhyme or reason’ edition

Amazingly, these waves of Crapgadgets tend to showcase some sort of mini-trend. Oftentimes it’s a certain fondness for USB overkill, while other times it just feels like gaudy is the new black. This go ’round, however, we’re looking at a veritable cornucopia of lameness. Eager to drop a Jackson to enjoy one of the most non-ergonomic wooden mice to ever see the light of day? Now you can. There’s also the common issue of not being able to see text in a book while in pure darkness, but rather than just flipping a light switch or changing time zones to locate the sun, there’s a wearable necklace to do the trick. Believe it or not, the list just keeps on getting better, with a machine gun-styled USB drive, heart-shaped telephone and a USB scent flower rounding things out. Dive into dumpster below if you dare, and drop your vote for the worst of the worst in the poll below.

Read – USB bamboo mouse
Read – Wearable hands-free light
Read – Machine gun USB drive
Read – USB guitar speaker
Read – Heart-shaped telephone
Read – USB scent flower
Read – Steering wheel Bluetooth mount

Crapgadget: ‘no rhyme or reason’ edition originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hulu’s subscription service might run $5 for access to select shows

There was a mini-internet revolt the last time NBC Universal’s TV chief started talking about ways to actually turn a profit from Hulu and the search for a balance continues. People familiar with the matter — our favorite source by the way — told the LA Times that the search in question could take another six months before official pricing is announced, but the latest idea being thrown around is to charge a $5 per month subscription for access to older shows. A quick search of Hulu just showed that only the past four or five episodes of newer shows are currently available, so charging for older shows means new access to additional content. We have to say that offering additional programming above and beyond what is currently free is a pretty good strategy, but the other one we’d like to see is a premium option to view content commercial free — no word on if any of the paid content will still have commercials. The one thing this won’t change is the fact that the content creators already sold the rights to these shows on the TV, which of course means Hulu won’t be able to stop going out of its way to block things like Boxee and the PS3 — still kind of shocked that PlayOn isn’t effected.

Hulu’s subscription service might run $5 for access to select shows originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cisco successfully tests orbital IP router, Pirate Bay ‘very interested’

Cisco successfully tests orbital IP router, Pirate Bay ‘very interested’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Siemens gurus hit 500Mbps with white LED lights, dare you to blink

You know what’s better than wireless power? Nothing, frankly. You know what comes darn close? Wicked fast transmissions through thin air. Researchers from Siemens have just shattered their own record for wireless data transfer using white LED light, hitting a whopping 500Mbps while working in collaboration with the Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin. The old record sat at “just” 200Mbps, but the new speeds are helping to take Visible Light Communication from a hopeful technology to a serious contender in the space. These same researchers were also able to show that a system using up to five LEDs is capable of beaming out data over long distances at up to 100Mbps. We’re told that the IEEE has been toiling tirelessly since 2007 to standardize activities in this field, and while a late 2010 completion date is currently being penciled in, we’re not holding our breath. Anyone remember how long it took 802.11n to escape “draft?”

Continue reading Siemens gurus hit 500Mbps with white LED lights, dare you to blink

Siemens gurus hit 500Mbps with white LED lights, dare you to blink originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon to start paying 70% royalties on Kindle books that play by its rules

Sure, you know how much you pay for a book on your Kindle, but do you know how much an author gets from that sale? For most it’s probably some meager single-digit percentage, with the publisher taking the rest of the roughly 35% of revenue Amazon doles out. The remaining 65% goes straight into the site’s coffers, but that’s about to change. On June 30, Amazon is launching a new option in its Digital Text Platform (DTP) publishing scheme that would give authors and publishers 70% of the revenue, with Amazon taking just 30% — effectively flipping the ratio on its head. The catch? There are plenty:

• Distribution costs are now paid by the publisher, but that should be on average a few cents per book.
• These books must sell for between $2.99 and $9.99 and must be priced at least 20% lower than a comparable physical copy of the book. (This is good news for readers, putting a greater incentive for lower-priced digital volumes.)
• The book must support the “broad set” of Kindle features, including text-to-speech.
• This will only be available for books that are in-copyright and only for those sold in the US.

This is an obvious reaction to the competition from places like Scribd, which pays publishers 80%, and publisher-friendly upstarts like Skiff, but it’s also an interesting push to force more books to enable Kindle’s text-to-speech. That is currently something of a sore spot amongst those who provide the content, so while we’re sure authors will love the extra money coming here, we’re wondering whether their publishers will take it given the possible loss of lucrative audiobook revenue. So, will this help Amazon in the upcoming war of the e-readers, or will it hurt? We can’t wait to find out.

Amazon to start paying 70% royalties on Kindle books that play by its rules originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clearwire in no rush to move to next-gen WiMAX Release 2

If consistently pulling down a fistful of megabits per second isn’t causing the hair on the back of your neck to stand on end… well, first, we strongly recommend you get that looked at by a professional. Secondly, though, you might have a bit of a wait before you get another hair-raising boost in throughput, because Clearwire — you know, the company that runs the WiMAX network shared by Clear and Sprint — is looking to take a laid-back approach on the migration to WiMAX Release 2. The underlying standard, 802.11m, looks destined for IEEE approval some time this year with the promise of 120Mbps down and 60Mbps up in an effort to wage 4G war with LTE Advanced, but Clearwire’s CTO is saying that he’s not looking to trial the tech this year — even though Russian carrier Yota is on track to make it happen using Samsung hardware. Instead, 2011 is a “much more likely” target for these guys, apparently, with commercial deployment plausible by ‘12. With the updated standard capable of speeds that put even high-end cable and fiber broadband connections to shame, you’ve got to wonder if backhaul isn’t the real concern here — or, even juicier, if they’re not just trying to keep all the options on the table for a little while longer.

Clearwire in no rush to move to next-gen WiMAX Release 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS’ Tegra-powered Eee Pad tablet to make sub-$500 Computex debut?

The first of June could see the introduction of the Eee Pad tablet if DigiTimes‘ proven ASUS sources are correct. The device has been rumored since early December and now appears to be heading to Computex Taipei for its big reveal with a price set below $500. The tablet was already rumored to feature a multitouch display, Tegra (Tegra 2, presumably) and an OS other than Windows CE. And with a name that sounds suspiciously like a feminine hygiene product for a robot, well, we’ll let you guess at which Google OS the Eee Pad will run.

Update: JKKMobile linked to a video he shot of an ASUS concept tablet running Android on Tegra 2 that was on display at CES. Somehow we missed it… we blame the Waveface.

ASUS’ Tegra-powered Eee Pad tablet to make sub-$500 Computex debut? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rogers’ HTC Magic having 911 call problems on Rogers, too

Turns out it doesn’t matter if you took up Rogers on its offer to swap your Dream to a Magic after all, because the bug’s spreading: Canada’s first keyboardless Android set is confirmed to be suffering from the same dangerous malaise as its older brother. Basically, neither model can complete emergency calls to 911 with location-based services enabled, and until HTC is able to spit out a patch, the only fix is to disable GPS altogether — not exactly an awesome solution. In the meantime, a quick check of Rogers’ site confirms that both the Dream and Magic have been pulled from retail, so let’s hope this gets cleaned up on the double. And try not to have an emergency, of course. Ever… but especially right now.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Rogers’ HTC Magic having 911 call problems on Rogers, too originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Silicon Power crams 128GB into 400x Compact Flash card: a world’s first

Whoa, we just hit yet another major performance milestone in removable storage. Silicon Power is touting the world’s first 128GB 400x Compact Flash card with write speeds of 90MBps and support for PIO Mode-6 (as defined by CompactFlash spec 2.0) and Multi-Word DMA 4 (as defined by CompactFlash spec 2.1) transfer mode in quad-channel configurations. In other words, it’ll play nice with new HD video capable DSLR shooters. Unfortunately, the card is only being announced today — no price or ship date in the press release. Sigh.

Silicon Power crams 128GB into 400x Compact Flash card: a world’s first originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gartner forecasts phones overtaking PCs as most common web browsing device by 2013

Predictions about phones overtaking PCs at one task or another are hardly anything new, but research firm Gartner has gotten a bit more specific than most with its latest forecast — which, among other things, foretells of a day when cellphones will be the most common device used for browsing the web. That momentous event will supposedly happen by 2013, when Gartner expects the number of browser-equipped phones to exceed 1.83 billion, compared to 1.78 billion old fashioned computers in use. According to Gartner, however, while browser-equipped phones will outnumber PCs by then, they won’t actually be most folks’ primary browsing device until sometime in 2015. In other prognostication news, the firm also says that fully three billion of the world’s population will be able to make electronic transactions via mobile or internet technology by 2014, and that by as soon as 2012, 20% of businesses will “own no IT assets” — meaning that employees would be using their own personal computer, and that the businesses themselves would be relying on cloud-based services.

Gartner forecasts phones overtaking PCs as most common web browsing device by 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monsoon adds streaming, sideloading sweetness to new Volcano placeshifting box

Blazing a different path from Sling or even its own HAVA line, Monsoon’s Volcano is not just an HD placeshifting device — it can play back video from attached storage devices, NAS or PCs, plus internet video from YouTube or CinemaNow. Existing remote DVR and streaming features are joined by sideloading, as it can deliver compressed recordings to compatible mobiles (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile) over 3G for later offline viewing. Other additions include an OS X client, MPEG-4 support plus plans for downloadable apps like Boxee and an open SDK for developers. Pricing is set at $199 with 4GB of flash memory included or $299 with 250GB HDD. Check out a video of our quick demo of the client running on a Motorola DROID and a press release with all the other details after the break.

Continue reading Monsoon adds streaming, sideloading sweetness to new Volcano placeshifting box

Monsoon adds streaming, sideloading sweetness to new Volcano placeshifting box originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video

The way video and other content is delivered is changing, there’s no doubt about it, but what isn’t as certain is exactly where we end up from here. So on our journey to the day when we can watch whatever we want, wherever we want, there are plenty of avenues for content like cable or satellite, internet, an antenna or whatever. Sezmi gets this and intends to bring them all together in a way that makes sense. The encouraging thing here is that the company didn’t just take an existing platform and paste on some internet streaming, it created a over-the-air DVR from scratch and integrated all the various sources into a unified experience. Ok, so much for the concept, but how does it work? In principle we love the idea: you buy a box, pay a monthly service for a select number of cable TV channels and get a single interface that makes sense. The problem right now is in the implementation. While we really like some of the DVR features included, like profiles catered to each viewer (custom guide listings as well as custom recorded TV etc,) only the major broadcast networks are presented in HD (no ESPN HD for example) — and the HD VOD content we watched showed noticeable compression artifacts. Sezmi is currently in a limited pilot in LA, but will be expanding and as it does we’ll be watching to see if the dream comes true.

Continue reading Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video

Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Viliv S10 Blade netvertible, N5 MID get official

Continue reading Viliv S10 Blade netvertible, N5 MID get official

Viliv S10 Blade netvertible, N5 MID get official originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered Mobinnova Beam hands-on

Right on the heels of NVIDIA unleashing its Tegra 2 (T20) platform, Mobinnova is jumping into the picture with one of the first smartbooks powered by the new chips. The device may be small, and quite thin, but its got a lot going on. First off, the design is nothing short of cool: the back of the rounded device actually snaps out of place to reveal its ports and slightly prop up the entire chassis. Under the lid it has a nice flush 8.9-inch display, but its smaller size causes the keyboard to be quite cramped. The touchpad has integrated mouse buttons, but because of its small size we noticed it being hard to make selections by left clicking. You’ll probably want to stick with double tapping on this one. ‘which is based on a 1GHz ARM architecture and an Nvidia GeForce GPU. It’ll ship with 256 MB of LPDDR memory and use a 512MB solid state drive for storage.”

Under the hood the Mobinnova Beam is powered by Tegra 2, which is based on a 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU and a GeForce GPU. It will also have 256 MB of memory and pack a 512MB solid state drive. The unit we saw was running Windows CE with a software interface developed by Mobinova, though the plan is to release an Android version. We still found the user interface to be easy to navigate with all the applications centered on a carousel of sorts. As promised by NVIDIA, a 1080p video played back on the device quite smoothly both on the 8.9-inch display and on a 42-inch 1080p Philips TV (take that Atom!). In our brief hands-on the overall performance seemed snappier than the past Mobinovia with the first Tegra chip: Firefox opened in about 7 seconds and navigating to web pages was faster than we’d anticipated. We don’t have any word on pricing, but Mobinova will only sell this bundled with AT&T connectivity. Hit the break for the full PR and some video.

Continue reading NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered Mobinnova Beam hands-on

NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered Mobinnova Beam hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Epson MovieMate multimedia projector hands-on

Epson MovieMate multimedia projector hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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