Motorola Xyboard 8.2 review

The march of the Honeycomb tablets goes on, playing a tune that's starting to get a bit muted thanks to the promise of fresher beats coming from Ice Cream Sandwich. Still, there are plenty of ways for manufacturers to add their own bit of swing to the same 'ol song. Motorola, of course, paved the way for all these slates with the Xoom. It's hard to believe that first Honeycomb tablet was released just 10 months ago, but now we have its successor, the Xyboard, here in its 8.2-inch guise.

At least, that's what it's being called domestically. Elsewhere it's the Xoom 2 (we reviewed the 10.1-inch flavor already), but in America we get a patently unfortunate moniker for a tablet that offers an interesting design at an interesting size with the interesting bonus of LTE. But, all that mobile bandwidth is going to cost you: $430 for the 16GB model or $530 for 32GB if you sign on for a two-year data contract. Does the funky design, convenient size and high-rate connectivity make up for the added cost over something like the class-leading Transformer Prime? Let's find out.

Continue reading Motorola Xyboard 8.2 review

Motorola Xyboard 8.2 review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/N9JwMxOyTJ4/

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Adblock Plus developer pokes holes in Mozilla's new add-on performance tests

Wladimir Palant, developer of the most popular add-on in the world, Adblock Plus, is also an active contributor to the Planet Mozilla blog community. Over the last few days, in response to Mozilla's new name and shame list of slow add-ons, Palant has been investigating whether Mozilla's testing methods are actually accurate.

Rather surprisingly, it turns out that Mozilla's numbers could be significantly wrong -- and if they're not wrong, the factors that Mozilla uses to tabulate an add-ons final score should definitely be made more transparent.

In the first set of tests, Palant shows that FlashGot's position in the top 10 is probably due to a fault in Mozilla's testing setup, and that add-ons can perform very differently depending on which operating system they're being tested on. In the second analysis, Palant uncovers an irregularity that doesn't seem to have an obvious cause -- but it could be due to an I/O bottleneck on Mozilla's test machines. Basically, even though performance testing of Read It Later is disabled because of a bug, it still (somehow!) manages to record a 14% slow-down on Windows 7.

Palant concludes both analyses by scolding Mozilla for going public with the performance data before its testing methods had been confirmed accurate. It definitely looks like Mozilla has been more than a little reckless, considering the importance of Firefox's add-on ecosystem.

Adblock Plus developer pokes holes in Mozilla's new add-on performance tests originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/08/adblock-plus-developer-pokes-holes-in-mozillas-new-add-on-perfo/

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Mantis Stand for iPad and iPad 2

Here’s an attractive entry to the world of iPad stands.  The Mantis Stand for iPad & iPad 2 from Flatscreen Arms is made of solid aluminum and has an anodized, maintenance-free finish.  The swivel, tilting head let’s you position your iPad in vertical or horizontal orientations; you can even adjust it to hold the iPad [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/12/14/mantis-stand-for-ipad-and-ipad-2/

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New Hipstamatic App Kicks Photography Back to the Old School

Hipstamatic's new Disposable Series iOS app is a free program that hearkens back to the days of disposable cameras. It shuns the instant, real-time focus of today's digital world, delivering your photos only when a virtual roll of film is completed.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/new-hipstamatic-app-kicks-photography-back-to-the-old-school/

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Verizon HTC Rezound Smartphone Review

When it comes to Android powered smartphones, it seems like there is a new phone released every month or so. At this point, there isn’t a lot that can be added to a smartphone to make it different than every other smartphone on the market. There are only so many cores you can add to the processor to make it [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/12/12/verizon-htc-rezound-smartphone-review/

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Moving Brands reveals proposed HP brand redesign, HP remains noncommittal

HP has gone through some big changes in the past year, and it turns out it's also been considering a rather drastic change to its identity -- one that may or may not yet be adopted. That's been revealed by the team at Moving Brands, who began working with HP on a complete redesign of the company's brand in 2008, and have now shown off what they've come up in an exhaustive case study on their website. At the heart of it is a new logo, which traces its history to HP's original 1941 design, but takes on a decidedly more modern appearance; gone are the familiar circle and rounded corners, and in are some sharp lines and hard edges. According to Moving Brands, the goal was to make the brand "digitally native, context-aware and ever evolving," with the lines in the logo itself echoing the same 13 degree angle of the original while also "recalling the forward slash used in programming." Just what would this new HP look like? You can get a pretty good idea of that at the source link below -- we've also included a small taste after the break, including two of Moving Brands' videos.

Continue reading Moving Brands reveals proposed HP brand redesign, HP remains noncommittal

Moving Brands reveals proposed HP brand redesign, HP remains noncommittal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/14/moving-brands-reveals-proposed-hp-brand-redesign-hp-remains-non/

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Vintage-fun with the Holga iPhone Filter Wheel

If you have a smartphone, you probably have or have seen additional photo apps to alter the state of your pictures.  With Lomo and vintage-style photos being such a craze, HolgaDirect has put out the SLFT-IP4 case and filter mount compatible with the iPhone 4 and 4S that will aid the amateur hipster photographer without [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/12/14/vintage-fun-with-the-holga-iphone-filter-wheel/

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The Day Mankind Swallowed the Globe [Techiversary]

A century is not a very long time. Life is short or whatever, but people live to be 100. One hundred years ago yesterday, we had never touched the southernmost point on earth. We had automobiles. And planes. But we'd never been to the South Pole. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/tuWRccnofE4/the-day-mankind-swallowed-the-globe

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Corel releases VideoStudio Pro X4, we go hands on (video)

videostudioprox4
Corel seems to be on a roll lately; after releasing WinZip System Utilities just last week, this morning the company announced VideoStudio Pro X4.

VideoStudio Pro is aimed at home users and small business professionals who want to create professional-looking videos, but without the hassle, steep learning curve and price of Adobe Premiere Pro and the likes.

This new version introduces several features:

  • Stop motion animation: You can now capture still frames using a webcam, camcorder or DSLR and use them to produce an animation. Tools such as "onion skin view" let you compare the previous image in the sequence with the current one and make the animation as smooth as possible.
  • Processor optimization: Corel says the app is optimized for Intel's new Sandy Bridge systems, and have shown us some graphs with very impressive numbers. We've been unable to test this particular point, but if you have a recent-generation Intel or AMD Fusion system, VideoStudio performance should be blazing. Even on our older test system performance was quite impressive.
  • Customizable workspace: You can drag the video preview window to your secondary monitor (if you have one) and tweak just about any other element in the window layout. Once done, you can save your ideal workspace in one of three slots.
  • Share-to-Web: VideoStudio Pro X4 hooks directly into YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Flickr, so you don't even have to launch a browser to upload your final product. Edit, produce and share from within the app itself.
  • Smart Package: Video projects typically consist of many files; Smart Package lets you bundle all video assets for a given project into one ZIP file which you can password-protect and keep in a safe place once you're done editing.
I've had a chance to play around with a pre-release version for a few days, and have put it through its paces editing a short video for my day job. Overall, I've been impressed with how easy it was to create pro-looking results. If you do any sort of video editing but are leery of the investment other apps require (both in dollars and effort), VideoStudio Pro is well worth checking out. To see a bit of the interface itself and what the app can do, watch the video after the jump.

Note: We'll be running a give-away of ten VideoStudio Pro X4 licenses later today, each worth $100 USD. Keep your eyes peeled for the giveaway post!

Continue reading Corel releases VideoStudio Pro X4, we go hands on (video)

Corel releases VideoStudio Pro X4, we go hands on (video) originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/22/corel-releases-videostudio-pro-x4-we-go-hands-on/

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