Android Phones Will Power NASA's New Fleet of Mini-Satellites

 

Hoping to inject new life into low-cost space exploration, NASA's 'PhoneSat' program will launch a series of Google Nexus One–controlled mini-satellites into space later this year. 

While most of the recent media attention on NASA has understandably focused on the Curiosity rover on Mars, that’s not the only experiment that the space and aeronautics research agency has in the works. A team at NASA’s Ames Research center in Moffett Field, California, is working on the future launch of miniature satellites constructed with Android-powered Nexus One smartphones at the helm. Dubbed “PhoneSat,” this project is part of a larger experiment called the CubeSat Launch Initiative that incorporates small consumer electronics into working nanosatellites.

Apple-Samsung Patent Battle Now in Jury's Hands

A nine-person California jury will begin their deliberations Wednesday in the landmark patent battle between Apple and Samsung. The case, which has been argued since the beginning of the month, pits two of the world's largest electronics makers against each other and could result in billions of dollars in fines depending on the jury's decision.
The case revolves around a handful of patents covering the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad and some of the icons on the devices' home screens. It's one of several legal battles the companies are fighting around the world but, given its location in the heart of Silicon Valley and close to Apple's Cupertino headquarters, it is perhaps the most closely watched.

The Top-Performing Android Phones: Benchmark Blitz

We put six Android phones through our suite of benchmark tests to see which ones had the best CPU, graphics, and browser performance.

 

HTC EVO 4G LTE 

Choose the Right Graphics Card: 2012 Edition

GPUs today are more than just gaming accelerators. They speed up a wide range of applications, and this guide helps you pick the best match for your needs.

Modern graphics cards are intimidating, hulking beasts in a world of increasingly tiny PC components. Most of them are double-wide, occupying two expansion-slot spaces, even though they use only a single physical slot. Many require two power connectors and beefier-than-average power supplies. Their primary audience appears to be serious PC gamers, who use an arcane jargon of their own: frame rates, VSync, antialiasing.
Graphics processing units, or GPUs, are at the heart of these cards, and their sheer physical size and transistor count--some models have in excess of 4 billion transistors--help explain why they consume so much power and require sophisticated cooling systems. The transistor count also suggests why these new graphics chips aren't just graphics accelerators: They improve performance across a broad range of applications.

EnemyGraph Facebook Application

UPDATE: you can follow the trending & top enemies on enemygraph.com and my ongoing comments on the project on twitter. For press see bottom of this post.
For the past six months my research group has been looking into an app that explores social dissonance on Facebook. Today we are announcing the public release of EnemyGraph. The project was developed principally by graduate student Bradley Griffith with invaluable help from undergraduate Harrison Massey.
EnemyGraph is an application that allows you to list your “enemies”. Any Facebook friend or user of the app can be an enemy. More importantly, you can also make any page or group on Facebook an “enemy”. This covers almost everything including people, places and things. During our testing testing triangles and q-tips were trending, along with politicians, music groups, and math.

How to Fix Your Wi-Fi Network: 7 Tips

A quick guide to fixing the most common Wi-Fi problems that crop up at home, in the office, or on the road.

Wireless Internet networks afford us the luxury of browsing the Web cable-free, but a connection that relies on radio waves is subject to failure due to interference, signal range limits, hardware problems, and operator error. With that in mind, we've put together a quick guide to the most common Wi-Fi troubles and how to fix them.

If you're struggling with your Wi-Fi network at home or in the office, read on to discover a few different ways to troubleshoot your Wi-Fi woes and restore your wireless network.

iOS 6 Passbook App Shown Off In A Real-World Scenario, Looks Impressive [VIDEO]

When Tim Cook and his cohorts took to the stage to introduce us to the next-generation of iOS, we were pretty much expecting most of the announcements which were rumored beforehand. However, as the demonstration of iOS 6 continued, there was a couple of little additions that took us by surprise and had managed to slip through the rumor net which led up to the event. One of those surprises came in the form of Passbook, a new iOS stock app which offers a new and efficient way for users to store tickets, coupons, gift cards and vouchers in one central place for easy access later on.

The Clutch Looks Like More Than Just Another iPad Case

Let’s face it: This is a world that’s packed to capacity with iPad cases. Do we really need one more? If you’ve seen the Clutch by DC Mobile Design, you might be willing to say “yes”.

Using a snap-on frame to attach a cylindrical handle, it’s less of a “case” than a system of handling your iPad. With it, you can comfortably hold an iPad in portrait or landscape orientation while on the move without getting your greasy meathooks all over the screen. Once you put your iPad down, the adjustable handle props it up at an angle (how much of an angle is up to you) and comfortably view or type away.

The Sad Lives of Smartphone Slaves

Too many people experience life through tiny device screen, and that ain't living.

We've all seen the funny YouTube videos of a person walking into a mall fountain or a glass door because they were so engrossed in their smartphones.

And most of us saw that commercial last year -- I think it was for Verizon, but I'm not even sure, to be honest -- of a young guy walking out of his home and onto the street without even having to stop playing his video game because he could transfer it from his computer right to his smartphone!

GM developing Wi-Fi app to help pedestrians avoid being hit [w/video]

 

Since even the threat of serious injury or death isn't enough to keep people engrossed in their phones from walking out into traffic, General Motors is developing a new pedestrian safety technology that will sense the phone itself. Using Wi-Fi Direct, a peer-to-peer wireless standard that's like a medium-range Bluetooth, a car would be able to detect a smartphone directly and alert the driver in time to avoid kneecapping the pedestrian.

The Top 5 Social Media Management Tools for Small Business

 

Managing your company’s social media presence is becoming an increasingly complex task. Small-business owners who used to rely on Twitter to post updates to LinkedIn, for instance, no longer have that option.

Fortunately, other tools allow you to manage your business’s assorted social media accounts from a single dashboard. We've selected the top five that are specifically geared toward small business. To make our list, each tool had to meet several criteria.

• Affordability: The tool is either free or priced low enough to meet the budget of a one- or two-person business.
• Scalability: The tool grows with your company's needs, even if you start with just one or two accounts.
• Support for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter: If a social media management tool doesn’t post to all three networks, it’s dead to most small businesses.
• Update posting assistance: The tool allows you to schedule posts in advance.

How To Add A Live Facebook Timeline Feed To Your iPhone’s Lock And Home Screen

When it comes to mobile smartphones and the operating systems that power them, there is always going to be a great divide from users who prefer one platform over the other. We all know that the two largest mobile OSes in the game are iOS and Android, with each one having its own set of pros and cons when compared against the other. Apple fans will argue that iOS is a more powerful and intuitive OS, whereas Android fans love the control they have over their devices as well as the ability to have live widgets on their home screens.
I can’t argue with the benefits of widgets, as they do – in some cases – provide some great additional interactivity with the device, but the more experienced will know that jailbreaking an iOS device opens the system up to a whole world of powerful widgets. With that said, the Facebook Live Widgets package that has just landed in the Cydia store is an attempt by Bluemetal to bring some dynamic social network type functionality to the home screen and lock screen of a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch. iOS is one of the largest mobile platforms in the world and Facebook is the king of the social networks, so what could possibly go wrong?

4 Things Apple Will Eliminate With iPhone 5 and iOS 6

The next-generation iPhone is set to bring some radical changes for users, and it will also mark a very public break-up between Apple and Google. Much-loved Google products on iOS will now disappear or be replaced with Apple variants, while hardware design changes will bring long-term improvements, but short-term headaches for some users.
The latest beta releases of iOS 6 are now giving a clearer indication of which of Google’s services Apple will drop or replace with its own, with several reports indicating upcoming design and hardware changes that you’ll have to keep in mind. Until the new iPhone is announced on September 12, as reports indicate, here are the changes being discussed and what they mean.

How to Share Personal Data While Keeping Secrets Safe

 

A new technique could help companies like Facebook make money from your data without putting it at risk.

Giant stockpiles of personal data, whether Web browsing logs, credit-card purchases, or the information shared through social networks, are becoming increasingly valuable assets for businesses. Such data can be analyzed to determine trends that guide business strategy, or sold to other businesses for a tidy profit. But as your personal data is analyzed and handed around, the risk increases that it could be traced back to you, presenting an unwelcome invasion of privacy.

How to Maximize Battery-Life While Traveling

If you take an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook along when you travel, you know how much of a challenge it can be to keep your device powered up. Here are a few tips.

Admit it: Your carry-on bag is stuffed full of digital gear you can’t bear to leave at home. Not only will your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook keep you entertained while en route, they’ll make great navigation, research, and photo tools once you’ve reached your destination. But keeping these devices charged up when you’re constantly on-the-go or stuck in the air can be a challenge. But there are a few things you can do to extend battery life and save power.

5 Things Windows 8 Can Learn from OS X Mountain Lion

Apple's newest iteration of its OS has some great features we'd like to see in Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8. Here's our list.

Apple's OS X Mountain Lion will launch Wednesday, so it's a good time for Windows users to peer across the border at what features in Mountain Lion might prove useful.
Note that Windows 8 is a complete overhaul, while Mountain Lion is more of a refinement. Yet the Apple update adds lots of new features that would fit in nicely on Microsoft's OS. In hopes of keeping alive the tradition of stolen OS features, here are five aspects of OS X Mountain Lion that we'd like to see in future versions of Windows.

Holiday Tech: Droolworthy Gear Coming This Fall

Ultrabook laptops, games, and HDTVs are likely to be hot this holiday season. And it's not too early to prepare for Black Thursday. Here's the lowdown.

You're still slathering on sunscreen, and the dog days of summer (by ancient reckoning) arrived less than two weeks ago; but the most tempting HDTVs, Ultrabooks, games, and smartphones for the impending holiday season are already coming into focus.
What's going to be hot this winter? Will retailers slash prices on Windows 7 laptops as they push newly arriving Windows 8 PCs? What pricing gimmicks will they try? What's going to be the big thing with HDTVs, games, and cameras?

How Did Apple Allow Hackers to Access iCloud Account?

The Internet is abuzz this weekend as a result of the Gizmodo Twitter account getting hijacked. That incident was traced back to the hack of an Apple iCloud account--allegedly accomplished through social engineering.

A Forbes.com story from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes explains that a former contributor for Gizmodo, Mat Honan, was the original victim of the attack. Hackers were able to access Honan’s iCloud account, and remotely wipe his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. The original theory was that the hackers used a brute force attack to crack Honan’s iCloud password, but further investigation revealed that social engineering was used to convince Apple the attackers were Honan, and Apple gave them the keys to walk right in.