devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares.What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dh003i writes "Canon has developed a 8 x 8 inch CMOS digital sensor. It will be able to capture an image with 1/100th the light intensity required by a DSLR and will be able to record video at 60 fps in lighting half the intensity of moonlight. There are already many excellent qualitylenses designed to cover 8 x 10 inches, although Canon may develop some of their own designed specifically for their requirements."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A phone-hacking scheme involving British royals and reporters working for one of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspapers went far beyond what was previously disclosed and prosecuted. The British Prime Minister's current media adviser is accused of having encouraged the hacking.

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Verizon strengthened its prepaid offerings on Thursday, introducing prepay data plans for consumers who wish to use smart phones on a no contract basis. While the acquisition costs for those phones will be significantly higher, a customer would be free to leave at any time.

Prepaid data plans would cost the user $30 per month, and include unlimited data access. The company would offer a 250MB data plan for "multimedia" phones, which would be a $10 per month add on. Both offerings would become available beginning immediately in Verizon's own stores, and online on September 28, the company said.

Data plans are not mandatory on prepaid phones, but would require a voice plan in order to be added to a user's account. The monthly fee is the same as a postpaid contract holder would pay, although its voice plans start at a $5 premium to the postpaid customer.

Many of Verizon's popular smart phones would be compatible with the prepaid service. These include the carrier's Blackberry line, the Droid X, the Droid 2, and HTC's Droid Incredible, among others. Multimedia phones compatible with the cheaper plan included the LG enV and Chocolate, Samsung Alias, and Casio Elixim.

"These new data offerings will help our prepaid customers experience the full breadth of Verizon Wireless' robust device portfolio," Verizon Wireless marketing director Jim Sullivan said. The move is also likely aimed at keeping the carrier in step with its competitors, who have increasingly been offering more smart phones in their device lineups as of late.

Essentially, prepaid users would for the most part have to pay a $200 premium on their desired device. That extra fee is compensation to Verizon Wireless for the subsidy that is normally paid for by the device manufacturer in exchange for carriage on the company's network.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010



Verizon Wireless - Smartphone - Blackberry - Droid - Prepaid

Remember the Googasm

Google is celebrating Chrome's second birthday by releasing a new stable version of its rapidly evolving browser, offering a slightly simpler user interface, an automatic form filler, and the ability to synchronize extensions and form data across machines.?

If it's September, it's football season — which also means it's time for millions of fantasy football drafts around the world to commence. Maximize your in-season points while dealing with the setbacks that are bound to occur by following our guide.

The video site's ever-evolving terms of service drive an observer mad in this arty clip by Carlo Zanni. No charge for the 1984 references.

Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. "While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset," writes Lawler. "All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mobile chips warming up as PC chips chill

While chip makers are not white-knuckled with fear as they were during the economic meltdown of late 2008 and early 2009, they were hoping that the recent boom in chip sales would hold for a couple of quarters ? and it probably won't.?

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Teaching old apps new tricks

Microsoft has released a new version of a software tool that developers and administrators can use to harden older applications against common vulnerabilities.?

This week?s big Apple announcement featured one big disappointment: Apple TV?s relative lack of, well, TV. Out of all of the hundreds of channels available on cable and satellite, only ABC and Fox agreed to offer their programs for rent on Apple TV. The fact that Steve Jobs is the largest single shareholder in, and on the board of, Disney ? owner of ABC ? perfectly illustrates this digital divide.

You rent from his cloud

Analysis With its Apple TV revamp announced Wednesday, Apple dipped its toes into the entertainment cloud ? if you'll forgive a muddled metaphor. It's a tentative baby step, but expect more cloudy offerings from Cupertino if the experiment is a success.?

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

Unlike infectious disease and information, behavior change spreads faster through online networks that have many close connections instead of many distant ties. Redundancy is key, as people are more likely to engage in a behavior if they see many others doing it."There has been a lot of theory about the difference between information and behavior spreading," said economic sociologist Damon Centola of MIT and author of the study published Sept. 3 in Science. "We've assumed that they are the same, but you can imagine that behavior is not really like that, that you need to be convinced."

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

In what could potentially be the first serious challenge to Apple's dominance in the tablet sector, Samsung Thursday debuted the Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch Android powered tablet device. It will initially be available in European markets later this month, with a broader worldwide launch shortly afterward.

Although the device's screen size is smaller than the iPad, much of the rest of the specifications are quite similar. The Tab includes a 1GHz processor; up to 64GB of storage space; 3G, Bluetooth, and 802.11 wireless connectivity, and high definition playback of digital content.

One thing it does have that the iPad does not is a front and back facing camera: the front one is 1.3 megapixels, while the back camera would support 3 megapixels as well as an LED flash.

No announcement was made as to the pricing for the new device, nor carrier partners for the included 3G connectivity.

Samsung says the Tab, which is part of the company's broader line of "Galaxy" Android devices, is only the first of a line of tablet devices from the manufacturer. "Samsung recognizes the tremendous growth potentialin this newly created market," mobile chief JK Shun said in a statement.

He said that the Tab was designed to maximize the user's online experience, and would "push the market in new directions." Built upon Android's 2.2 "Froyo" update, the Tab also includes something that has notoriously been left out of the iPad: Flash.

Adobe Flash 10.1 is supported, which Samsung extols the Tab as being able to view every single web page as the developer intended. In order to make these same pages viewable correctly on the iPad, some web developers have had to tweak their designs to take advantage of HTML5 vis a vis Flash, which could be inconvenient.

Getting into the e-reader business is something that Samsung is also interested in: each Tab would come with an application called the "Readers Hub," which would link into a library of content. The hub concept would also translate into other forms of media discovery including a "Music Hub" and "Media Hub."

The Korean manufacturer did not specify if it would use proprietary or open technologies to deliver this content to users.

Among many of the first looks given of the Samsung Galaxy Tab today, mobile messaging and VoIP software maker Fring gave a quick peek at video chatting on the device.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010



Apple - Android - Bluetooth - Adobe Systems - Adobe Flash

A new batch of sharp Martian close-ups from NASA's HiRISE camera were released, and we've gathered some of the best in the gallery.

eldavojohn writes "A new paper up for prepublication from the controversial solid-state physicist Godfrey Louis claims that the cells Louis collected from a Keralan red rain incident divide and produce daughter cells at 121 degrees Celsius. While unusual, this is not unheard of as thepaper recalls cells cultivated from hydrothermal vents are known to reproduce at 121 C as well. Of course, caution is exercised when dealing with the possible explanation surrounding the theory of panspermia but the MIT Technology Review says researchers 'examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in the Monocerous constellation.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'We're more consistent. And we're here'

Microsoft has tried to justify its Silverlight media player in the age of HTML5.?

The atmosphere of a young exoplanet didn't fit any of our existing models for what gas giants should look like. But when astronomers added huge dust clouds, it was a perfect fit, perhaps revealing a larger truth about gas giants.