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We love the United Kingdom, especially the way they use all these adorable names for things: “lorry,” for truck, or “loo” for bathroom, or “sin bin” for an Orwellian program whereby “problem families” (currently numbering 2,000, but someday as many as 20,000) are placed under 24/7 CCTV surveillance in their own homes. Chris Grayling, something called the “Shadow Home Secretary,” puts it thusly: “This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behavior, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse.” Meaning, of course, that cameras must be moved from the streets of England into people’s homes, where they’ll be used to make sure that kids go to school, go to bed at a decent hour, and eat proper meals. If only they’d had programs like this when we were kids — maybe things would have turned out differently.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

UK puts CCTVs in the homes of lousy parents originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As it turns out, those Sony Reader leaks from earlier this week were spot on. The company just went official with the PRS-300 and 600, which will more affectionately be known as the Pocket and Touch editions, respectively. The latter (pictured left, not to scale) is the 6-inch resistive touchscreen model replacing the PRS-700, with Memory Stick / Duo and SD card slots. The backlighting layer from its predecessor has been dropped to improve touch responsiveness and to alleviate concerns of glare. It also comes packing a stylus and a digitized copy of the Oxford American English Dictionary and will be available in red, black, and silver. The Pocket Edition, on the other hand, is your standard fare with no touchscreen or expandable disk port, and palettes including blue, silver, and rose. Both models have USB 2.0, 512MB internal memory, and no WiFi whatsoever — Sony assures us a WiFi version is coming and there’ll be news on those coming soon, but this isn’t it. There’s also Mac compatibility, a first for the series, that’s trickling down to older models via a firmware update. Touch and Pocket will be available by the end of August and will retail for $299 and $199, a substantially more competitive price point than its previous generation. Speaking of which, as of tomorrow, the Sony’s e-book store is dropping the prices of its bestsellers from $11.99 to $9.99. A win all around, but will it be enough to make a dent in Kindle’s stronghold? Things are certainly getting more interesting.

Filed under: Handhelds

Sony Reader Pocket and Touch editions lower cost of entry, online e-book store follows suit originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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She still hasn’t ever been formally named to the post she helped create, but acting White House Cybersecurity Czar Melissa Hathaway has now already taken her name out of the running and announced her resignation from the job, citing the usual “personal reasons” and the need to “pass the torch.” As The Wall Street Journal reports, however, there may have been a bit more drama going on behind the scenes, with “people familiar with the matter” reportedly saying that she has been “spinning her wheels” in the post, and marginalized politically. For it’s part, the White House simply says that cybersecurity remains “a major priority for the president,” and that “the president is personally committed to finding the right person for this job, and a rigorous selection process is well under way.”

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Internet

Acting Cybersecurity Czar resigns for ‘personal reasons’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Much of the speculation around an “iPad” — a rumored 10″ Apple tablet — has portrayed it as an Amazon Kindle-killer or a large-screen iPod touch, but there’s a strong case that such a product could effectively serve as a replacement for – or more a compelling complement to — Apple’s non-platform sleeper Apple TV.

Apple faces a dilemma in moving iPhone apps to a larger screen size or higher resolution. It must either scale them (ugly), ask developers to create a large-screen version (cumbersome), or run them in a window (which would beg some level of multitasking at least beyond what the iPhone OS does today. Not only that, but a 10″ device is simply inconvenient for some of the iPhone’s apps. Just try focusing on the road with a 10″ navigation screen suctioned to your windshield.

The base version of Apple TV is 40 GB, just a bit over the 32 GB that has been offered on the iPod touch and iPhone. By the end of the year, a 64 GB flash product could be well within reach for a flash-based iPad. That would easily store many consumers’ photo libraries and a Netflix queue’s worth of movies. Rumors about the “Cocktail” music experience notwithstanding, the tablet would make an excellent platform for watching and displaying video and photos. a 10″ screen would be a fine fit for 720p video and the small size would mask artifacts that could show up on the 50″ television. But the iPad would be even more versatile than Apple TV.

Continue reading Switched On: The iPad could succeed Apple TV

Filed under: Handhelds

Switched On: The iPad could succeed Apple TV originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been asked not to reveal the URLs, but we can assure you we’ve seen this official support screen pictured above with our own two eyes, which means that the HTC Hero is all but confirmed in a juicy CDMA blend for Sprint. How (or if) that’ll affect the availability of the US 3G version unlocked or on any carrier is unclear, but given Hesse’s huffy language regarding Pre exclusivity, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got this one locked down for a while as well. We’ve seen a similar support page for an Alltel-branded Snap, so if you’re still tied up in one of the carrier’s legacy divested markets and you’ve been pining after the Snap (and Ozone) on Sprint and Verizon, fear not — your own version is on the way. We’ll admit, if you had asked us a few months back what American carrier would get HTC’s highest-end Android phone to date, Sprint wouldn’t have been our first guess — but hey, good for them. If you can’t win the coverage battle against the Big Red juggernaut, may as well try to win the exclusive hardware battle, right?

[Thanks, Adam]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC support site reveals Hero for Sprint, Snap for Alltel originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s no secret that Palm has plenty of Apple veterans in its upper ranks (starting right at the top), and it looks like there now may be even more reminiscing about old times going on during lunch breaks, with the company recently announcing that it has hired Jeff Zwerner as its new Senior Vice President of Brand Design. In addition to working at Apple for a stint from 2001 to 2003 as Creative Director for Packaging and earlier from 1995 to 1996 as a Senior Art Director, Zwerner also founded the San Francisco branch of Factor Design, which has done work for Coca-Cola, Gap, GE, Hewlett-Packard, L.L. Bean, Nike, the Walt Disney Company and, yes, Apple.

[Via PreCentral]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm hires Apple vet Jeff Zwerner as new SVP of Brand Design originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been messing around with Kodak’s latest pocket camcorder, the Zi8, and find the shooter to be an interesting hybrid. With a flip-out USB plug, HDMI out and an easily accessible SD card slot, this is clearly a “premium” mix of features for the class, but the $180 pricetag keeps the device firmly grounded in Walmart-friendly reality. Other odd perks like a line-in jack and 1080p have us scratching our heads — but in a good way. Overall, we’d feel pretty comfortable saying the footage is about the best you can obtain at this pricepoint. Colors are great, the image stabilization isn’t a gimmick (sorry, Flip), and if you squint hard enough you can almost believe the 1080p is 1080p. Still, the camera is hampered by its cheap approach to processing and compressing the footage it’s taking in — despite its limitations, we’d say the iPhone 3GS is besting most cheap pocket camcorders on this front, motion just looks much more fluid. But don’t take our word for it, check out a couple of video samples after the break.

Continue reading Kodak Zi8 impressions: surprising functionality, but it’s still a pocket camcorder

Filed under: Digital Cameras, HDTV

Kodak Zi8 impressions: surprising functionality, but it’s still a pocket camcorder originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last we heard, Dell was secretly at work on a handheld / MID that would challenge the likes of the iPod touch, but it turns out it may also have its eye on the Kindle and the still emerging e-reader market, or the two may be one in the same — or neither, but bear with us for a minute. According to Wired’s Gadget Lab, Dell is looking to shake things up in a fairly big way by offering a touchscreen tablet of unspecified size for free to folks willing to enter into a contract and sign up for “one or more digital media subscriptions.” Details are otherwise a bit light, as you might expect, but Dell is rumored to be collaborating with Intel on the device, and the pair are supposedly looking to launch it in “about six months.”

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: Handhelds

Latest Dell tablet / MID rumor: Intel-based, free-on-contract originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That new BlackBerry Curve 8520 for T-Mobile is in the house, sucking down EDGE data like it’s going out of style (oh, right, it is). For a device that can be scored for $50 at Walmart as of tomorrow ($130 at T-Mobile stores), this is a surprisingly solid handset. The keyboard is classic BlackBerry goodness, and the overall heft gives us at least a little bit of assurance that the phone can hold up to wear and tear better than its predecessors. Most of the changes are for the better, like a trio of media keys up top and the rubberized sides, but we’re not completely sold on the touchpad. It works great when it works, but if it’s too clean or our thumb is at the exact wrong moisture level, we found that we kind of “stuck” to the pad instead of gliding across it. A bit of texturing could go a long way. We also found the QVGA screen to be pretty dim, which is particularly unfortunate in light of RIM’s higher-end, high-res wonders, but it’s certainly passable. We’re planning on spending some more time with the handset, testing that EDGE network to the limit, giving UMA time to handle some of legendary conversational stylings, and seeing how many Engadget Podcast episodes we can narcissistically cram onto the bundled 1GB microSD card.

In speaking with RIM, it’s quite clear that the decision to go EDGE was primarily based on price, along with the fact that T-Mobile’s 3G rollout is still lacking — it’s still a head scratcher to us, though. The spokesperson also seemed pretty confident that the new touchpad interface is the way of the future, and we get the feeling the BlackBerry’s legendary trackball isn’t long for this world. Check out a quick video hands-on after the break, or you could opt for some fine unboxing shots below.

Continue reading T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve 8520 unboxed and handled (with video!)

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve 8520 unboxed and handled (with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Could this mean the death of the Cassingle?

Continue reading Maxell launches flash storage line

Filed under: Storage

Maxell launches flash storage line originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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