Day: March 30, 2010

22 Most Unusual Google Earth Photos

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – webdesigncore.com/

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on the Earth to view satellite images, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others. This amazing software allows you to search the whole planet right from your comfortable rooms. Fans of Google Earth have been on a virtual searching chase looking for anything interesting and amazing. Here we have collected some of the mind blowing and spectacular sights to mesmerize you. Enjoy and feel free to share it with others.

Terrain Face in Google Maps

The terrain in Alberta, Canada accidentally forms what looks like a human face when viewed from the air or when viewing the satellite pic in Google Maps.

Osmington White Horse

The Osmington White Horse, outside Sutton Poyntz, UK. This prehistoric figure is carved into the white chalk of the hillside – such horse carved shapes are called “Leucippotomy”.

Google Escher Effect pic from Houston

Here’s another weird satellite pic from Google Maps of some downtown Houston skyscrapers. This effect has become known as the “Escher Effect”, or the “Google Escher Effect”.

Heart-shaped island highlighted by Google Earth becomes hit with lovers

The 130,000 square yard islet of Galesnjak came to prominence after its unusual shape was highlighted on Google Earth.

Land Art near Munich Airport

Land Art or “Earth Art” appearing in a field near the airport in Munich, Germany.

KFC space logo

Yum! Brands Inc created the logo near Rachel, Nevada, and claimed it’s the first ad that can be seen from space. If you recall, the same company had previously wanted to beam a laser ad up onto the moon for Pizza Hut, but had later scaled back to buying ad placement on the side of a Russian rocket.

Firefox Logo

Crop circle art made in the shape of the iconic Firefox Logo near Portland, Oregon,

Where’s Waldo in Google Maps?

Canadian artist Melanie Coles built a large image of the iconic “Waldo” onto a rooftop at an undisclosed location in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Will U Marry Me

Marriage proposal seen on a rooftop via Google Maps.

Lips

Bunny in Google Maps

Giant Pink Bunny created by a group of artists near Artesina, Italy as seen in Google Maps.

Coca Cola Logo in Google Maps

This Coca-Cola logo in Google Maps was apparently created out of coke bottles just outside of Arica in Chile.

Portrait of Ghenghis Khan in Google Maps

Out of some sort of fear that they might forget who he was, the people of Mongolia have carved the likeness of Ghenghis Khan onto a hillside outside of Ulaanbaatar. (See it in Google Maps.)

The Vitruvian Man by Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man – one of the world’s most recognizable illustrations – is rendered here in crop art in Germany.

Man-Shaped Lake in Brazil

The Palm Islands of Dubai

The Palm Islands are artificial islands in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on which major commercial and residential infrastructure will be constructed. They are being constructed by Nakheel Properties, a property developer in the United Arab Emirates, who hired Belgian and Dutch dredging and marine contractor Jan De Nul and Van Oord, some of the world’s specialists in land reclamation. The islands are the Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali and the Palm Deira.

Oprah Maze

She’s got a massive syndicated show and a magazine called O, and she was dubbed the most powerful celebrity in the world by Forbes. Why shouldn’t Oprah get her own corn maze? An Arizona farmer created this 2004 tribute to the TV talk-show host.

Iraq’s Bloody Lake

This blood-red lake outside Iraq’s Sadr City garnered a fair share of macabre speculation when it was noticed in 2007. One tipster told the tech blog Boing Boing that he was “told by a friend” that slaughterhouses in Iraq sometimes dump blood into canals. No one has offered an official explanation, but it’s more likely that the color comes from sewage, pollution or a water-treatment process.

World’s Largest Fingerprint

Mystery Stone Arrow

Guitar-Shaped Mansion

I lOVE u

Europe’s biggest publisher embraces the WePad not iPad

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

iPhone HD arriving this summer

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – techcrunch.com/ by John Biggs

The rumor mill is churning today as news of a CDMA iPhone running on Verizon will be manufactured by Pegatron in China while a whole new AT&T model, made by Foxconn, will also drop in the summer/fall timeframe. the Journal notes that the two new devices will be exactly the same except, obviously, the CDMA version will lack a SIM card.

We’ve seen weird leaks of an iPhone 4G screen – something longer than the current iPhone screen with a front-facing camera – but nothing concrete. We also need to take this with a grain of salt. Asian manufacturers enjoy talking up their connections with certain companies because it gives them a slight boost in the equities markets, so this could be a pump and dump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Windows Phone 7 Series on HTC Touch Diamond

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – engadget.com/ By Joseph L. Flatley

If there’s any better argument for rigid spec requirements for Windows Phone 7 Series hardware, it’s this video of an HTC Touch Diamond running the OS at an especially syrupy pace. Indeed, the lag is so severe that it could very well be some trickery in the form of a RDP client running on a 7 Series emulator, which is in turn running on a PC — which, now that we think of it, is a pretty good possibility. Whichever way they achieved this feat, it’s certainly not a recipe for a viable handset. But we do know that these sort of “ports” are only going to increase as time goes on. See for yourself after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Sure enough, the author of the video has fessed up that this is an RDP hack job — in other words, it has absolutely zero bearing on how WinPho 7 would actually perform in some post-apocalyptic future where it’s been successfully ported to the Touch Diamond (that being said, we certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the herky-jerky action ends up being just about accurate).

Aluratek eBook Reader Pro

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – techcrunch.com/ by John Biggs

It’s no Kindle, but at $149 the Aluratek eBook Reader Pro is a pretty interesting device. It comes with a 2GB card and includes 100 public domain books including Wuthering Heights and The Bible. It works with PDFs, ePubs, and Mobi files along with standard text files. The whole thing works quite well and it’s a nice, small size, especially for an inexpensive e-reader. It’s definitely a no-frills ereader solution but it may be good for folks who find ebooks online and not through the Kindle store.

Dell Aero UI

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – engadget.com/ by Joshua Topolsky

We took a look at the Dell Aero during last week’s CTIA bonanza, but AT&T and Dell weren’t exactly forthcoming with letting us take the UI for a spin. Luckily, we’re pretty resourceful folks, so we’ve wrangled some face time with a functioning device, and walked away with some insight into the phone’s unique personality. Read on after the break for a bulleted breakdown of exactly what this phone is all about, a video of the Aero in action, and make sure to feast your eyes on the gallery below.

Update: We’ve just been contacted by an AT&T spokesperson and told on no uncertain terms that the final version of the Aero will definitely have the Android Market, so that’s a relief — and it also means we should be able to get our hands on Maps, even if the firmware doesn’t include it.

Update 2: We’ve also had Dell reach out to us, who adds that “since the Dell Aero is not generally available, this is not representative of the final product.” Seems like the software deficiencies here have riled up carrier and manufacturer alike, which is probably a good thing.

Dell Aero hands-on and UI walkthrough

So here are our main takeaways about this device:

  • The form factor is very, very sleek, though it feels surprisingly light compared to a Nexus One or Droid.
  • The UI has been completely reskinned, and there are multiple skins available — but also missing is Google Maps, Gmail, and a handful of other Google-centric features… like the Android Market.
  • It looks like AT&T and Dell want to turn this device into a glorified featurephone, which is a huge downer — it’s definitely loaded with AT&T bloatware.
  • Dell has merged the home button and back button into a single target on the left side of the phone — long press for home, short press for back, and it doesn’t always feel very natural.
  • Screen responsiveness wasn’t super tight, though this is still an unreleased version, so we suppose that could change.

All in all, the Aero was somewhat of a disappointment for us. It seems that AT&T is doing just about everything it can right now to rob Android of its nerdy core and replace it with stripped down (and frankly boring) featurephone skins. We really hope that the carrier wises up and lets some “pure” Android fodder hit its airwaves — because this is no way to treat a ‘droid. Hey, at least we can still hold out hope for the Mini 5.

Apple Posts A Boatload Of New iPad Footage

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – techcrunch.com/ by Jason Kincaid

There’s less than a week to go until the iPad’s April 3 launch date, but up until now footage of people actually using the device has been relatively scant — there’s the Steve Jobs keynote address, a few Flip-cam recordings from the twenty minutes reporters had after the keynote, and a whirlwind commercial. Today, we’re getting much, much more: Apple has just posted a series of eleven Guided Tours that walk you through many of the device’s core features, including Safari, Mail, iBooks, and the iWork suite.

If you want to get a feel for what can be done with an advanced app on the iPad, check out the iWork apps. The Keynote video, in particular, is impressive — it shows how you can use multi-touch to rearrange slides, place and resize images, and create animated effects using a feature called ‘Magic Move’. It looks very slick, though we’ll have to try it for ourselves before we can determine if it’s as efficient as its desktop counterpart.

We can’t embed the videos here (you’ll have to head to Apple’s site to watch them), but here are some screenshots showing off the device.


Apple posts up iPad Guided Tours

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – engadget.com/ by Nilay Patel

iPad pre-orders are just starting to ship out and Best Buy is getting prepped, but Apple’s just posted up a whole slew of its Guided Tours to hold you over until April 3. Sadly, we’re not seeing any entries for “How Do You Type While Standing Up” or “Why Do I Need A $30 Dongle To Get A USB Port On This Thing,” but the entries for Mail, Safari, iBooks, and the rest do include some revealing new information — and it certainly seems that tap-and-hold will be a big part of the UI paradigm. We’re still watching them all — let us know if you see anything interesting in comments.

Update: Okay, here’s the new stuff we’ve seen so far:

  • iBooks has an integrated search feature, a built-in brightness control, and a dictionary that can pull up any word just by tapping on it. The same dictionary is in Pages, too — we’re assuming it’s a system-wide feature available to any app, just like on Mac OS X. We’ve been told in the past that it supports user dictionaries and spellcheck, but we’ll see what actually ends up shipping.
  • There’s a quick mention of connecting the iPad to your home stereo in the iPod video, but no mention of streaming to the Airport Express or an Apple TV. There’s a big missed opportunity.
  • Typing with one hand on the portrait keyboard in Pages looks just as silly as you’d expect.
  • Numbers has a special formula keyboard.
  • Tap and hold is everywhere, and unlike the iPhone, the UI has “windows,” which are detailed info panes that float above the main app interface. The iWork apps also all have a “menu bar” area in the upper right that contain several options. You can see how interacting with an iPad will be familiar but still quite different than using an iPhone — depending on the apps, of course.

[Thanks, John]

How to Transform Your Windows Desktop with an Amazing Windows Phone 7-Style HUD

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – lifehacker.com/

How to Transform Your Windows Desktop with an Amazing Windows Phone 7-Style HUD

Windows: Windows desktop customization tool Omnimo takes the look and feel of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 user interface and brings it to any Windows desktop in an attractive and functional form that’s fresh, useful, and full of eye candy.

(Click most of the images in this post for a closer look.)

When you’re done setting it up, the Omnimo customization will add Windows Phone 7-style widgets to your desktop that’ll give you quick access to weather, calendars, your favorite programs, your unread email, notes, system monitoring (like CPU, hard drive, and RAM use), Wi-Fi signal strength, and oh-so-much-more. Best of all, everything’s easily customizable via drag and drop once you make it through the setup, so you can make it look however you want. Here’s a quick sampling of various setups straight from the Omnimo homepage:

How to Transform Your Windows Desktop with an Amazing Windows Phone 7-Style HUD

Note: Omnimo should work on any Windows system, XP through Windows 7.

read on the rest of the article at lifehacker.com

46-inch BeoVision 10 by Bang and Olufsen

Posted by ts On 30.03.2010

source – engadget.com/ by Joseph L. Flatley

Suddenly Bang & Olufsen’s 40-inch HDTV seems like a consolation prize. While the BeoVision 10-40 is making its good will tour of the states, the kids in Copenhagen will be checking out the new standard in the company’s lavish displays, the BeoVision 10-46. Aside from the 6-inch real estate boost, this thing sports “a new and exciting LED-based, 240Hz LCD panel” and unnamed “sophisticated motion compensation technologies” that apparently sport “a yet unseen level of smoothness.” Can you handle all this sophistication? We didn’t think so. To be unveiled on April 14 in Denmark, goes on sale this summer. No word yet on a price, but we’re guessing you can’t afford it anyways.

Update: Special thanks to Jesper for sending the price our way: 54,990 DKK (or about $9,940). We were right — you can’t afford it.

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