FocuSoft Tech Blog |
- Cellular South scoops up Sprint-spec Hero
- King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
- Netflix awards $1-million prize to recommendation wizards, announces 2nd contest
- Microsoft fesses up to 802.11n Xbox 360 adapter, short on details
- Awesome R2-D2 Houses Eight Game Consoles and Projector [Star Wars]
- NYC intern needed
- Brizzly: Faster, Better, More Open
- Netflix to Come to the iPhone "Eventually" [Streaming]
- AT&T’s 3G MicroCell gets unboxed, looks sufficiently cute
- World of Warcraft is back in China~!
| Cellular South scoops up Sprint-spec Hero Posted: 21 Sep 2009 05:41 PM PDT
 If you’d told us that privately-held regional Cellular South would be just the third carrier in the US to properly offer an Android handset, we would’ve laughed until we cried — but now that it’s official, our laughter has turned to steely solemnity and respect for a tiny company going above and beyond the call of duty. The carrier hasn’t announced an availability date, but interested parties can now sign up to be notified when the Hero — an exact duplicate of Sprint’s version — will be launching. Just like Sprint, you get Sense, a 5 megapixel cam, and that chinless bottom that’s less likely to make your thumb upset in day-to-day use than its GSM cousin. We’d say “sign us up,” but then again, we’re not Cellular South subscribers, nor could we be if we wanted to — that’s the perpetual tragedy of the regional carrier, sadly. [Thanks, Bill] Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds Cellular South scoops up Sprint-spec Hero originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Posted: 21 Sep 2009 05:00 PM PDT
KAUST was brought about, rather obviously, by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Says the king:
The university, as the name implies, is science-focused. It offers degrees in nine fields of study:
As a well-funded, brand-new university, there’s a lot of top-notch tech here. From a nanofabriacation lab with a Level 100 clean room (no more than 100 particles per square foot), to a room filled with ten Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometers, to Shaheen, the fastest supercomputer in the Middle East, the facilities at KAUST are a researcher’s dream. I plan to dig into more, but here’s two quick overviews of things I found remarkably impressive: Shaheen, and the CORNEA immersive virtual reality facility. Shaheen The room in which Shaheen lives is pretty bland, and doesn’t make for very good photography. But here’s a photo, nonetheless: We weren’t permitted inside because it’s operated inside a clean room environment. Aside from the fact that KAUST has been a construction site until just recently, there’s also serious concern about the effects of salt from the Red Sea coming into the room, so the project coordinators are playing it safe by restricting access and strictly controlling the environment. CORNEA
Two things set KAUST’s CAVE apart from all the rest. First, it has the world’s highest resolution at 100 million pixels, and second, it has a phenomenal audio system inside the room. Speakers placed in the room pick up sounds and project them back in any of a number of programmable acoustic configurations. So if you’re walking through a visualization of an actual cave, your voice will echo and reverberate. This is actually amazingly hard to describe in text, and even harder to capture on video. Here’s a quick video I took while inside CORNEA: When the audio is on, you really do feel like you’re in a larger space. Then when the audio is muted, you feel like you’re in any other room in the world. It’s very impressive what a dramatic effect sound has on our sense of sight. If you guys have any techie questions for the KAUST staff or faculty, leave ‘em in the comments and I’ll do my best to get them answered! Go here to read the rest:
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| Netflix awards $1-million prize to recommendation wizards, announces 2nd contest Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:56 PM PDT
It took three years and 40,000 teams from 186 countries, but the $1-million Netflix prize has finally been awarded.
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| Microsoft fesses up to 802.11n Xbox 360 adapter, short on details Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:49 PM PDT
 In a startlingly new twist on the standard non-denial denial of the incredibly obvious existence of an upcoming product, Microsoft has done the world a favor in confirming the 802.11n adapter it has in the works for the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, the company stopped there, failing to mention price, launch date or the all important HOT or NOT score of the upcoming unit. As Joystiq points out, Microsoft did say that the adapter will offer “another choice to consumers,” which means the original adapter might be sticking around for a bit — at hopefully a cheaper pricepoint — but that’s about all we’ve got to go on at the moment. So… we’re pretty much back where we started from, but now we’re officially in the dark. Filed under: Gaming, Networking Microsoft fesses up to 802.11n Xbox 360 adapter, short on details originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Awesome R2-D2 Houses Eight Game Consoles and Projector [Star Wars] Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:40 PM PDT
Brian first took an R2-D2 shaped cooler and modified it to make it look more realistic. He then gutted the consoles to rearrange the controllers inside so all the ports could face in the right direction. That still left enough space inside to place a projector and a sound system. Quite a feat. I can see Dreamcast, Playstation, SNES, and Nintendo Ultra64 gamepads, but what are the rest? [The Force]
The rest is here:
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| Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:29 PM PDT
How do you apply? Send an email to john@crunchgear.com with a brief description of your gadget collection along with a sample post based on a recent tech news story. Extra points for good spelling, grammar, and the ability to place commas and periods in the correct order. Put “NYC INTERN” in the headline. See original here:
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| Brizzly: Faster, Better, More Open Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:22 PM PDT
Brizzly, the web-based Twitter client that was first unveiled at our Real-Time Stream Crunchup in July, continues to roll out the improvements. After allowing users to upload and host their own pictures on its servers a few weeks ago, last week saw them give the service a significant speed boost, which also brought stream auto-updating. Today, the service rolled out the ability to send invites to other friends. If you haven’t tried out Brizzly yet, you really need to. It’s a great way to use Twitter from the web thanks to its inline images and videos, new reply and message indicators, and most importantly, the ability to group the people you follow. You can also mute people in your main feed if they’re at a conference, or doing something for a set period of time that you really don’t care about. I’ve gushed previously about the grouping feature, but the auto-updating is really nice as well. Rather than having to reload the page each time to see if there are new tweets from the people you follow (as you must on Twitter), Brizzly will pull in news ones automatically every so often. Long time users of Twitter will remember that it used to automatically pull in new updates back in the day (the feature was killed off to reduce server strain). This is also standard on FriendFeed (though Brizzly is not working quite that fast yet). Brizzly also recently updated it own tutorial video to walk new users through some of the features. Find it below. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Original post:
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| Netflix to Come to the iPhone "Eventually" [Streaming] Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:20 PM PDT
When questioned by Reuters if Netflix was working on an iPhone-related partnership with Apple, Hastings responded:
At first, I looked at Hasting’s statement as a false if casual bravado regarding the simplicity of arranging a deal with Apple. But given that both Sling and Sirius XM have worked their way onto the platform, it’s reasonable to think that Netflix can make it, too. [Reuters via Digital Daily]
Original post:
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| AT&T’s 3G MicroCell gets unboxed, looks sufficiently cute Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:03 PM PDT
 It’s sort of outrageous how much publicity AT&T’s very own femtocell has garnered here lately, particularly when you realize that it’s limited to the Charlotte, North Carolina area alone. But look — did you really expect us to pass up what appears to be the very first unboxing of the 3G MicroCell? No, you didn’t. Hit the read link if you’re somehow not quite past the point of saturation, and be sure to have a peek past the break for an unexpected treat. [Thanks, Aaron] Continue reading AT&T’s 3G MicroCell gets unboxed, looks sufficiently cute Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless AT&T’s 3G MicroCell gets unboxed, looks sufficiently cute originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| World of Warcraft is back in China~! Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:00 PM PDT
Chinese gamers can once again feel the joy of buying an epic on the Auction House for 100G, then selling it for 300G to some sap. Yes, World of Warcraft is officially, 100 percent back in China. This is clearly huge news that’s totally worth your time of day. You’ll recall that WoW had been offline in China for quite some time, owing to a dispute between Blizzard, the local company handling the game’s operation, and the Chinese government. The game had to be censored to a degree, and then it was put into a beta, and then is came out. Oh, that’s where we are today—it’s out again. Kotaku says more than half of WoW’s players comes from China, so you can imagine that this must have been quite the headache for Blizzard to deal with. This is where I make the tenuous link between China, MMOs, and gold farming. Although I will say this: I am so damn sick of corpse spam in the game. It totally takes you out of the game, so to speak. I was going to do a "Please Kill the Corpse Spam, Blizzard" post, but then I’m like, "You idiot, you don’t think Blizzard’s already working on the problem? What good will your complaint do?" Anyway, WoW is back in China. Let us celebrate by having many brews at Brewfest, which is still my favorite in-game holiday. Here is the original:
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![87f1573a04016810.jpg Awesome R2 D2 Houses Eight Game Consoles and Projector [Star Wars]](http://www.focusoft.biz/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/55db563d20016810.jpg.jpg "Awesome R2 D2 Houses Eight Game Consoles and Projector [Star Wars]")
![Awesome R2 D2 Houses Eight Game Consoles and Projector [Star Wars]](http://www.focusoft.biz/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/226ac3e48deus.gif.gif?eui=2226 "Awesome R2 D2 Houses Eight Game Consoles and Projector [Star Wars]")
![e3836c4fc1iphone.jpg Netflix to Come to the iPhone "Eventually" [Streaming]](http://www.focusoft.biz/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/e3836c4fc1iphone.jpg.jpg "Netflix to Come to the iPhone \"Eventually\" [Streaming]")
I’m not sure it’s the most forceful statement ever uttered by a titan of industry, but Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings has expressed confidence that his service will make it to the iPhone—some day.
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