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Comment Re:Notion Ink Adam (Score 1) 396

by smartdreamer (#34818274) Attached to: When Should I Buy an Android Tablet?

I second that. Notion Ink is shipping its Adam [android tablet] right now (in pre order). It is a more mature offering of all talked Android tablets at CES. What I mean is that they started working on it long before the iPad was talked about. Unlike Motorola's Xoom or Samsung's Galaxy Tab they did not wait for Android Honeycomb. In fact, they created a set of stock applications made for tablets and built Eden: their home made GUI (truly innovative).

Here are some pros about Adam:

  • Power full computing capability. Tegra 2 processor (AMR A9 dual core processor + GeForce GPU + other)
  • Revolutionary display. It comes in two variants: normal LCD or PixelQi's transreflective technology with the ability to read in direct sun light and reduce battery life.
  • Swivel camera (3.2 MP auto-focus) which means front and rear facing camera!
  • Lots of standard ports: HDMI out and USB. Yes, you can output to your big HD screen and pulb a mouse and keyboard out of the box.
  • Storage extention: It supports microSD cards and USB external storage.
  • Wireless connectivity: Wifi N; 3G; Bluetooth.
  • Adobe flash works flawlessly.
  • Mega stereo speakers.
  • Mat antireflective finish.
  • Very long baterry life. Up to 16 hours with PixelQi model.
  • Eden's tablet designed UI.
  • 1 GB of RAM for a good multi tasking experience.

Here are some cons:

  • 8 GB of internal storage.
  • 3G wireless only.

Check their site at Notion Ink.com. Also make sure you take a look at their blog for a ton of details.

Note that they are a start up based in India. They are shipping in every country, but you won't have the same support as a big names.

Earth

Price Shocks May Be Coming For Helium Supply 362

Posted by kdawson from the squeaky-voice-price-inflation dept.
Ars has an update on the potential helium shortage we discussed a couple of years back. A Nobel laureate, Robert Richardson, argues for ending market distortions that are resulting in an artificially low price for helium, which is accelerating the projected exhaustion of the supply. "Richardson's solution is to rework the management of the Bush Dome [so named for reasons that have nothing to do with the politician] stockpile once again, this time with the aim of ensuring that helium's price rises to reflect its scarcity. In practical terms, he said that it would be better to deal with a 20-fold increase in price now than to deal with it increasing by a factor of thousands in a few decades when supply issues start to become critical. But he also made an emotional appeal, stating, 'One generation doesn't have the right to determine the availability forever.'"
Portables

DIY Pixel Qi Screens Available 60

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-it-fits-in-the-something-something dept.
16384 was one of a surprising number of DIY types to note that the Pixel Qi screen is out. It can be installed in many netbooks. Can't wait to see what people build with them. An excerpt from the press release says "MAKE and Pixel Qi announced today the availability of a revolutionary LCD display technology from Pixel Qi — the 3Qi display. This one-of-a-kind, plug-and-play 10.1-inch display offers two modes: an easy-to-read, real color, multi-media mode or a crisp, low-power e-reader mode. Indeed, the sunlight-ready e-reader mode makes it easy to use outdoors. The 3Qi display is on sale now at makershed.com."
Medicine

Three Ground-Breaking Miniature Biosensors 18

Posted by samzenpus from the hospital-pill dept.
kkleiner writes "Over the past few years, several research teams have developed increasingly smaller and cheaper biosensors with improved detection capabilities and faster turnaround times. Whether you are a doctor diagnosing patients in the rural areas of Africa or a Homeland Security agent working to thwart an act of bioterrorism, one of these little devices should be your sidekick."
GNU is Not Unix

New LLVM Debugger Subproject Already Faster Than GDB 174

Posted by timothy from the pop-will-eat-itself dept.
kthreadd writes "The LLVM project is now working on a debugger called LLDB that's already faster than GDB and could be a possible alternative in the future for C, C++, and Objective-C developers. With the ongoing success of Clang and other LLVM subprojects, are the days of GNU as the mainstream free and open development toolchain passé?" LLVM stands for Low Level Virtual Machine; Wikipedia as usual has a good explanation of the parent project.
Robotics

Underwater Robot Powered By Ocean's Thermal Energy 40

Posted by Soulskill from the maybe-skynet-evolves-from-the-seas dept.
separsons writes "A team of scientists recently created the world's first underwater robotic vehicle powered entirely by renewable ocean thermal energy. Researchers from NASA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the US Navy developed Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC), an autonomous robot that runs on a thermal recharging engine. The engine derives power from the natural temperature differences found at varying ocean depths. SOLO-TREC produces about 1.7 watts of power each dive, enough to juice the robot's science instruments, GPS receiver, communication device, and buoyancy control pump. SOLO-TREC is poised to revolutionize ocean monitoring; previous robots could spend only a limited amount of time underwater because of depleting power sources. SOLO-TREC can stay beneath the surface of the waves for indefinite amounts of time. Based on SOLO-TREC's success, NASA and the US Navy plan to incorporate thermal recharging engines in next-generation submersibles."
Science

Half-Male, Half-Female Fowl Explain Birds' Sex Determination 117

Posted by timothy from the fish-nor-fowl-except-fowl dept.
Kanan excerpts from a BBC report out of Scotland: "A study of sexually scrambled chickens suggests that sex in birds is determined in a radically different way from that in mammals. Researchers studied three chickens that appeared to be literally half-male and half-female, and found that nearly every cell in their bodies — from wattle to toe — has an inherent sex identity. This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones." Kanan also supplies this link to some pictures of the mixed-cell birds.
GUI

Code Bubbles — Rethinking the IDE's User Interface 198

Posted by timothy from the don't-get-distracted-now dept.
kang327 writes "As Java developers we are used to the familiar file-based user interface that is used by all of the major IDEs. A team at Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that makes a fairly radical departure from current IDEs — it is based on fragments instead of files. The idea is that you can see many different pieces of code at once. Fragments can form groups, have automatic layout assistance, wrap long lines based on syntax, and exist in a virtual workspace that you can pan. A video shows reading and editing code, opening different kinds of info such as Javadocs, bug reports and notes, annotating and sharing workspaces, and debugging with bubbles. They report on several user studies that show the system increases performance for the tasks studied, and also that professional developers were enthusiastic about using it. There is also a Beta that you can sign up for."
Power

Tiny ARM-Based Sensor System Makes Battery Replacement Obsolete 96

Posted by timothy from the transcend-batteries dept.
An anonymous reader writes "University of Michigan researchers have crammed an ARM Cortex microcontroller, a thin-film battery, and a solar cell into a package that is only 9 cubic millimeters in volume. The system is able to run perpetually by periodically recharging the on-board battery with a solar cell (neglecting physical wear-out of the system)."
Media (Apple)

Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open 1713

Posted by timothy from the will-care-when-it-runs-linux dept.
Reader oxide7 is one of the many to note that the heaviest speculation is mostly over (still waiting on the price, though) about Apple's anticipated new device (though there are surely plenty of questions about the device's hardware capabilities and the scope of its software and content marketplace): "At an event in San Francisco Apple released its anticipated iPad.'[It's] Way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal,' said Jobs." The (0.5") skinny: 1.5 lbs, multitouch, up to 64GB of flash, 9.7" screen, and a 1Ghz "Apple A4" chip (more about the A4 in Engadget's developing story). The iPad is closer in concept to an expanded iPhone (OS and all) than a miniaturized laptop, though it doesn't have quite as much connectivity as you might expect, with no 3G connection built in. (You'll have to make do with 802.11n, Bluetooth, and tethering.) Live coverage is ongoing at gdgt live, Engadget, and Gizmodo, as well as various others. Update by timothy, 19:58 GMT: Got the 3G part wrong; 3G is indeed an option. Prices run from $499 (16GB flash, WiFi but no 3G) to $829 (WiFi and 3G, 64GB flash). Should start shipping in 60 days (WiFi only), in 90 days for 3G. Surprsingly, no built-in camera.
Medicine

Prions Evolve Despite Having No DNA 214

Posted by kdawson from the wipe-that-foam-off-your-mouth dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that 'lifeless' organic substances with no genetic material — prions similar to those believed responsible for Mad Cow disease and similar, rare conditions in humans — are capable of evolving just like higher forms of life. The discovery could reshape the definition of life and have revolutionary impacts on how certain diseases are treated."

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