Flexio solar powered FM radio doubles as bookmark

November 30th, 2009 by

Joseph L. Flatley

We don't really have much use for radio over the airwaves -- hell, the closest we ever get to the halcyon days of rock'n'roll radio is the Flaming Groovies station on Pandora. But something as convenient (and as cute) as this next item just might get us back in the habit. A proof-of-concept by a small handful of designers (Wu Kun-chia, Wang Shih-ju, Chen Ming-daw & Liou Chang-ho), Flexio is a a portable, printed, solar powered, paper-thin FM receiver that fits in a book -- or a pocketbook. Each radio is tuned to a specific frequency, so the design calls for boxed sets for different cities (for example, Taipei, Berlin, or Paris). Sure, it's probably not convenient to carry the whole box around with you, but you might want to hang onto KROQ in case you should ever find yourself wandering around LA late Sunday night/early Monday morning. Get a closer look after the break.

Continue reading Flexio solar powered FM radio doubles as bookmark

Flexio solar powered FM radio doubles as bookmark originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft actively urges IE 6 users to upgrade

November 30th, 2009 by

CNET News.com

A shopping video and eBay promotion are part of Microsoft's effort to give IE 6 users a reason to upgrade. The company also is trying to move corporate customers away.

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Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use

November 30th, 2009 by

Joshua Topolsky

Hey, it's just what you've always wanted: to use your Xbox 360 controller on your old NES. Using a Cortex M3 processor left over from a school robotics project, Francois Gervais managed to rig his wireless pad to control something decidedly less advanced than a game of Modern Warfare 2. There's a video of the controller in action after the break, and you can grab some of the code being used in the Google link below -- perhaps one of you brainiacs will finally hack the Wiimote to control a Jaguar. A tech writer can dream...

Continue reading Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use

Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hack A Day | source

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Nook ship date slips to January 11th, supply chain managers weep

November 30th, 2009 by

Darren Murph

Hardware construction is a funny thing. Sometimes, regardless of the money you throw at something, you just can't get products to come together any quicker. Evidently that's the case with Barnes & Noble's Nook, which has seen its estimated ship date slip from today to sometime after the holidays, and now to January 11th. There's still a sliver of hope that you'll be able to snag one from a high-traffic retail location on December 7th, but unless you're planning on abandoning ship and helping the Kindle have its new best month ever, the realistic choices are pretty clear: a) pay Tickle Me Elmo-like prices on eBay or b) drop an IOU in a nicely wrapped box, preferably with a cute puppy. We suggest the latter.

[Thanks, Dave and Wes]

P.S. - We're also hearing that pre-orders (even those placed moments after it was announced) are also being pushed back, though hopefully they'll still be received before December 25th.

Nook ship date slips to January 11th, supply chain managers weep originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Open source: No vow of poverty (or get-rich-quick scheme)

November 30th, 2009 by

CNET News.com

Open source is not a sure-fire way to get developers, income, or much of anything, but used right it can help to grow a proprietary software business. Go figure.

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Editorial: The Engadget style guide reaches a MILESTONE

November 30th, 2009 by

Nilay Patel

So last week the New York Times Magazine published a piece called "Against Camel Case" which argues that intercapped product names like iPhone and TiVo are "medieval," because they harken back to a time in which people mostly read aloud, slowly sounding out each word as they tried to understand them. Proper word spacing, says the Times, "eventually made possible phenomena like irony, pornography and freedom of conscience."

That's sort of a crazy coincidence -- while we're not so sure word spacing and porn have anything to do with each other, we did just re-do our style guide when we launched our jazzy new redesign, and we actually thought long and hard about how to handle intercapped, all-capped, and otherwise non-standard product names. This is something we deal with a hundred times a day, and we simply weren't going to let Motorola tell us to write MILESTONE over and over again, completely contradicting our own sense of style and taste -- as the Times says, "Writers of the world, fight back!" Well, we can't say no to that, so we thought we'd share our four newly-minted rules for writing out non-standard product names:

Product and company names that are regular English words shall be treated like proper English nouns, complete with proper capitalization. Example: DROID becomes Droid and nook becomes Nook.
Product and company names that are not regular English words shall be capitalized first as proper nouns, and then as the company treats them. Example: RAZR stays RAZR, but chumby would become Chumby.
Intercapped product and company names should generally be treated as the company treats them, unless it's egregious and / or looks weird. Example: iPhone stays iPhone, BlackBerry stays BlackBerry and TiVo stays TiVo, but ASUSTeK becomes Asustek. This rule is subject to many exceptions based on usage and history, and also functions as the "this is stupid" loophole.
Acronyms should obviously be in all-caps.

We think these rules are flexible to handle most situations, although there are some edge cases and blatant Rule 3 violations out there. Still, it's a start -- unlike the Times, we're pretty sure "iPhone" and "MasterCard" are here to stay, but we feel like our rules are a small step towards making our site clearer and more readable. Either that, or we're just crazy in the head.

Editorial: The Engadget style guide reaches a MILESTONE originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gizmodo | source

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