Monday, April 30, 2012

The USAF's Ultimate Flight Simulator Had Two Cockpits and Actually Flew [Monster Machines]

Before spending the cash on expensive, full-size aircraft prototypes, US Air Force engineers needed a way to ensure that their experimental designs actually, well, worked. Their solution—an airborne flight simulator mounted on the front of a transport plane. More »


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Inhabitat's Week in Green: biophotovoltaic table, giant rubber ducky and cushions of shredded cash

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

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Buon giorno! Milan Design Week 2012 is in the rear-view mirror now, but we're still sifting through the incredible furniture, lighting and technology that was showcased all throughout the city this year. Inhabitat sent a couple of correspondents to report on everything that was on display, and they didn't disappoint. We featured a nifty biophotovoltaic table that uses moss to generate electricity through photosynthesis. We also caught wind of a digital camera that IKEA unveiled in Milan that's made of cardboard. And given our love for terrariums, we were pretty excited to find this pendant lamp that doubles as a vegetable garden at this year's fair. But the star of the Milan show this year had to be British designer Tom Dixon, who rolled out countless innovative lamp designs, including the gorgeous Etch Light, which casts geometric shadows all over the room -- and he even invited visitors to design their own flat-pack lamps!

Continue reading Inhabitat's Week in Green: biophotovoltaic table, giant rubber ducky and cushions of shredded cash

Inhabitat's Week in Green: biophotovoltaic table, giant rubber ducky and cushions of shredded cash originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday Evening Dog Blogging: Reader Dogs (Theagitator)

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Vimeo: Venice in a Day (Little green footballs)

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Sunday Links (Theagitator)

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Sunday, April 29, 2012

From the Editor's Desk: London calling, inside man and Nexus done right

From the Editor's Desk

It's another working weekend. Time for some quick hits:

  • If I wasn't over the Samsung Galaxy S3 fakes, leaks and fake leaks, I certainly am now. Alex and I will be at the event on Thursday. I can wait till then.
  • Speaking of heading overseas, I used MaxRoam in Barcelona this year and am using it again this week in the UK. 500MB for $13? (Which is more than even I can use in two days.) Sold.
  • And that's just the start of the travel. Coming up next week we've got the CTIA conference in New Orleans.
  • If you haven't seen Jean-Baptist Queru's latest Q&A on updates to Ice Cream Sandwich and how Sony's gotten updates out the door in about 5 months. That's due in no small part, JBQ says, to the amount of code that Sony's contributed back to the Android Open Source Project. Remember the early days of Sony Ericsson and the Xperia X10, which launched in the age of Eclair with Android 1.6 Donut, and finally got updated a year later. Things certainly have changed.
  • Something that hasn't changed? Carrier approval times. JBQ rightly points out that carriers often are the bottleneck in getting updates released, which does seem a little insane in the Nexus world. But neither is it new. If the carrier's selling the phone, it's going to go through (I'd assume) the same rigorous (read: slow) testing process as any other phone. Verizon's been, shall we say, fastidious, long before Android even existed. It's funny to see blogs set their hair on fire over this one.
  • I hesitate to even write about these sorts of Q&As. They're a rare glimpse into the inside workings of things and are best read in their entirety, straight from the source. It pains me to see blogs pick and choose the juicy parts for publication. ("OMG Verizon is sooooooo slow." Thanks for that insight.) It's pretty rare that we get a relatively unfiltered and unfettered look at how things work, with actual opinion from the folks who make the donuts instead of PR-speak and lawyered releases, and even more incredible that folks like JBQ stick around to answer questions. Let's not spoil it and waste the opportunity.
  • I'm pretty excited about Google once again selling devices. I'm still curious as to how it's going to handle the problems it ran into the first time — namely customer service, though it does have a dedicated page for orders and returns questions. But this is the way Nexus devices were meant to be sold and maintained (meaning updated). Forget the carrier. (And, yes. That means CDMA gets shut out again. Them's the breaks.) And if you didn't notice, note how Google's calling it a "Devices" store and not a "Phone" store. If that's not a flashing neon sign that tablets are coming, I don't know what is. (And I'm willing to bet it's going to go beyond tablets, as well.) The important part is that I should once again be able to say "You want updates the day they're pushed? Get a Nexus." — and do so without looking like an idiot.
  • The site redesign is coming along well. (Major props to our designers and coders, whose work you enjoy every day but whose names you never get to see.) We're still tweaking things, and as I've said before, this is only the beginning. If you've got feedback, leave it here.

TTFN. We'll see you from London this week, and NOLA the next.



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(Founder Stories) Send The Trend?s Gugnani & Chris Dixon Discuss M&A

(Founder Stories) Send Trend Episode 2.mp4In episode II of Divya Gugnani's Founder Stories interview with host Chris Dixon, the two dive into M&A, a topic that both founders know well. Dixon's company Hunch, was recently acquired by eBay and Gugnani's company, Send The Trend was recently acquired by QVC. On being acquired, Gugnani tells Dixon that she was approached much earlier than she had anticipated and it was a "really intimidating and scary" experience. She adds, "there were really two directions; do I go down this route and potentially distract myself from the base business that is growing ... or do I just keep focusing on my business and have that kind of bravado that you know what, it is going to be worth so much more later?"

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HTC One X case: Clear hard shell gets some forum love

HTC One X Case

We know, we know. You folks are chomping at the bit -- especially here in the U.S. -- to get your hands on an HTC One X. (We've still got a couple weeks before it drops on AT&T here.) But for the moment, let's talk about the HTC One X case.

HTC One X CaseWe've already given you a little preview of HTC's own slim case. (Actually, that's us calling it a "slim case." HTC didn't even have a name for it yet when we saw it last week.) It's a really thin plastic deal that snaps onto the phone, offering some pretty basic protection. We've seen two versions -- one with a series of circles, and another that kind of looks like window blinds. The idea was that HTC didn't want to break up the underlying look and feel of the device. But while the cases certainly are slim (and they do fit very nicely), the designs are a bit on the extreme side. We'll just have to see how popular they are when they're finally made available. (And, no, we don't know when that will be.)

And we've done a full-blown review of the HTC One X Hard Shell Case with a flip stand.

But now we're getting another look at a new case -- and one that definitely lets the design of the phone shine through. Chrisjcks has posted a series of pics in our HTC One X forums showing the phone in the official HTC clear hard shell case. No crazy designs this time, just some pretty basic protection that still lets the polycarbonate shell of the phone show through.  One piece of bad news is that it looks like the charging contacts are covered, which means you'll need to remove the case to use the phone in one of HTC's docks. (The crazy-designed cases we played with last week will actually work with the docks -- no removal required.)

Check out more pics and full rundown in our HTC One X forums!



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London Olympics Will Have World's Largest McDonald's Fast-Food Restaurant [Olympics]

The London 2012 Olympics, athletic event to top all athletic events, will be honored with the installment of the largest McDonald's fast-food restaurant on Earth. Seems a little ironic, no? [Eater via FoodBeast - Images via McDonald's / Flickr]
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