Microsoft inks Android patent deal with Velocity Micro — sound familiar?

Further proving that patent infringement claims are incentive enough to drum up licensing deals, yet another Android device maker has signed on the dotted line to pay up to Redmond. Following up on Monday’s licensing agreement with Itronix , Microsoft has just announced a deal with Velocity Micro, Inc., that will have the outfit feeding the software giant’s coffers. Of course, details are scarce here; in fact, all we really know is Velocity Micro will pay royalties in regards to its Android-based devices, including the Cruz Tablet . Looks like those talks are paying off. Full PR after the break. Continue reading Microsoft inks Android patent deal with Velocity Micro — sound familiar? Microsoft inks Android patent deal with Velocity Micro — sound familiar? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:08:00 EDT.

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Microsoft inks Android patent deal with Velocity Micro — sound familiar?

Panasonic Lumix GF3: sample photos and video

We already gave you some hands-on impressions of Panasonic’s new Lumix GF3, but we just had a chance to shoot video and stills with the Micro Four Thirds cam at an event in NYC, leaving with a couple hundred photos and a small handful of video clips. There’s no question that this GF2 successor was designed with interchangeable lens camera (ILC) newbies in mind, with no dedicated mode dial, a touchscreen display, and a boatload of auto settings, along with the usual spattering of effects modes. Panasonic chose a mock wedding scene as the centerpiece of its demo today, complete with bride, groom, and celebrity cake designer (a rather enthusiastic Ron Ben-Israel). Weddings mean colorful flowers, well-dressed subjects, and food — but also dim lighting and chaos — a perfect environment for showing off a camera’s strengths shooting in low-light, assuming it can actually deliver. The GF3 probably won’t be the camera of choice for our next celebration, however. Gallery: Panasonic GF3 Image Samples First up was a balcony shot with bride and groom. As expected, the backlit scene presented an incredible challenge for the GF3, which had trouble focusing and compensating exposure to properly light our subjects — even the professional wedding photographer on hand had difficulty focusing his GF3 at times

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Panasonic Lumix GF3: sample photos and video

Panasonic Lumix GF3: sample photos and video

We already gave you some hands-on impressions of Panasonic’s new Lumix GF3, but we just had a chance to shoot video and stills with the Micro Four Thirds cam at an event in NYC, leaving with a couple hundred photos and a small handful of video clips. There’s no question that this GF2 successor was designed with interchangeable lens camera (ILC) newbies in mind, with no dedicated mode dial, a touchscreen display, and a boatload of auto settings, along with the usual spattering of effects modes. Panasonic chose a mock wedding scene as the centerpiece of its demo today, complete with bride, groom, and celebrity cake designer (a rather enthusiastic Ron Ben-Israel). Weddings mean colorful flowers, well-dressed subjects, and food — but also dim lighting and chaos — a perfect environment for showing off a camera’s strengths shooting in low-light, assuming it can actually deliver. The GF3 probably won’t be the camera of choice for our next celebration, however. Gallery: Panasonic GF3 Image Samples First up was a balcony shot with bride and groom. As expected, the backlit scene presented an incredible challenge for the GF3, which had trouble focusing and compensating exposure to properly light our subjects — even the professional wedding photographer on hand had difficulty focusing his GF3 at times. The position-adjustable flash allowed us to light our subjects at an angle, or to bounce light off the ceiling, which didn’t seem to work well in the cavernous room.

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Panasonic Lumix GF3: sample photos and video

Samsung Galaxy S II gets official for Canada on Bell, Virgin Mobile and SaskTel

We’ve already had some indication of where and when the Galaxy S II would land in Canada, and three carriers have now finally made things fully official (even if they haven’t yet got completely specific). That includes Bell and Virgin Mobile — neither of which are confirming a price at the moment — plus regional carrier SaskTel, which plans to offer the phone for $79.99 on a three-year contract. SaskTel and Virgin Mobile both also say that the phone will be available in the coming weeks, while Bell isn’t offering much more than a chance to win the phone in a contest that ends July 19th — we’ve previously heard that the phone will be hitting Bell on July 14th . Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s looking like the phone will also alternatively be known as the “Galaxy S II” or “Galaxy S II 4G” depending on the carrier. Samsung Galaxy S II gets official for Canada on Bell, Virgin Mobile and SaskTel originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Add and Set Ringtones on your Android Smartphone

If you have recently purchased an Android smartphone, you may be wondering how you can add additional ringtones, alarms and notification sounds to the phone. To clarify the three types of tones that can be added: ringtones are used for incoming phone calls, alarms are used by the alarm clock application, and notification sounds are used by applications such as email and SMS for alerting you of incoming messages. The three types of tones are available on separate lists so you cannot, for example, assign a tone from the ringtone list to an alarm.

Other applications may choose to use one list or the other for their sounds depending on what is appropriate for that app. There was probably no documentation that came with your phone that explained how to add these tones to your phone, but it is an easy task to accomplish. Some of the methods described below only apply to ringtones, others apply to all three types. The simplest application solution for adding a new ringtone is to use Android’s built-in audio player.

This will allow you to set any song you have installed on your phone as the current ringtone. While you have the audio player application open, pressing on a song will result in a popup menu being displayed. That menu contains an option to assign the selected song as the phone’s ringtone. This will not only add the song to the ringtone list but will make the song the current ringtone at the same time.

A drawback to this approach is that the built-in audio player will not let you add a song to the alarm or notification sound list. There are also many ringtone applications which can be found on the Android Market by searching the market for “ringtone”. Most of these apps can be downloaded for a small fee. Some of the ringtone applications allow searching and selecting from large directories of commercial ringtones, while others only provide a single ringtone or a small related set of them. These applications vary in whether they will allow installation of just ringtones or all three types of tones. Be careful to read the description of the application as well as the comments to understand exactly what is provided and what the costs are. Another approach is that offered by the free Ringdroid application.

Ringdroid allows you to select any song that is on your phone and then choose exactly which portion of the song you wish to use as your ringtone. You can then save that portion of the song to any of the three lists of alarms, ringtones, or notification sounds. This is probably the most flexible solution for creating and saving tones if you already have the song you are starting with on your phone.

You may already have existing ringtones on your computer or have received some via an MMS message or email. It’s possible to turn these sound clips into ringtones, alarms, or notification sounds, although it takes a bit more manual work than the approaches discussed above. The first thing you will need to do is create the appropriate directories on your phone’s SD card. If you’ve used Ringdroid or one of the other ringtone applications then the directories may already exist, but if that’s not the case there are two ways to create them: either using your PC or through a file manager application on the phone itself. In order to create these directories with your PC, connect the phone to your PC with the USB cable.

You should be prompted on the phone to mount the SD card, which will then make it available as an external drive on the PC. Once you’ve done that, you can access that external drive as a folder on the PC. What you will see in this folder is the contents of your phone’s SD card. Now you want create the following folders on your phone’s SD card, just like you create folders on your PC.

These folders may already be present and if so, just click into them in order to verify that all of the folders needed are present. At the top level of the SD card, create a folder named “media” and click into it. Within the media folder, create a folder named “audio” and click into that. Finally, within the audio folder you will need to create three folders: “alarms”, “notifications”, and “ringtones”.

What you should wind up with are three folders: “media/audio/alarms”, “/media/audio/notifications” and “/media/audio/ringtones”. You can also create these directories on the phone itself using one of the file manager applications available for Android phones, such as Astro or Linda. There are many of these applications available, but any of the highly rated ones should have the capability of creating folders on the SD card and then moving files to them. Once you have created these three folders you can copy your existing tones, stored as either mp3 or ogg files, into them. As mentioned above, there are three different selection lists of tones available: ringtones, alarms, and notification sounds. The folder you choose to put a sound file into corresponds to which selection list the tone will show up on.

If you want the same tone to show up in more than one of these selection lists you will need to copy it to each of the appropriate folders. If you have these tones on your computer, you can drag and drop them to the appropriate one of these three folders while your phone is connected with the USB cable. If you have the tones attached to a MMS or email message now, it may be a little more complicated. For an MMS message, you can usually press on the message to get an option to save the attached audio file to the SD card. Then you’ll need to find the file and move it to the ringtone directory.

If you are using the default text message application, then the file will probably have been saved to the “download” directory on the SD card. Similarly, if your tone is in email, the email program on your phone may offer a way of saving the attachment to your SD card. If it doesn’t, then simply access the email on your PC and save the audio file to the appropriate directory on the SD card while the phone is attached to the PC with the USB cable.

With the techniques described above, you should be able to set any song or sound clip you’d like as a ringtone, alarm, or notification sound on your Android smart phone. One thing to be aware of is that if you’ve set a tone to a sound file that is stored on the phone’s SD card, that sound file is not available to be used by the phone while the card is mounted to your computer as external drive. In that case, you will most likely hear a default tone in its place. You will need to disconnect the phone from the PC before the tones on the SD card are available for use.

 

Yokohama EV sets new Pikes Peak Hill Climb record, leaves Leaf blowing in the wind

Remember the unmodified Nissan Leaf that dared to take on the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb? No, it didn’t win the electric vehicle class, but it did have the honor of playing second fiddle to a new paladin. By pairing the motor they used to set last year’s EV record with a new high-performance cooling system, Team Yokohama managed to shave nearly a minute off of their previous record-setting time, completing the course in 12 minutes and 20 seconds. The Leaf ? It leisurely drifted through the finish line at 14 minutes, 33 seconds. Not the quickest way to the top, but let’s be fair — if it’s a choice between being comfortable or being king of the hill, we’ll stretch our legs, thanks. Yokohama EV sets new Pikes Peak Hill Climb record, leaves Leaf blowing in the wind originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 01:21:00 EDT

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Yokohama EV sets new Pikes Peak Hill Climb record, leaves Leaf blowing in the wind

T-Mobile announces myTouch 4G Slide, aims to take smartphone photography to new heights

Well, we’d seen plenty of pictures of T-Mobile’s new myTouch 4G Slide over the past couple of weeks, and now it’s official. T-Mo officially pulled the wraps off its newest handset, and it’s packing a 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and a 3.7-inch WVGA Super LCD screen. As for software, the slick slider comes with some tasty Gingerbread slathered in Sense 3.0. There’s also an 8-megapixel shooter that does low-light photos with a wide-aperture lens capable of f2.2 — just like that new Nokia N9 that has us all hot and bothered. The camera also has burst mode for snapping rapid fire photos, takes HDR pictures, and does 1080p videos, too. It’s slated for a July release, so we won’t have to wait much longer until we can indulge our inner Ansel Adams. Such fantastic smartphone photography is all yours for $199.99 on a two year contract, and there’s a video of the phone and a smattering of other details in the PR after the break. Continue reading T-Mobile announces myTouch 4G Slide, aims to take smartphone photography to new heights T-Mobile announces myTouch 4G Slide, aims to take smartphone photography to new heights originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:34:00 EDT.

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T-Mobile announces myTouch 4G Slide, aims to take smartphone photography to new heights

Nevermind the Pi music, here’s what Tau sounds like (video)

There’s a heated debate going on in the exciting world of mathematics that pits notoriously irrational pi against relative newcomer tau. Wherever side of the fence your math club’s allegiance may lie, a quick listen to Michael Blake’s newest nerd composition could have your circle singing a different equation . Perhaps spurred by the copyright brouhaha that yanked his earlier musical extrapolation — What Pi Sounds Like — from the YouTubes, Blake set this interpretation of the controversial constant to 126 decimal places and let’er rip at 125.6 bpm. What follows is a not-unpleasant symphony that should have Bjork’s producers calling for a collaboration. Full video for the prog-rock nation after the break. Continue reading Nevermind the Pi music, here’s what Tau sounds like (video) Nevermind the Pi music, here’s what Tau sounds like (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:44:00 EDT.

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Nevermind the Pi music, here’s what Tau sounds like (video)

Sony’s ultraslim 13-inch VAIO Z laptop revealed in Europe, packs external GPU for power on demand

Turns out those leaked shots we saw of Sony’s new VAIO Z laptop were right on the money as the company showed it off officially today for the European press. The specs reveal a 13.1-inch “ultramobile” notebook that comes in at under 1.2kg with a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 1600×900 screen (the press release mentions an optional Full HD display) and sheet battery borrowed from the earlier VAIO S for up to 7 hours of computing. Onboard it features only Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 solution but the VAIO Z beats other ultralights with its Power Media Dock, which contributes the power of an AMD Radeon 6650M GPU with 1GB of dedicated memory connected via Light Peak when more polygons have to be pushed. The dock sports one USB 3.0 hookup plus additional USB, VGA and HDMI ports, and a slot for either a DVD or Blu-ray drive. There’s no word on price yet, but it is promised to ship by the end of July in Europe so if the full specs (included after the break) are appealing then you don’t have much time to save up. Gallery: Sony VAIO Z Continue reading Sony’s ultraslim 13-inch VAIO Z laptop revealed in Europe, packs external GPU for power on demand Sony’s ultraslim 13-inch VAIO Z laptop revealed in Europe, packs external GPU for power on demand originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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Sony’s ultraslim 13-inch VAIO Z laptop revealed in Europe, packs external GPU for power on demand

HP TouchPad veers into stores early, flaunts its webOS moves (video)

Dying to get your hands on HP’s TouchPad before it’s available on July 1st ? According to Pre Central , a visit to either Best Buy or Walmart may afford you the opportunity. During the past few days, the stores have apparently begun quietly displaying demo-loaded versions of the slate. The device went up for pre-order about a week ago, but for webOS hopefuls still contemplating whether to take the Palm-rooted plunge, a pre-release impression may not be a bad grab between socks and motor oil. Don’t feel like taking a trip to Wally World, you say? You’ll find a video overview past the break; although the box to the left has us wondering if now’s a good time for getting lucky … Continue reading HP TouchPad veers into stores early, flaunts its webOS moves (video) HP TouchPad veers into stores early, flaunts its webOS moves (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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HP TouchPad veers into stores early, flaunts its webOS moves (video)

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