Archive for December, 2007
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Poll: Have you been affected by the Xbox Live outages?
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Gaming
Of all the weeks to have a major outage of your online gaming service, the holiday and vacation weeks of Christmas and New Years may have to be the worst — which Microsoft has learned all to well over the last ten days. We know you’ve heard plenty about it here at Engadget — but that’s really only because Xbox Live has had such a solid track record over the years, and we’re all just as surprised as you. But while it’s perfectly clear users have been seeing these issues, it’s still unclear exactly how “intermittent” those issues really are. Care to let us know how you’ve fared in our wholly unscientific poll?
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Broadcom wins major injunction against Qualcomm
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
In the latest major twist in this epic battle between wireless chipmakers, a US District Judge has slapped a permanent injunction on any products containing those Qualcomm 3G chips ruled to be infringing on Broadcom’s so-called ‘686 patents. Not only can Qualcomm no longer offer infringing devices nor the chips themselves in the US, the retroactive nature of the ruling means that the company can’t even provide service or technical support for ‘686 products already on the market. At this point, with a voluntary licensing agreement seemingly off the table, the next move for Qualcomm is establishing a plan of action to show Judge James Selna how it plans to redesign its products into compliance. [Warning: PDF link]
[Via Reuters]
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OLPC sells 150,000 laptops to public, may do Give1 Get 1 next year
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Laptops
Shockingly enough, Laptop magazine — of all magazines in print today — wanted remind everybody that tonight’s the last night your hard earned (and increasingly devalued) American currency can be exchanged for an OLPC. But they also got a few words out of NickNeg as to how many OLPC units sold in the decidedly successful Give 1 Get 1 program (150,000+, not counting big buyers like Birmingham, Alabama), and why not continue the program indefinitely (”We are a charity and not a business. If we continued it, it would become ’sales’ versus a charitable promotion.”) While we kind of take umbrage with that attitude — isn’t it better, after all, to seed as many machines to underprivileged children as possible under any circumstances you can? — we’re hopeful at least that the gang at OLPC will bring back the G1G1 program next year with their v2 hardware. Hopefully by then some sovereign nations will have actually bought some OLPCs of their own.
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ARCwelder gives root / binary executable to Archos 605 and 705 players
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Ah, how we do love a good root-hacking resulting in the ability to run homebrew code. And being that we also have a soft spot in our heart for Archos’s 605 and 705 series players, ARCwelder ought to do our kind and yours quite nicely. If yours is running firmware 1.7.13, check it out, it should get you root access to the device’s Linux shell, enabling you to do all kinds of fun things, like develop and run your own apps, or see how long it’ll take to break the DRM on downloaded media. Did we say that?
[Thanks, Justin and Nathan]
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Xbox Live: still up and down ten days later
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Gaming
It’s been ten days since we started tracking The Great Xbox Live Outage of Late 2007 — ten days that the team at Microsoft has spent working 24/7, apparently unable to quash the issues affecting untold thousands (or millions) of users. Things were supposedly looking better until earlier today when they apparently got worse again, resulting in Xbox Live’s service status box making a decisive turn towards the apology side of the spectrum. Granted, the whole thing may seem a little gratuitous at this point, especially considering that the issues are still tagged as intermittent — but at least our informal polling at Engadget HQ has improved, with some of us even able to get on and play a game (slow and sticky though it may be).
We suggest everyone get a little extra drunk tonight on behalf of all those at the Xbox NOC who will be ringing in the new year sitting at terminals so we can have our precious Live service back.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Dell Latitude XT goes tablet to tablet with Lenovo’s X61T
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs
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Canon said to be developing own tech for SED TV production
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
After being hampered by habitual delays both legal and technical, it looks like the long-awaited über-tech of the display world may finally be on the cusp of reaching market, as Canon is reportedly developing a way to build surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) TVs without using contentious IP. Specifically, Japanese newspaper Asahi is reporting — without citing sources — that Canon is working on a “non-carbon” method of producing the sets that bypasses the Nano-Proprietary patents at the heart of that lawsuit. Still no hint on when we’ll actually be able to install one of these models in our home theater, but the promise of unrivaled black levels, brightness, and contrast could well have us drinking the SED Kool-Aid for years to come.
[Via Bloomberg, thanks Dr. MORO]
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Alpine announces iDA-X200 and X300 iPod-friendly headunits for 2008
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Portable Audio, Transportation
Alpine’s cutting straight to the chase with its new iDA-X200 and iDA-X300 headunits. Forgoing a CD mechanism entirely, the two systems are designed primarily for use with an iPod, though they do pack a few extra goodies. The X200 works with Alpine’s Sound Imprint system for some fancy DSP, while the X300 has USB input for pulling media off of non-iPod sources. No word on price or availability.
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HAI brings home automation control to your smartphone
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Cellphones
[Via CE Pro]
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Sprint halts sales of LG Rumor?
Monday, December 31st, 2007Filed under: Cellphones
We’re not planning on seeing any sort of confirmation from Sprint on this, but word on the street has it that the carrier has actually halted shipments of the LG Rumor to its retail outlets. Apparently, the handset has a “known issue where certain sets of key presses during startup can trigger a complete erasure of the phone’s firmware.” Purportedly, the device cannot be restored once triggered save for at the factory, but LG is hard at work creating an updated firmware that “removes the code from being accessible.” Once that’s completed and approved, existing users can expect an over-the-air download to be made available, and users to-be can expect the mobiles to start showing back up with the update already loaded on.
[Via PhoneScoop]
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