Apple’s Grand Central Terminal store, largest in the world, opening this Black Friday

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  • November 21, 2011 at 3:09 am

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Apple's Grand Central Terminal store spy shot

It was back in July when Apple signed a ten-year lease for 23,000 square foot space in New York’s iconic Grand Central Terminal. Apple has since been meticulously renovating the space of Grand Central’s east balcony that will become the company’s largest store worldwide, a position currently held by the Covent Garden store in London.

Around 750,000 people pass through Grand Central daily and the number goes up to 1,000,000 during the holidays. Apple is now putting the final touches at the new retail location and the store should be open just in time for the holiday season, with the store opening on Black Friday or shortly after.
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Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 gives you SSD performance in a USB 3.0 flash drive

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  • November 19, 2011 at 8:27 am

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Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 flash drive 256GB

USB flash drives are loved as convenient forms of portable storage and loathed for their very slow speeds. Remember those spy flicks where you our lovely hero(ine) is risking capture while waiting for ages to transfer a bunch of state secrets on a USB stick. Well, Hollywood producers take note, a new kind of flash drive is in town.

Kingston, maker of all things memory, has unveiled the DataTraveler HyperX 3.0. It’s a USB 3.0 device and promises transfer speeds of up to 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write. These make it by far the fastest USB flash drive out there now. Speed is owed to an 8-channel architecture while the drive is also USB 2.0 backwards compatible but at much slower 30MB/s transfer speeds.

The HyperX brand had so far been reserved for the company’s enthusiast memory and more recently its SSD drive line. Kingston points out that USB 3.0 transfer speeds are good enough so that you can work on large files or launch applications directly from the drive. The drive also offers Windows ReadyBoost support to speed up Windows systems.
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When technology becomes culture and when making a lens becomes art

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  • November 18, 2011 at 2:18 pm

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Canon lens factory

We mostly don’t think of how the things we use daily are made. You buy a new gadget, take it out of the box and concentrate on what you can do with it, rather than its origins. We have this subconscious idea that things roll out of a nameless and faceless production line which is there for the sole purpose of feeding our voracious appetite for material goods.

Canon’s virtual lens plant is a series of videos demonstrating the entire painstaking process starting from the raw powdered optical lens material up to the construction of the Canon EF 500mm f/4.0L IS USM lens. It’s a testament to man’s achievement, that we continue to evolve. It’s technology and engineering that have become part of human culture, pushing our boundaries as humanity forward. We have evolved from making basic tools for survival to precision instruments such as these. After watching the full nineteen videos, I’m again reassured of humanity’s progress and technology’s role as an agent for progress.
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Sony resumes NEX-7 and Alpha A65 production, NEX-7 release date edging closer

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  • November 17, 2011 at 3:26 pm

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Sony NEX-7 front dramatic

We had reported about a month ago that Sony postponed the release of its NEX-7 high-end compact mirrorless camera as a result of the devastating flooding in Thailand. Production of the Alpha A65 together with some lens kits was also affected. Sony operates three plants in the country and has now moved production of the NEX and DSLT cameras from its affected Ayutthaya facility to a plant in Chonburi.

A spokesman from Sony USA has confirmed that production of the NEX-7 and the Alpha A65 has now resumed. The Sony NEX-7 was scheduled to be released this month, before it was postponed indefinitely. We are not sure yet when the official release will happen, but we hope that the high-end compact will arrive before the holidays. Note that the Sony Alpha A65 has already appeared at retailers but with limited availability.

The NEX-7 shares the same 24.3-megapixel APS-C sensor and the incredible 2359k dot OLED electronic viewfinder with Sony’s larger DSLT duo, the A77 and A65. You might want to check out our initial hands-on with the A65, for our impressions on the sensor and the OLED EVF.
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Xbox 360 successor and PS4 coming in 2012

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  • November 17, 2011 at 11:48 am

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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim concept art

Gaming magazine Edge just dropped a bomb. Some game developers have already abandoned work on the Xbox 360 and PS3 and are instead focusing on the next generation of game consoles from Microsoft and Sony, which should be released next year; just in time to take some of the joy away from Nintendo and its upcoming Wii U.

Some game developers are working with PCs based on the specifications for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 successor. The ‘target boxes’ include a custom AMD GPU which will find its way in Microsoft’s upcoming console. Ubisoft Montreal is one of the developers working on these target boxes. Developers should receive genuine devkits before Christmas and Edge is speculating that a finalized Xbox 360 successor should be released in late 2012.

Now on the PS side, it has been revealed that a Sony owned studio has shifted its focus to the successor of the PlayStation 3 and is involved in the development process for the graphics technology of the console.
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Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus arrive in the UK, first handset is a dud

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  • November 17, 2011 at 9:36 am

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus in box on UK launch

It’s the 17th of November and that means the official release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first device to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. As expected, the phone has launched in the UK first, unfortunately the release is not as far-reaching as we would have hoped, as Phones4U managed to get a few days of exclusivity. The Galaxy Nexus has been on sale from the UK retailer since 8am this morning, and you can grab one with a new contract or unlocked for £530. Phones4U has been celebrating the launch by offering, what else, ice cream sandwiches.

The Galaxy Nexus will be arriving directly from three UK mobile carriers, O2, Three and Vodafone, in the coming days. Those who would rather get their phone sim-free from an online retailer, should also be treated to some frozen dessert next week as well.

Just a reminder for anyone that hasn’t been paying attention, that the Galaxy Nexus has a 4.65-inch 720p Super AMOLED (PenTile) display, dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 5-megapixel rear and 1.3-megapixel front-facing cameras.
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HTC Rezound 2,750mAh extended battery, worth it if you can live with the thickness

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  • November 16, 2011 at 3:57 am

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HTC Rezound extended battery and back cover

We’ve covered all these before, you get a brand new shiny smartphone with a large gorgeous display, like the HTC Rezound’s 4.3-inch 1280×720 retina display, and of course you don’t want to put it down. You browse the net and your social networks, you play a quick game, and by mid-day you realize that the battery is down. You then have to choose between being tethered to a wall outlet all the time, stop using your device as much, or get an extended or external battery.

Marchello from Htcpedia chose the latter for his HTC Rezound, and we would too. The Rezound comes with a ridiculously small 1,620mAh battery for such a large device. Thankfully HTC offers a 2,750mAh extended battery, but that comes with two caveats. First, you have to shell out around $50 for the extended battery and second, it’s so large that the battery comes with an extended cover to accommodate the larger battery. The extended battery makes the Rezound quite thick, at around 3/4 of an inch, but also lets you go through a whole day of use without having to worry about recharging your phone.
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Pictures of Fujifilm’s new X-series LX interchangeable lens mirrorless camera leaked

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  • November 15, 2011 at 3:40 pm

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Fujifilm X-series MILC leaked picture - back

We’ve already heard directly from Fujifilm that the camera maker is preparing a new mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC) system under their popular X-series. It is going to be a premium camera system and we expected it to bear some similarities to the very popular X100.

Well a few pictures appeared on a Chinese website, Xitek, claiming to belong to above said Fujifilm MILC camera. There is very close resemblance to the X100, both in terms of design and button and dial layout, with dedicated exposure and shutter speed dials. The X100 design queues suggest this could be the real thing, though it might be an early prototype.
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CyanogenMod team promises CM9 in 2 months, could be getting you to eat Ice Cream Sandwich in the dead of winter

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:03 pm

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Cyanogen CM9 Android Ice Cream Sandwich tweet

You might know of the team over at CyanogenMod (CM), which creates and publishes for free its own streamlined Android ROMs for over 50 devices. As manufacturers and mobile carriers linger on old versions of Android, CM was the best way for many to update their devices to the latest Android version.

As promised Google made the source code of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich open yesterday. This means that developers can download the code and start tinkering.

Of course, the CyanogenMod team has followed suit and has announced via Twitter that we should be seeing an Ice Cream Sandwich infused CM9 in two months, more or less. This is great news, since most manufacturers will only start to officially update Android devices in the beginning of 2012, with attention placed on 2011 devices first, while some older devices might not be upgraded at all.
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Adobe Photoshop Touch and five other Touch Apps now available for Android

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  • November 15, 2011 at 5:03 am

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Adobe Touch Apps

Adobe has just released its Touch Apps suite for Android tablets, made of five creative apps each priced at $9.99 and available on the Android Market. There is an Android 3.1 Honeycomb or higher requirement, while Adobe points out that you’ll need at least a 8.9-inch 1280×800 tablet to get the most out the applications. As the name implies, they are all touch optimized applications, but also integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud. You can open Photoshop or other Adobe desktop application files saved in the cloud, work with them on your tablet and then save them back to the cloud to continue working on a desktop or other device.

King of the pack is of course Adobe Photoshop Touch. You can get your images from social networking sites such as Facebook, use locally saved images or snap live from your tablet’s camera. The app includes layer support, various adjustments and filters, and of course you can share your results back to Facebook.
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Fujifilm X10 unboxing video, not for the faint-hearted

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  • November 14, 2011 at 6:08 pm

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Fujifilm X10

We won’t hide the fact that the “Fuji Guys” are our favorite internet duo. Billy and Greg are two people who obviously love their job, and who wouldn’t when that would entail getting your hands on the latest Fujifilm shooters and demonstrating them for the world to see. After their last 16 minute video demonstration of the new Fujifilm X10 high-end point-and-shoot camera, the Canadian pair returns with a painstakingly detailed unboxing video of the X10.

If you enjoy lusting over every piece of kit that comes with the X10 and of course the camera itself, you’ll find the video right after the break. As a reminder, the X10 is not a simple run-of-the-mill compact camera. It offers tons of controls, a manual 4x optical zoom f2.0-2.8 Fujinon lens, optical viewfinder, image stabilization, built-in ND filter, magnesium alloy body and a sexy retro design. The X10 is already up for sale for $599.

The full 6 plus minute unboxing video is after the break.
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Siri security protocol cracked, could allow it to be accessed on any device

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  • November 14, 2011 at 4:33 pm

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Siri ported to the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch

Ever since Apple released Siri, its voice control app, as an iPhone 4S feature only, there have been endless attempts to get the lady working on other iOS 5 devices. We’ve already seen Siri running on an iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, and the main challenge so far had been to get Apple’s servers to respond to Siri’s requests from non iPhone 4S devices.

Well the developers over at Applidium have one-upped everyone by cracking Siri’s security protocol and getting access to its recognition engine from any device. What they did was setup a fake local Apple server and listen to all of the Siri generated commands from their iPhone 4S going to this fake server. What they found is that Siri sends a unique iPhone 4S identifier with every command, which is what gets the server to respond. If you have an iPhone 4S you could potentially use your phone’s unique identifier and get Apple’s server to respond to any device, even a Mac or Windows PC or an Android phone.

Developers could write their own applications, that would send requests to Apple’s Siri server and get back responses. Obviously there are two issues here, first you need to own an iPhone 4S and then you never know when Apple might catch-up with this method and issue a patch effectively nulling it. In any case, very smart going to the developers, who have also provided a host of info on their website.
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iTunes Match is finally here, access your music from the cloud in high quality, US only for now

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  • November 14, 2011 at 1:46 pm

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Apple iTunes Match

Although Apple missed its own end-October deadline for the release of iTunes Match, the $25 per year service is now available as a public beta for people living and breathing in the US.

The service basically uses iTunes to scan your music collection and gives you access to the same songs in high quality 256Kbps AAC on Apple’s servers. That is, unlike other cloud services, you don’t need to upload your files directly. It’s a neat idea since, it saves you the time and effort to upload files and gives you access to better quality rips, irrespective on the quality of your own files, accessible from all your iOS 5 devices. Of course if a file is not matched with one in Apple’s servers then it will be uploaded the old-fashioned way.

Because iTunes Match is in beta you get three free extra months on the annual subscription. Be warned that demand has been so high initially that Apple has suspended sign-ups temporarily. Those from other countries will have to wait unfortunately as Apple is still negotiating licensing deals outside the US.

To get started you need to download the latest version of iTunes (link after the break) 10.5.1 on your Mac or Windows PC. After installing, you can subscribe to the iTunes Match service from inside the iTunes Music Store — a link with iTunes Match will be highlighted on the right side of the main store page. After you sign-up and scanning and syncing is complete, on your iOS 5 device, go to ‘Settings’ > ‘Music’ and slide the iTunes Match switch to On.
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Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet gaming hands-on and pictures (video)

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  • November 12, 2011 at 9:22 am

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Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime hands-on

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime 10.1-inch Android tablet is coming in December and it’s coming in hot. It will be the first mobile device to run on the quad-core (or should we say penta-core) Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. The Tegra 3 promises both amazing performance, with three times higher graphics performance than the Tegra 2, and as we’ve seen in our initial coverage, it will also offer better battery life, since it features a fifth low-power core which takes over automatically to reduce energy consumption.

The Eee Pad Transformer Prime is set to debut for $499 in December, while a keyboard dock accessory will also be offered, essentially turning it into a ‘laptop’, hence the the transformer part. It will initially come with Android 3.2 Honeycomb but a promised Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update will soon be in the works.

A Brazilian blog, Ztop, managed to get its hands on the tablet and has posted some first pictures of the Transformer Prime, showing off its thinness against an iPhone 4 and a Droid RARZ and getting friendly with the keyboard dock. There is also a hands-on video showing the tablet’s gaming abilities running the game Shadowgun; you’ll find it all after the break.
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