| China Unicom says partnering with Apple was a good thing, we feign surprise Mar 23rd 2012, 13:41 China Unicom saw a 14 percent bump in profits for 2011, with company execs attributing much of that gain to its exclusivity deal on the iPhone. Despite the increased income, China's second largest network still fell short of analyst estimates, with much of the blame being pinned on the carrier's need to increase capital spending. New customers means network expansion and more handset subsidies, and the firm's augmenting its spending by 30 percent to 100 billion Yuan (about $16 billion) to keep up. This extra expense caused stock in the network to cool a little, falling 3.1 percent after the announcement. Not so good news then, considering what's around the corner. China Unicom says partnering with Apple was a good thing, we feign surprise originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  AppleInsider |  Bloomberg | Email this | Comments | | Distro Issue 33 takes on Apple's new iPad -- Now in HD! Mar 23rd 2012, 13:15 Late last week, Apple unleashed its new iPad on the world, and in this issue of Distro we'll let our review of the hi-res tablet loose on you. While the iPad may be out in front in terms of sales today, our Weekly Stat shows that the army of Android competitors may surpass it by 2016. We'll give one of those soldiers, the Acer Iconia Tab A200, the review treatment in this issue, as well as Wacom's latest tablet of another sort, the Intuos5 Touch, and Samsung's rugged handset, the Rugby Smart. Also on offer in our 33rd edition are a host of regular exclusives: Recommended Reading, Switched On, a Q&A with Tekzilla's Patrick Norton and the comic stylings of Box Brown. So grab the tablet of your choosing and hit the appropriate download link below, but make sure to update your app if you're sporting Apple's latest slate -- we've optimized Distro for high-res viewing. Distro Issue 33 PDFDistro on the iTunes App StoreDistro in the Play StoreDistro APK (for sideloading)Like Distro on FacebookFollow Distro on TwitterDistro Issue 33 takes on Apple's new iPad -- Now in HD! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | iTunes, Play Store | Email this | Comments | | What if trees could be used as batteries? Mar 23rd 2012, 12:43  Yes, our bark-skinned friends are nice and beautiful and we shouldn't mess with them too much. But here's the thing: we already chop them down for paper, so why not use their spare woody meat for batteries too? Like previous attempts at organic energy storage, it all hinges on mimicking photosynthesis. Up to the a third of the biomass of a tree is a pulpy substance called lignin, which is a by-product from paper production and which contains electro-chemically active molecules called quinones. With a bit of processing, Professor Olle Inganäs at Linköping University in Sweden reckons he can turn lignin into a thin film that can be used as cathode in a battery, and he believes it's efficient enough to start industrial-style development of the technology. "Nature solved the problem long ago", he says, and "[Lignin is] a source that never ends". Meanwhile, if you imagine Inganäs as having a long white beard and cloak, then, er, snap. What if trees could be used as batteries? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 08:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink PhysOrg | Science | Email this | Comments | | Carpathia wants to delete orphaned Megaupload data, pay the bills Mar 23rd 2012, 12:11 The Federal shut down of Megaupload did more than jail its founders, scare its competitors and worry its users -- it also left Carpathia Hosting footing a $9,000 a day bill. The outfit previously agreed to preserve Megaupload's frozen data, but now that the service's unpaid bills are piling up, it's ready to change its tune. In a emergency motion filed with the U.S. Federal Court in Virginia, Carpathia asked the court to either take the data off its hands, pay it for retaining the data or else allow it to delete the data altogether after allowing users to reclaim their files. The hosting service won't take action on its own, it says, as that might "risk a claim by a party with an interest in the data," such as the Motion Picture Association of America. With any luck, the matter will be settled in a court hearing next month. If not? Well, we'll just take it as a lesson: back up locally, you never know when your files might get wrapped up in the legal system. Carpathia wants to delete orphaned Megaupload data, pay the bills originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 08:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Huffington Post | Email this | Comments | |
