Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Your 2 hourly digest for Engadget

Engadget
Engadget
AOL redesigns its Play music player app for the Kindle Fire, premium version is free tomorrow
Jul 24th 2012, 15:00

AOL redesigns its Play music app for the Kindle Fire

Well, looky here. Engadget's very own parent company AOL has released its Play music player app for Kindle Fire, and the interface here is actually considerably different from what you'd get on the straight Android version, available in Google Play. The product people behind the application say they re-tooled the design to match the Fire's 7-inch, 1,024 x 600 screen (and also, the tablet's heavily skinned UI, based on Android). Other than the facelift, there seems to be a good deal of overlap in functionality between this and the Google Play version: access to more than 55,000 Shoutcast radio stations and the ability to share favorite songs over Twitter and Facebook. Also like the main Android version, there's a so-called CD Listening Party feature that opens up free, complete albums, with selections changing weekly. (Naturally, you can also use the app to listen to your own MP3s stored locally on the device, but you probably gathered that.) Play will be available as a free, ad-supported app, though you can also get an advert-free version for 99 cents. Download tomorrow, though (that would be Wednesday, Eastern Standard Time), and you can get the premium one gratis.

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AOL redesigns its Play music player app for the Kindle Fire, premium version is free tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Redbox Instant enters alpha testing with help from Verizon
Jul 24th 2012, 14:39

Redbox Instant enters testing with help from Verizon

It's been a long, long road but Redbox's streaming movie service is finally crawling towards reality. In February the DVD vending company announced a partnership with Verizon that would finally usher the Walmart staple into the 21st century. According to Fast Company, Redbox Instant will enter an internal alpha today, beginning the process of ironing out the bugs and fine tuning the offering. Heading up the joint venture will be newly appointed CEO Shawn Strickland, who served as a VP in Verizon's FiOS division. Both physical discs and streaming media will be available as a single package, but execs have been quiet on pricing and structure of those subscription plans. Supposedly we'll be getting more details later today, but in the meantime you can simply go visit the fist-pumping landing page at the more coverage link and sign up for more info.

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Redbox Instant enters alpha testing with help from Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corning and Samsung plan LCD glass plant in China, may toughen up a few laptop screens
Jul 24th 2012, 14:15

Samsung Series 9 13-inch review head-on

Corning and Samsung were the best of friends well before even the Lotus Glass deal, but the relationship just got a little cozier. The two have agreed to build a plant in China's industry-heavy Wuxi New District focused on making glass to cover LCD panels in laptops and desktop displays. The roughly $600 million factory will be a major production hub for Samsung, not just an expansion: it's planning to stop some of its glass production in South Korea and send that work to the new facility when it opens. There won't even be signatures on the agreement until sometime later this year, so the plant itself is still a distant prospect -- but while the two haven't outlined their exact strategy, the new plant may be the ticket to toughening up that future Series 9 laptop with a touch of Gorilla Glass.

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Corning and Samsung plan LCD glass plant in China, may toughen up a few laptop screens originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nike+ Kinect Training arrives October 30th, looks to whip you into shape for $50
Jul 24th 2012, 14:07

Nike Kinect Training arrives October 30th, looks to whip you into shape for $50We caught a glimpse of that Nike+ Kinect Training had to offer back at E3. Now, we'll all be able to give it our best shot just before the holiday season. The Kinect exercise title for the Xbox 360 is set to hit shelves on October 30th and will carry a $49.99 price tag. Claiming to make us "athlete-fit", the software will offer constant tips on form and technique while monthly reports will display progress along the way. Still no word on companion apps for mobile platforms, but the kit is expected to play nice with Windows Phone devices at launch for session reminders and sharing achievements with training mates.

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Nike+ Kinect Training arrives October 30th, looks to whip you into shape for $50 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceMajor Nelson  | Email this | Comments

Amazon puts 50MB limit on 3G Kindle's 'free' experimental browser
Jul 24th 2012, 14:01

Amazon puts 50MB limit on 3G Kindle's 'free' experimental browser

Sad news for global freeloaders travellers looking to keep up with Gmail and Twitter on their Amazon e-reader. The online book seller has started closing in on excessive free web browsing, policing a 50MB data limit on its keyboard Kindle iterations. According to users on MobileRead, you'll still be able to browse Amazon's Kindle store and Wikipedia, but anything beyond that gets locked down. After some further investigation, it looks like Amazon added a provision outlining the data limits on its site, dated around July 1st. It stipulating that users "may be limited to 50MB of browsing over 3G per month." The data cap only applies to older Kindle versions, including the Kindle Keyboard and Kindle DX. If you've got Amazon's latest e-reader hardware, then you're not missing anything -- the free web browsing option was sidestepped on the likes of the Kindle Touch.

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Amazon puts 50MB limit on 3G Kindle's 'free' experimental browser originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scientists create first computer simulation of a complete organism
Jul 24th 2012, 13:41

Scientists create first computer simulation of a complete organismEveryone, meet Mycoplasma genitalium, the subject of many scientific papers, even more vists to the clinic and now the first organism to be entirely recreated in binary. Computer models are often used for simplicity, or when studying the real thing just ain't viable, but most look at an isolated process. Stanford researchers wanted to break with tradition and selected one of the simplest organisms around, M. genitalium, to be their test subject. They collated data from over 900 publications to account for everything going on inside the bacterial cell. But it wasn't just a case of running a model of each cellular process. They had to account for all the interactions that go on -- basically, a hell of a lot of math. The team managed to recreate cell division using the model, although a single pass took almost 10 hours with MATLAB software running on a 128-core Linux cluster. The representation was so accurate it predicted what M. genitalium looks like, just from the genetic data. And, despite the raft of research already conducted on the bacterium, the model revealed previously undiscovered inconsistencies in individual cell cycles. Such simulations could be used in the future to better understand the complicated biology of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. Looks like we're going to need more cores in that cluster. If you'd like to hear Stanford researcher Markus Covert's view on the work, we've embedded some footage beyond the fold.

Continue reading Scientists create first computer simulation of a complete organism

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Scientists create first computer simulation of a complete organism originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Droid RAZR HD raises hopes during its brief encounter with the FCC?
Jul 24th 2012, 13:22

Motorola Droid Razr HD

What do we know about Motorola's Droid RAZR HD? It's likely to arrive clad in a Kevlar body, run Ice Cream Sandwich and be quick off the blocks. Now we can possibly start looking forward to a release date for such a teasing device since it's been passed fit for human consumption by the boys at the FCC. The test documents revealed it's got CDMA and GSM radios, will slurp down Verizon's LTE and pack an NFC chip -- but alas, no hint of whether we should be waiting for a version with a bigger battery.

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Motorola Droid RAZR HD raises hopes during its brief encounter with the FCC? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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