Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Your 2 hourly digest for Engadget

Engadget
Engadget
Acer Iconia Tab A510 now available, 10.1 inches of Olympian ICS and Tegra 3 for $450
Apr 18th 2012, 00:19

Ah, Acer's Olympics-themed Iconia Tab A510. If you'll recall, after months of staying quiet about its A500 successor -- which was already viewable in public -- Acer finally made the 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) slate official when it went up for pre-order last month. Fast forward to today, and the company's US website is now listing the tablet as in-stock and ready to ship. Notably, the A510 is Acer's first tab loaded with NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 SoC and Android Ice Cream Sandwich (slightly modified) -- a duo of delicacies seldom found together in tablets up for grabs as of late. To refresh your memory, its $450 price tag also gets you 32GB of storage with 1GB of RAM, your choice of a white or black bezel and other goodies, including a 1-megapixel front-facing camera and an auto-focusing 5-megapixel shooter on back. Not too shabby for device that can reportedly handle 12 hours of video playback. Sweet tooth tingling? Hit up the source link below for all the details.

[Thanks, Daryl]

Acer Iconia Tab A510 now available, 10.1 inches of Olympian ICS and Tegra 3 for $450 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAcer  | Email this | Comments

Researchers out faux product review groups with a lot of math and some help from Google
Apr 17th 2012, 23:49

Google sponsors research that outs faux product review groups, calculates 'spamicity' and more

Ever consulted a crowdsourced review for a product or service before committing your hard-earned funds to the cause? Have you wondered how legit the opinions you read really are? Well, it seems that help is on the way to uncover paid opinion spamming and KIRF reviews. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have released detailed calculations in the report Spotting Fake Reviewer Groups in Consumer Reviews -- an effort aided by a Google Faculty Research Award. Exactly how does this work, you ask? Using the GSRank (Group Spam Rank) algorithm, behaviors of both individuals and a group as a whole are used to gather data on the suspected spammers.

Factors such as content similarity, reviewing products early (to be most effective), ratio of the group size to total reviewers and the number of products the group has been in cahoots on are a few bits of data that go into the analysis. The report states, "Experimental results showed that GSRank significantly outperformed the state-of-the-art supervised classification, regression, and learning to rank algorithms." Here's to hoping this research gets wrapped into a nice software application, but for now, review mods may want to brush up on their advanced math skills. If you're the curious about the full explanation, hit the source link for the full-text PDF.

Researchers out faux product review groups with a lot of math and some help from Google originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Verge  |  sourceUniversity of Illinois at Chicago (PDF)  | Email this | Comments

Windows Phone 8 (Apollo) reportedly coming to 'all' WP smartphones
Apr 17th 2012, 23:17

nokia windows phone

We've heard it rumored, but this is as close to an official confirmation as we've seen. Windows Phone 8, affectionately known as Apollo 'round these parts, will reportedly be available on every single Windows Phone device to ever ship. Let that sink in a second. Now that you've been appropriately wowed, we'll point you to the video just after the break, which shows a Microsoft spokesperson affirming that "all" devices -- including those first-generation handsets from LG and Samsung -- will be included in the WP8 rollout. No details regarding timing were revealed -- and it remains to be seen if this will prove true in the States, where carriers have just as much say on updates as the OEMs -- but you can consider us cautiously optimistic in the meantime.

Continue reading Windows Phone 8 (Apollo) reportedly coming to 'all' WP smartphones

Windows Phone 8 (Apollo) reportedly coming to 'all' WP smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Next Web  |  sourceWMPoweruser  | Email this | Comments

Another reason to buy gold: nanoparticles help to kill brain tumors
Apr 17th 2012, 22:56

Another reason to buy gold: nanoparticles help to kill brain tumors

Stanford scientists have used lab-made gold nanoparticles to highlight malignant tissue in the brain, making it easier for surgeons to cut out tumors while leaving healthy bits in tact. Measuring just five millionths of an inch in diameter, these tiny glistening orbs are injected into the patient and then left to bleed out through leaky blood vessels in parts of the brain that have been damaged by the disease. They then get stuck in the bad tissue itself, marking it out for the scalpel when viewed with the right type of imaging. It's not totally new -- we've actually seen gold nanotech deployed against the Big C in stem cells before, but better to be useful than avant-garde.

[Brain image via Shutterstock]

Another reason to buy gold: nanoparticles help to kill brain tumors originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Daily Tech  |  sourceScience Daily  | Email this | Comments

Facebook places 'Listen' button on artist pages, now takes you to your go-to streaming app instantly
Apr 17th 2012, 22:33

Facebook places 'Listen' button on artist pages, now takes you to your go-to streaming app instantly

If navigating away from a musician's timeline on Facebook to get a quick listen isn't your favorite activity, you're in luck. The folks in Palo Alto dropped a "Listen" button on artist pages today, giving you access to popular tracks instantly. Situated right beside the ever important "Like" button, the new feature first asks if you'd like to open your favorite music-streaming app -- either Spotify, MOG or Rdio. If you've yet to link a service to FB, it'll ask which you'd prefer to use. Once prompted in Spotify, for example, the app heads to the band's library and begins playing selections from the Top Hits category. The "Listen" button then becomes a play / pause control and clicking one on another artist's page makes the change in the app in a flash. To grab a look at the new control in action, head to your band of choice to give it a try.

Facebook places 'Listen' button on artist pages, now takes you to your go-to streaming app instantly originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechCrunch  |   | Email this | Comments

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