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Filed under: Laptops

It’s been forever and a day since we heard from Dospara, but as it typically does, it’s just hanging around and waiting to see what catches on before it dives in. Case in point: here we have the Prime Note Cartina UM, an 8.9-inch netbook that’s hitting alongside the second and third iteration of everyone else’s. You could likely guess the specifications in your sleep, but we’ll humor you anyway; we’ve got a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 120GB hard drive, a 1,024 x 600 panel, 802.11b/g WiFi, a battery good for two hours and a mysterious Linux build pre-installed. You won’t find an optical drive bundled in, but you will find a ¥39,980 ($413) price tag should you venture over to Japan.

[Via Liliputing]

Dospara doles out Atom-powered Prime Note Cartina UM netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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14th November 2008: XT Software has released a new beta version of energyXT2 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Changes: Multi-track export didn’t remove empty tracks, now fixed. New version of jack.cpp for Linux upload…

Yes, the netbook market is tired and pretty jam-packed, but check out this shiny beast: it’s a mini-netbook from Korean manufacturer UMID. And it’s tiny. There’s no official size info, but it looks smaller than a paperback book, and comparable to the old Psion PDAs, if you remember ‘em, but far more capable.

It’s Atom-powered, of course, with 1GB memory and up to 32GB of SSD storage, and crazily jams in Korean wireless broadband WiBro, digital TV receivers, HSDPA, WiMAX, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Its touchscreen is a respectable 1024×600 pixels, and while the keyboard may challenge the fat-fingered, the machine can run XP, Vista or Linux. Skinny-fingered netbook fans will have to hold their horses though as there’s no info on price or whether it’ll make it over the Pacific. [Aving]

VMware, which consumers know mostly for their Fusion desktop virtualization software, is moving into the mobile space, albeit surreptitiously. The company has announced VMware MVP, a thin layer of software that will interface between handsets’ hardware and operating system, allowing for a standardized development platform across any handsets that include it. What does this mean for regular consumers? For now, not much. If the tech finds enough support for hardware vendors, though, the consequences could be major.

For developers, having this VMware abstraction layer is pretty attractive from the start. If the layer is installed in, say, Blackberry, HTC and Motorola smartphones, then the developer will only have to write the software to run on the virtual machine’s universal simulated hardware, rather than each phone’s different hardware. VMware is promoting this capability as sort of a Java VM on steroids, which — with wide enough deployment and high enough efficiency — could mean an end to platform-specific apps. But that’s not the most exciting part.

VMware’s European product director told ZDNet that MVP could “make it possible for various mobile operating systems, such as Symbian, varieties of Linux and Windows Mobile, to ‘co-exist on the handset as well’.” In other words, due to the low-level nature of the solution, a VMware MVP-equipped handset could not just run platform-agnostic programs, it could run entirely different OSes in parallel. Whether anybody will take the time to make that happen remains to be seen, but just the possibility that new hardware could support pretty much any mobile OS is pretty exciting. [ZDNet]

When the DSi specs were first revealed in front of the Nintendo money vault this past October, we noticed the battery life of the DS line went from “pretty awesome” to “WTF?” The brighter, larger screens were initially blamed for the 1-6 hour drop, but a field stripped DSi we discovered today hints the drain might be due to a beefier processor and speakers housed within.

The beefing up arrives, apparently, because of Nintendo’s multimedia plans concerning the portable—mainly the new sound, video and photo manipulation features.

“The markings on the CPU package yield no clues about its performance, but my guess is that any ARM9 or ARM11 CPU manufactured in 2007 would have a performance around the 266-533 MHz range,” Bunnie says, adding that Linux could have a field day playing around on this system. Hackers, get going! [Bunnie's Blog via MAKE]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

The philosophy goes something like this: the great thing about Linux is that it’s secure, and the great thing about open-source software is that it’s thoroughly and constantly vetted for robustness. So to that end, Android should be pretty rock solid, right? Perhaps, but the overwhelming enormity of this particular bug definitely gives us pause. It turns out that G1 firmware revisions RC29 and earlier literally interpret everything you type as command-line operations, so if you happen across a legit command, it’s going to get executed — with superuser permissions, no less. No, seriously. Just go to the messaging app, the browser, or anywhere else a text box is convenient, type “reboot,” press the enter key, and watch magic happen. We’ve tested this on two G1s, both with RC29 firmware, and have gotten this to consistently work on one of the two, so your mileage may vary — but either way, this needed to get patched on the double. Fortunately, Google’s been quick about it, rolling a fix into the RC30 build that’s being rapidly pushed to users as we speak, but man… how did that get through?

Epic Android bug interprets your typing as system commands originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just last week, Time announced what they considered the 50 most important technological breakthroughs of 2008. Not to be outdone, today Popular Science has named their 100 “Best of What’s New.” Unlike Time, PopSci has categorized their awards into achievements in Automotive, Aviation & Space, Computing, Engineering, Gadgets (of course!), Green Tech, Home Entertainment, Home Tech, Health, Recreation and Security. But you’ve had enough of a tease; you just want to see the winners:

Automotive

• 2009 Nissan GT-R
• BMW MyInfo
• Carnegie Mellon’s Boss
• BMW 7 Series Sign Reading Camera
• Audi Harmonic Drive Steering
• Lexus LX570 Wide-View Cameras
• Infiniti EX-35 Self-Healing Paint
• Ford Eco-Boost Engine
• Honda FCX Clarity
• Mercedes SL63 Speedshift
• Ford Capless Fuel Filler

Aviation & Space

• Mars Phoenix Lander
• White Knight II
• GeoEye-1 Satellite
• Kizuna Broadband Satellite
• Large Binocular Telescope
• Martin Jetpack
• Icon A5
• Rocket Racing League
• Boeing Advanced Technical Laser
• DraganFlyer
• Pipistrel Taurus Electro

Computing

• Maxis’ Spore
• Device VM SplashTop
• Adobe AIR
• Qualcomm Gobi
• Microsoft PhotoSynth
• Microsoft Explorer Mouse
• Phoenix FailSafe
• Intel Core Duo Merom

Engineering

• Large Hadron Collider
• Bahrain World Trade Center
• Hillman Composite Beams
• Glubam’s quick assembly bridge
• Kajima’s new demolition method

Gadgets

• 3M MPro 110
• Casio EX-F1 Camera
• BUG Labs’ Base and Modules
• Eye-Fi Explore SD Card
• Polaroid ZINK
• Sleek Audio SA6 Headphones
• Vision Research’s V12 Camera
• Livescribe Pulse
• Ugobe Pleo
• Nikon D90
• Samsung AIRAVE
• iTunes App Store
• Amazon Kindle
• Tonium Pacemaker DJ System

Green Technology

• Serious Materials EcoRock
• ElectraTherm Green Machine
• Envirofit Clean Indoor Cookstove
• Enphase Energy Micro-Inverter System
• Mariah Power Windspire
• Agroplast All In One System

Home Entertainment

• Sony OLED TV
• Audiovox FPS10 Subwoofer
• Lucas Arts’ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Sonos ZP120 Digital Amp
• Sony BDV-IT1000ES Home Theater System
• Onkyo TX-NR906 A/V Receiver
• Hitachi UltraThin TVs

Home Technology

• Honeywell Specialty Materials Storm-a-Rest
• Craftsman VibraFree Sander
• Home Comfort Zones MyTemp
• Festool Lapex Miter Saw
• Remington PowerMower
• Gorilla Super Glue
• FreshAire Paint
• PF WaterWorks PermaFLOW

Personal Health

• Recellularized Heart
• CellScope
• SensAble
• Toshiba Aquilion One CT
• Fraunhofer Institute’s Magnet-Controlled Gut Camera
• BioXcell INVOcell Fertility Assist Device
• Pro-Neck-Tor
• Nintendo Wii Fit
• Electronic Taste Chip
• Hewlett Packard Smart Drug Delivery

Recreation

• Shimano Dura-Ace 7900 Di2 Electronic Shifting Components
• Poseidon Mk IV Discovery Rebreather
• Speedo LZR Swimsuit
• Schoeller Cold Black
• Atomic Double Deck Skis
• Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Sleep Pad
• O’Neill XDS-Air Insulated Neoprene
• Energy Integration Technology Aevex Gloves
• Moog Guitar

Security

• Thruvision T5000 Camera
• Noblepeak Vision Triwave
• Rotundus GroundBot
• Ingenia Technology Laser Surface Authentication System
• Lumidigm Venus Series Sensors
• Raytheon Controlled Impact Rescue Tool (CIRT)
• Landshark IED Robot
• RedX Spray-On Bomb Detector
• ARA Safety FIT-5
• The Streetlab Mobile

So what do you think? Was PopSci dead on or dead wrong? Lay it out in the comments. We were personally affronted that disemvowling didn’t make this particular list. [PopSci]

Artifex, makers of the Linux Ghostscript Postscript interpreter, is suing Diebold for breaking the fair use terms of its software. Diebold used the freely-available software, which is fine, but when they authored some changes to Ghostscript Postscript, they neglected to follow the very reasonable rules such use requires. Biggies like HP, Xerox, and IBM all use Ghostscript legally and honestly, so why can’t Diebold?

They neither publicly released the changes they’d made nor paid Artifex for the privilege to keep the changes to themselves, and in the hippie-dippie share everything world of Linux, that doesn’t fly. Luckily our new President of the Universe Barack Obama won by a large enough margin that we can’t question the results, but good god, it’s beyond time to ditch this aggressively stupid company and get an electronic balloting system that, you know, works. [LinuxDevices]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Diebold just can’t seem to keep its nose clean these days. The nation’s largest manufacturer of ATMs admitted not too long ago what everybody already knew: that their e-voting machines were totally bunk. Apparently in the course of that investigation it emerged that the company also thought it would be a laugh to load the open source Ghostscript Postscript interpreter software into those faulty machines without releasing its changes or paying the proprietary usage license fee — leading Aritex, its developer, to file a lawsuit. It doesn’t really instill confidence any further to hear that our nation’s terrible electronic voting machines are running on stolen software, guys — and to be honest, we’re kinda starting to wish you’d get out of the ATM business, too.

Diebold’s e-voting machines violate GPL, good taste originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It only took Google about three days to recognize, examine and fix the vulnerability that allowed Android phones to be ‘jailbroken’, and users should see the fix (update RC30) pushed to their phones via an over the air update during the next few days. From the mouth of the Google:

We’ve been notified of this issue (Jailbreaking of Android) and have developed a fix. We’re currently working with our partners to push the fix out and updating the open source code base to reflect these changes.

So what do Android users stand to lose from this Apple-like vigilance?

At present, very little. The so-called ‘jailbreak’ was of a completely different nature than the app-enabling hack that iPhone users are now so accustomed to. The technique was a telnet trick that allowed for easy root access to the operating system. The reality of the situation is less like a ‘jailbreak’ in the iPhone sense, and more like finding the administrative password on a desktop Linux system.

The exploit did provide more access to the the Android’s core functions, some of which could be useful for app development and porting to other phones, but it also exposed a gaping vulnerability that would be immediately shut on any other Linux distribution. Google’s fix is most accurately characterized as a security fix, not a party poop. [ModMyGphone, XDA —Thanks, Kyle]