The IT Lounge

Among the Nokia N8’s neater tricks is its support for USB On-The-Go, which basically lets you connect USB peripherals (flash drives, for example) to the phone and have it act as a host — a duty usually reserved for heavier-duty devices like PCs. Though the N8 is still a solid month or three away from release, we’re getting a nice little video demo on YouTube today of an N8 being walked through the paces of connecting both a plain-vanilla USB drive and another Symbian-based Nokia candybar (brownie points for naming the model in comments, by the way). Basically, you can treat the connected hardware as mass storage and browse it just as you would the N8’s internal space, which basically means you’ve got unlimited music capacity as long as you’ve got a pocket full of USB sticks and a micro USB-to-USB adapter cord. Follow the break for video.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Nokia N8’s USB On-The-Go support demoed, lesser phones turned into slaves

Nokia N8’s USB On-The-Go support demoed, lesser phones turned into slaves originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 15:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

The highest ranking official in the Guangdong province of China has called for improved conditions for workers in light of the recent slew of suicides at Hon Hai Precision Manufacturing, also known as Foxconn. Wang Yang, the provincial party secretary in the province where the suicides have taken place, said that the government must work together with the company to “take effective measures to prevent similar tragedies from happening again,” While it’s still not clear what is causing the deaths, Wang called for measures such as increasing sports and leisure activities for the workers, and improving communication between worker and employer. “Labor unions in private firms should be improved to facilitate better working conditions and more harmonious relations between workers and employers,” he said, speaking at a conference in Shenzhen on Saturday, just about one day after Foxconn announced it would increase wages of workers up to 20 percent.

Top Chinese official calls for improved worker conditions in response to Foxconn deaths originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How desperate are you to get Netflix running on your iPhone? Desperate enough to jailbreak, grab frameworks from your iPad, and do some plist hacking? If the answer to those questions is “yes,” then the folks at ModMyi have something they’d like to show you. According to the site, a tipster has been able to get the video streaming service up and playing on an iPhone by making what appears to be fairly simple changes to his device; namely, boosting the iPad’s MediaPlayer.framework and altering plist settings once the app was installed on his phone. It’s not all wine and roses, as using Netflix where it’s not supposed to be used causes a massive battery drain (go figure), and there are issues with crashing and 3G playback (two more unsurprising problems). Still, it can be done, and this is just the start — so if you want to get in on the party (and maybe even help out a little bit), hit the read link and see what it’s all about.

[Thanks, Cody]

Netflix for iPad hacked and running on iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 13:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know what happens when you give EVO 4Gs to a room full of some of the brightest developers the world has to offer? Well, [expletive] is going to go down, that’s what — so it comes as little surprise that the phone’s already been blessed with a seemingly functional Froyo port, even though neither the phone nor the operation system have even seen a public release yet. The largest distribution of the EVO so far has come at the hands of Google itself, which provided the Android 2.1- and Sense-equipped handsets to attendees of its recent IO conference; a timely upgrade to Android 2.2 has unquestionably been a big sticking point for would-be buyers, though, so it’s good to see that early owners are already hard at work making this happen. Root is naturally required for the 2.2 port to work — and there will undoubtedly be some hurdles to overcome to make this totally usable — but we have full faith in these lovely wunderkinds. Follow the break for video evidence of a Froyo’d EVO in the wild.

Continue reading HTC EVO 4G gets hacked Froyo port, Sense UI be damned

HTC EVO 4G gets hacked Froyo port, Sense UI be damned originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Just kidding, we were never drug mules. Still, we once watched a film that mentioned drug mules, and boy does this Taiji tablet prototype remind us of that formative experience. Taiji is bringing this 10-inch tablet to Computex (which starts tomorrow), with a VIA C7 M processor and 1GB of RAM under the hood, which looks relatively uninspired until you flip it around and discover the pop-off keyboard around back. The tablet even has its own stand, converting from a slate form to a rather amenable “desktop” computer with no trouble. Sure, you might end up with a thinner tablet if you just buy a keyboard free model and toss a Bluetooth keyboard in your bag with it, but we’ve gotta hand it to Taiji for ingenuity. Check out a quick demo of it after the break.

Continue reading Taiji sneaks a Bluetooth keyboard in and out of its tablet prototype, reminds us of our drug mule days

Taiji sneaks a Bluetooth keyboard in and out of its tablet prototype, reminds us of our drug mule days originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 12:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

We don’t say this very often, but some products are just worth the wait. And well, the ExoPC Slate looks like it’s going to be one of those very products. After months of following along, we finally got to spend some quality time with the 11.6-inch slate at Computex, and came away surprisingly impressed. Read on after the break for our impressions of this Windows 7 tablet, what that funky UI is all about, and a video of the Slate in action. Oh, and after you’ve done all that, don’t forget to feast your eyes on the gallery below.

Continue reading ExoPC Slate hands-on

ExoPC Slate hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 10:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake: N8 available now, only not from Nokia

Keepin’ it real fake: N8 available now, only not from Nokia originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 06:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh sure, Nikon’s got its own solution for adding native geotagging to your existing DSLR, but the GP-1 dongle definitely has its drawbacks. Aside from sucking down around 4x more power than Gisteq’s new PhotoTrackr Plus, it also eliminates the ability to use a dedicated flash in the hotshoe while capturing GPS data. Moreover, it has to warm up every time you turn the camera on / off, and there’s just 18 tracking channels compared to the Gisteq’s 44. Regardless of the back and forth, we do appreciate the PhotoTrackr Plus’ ability to plug directly into the 10-pin terminal that few amateurs even think to recognize, though we do fear that the reliance on Bluetooth could cause issues if you stray too far from the transceiver. Still, this newfangled dongle is far superior to its past iterations, both of which simply logged data as you went and then added metadata after you synced the information with your images via PC; this dongle, however, embeds the data right away into every image. Better still, there’s even a price advantage to going third party — Nikon’s aging GP-1 is pushing $200 on many webstores, while the Gisteq apparatus can be procured right now for $179. Take your pic, as they say.

Continue reading PhotoTrackr Plus brings geotagging to Nikon DSLRs, leaves your hotshoe open

PhotoTrackr Plus brings geotagging to Nikon DSLRs, leaves your hotshoe open originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 04:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For years now, hotel chains have been toying with alternative ways to letting patrons check-in, access their room and run up their bill with all-too-convenient in-room services. Marriott began testing smartphone check-ins way back in 2006, and select boutique locations (like The Plaza Hotel in New York and Boston’s Nine Zero) have relied on RFID, iris scanners, biometric identifiers and all sorts of whiz-bang entry methods in order to make getting past a lock that much easier (or harder, depending on perspective). This month, InterContinental Hotels Group announced that they would soon be trialing OpenWays at Chicago’s Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center, enabling iPhone owners to fire up an app and watch their room door open in a magical sort of way. Other smartphone platforms will also be supported, and as we’ve seen with other implementations, users of the technology will also be able to turn to their phone to order additional services, extend their stay or fess up to that window they broke. There’s no word on when this stuff will depart the testing phase and go mainstream, but we’re guessing it’ll be sooner rather than later. Video after the break, if you’re interested.

Continue reading OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of ‘unlock’

OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of ‘unlock’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 01:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Typical, right? As the 3D craze flows from the cinema to the television and onto the PC, it was just a matter of time before one of MSI’s Wind Top all-in-ones shipped with support for the third dimension. By most accounts, the new Wind Top AE2420 3D looks like a mildly larger version of the AE2220 we peeked late last year, touting a 24-inch 1080p multitouch panel, support for shutter glasses (a single pair is included), Core i5 or i7 CPU options and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD5730 pushing the pixels. There’s also a pair of 5-watt speakers built-in, not to mention an Ethernet jack, VGA output and a handful of USB 2.0 sockets. Mum’s the word on pricing, but MSI is expected to have this bad boy on display as Computex kicks off early next week. Yeah, you know we’ll be there pretending to be embarrassed while donning the spectacles.

Continue reading MSI follows fate’s whispers, intros 24-inch Wind Top AE2420 3D

MSI follows fate’s whispers, intros 24-inch Wind Top AE2420 3D originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 22:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popularity: unranked [?]