Early Valve Steam Machine easily torn down by team iFixit
It looks like tearing apart a Steam Machine apart is infinitely easier than getting your hands on one. Luckily iFixit had one of few fortunate beta testers on its crew, so they naturally proceeded to dismember his box and controller. Unlike other gaming consoles, this one is designed to be opened and modded by its owners, since it’s essentially a small form factor PC with removable components. After removing the single Philips screw (yay!), the team found a punchy Zotac NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB graphics card, 1TB Seagate hybrid SSHD drive, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, an Intel Core i5-4570 CPU clocked to 3.6GHz and a 450W power supply. As for the controller, the team easily cracked it open and were fans of its configurable nature and wealth of buttons. Overall, the only snafus iFixit noted were hard-to-remove RAM and a tricky cable routing system, and gave it a top-notch 9 out of 10 repairability score. This is the part where we normally say to avoid such exploits if you’re lucky enough to get one of the 300 boxes — but given these results, we’d say go for it.
Source: iFixit
Zeebox update for iOS lets you follow TV show news before the air date
Zeebox’s value as a TV show companion usually fades quickly once the credits start rolling, but it should be useful around the clock in the wake of the latest iOS app update. A fresh My TV feature lets viewers follow TV shows like they would a Facebook friend; you can now catch news and chat with fans well before an episode airs. Regardless of when you load the app, it should also be easier to join TV discussion rooms. Android users can’t join the party just yet, but Zeebox promises a My TV update for their platform in late January.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD
Source: App Store
Europe’s billion-pixel camera blasts into space to snap the galaxy
When thinking about powerful cameras, most gadget nuts would be happy with a Lumia 1020 or a 5D Mark III, but neither of those can match what’s just left the planet. The European Space Agency has launched the Gaia satellite with a mission to photograph and map the galaxy surrounding us with an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy. Armed with a one billion pixel camera, the lens can pinpoint a far-away star with an error margin of seven micro-arcseconds, or measure a person’s thumbnail on the moon — from Earth. The satellite will now travel 1.5 million kilometers away from our home, a which point it’ll begin a five year mission to, you know, explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly photograph where no one has photographed before.
Filed under: Cameras, Transportation, Science, Alt
Via: BBC News
Source: ESA
Is AT&T already testing the Galaxy S5?
According to @evleaks, which is one of the most reliable sources around, AT&T has already begun to test the Samsung Galaxy S5 in its labs. We know the Galaxy S4 was unveiled in March of this year and later available in April. So it is unlikely to hear anything “official” about the S5 until February. Now we all know that rumors are rumors, but what do you think?
Are you holding out for the “Next Best Thing”? Let us know below!
Source: Phone Arena
The post Is AT&T already testing the Galaxy S5? appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google’s charity donation app comes to iOS for the holidays
It’s the season of giving, and this year, iOS users will be entitled to share the love with Google’s One Today app. Each day, users will be shown the details of a different non-profit and encouraged to make a $1 donation. It’s a nominal amount, but the company’s hoping people would challenge their friends to match their pledges through social media. Note that Google still takes 1.9 percent per $10 to cover credit card charges, but the company swears it gives the rest of the amount to charities. For now, the project remains US-only, so those outside of the country will have to resort to other methods to help out those in need.
Filed under: Misc, Mobile, Google
Via: Benjamin Cole
Source: Twelve Days of Giving, iTunes
PPL Connect makes physical phones virtual, is now available via open beta to Android users
Your phone is a prisoner. No, it’s not chained to a particular cell, but it is confined to whatever handset your SIM is stuffed into. PPL Connect wants to free your phone from that confinement through the powers of cellular virtualization. And today, if you have an Android phone, the company can do just that with the launch of its eponymous app and open beta. In case you missed our earlier coverage of PPL Connect, let us give you a quick refresher on its technology. By creating a PPL Connect account and linking it with your phone number via an Android app, you gain access to your contact list, text messages and phone calls from any device with an internet connection — letting you both make and take calls and send and receive texts straight from the browser. And the best part? Because it’s fully virtualized, your phone doesn’t even need to be turned on for you to use it remotely.
Before you go signing up for the open beta, however, there are a few more things you should know. Since we last saw PPL Connect, it redesigned its web interface to be responsive to work on any screen size. During that redesign, the team decided to optimize it to work in Chrome due to that browser’s use of WebRTC technology and its cross-device compatibility. Support for Firefox and Safari are also in the pipeline and are slated to be supported early next year, but for now you’ve gotta stick with Google’s browser.
Also, for folks with privacy concerns: yes, PPL Connect holds all of your contacts and communications info on its servers, but co-founders Denzil D’sa and Jenviev Azzolin assure us that they absolutely prioritize their users security and privacy. “We believe that your data is your data,” says Azzolin, which is why one of the first features built into the platform was a one-click means to delete your account. Plus, the whole point of the company is to provide a better, more flexible phone service for us all, and to do that it needs to build and maintain credibility with users. D’sa and Azzolin made clear that they see user privacy as key to achieving its goals.
So, if you’re willing to take them at their word and you’re over the tyranny of physical phones, head on down to the source — the PPL Connect bandwagon’s still got plenty of seats available.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile
Source: Google Play
UK adult content filters inadvertently block online education and medical resources
We’ve all fallen victim to the pedantic e-mail filter that denies the existence of Scunthorpe and refuses to let you order Shiitake Mushrooms, but the situation just got a whole lot worse in the UK. The country’s new nationwide adult content filter has been found to restrict access not just to smut, but also to online educational, medical and emergency resources. The list of “offending” sites runs from BishUK, a site to teach young people about relationships, all the way through to several women’s crisis centers being blocked. In response to questions from the BBC, networks like BT and TalkTalk have pledged to make the necessary changes — although some have questioned if it’s right that ISPs have this much say in what parts of the internet are safe or not.
Filed under: Internet
Source: BBC News
Drivable 500,000 piece Lego car runs on compressed air, insanity (video)
If you’re still stuck on that Lego Mindstorm EV3 project, then you might have a tiny inkling of how the folks from the Super Awesome Micro Project feel. They’ve just pieced together a car with 500,000 of the plastic blocks that can actually hit the road, thanks to four radial engines with 256 pistons that run on compressed air. It was designed and built by 20-year-old Romanian Lego savant Raul Oaida in 20 months after he and a partner raised “tens of thousands” of dollars from Aussie backers. It’ll only cruise at 12-17 mph hour (since it’s built of freaking Lego), but as shown in the video after the break, you probably wouldn’t want to go any faster — especially given the seats.
Filed under: Misc, Transportation
Via: CNET
Source: SAMP
LG’s webOS Smart TV tipped to arrive at CES
Remember when LG bought the festering remains of the once proud webOS project from HP with the plan to add it to Smart TVs? Nearly a year later and it looks as if the company is ready to show off the results. According to ZDNet Korea, company officials told investors that next fortnight’s CES is where the platform will launch. At the same event, LG chiefs also said that it would throw its weight behind Palm’s Enyo open-source JavaScript development framework in the hope of encouraging third parties to craft software for the new system. You never know, maybe Jon Rubinstein’s big project could get a happy ending after all.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD, LG
Via: The Verge
Source: ZDNet Korea (Translated)
Apple’s new Mac Pro now on sale, will ship by December 30th
After months of waiting, Apple’s new Mac Pro is now available to order through its online store. Coming just a day after the company announced the availability of the trashcan-shaped desktop, the quad-core and six-core models start at $3,000 and $4,000 respectively. Should you order today, Apple says it’ll ship your new Mac Pro by December 30th. That base model will get you a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU, 12GB DRAM, two AMD FirePro D300 GPUs, and a 256GB SSD. However, if you max out every setting, you’re looking at around $10,000 — and that’s without a mouse or a keyboard.
Source: Apple Mac Pro
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