Posted on May 17th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
Human footprints frozen in time, lodged in volcanic ash in a Mexican valley, seemed poised to rock history.
In the current Journal of Human Evolution, a study tells the story of how they didn’t - and how science checks out extraordinary claims.
“The timing and origin of the earliest human colonization of the Americas has been the subject of great debate over the last 100 years and is still a matter of heated discussion today,” begins the study. Hiking on the dried bed of Mexico’s Valsequillo Lake in the summer of 2003, an archeology team made a discovery they suspected would open a new chapter in the debate.
Crisscrossing the lakebed, they saw tracks, an ash field littered with hundreds of impressions that resembled footprints from adults and children, ” along with birds, cats, dogs and species with cloven feet,” as Nature magazine later reported. The team led by geoarchaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of the United Kingdom’s Liverpool John Moores University, suspected the track’s makers had fled an ancient eruption of the looming Cerro Toluquilla volcano, leaving their tracks in the now-famous “Xalnene Ash.”
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Posted on May 12th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
Verizon Wireless and LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A. have launched the first U.S.-destined Android smartphone from LG, previously promoted with the movie & Iron Man 2.& The mid-range LG Ally offers a 3.2-inch touchscreen, slider QWERTY keyboard, 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, S-GPS, and a 3.2-megapixel camera, says Verizon.
Earlier this month, the LG Ally was briefly previewed in a marketing campaign with Marvel Studios for its movie “Iron Man 2,” although the carrier was not identified at that time. The marketing campaign promoted the fact that Ally users can download an exclusive Android 2.1 augmented reality app featured in the film. (See link at end of the story for the promo and interactive Flash application.)
Today, Verizon Wireless announced that the Ally is available for pre-order tomorrow, and will ship starting May 20. For now, LG and Verizon have left major holes in their published feature list, although several mobile phone sites, including PhoneArena have already posted much more complete “leaked” specs.
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Posted on May 4th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
The HTC Droid Incredible debuted last week at $200 with contract, but new Verizon customers can get it for $50 less. This Android OS smartphone is well supplied with high-end features: large, high-resolution screen, 1 GHz processor, 8 MPx camera, and more.
Wireless carriers regularly offer special deals to new customers, hoping that discounts on phones will lure in additional subscribers. That’s why the Incredible is available for $150 to those who are willing to switch carriers.
This deal is being offered now on the Amazon.com website, and requires a new two-year service contract. The best price for those renewing their Verizon service contract is $200.
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Posted on May 4th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
Just as every smart phone claiming to be an “iPhone killer” has failed to dethrone Apple’s iPhone, every so-called “iTunes killer” has so far fallen short of expectations.
But a new music service from Europe might be the first legitimate iTunes contender. And it’s coming soon to the United States.
Spotify, based in the U.K. and available in a handful of European countries, looks just like iTunes at first glance. Both allow users to buy music from a library songs (8 million for Spotify, 11 million for iTunes), make playlists, store music on their computers, and sync that music with their iPods, smart phones or other MP3 players.
But unlike Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iTunes, Spotify gives users total control over their music — with a Facebook tie-in. Users can listen to any of Spotify’s 8 million tracks online for free, if they’re willing to endure the occasional advertisement, or pay $15 per month for ad-free access. They can also upload their existing music to get access to their personal libraries over the Internet.
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Posted on April 24th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
Google on Tuesday was sued in a Wisconsin court for allegedly violating the privacy rights of Beverly Stayart, an animal rights activist and the CFO and director of business development at Stayart Law Offices, the firm filing the complaint.
The lawsuit claims that Google is responsible for suggesting the search term “bev stayart levitra” as a user types “bev stayart” and is profiting from this association through the sale of ads on search results pages triggered by those keywords.
Levitra is a sexual dysfunction drug, and thus a term to which some might wish to avoid being linked.
“Google is misleading consumers, in Wisconsin and throughout the world, by selling the keyword phrase ‘bev stayart levitra’ and placing ’sponsored links’ advertisements for Levitra, other male sexual dysfunction drugs, and other medicines and products on the page ‘bev stayart levitra’ on Google’s Web site,” the complaint states.
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Posted on April 24th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
Nokia and Intel are collaborating on a joint operating system called MeeGo, and while the news was announced in February, new details have slowly been emerging.
MeeGo is a combination of two operating systems: Nokia’s Maemo, an open source development platform used on the N900 mobile computer and Intel’s Moblin project, a netbook and embedded platform.
MeeGo is designed to work across a range of mobile products, including netbooks/laptops and consumer appliances, but it’s likely to show up first in Nokia smartphones.
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Posted on April 24th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
Ferrari is the latest manufacturer to claim a lap record on the famed Nürburgring, with the race-ready 599XX. ( Click here to read our review of the burly beast.) Test driver Raffaele De Simone lapped the German track just in 6 minutes, 58 seconds. Click here to watch an in-car video of the lap.
Ferrari says the 599XX is the first “production-derived” car to lap the ‘Ring under seven minutes, although using the word “production” here, while technically true, seems like a stretch. The 599XX has Lexan windows instead of glass, a trick active downforce system complete with trunk-mounted fans, costs $1.5 million, and isn’t road-legal. In our book, that’s pretty far from production, no matter how similar the bodywork is to a regular 599GTB. Regardless, 6:58 is blisteringly quick and a testament to the 599XX’s monstrous performance levels.
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Posted on April 24th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
The sleek, 7-series-based four-door concept from Beijing will make it to production.
After a two-year hiatus in which the project sat on the shelf, BMW’s 7-series-sized four-door “coupe” is back on again. The licorice-black Gran Coupé concept shown in Beijing at a private reveal for journalists “will be built” according to BMW head of design, Adrian von Hooydonk, “though we don’t know yet what to call it.”
With the numbers 5, 6, and 7 taken, its possible BMW will revive the long-dead 8-series moniker last used in the 1990s on its wedge-shaped super coupe. (We’ve also read internet chatter that it could join the 6-series lineup as a range-topper, possibly with a convertible variant.) Although BMW is mute on timing, judging from the nearly finished state of the design, we can probably expect a production version to appear next year wearing a base price in the high-$70K to low-$80K range.
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Posted on April 19th, 2010 by ElectroGeek
It sounds too good to be true, and it just might be. An Apple employee reportedly left a prototype of the new iPhone at a bar, and it ended up in the hands of a gadget blog.
Photos of the fourth-generation iPhone prototype first appeared on the tech blog Engadget over the weekend. The site said whoever sent the photos found the phone on the floor of a bar in San Jose, Calif. On Monday, rival tech blog Gizmodo said it had obtained the device — but wouldn’t say how.
Alright, we’re skeptical too, but there are a few reasons to take this seriously.
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