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Gear4 speaker dock supports USB audio for Jelly Bean at Google I/O 2012 (hands-on video)
Another day, another speaker dock. We initially dismissed Gear4's latest accessory at Google I/O 2012 until we noticed that the attached Nexus 7 was playing audio digitally via the USB port instead of simply through the headphone jack (or wirelessly over Bluetooth for that matter). It turns out that Jelly Bean supports USB audio, a software feature that's bound to spearhead a whole new generation of accessories for Android devices. Gear4's universal speaker dock with alarm clock radio is the first to handle USB audio. While the sound for any app can be routed to the USB port in Jelly Bean, the functionality is missing from older versions of Android. Thankfully, Gear4 includes an app with its accessory that can be used to set alarms, sync time, tune the radio and play media over the USB port on legacy versions of Android. Want to know more? You'll find our gallery below and our hands-on video after the break.%Gallery-159523%
Lesser known features in iOS's built-in apps
iOS ships with a few core apps such as a calculator and a weather app, which are there for your convenience. Yes, you might have found third-party replacements for them, but they're still nice to have when you are in a pinch. And if you spend some time with these apps like Lex Friedman of Macworld did, you will discover they have a few hidden functions that'll surprise you with their utility. An excellent example is the Calculator app which is a simple calculator in portrait mode, and a scientific calculator in landscape. Similar features exist in the Clock, Weather, Stocks and Voice Memo apps. You can check out all these lesser-known functions in Friedman's Macworld article.
Sony SmartWatch torn down and dissected, wishes it were a Pebble
Wondering how the innards of Sony's SmartWatch compared to the Motorola's MotoACTV? Wonder no more. One cmw has dissected the aforesaid timepiece, noting that most of what's inside doesn't live up to the superior hardware found in Moto's unit. Aside from finding a 110mAh battery (compared to 258mAh in the MotoACTV), there's also a Micrium uC/OS-II. For those just here for the eye candy, there's a bit of that down in the source link, too. When asked for comment, Pebble simply quipped: "Everyday I'm Shufflin'." [Thanks, John]
Custom clock pays homage to CPU, separates geeks from the squares (video)
Pop quiz: Can you tell what the device pictured above is? If you answered "a clock that represents the essential building blocks of a CPU while using binary and HEX numerals to display time," then you're certifiably crazy -- and correct. The brainchild of tinkerer extraordinaire Lior Elazary, the "CPU clock" mechanically emulates the application of computer concepts -- codes, instructions and checks -- to create a "simple" wall clock. To display the time, the middle register uses binary numbers to indicate the hour (a reading of "0010" indicates 2 o'clock, for example). For minutes, the clock uses the HEX numerals on the outer edge of the device, so "05" represents "5," "0A" indicates "10," and so forth. Keeping the clock up to date is a ball that goes around and activates the various levers to change the time. Given all its geeky goodness, this one easily takes the nerd cake from the wordy QLOCKTWO W and super flashy Sci-Fi watch. For a more clockwork-like explanation about its inner workings, check out the video after the break.
Biegert & Funk bring the literal time to your wristwatch with QLOCKTWO W
It's a common desire among everyday folk: we often say we'd like to read more, if only we had the time. While it's unlikely to fill your noggin with the prose of Hemingway or the poetry of Whitman, a new wristwatch from Biegert & Funk promises to quench your thirst for words and literally provide you with the time. Known as the QLOCKTWO W, the timepiece is a portable revision of the company's original wall clock, both of which display the current time in everyday language. Priced at €550, the watch is scheduled for arrival this autumn and will be available in black or stainless steel variations, with either rubber or leather bands. As another option, those who find English far too mundane may spring for the Deutsch version. Curious shoppers will find the full PR after the break.
Arduino-powered Artbot writes the time, erases it, writes again (video)
Watching the seconds go by is a frightening reminder that time pauses for no one, but somehow, a hacker going by the name of Ekaggrat has figured out how to make the process a bit less daunting. The so-called Doodle Clock is an Arduino-powered robotic arm that's been trained to jot down the time with a dry erase marker; once the minute passes, he erases the last digit and rewrites it -- a number beyond what he just erased, of course. Per usual, these things are better seen than read about, so why not hop on past the break and mash play? Smiles await.
New single ion clock is '100 times more precise' than existing atomic models
Researchers at the University of New South Wales have developed a new type of atomic clock that measures an atom's neutron orbit instead of the electron's flight path. This method is apparently accurate to 19 decimal places, with several lasers shifting electrons in a certain way, allowing Professor Victor Flambaum to measure the "pendulum" motion of the neutron. It's purportedly close to 100 times more precise than its predecessors -- all with no freezing involved. These existing atomic clocks may be accurate beyond 100 million years, but for this new breed of hyper-accurate timekeeping, you'll only need to reset the clock once every 14 billion years. And we have no idea how they calculated that.
iOS users jump time zones during DST switch
Ah, the pleasures of Daylight Saving Time. The semi-annual clock shift (known as "Summer Time" in the UK and Europe) saves energy on lighting and heating and aligns daylight hours with the times most people are active; unfortunately, the actual change leads to frayed sleep, a brief spike in traffic accidents, and frustration with gadgets that ought to know how to handle leaping an hour forward. Apple's devices and operating systems are by no means immune to the confounding effects of DST, as we've seen repeatedly over the past few years. Odd behaviors have cropped up including alarm fouls on iOS, mistaken clocks on Snow Leopard and even Siri being confused about when DST actually starts. This year, despite substantial updates to iOS, there still appear to be a few kinks to work out. Several readers report that rather than jumping forward an hour last night as expected, their iPhone clocks actually shifted in the wrong direction -- back an hour -- because the automatic time zone adjustment went wonky. A reader in Nashville has a phone that thinks he's in Mountain Time; a reader in Florida's phone is convinced it should be on Chicago time. Our colleague Mel Martin lives in Arizona, which mostly does not observe DST at all; nevertheless, his phone (which had automatic time zone settings & location settings on) incorrectly jumped forward one hour. Most of these issues will probably resolve themselves with a device restart, or by turning timezone automation on and off, but it's still annoying. By now it's probably too late to issue our regular reminder, but I'll say it just the same: if you are depending on your iPhone as a critical, gonna-miss-my-flight, OMG-I'm-so-fired alarm clock, set a backup. Or two. In a pinch, use the countdown timer rather than the alarm clock -- Siri can do that for you. For years, I've used a 999-minute pocket timer (a gift from SKYY Vodka inventor Maurice Kanbar) as a backup alarm, which trained me to multiply by 60 quickly; your iPhone won't make you go through that work. Thanks Tommy & Alexander
Insert Coin: Alarm clock makes you enter a code to silence it, in another room (video)
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. We love the snooze button as much as everyone else. But we've all postponed exiting the comfort of our Tempur-Pedic one too many times. Enter the Ramos alarm clock, a rise-and-shine solution that integrates a Defuse Panel in order to silence your wake-up call. Don't expect to stay in bed to enter the code either, as the keypad can be wirelessly situated in another room to prevent further slumber. Two time keeping options, LED and Nixie models, await your minimum pledges of $160 and $350 before the April 1st deadline. The latter features a nixie tube display that will put any regular ol' alarm clock's digits to shame. You can spring for a long-range kit if you need to place your key panel more than 50 feet away from your nightstand. If you're feeling extra generous, a pledge of more than $800 will allow you to select the type of wood used for your Ramos. In need of a bit more convincing? Peep the video on the other side of the break for a closer look.
Belfry brings Stocks and Weather, other native iPhone apps to jailbroken iPads
Rounding out the honeymoon period with that freshly jailbroken iPad 2? Well now we have some new apps for you to play with, and you may already be acquainted. iOS hacker Ryan Petrich's most recent project, dubbed Belfry, lets you install stock iPhone apps that are otherwise absent from both versions of Apple's tablet including Clock, Voice Memos, Stocks, Calculator, Compass and Weather. As to why these aren't included already is beyond our knowledge, but at least there's an alternative. Users can install Belfry directly within Cydia for free from the BigBoss repository. If you're looking for proof to seal the deal, you can catch the bashful Belfry and his silent film antics after the break.
Oregon Scientific Time & Wireless Charging Stations hands-on
Buried within the pile of gadgets at Oregon Scientific's CES booth were these two Time & Wireless Charging Stations. On the left we have the entry-level clock that's already out in the market, whereas the bigger "plus" model on the right made its debut at the show, boasting the extra clock projection and weather forecast feature. Also shown along side were the customized iPhone 4 Qi sleeves that Oregon Scientific will be offering online, and they actually had pretty high quality finish, too, especially with the texture coating on top of them. Do take a closer look in our hands-on photos below.
Archos 35 home connect hands-on
Though we didn't have the Archos 35 home connect to wake us up personally during CES, we had a chance to get hands-on with the Android-based alarm clock on the floor and it did not disappoint. The Archos 35 home connect is the company's entrance into the world of feature-filled alarm clocks, joining the already established Sony Dash and Chumby. In terms of functionality, it's a morning talk show all rolled up into one, providing weather, real time traffic, news, sports, movies, music, TuneIn radio, social networking and much more through the built-in WiFi. You'll also find a webcam on the front, supporting apps like Tango for video calling, a rechargeable battery to take the party with you, and a 3.5 headphone jack for more personal use. The overall device is solid and has a very curvy and nightstand-friendly footprint -- which is important for folks like us who sleep with other bedside gadgets. The volume controls are touch sensitive and the unit itself has a decent enough range. Archos is not only pushing this as a fully-featured Alarm Clock, but also a portable Android 2.2 media device -- supporting over 30,000-or-so apps in Archos' non-Android-Market, Appslib. While the 35 home connect's features make it compelling enough to make it a viable option, we feel there's nothing to push it past its aforementioned competition, especially with the $149 price tag. Check out all the angles and interface of the 35 home connect in the gallery below.
Nuclear clocks could be 60x as accurate as atomic counterparts, less prone to errors
For years, atomic clocks have been considered the most accurate devices for tracking the slow march towards obsolescence, a subatomic particle vibrating a given number of times per second with relatively few issues. Now the reliability crown might be passed to the nuclear clock, which in addition to sounding gnarly, could prove to be less susceptible to errors from outside stimuli. It goes like this: although an atomic clock will measure a certain number of vibrations per second, external forces such as ambient electric and magnetic fields affect the electrons used in atomic clocks, causing mishaps. The particles used in nuclear clocks that are measured for vibrations -- and thus timekeeping -- can be excited with a relatively low-energy ultraviolet light, allowing for fewer variations from the aforementioned fields. To wit, Corey Campbell and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have devised a scheme that uses lasers to carefully control the spatial orientation of the electron orbits in atoms. A nuclear clock containing a thorium nucleus controlled in this way would drift by just one second in 200 billion years, the team claims. Before nuclear clocks become a reality, researchers must identify the precise frequency of light needed to excite thorium nuclei; but this is what grad students are for, right? [Image credit: University of Colorado / Science Daily]
Benchmarks clock iPhone 4S' A5 CPU at 800MHz, show major GPU upgrade over iPhone 4
Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S only began shipping this week, but a handful of early owners have already taken Apple's first A5-based smartphone for a test run, and they've got the benchmarks to prove it. The results, obtained by AnandTech, are hardly what we'd call shocking. In terms of Javascript performance (pictured above), the 4S measures up rather nicely against the Tegra 2-based Honeycomb competition, while out-dueling the iPhone 4 in overall CPU muscle. Geekbench results, meanwhile, clock the 4S at around 800MHz, with a score of 623. That's about 25 percent lower than the A5-based iPad 2, but notably higher than the iPhone 4 (see graphic, after the break). When it comes to GPU performance, GLBenchmark 2.1 tests in 1280 x 720, off-screen render mode place Apple's new handset well above the Galaxy S II, with scores of 122.7 and 67.1, respectively. It still trails the iPad 2, not surprisingly, but the 4S' scores show a major advantage over the iPhone 4, which registered a score of 15.3. For more statistics and graphics, check out the source link below.
Mutewatch wrists-on: stay on-task with good vibrations (video)
No, the picture above isn't some modernized Power Ranger's wrist communicator. This is the Mutewatch, and we've been intrigued since we first laid eyes on it over a year ago. At a glance, it looks akin to a rubber fashion bracelet, which could make its $260 price tag a shocker. But with the right touch or flick it reveals itself to be much more. The Stockholm-based start-up behind it, dubbed Mutewatch AB, envisions the device serving as "time management tool" for setting quick wrist-felt vibrating reminders during the course of the day. Think Growl, but on your wrist. The wristwatch lacks a dial and crystal, and instead has an angled, touch-sensitive section for a face with hidden LEDs, an ambient light sensor, a motion sensor and a vibrating motor for alarms. We've spent some time using a near-final unit seeing what it would be like silently manage our days, and it's all laid out just past the break. %Gallery-134989%
Daily Mac App: TimePlus
I'm almost afraid to write about TimePlus because it is such an accurate simulation of the LCARS interface from Star Trek: The Next Generation (complete with sound effects) I worry that the lawyers will descend upon the developer and force him to remove all traces of familiarity in the app. Still, TimePlus is too fun not to write about. If you're a Star Trek nerd like me, TimePlus gives you not just a big clock as you see above, but also timers, a stopwatch, two alarms and a world clock. Plus, you can use it as a sort of screensaver, or reduce it to a "nano" clock, or access world times in your menu bar. All of this is super handy if you manage people around the world (as I do), or use time management like the Pomodoro technique, or just want to geek out with something Trek-y in your daily life. TimePlus is free on the Mac App Store, although you may need to install the LCARS font first to get it looking just right. There's an iPad app as well called Clock Tacular which costs a reasonable $.99. If you want a fun clock on your Mac, download TimePlus and make it so Number One!
Original Apple TV repurposed as Nixie clock
When Apple went from the ginormous original Apple TV to the minuscule black plastic box that is the second model, a lot of owners of the first-generation unit were suddenly asking themselves what to do with the aluminum and plastic slab. While we've seen the original Apple TV transformed into a regular clock, designers at Atelier Kurth had a better idea: using Nixie tubes to create a "proto-digital clock." Nixie tubes were the vacuum tube equivalent of today's segmented LED displays. They were used in many early electronic devices, including calculators, to display numbers. Nixies give any electronic a certain Cold War chic, and the warm, flickering glow of the tubes is both nostalgic and disturbing in a "Brazil" way. Atelier Kurth's ATV1 clock uses six Nixies to display the time, with the first column of numbers showing the hour, the second minutes, and the third seconds. Core77's blog entry on the clock mentions that the tubes have an expected lifetime of 200,000 hours (almost 23 years) and that there are 108 connections behind the Apple faceplate. The clock falls back on the design of an earlier clock from Atelier Kurth that used a concrete block as a base. A video showing that predecessor Nixie clock is seen below.
Engadget's back to school guide 2011: speaker docks
Welcome to Engadget's Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we're here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we have speaker docks in our sights -- and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back -- at the end of the month we'll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides -- and hit up the hub page right here. Yeah, studying's the hip thing to do, but waking up for class is arguably where success begins. Rather than relying on some ear-piercing tone emitted from one's cellphone, we prefer something more... substantial. Here, we'll be covering the best and brightest in speaker docks, also known as the alarm clock that your grandkids will eventually point at and laugh, mockingly. Jump past the break for our recommendations, and another opportunity to enter our back to school giveaway. Simply leave a comment below to be entered to win, and head over to our giveaway page for more details.
Gresso flaunts $30,000 white iPhone 4, holds more ice than a skating rink
Sure, you probably waited longer than you should have to get the elusive white iPhone 4. But, you know what's better than a boring regular model? One with diamonds, crystals and pearls... of course! Known for its ridiculous custom mobile devices, Gresso may force you to refinance your house and hock a kidney to afford its latest creation, the Lady Blanche. A solid diamond-coated mineral glass backing, three independent Swiss clocks and pearl dials replace the usual body on this iced-out iPhone. If the $30k diamond model is a bit out of your price range, the much more affordable Swarovski crystal version will only set you back 7,000 bones. Release details are unclear at this point, but when they drop you better act fast -- only 150 of these gems will be available. Heck, if you have that kind of cash lying around, just get the salesman to throw in one of these for your iPad, too.
Bushnell BackTrack D-Tour personal GPS takes you home, shows you how it got you there
We've seen our fair share of uncomplicated (and under-featured) GPS units, but the Bushnell BackTrack D-Tour throws in just enough tricks to make our inner techno-mountain-man salivate. The D-Tour does away with onboard maps and turn-by-turn directions for five simple waypoints and a digital compass. Lose your way? Just follow the arrow back to the campsite. When you get home, you can dump your hiking data into Bushnell's map application, which will show you exactly where you've been, how far you traveled, and how fast you trekked. Its also a built in digital compass, clock, thermometer, and altimeter. Not too shabby, but a bit steep at $120, considering you'll still need to provide your own maps. Hit the break for a video of the doodad's track recording and mapping software.
