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Facebook makes it easier to see how much it knows about you
Facebook will let you view and download more of the data it collects about you, the company revealed today. It's expanding the Download Your Information tool on Facebook and the Download Your Data tool on Instagram to include more of the info it tracks as you use those platforms -- like what you add to your profile or which Pages or posts you like. That info is used to personalize what you see on Facebook and Instagram, but it also raises some data privacy concerns.
NASA will livestream the total solar eclipse over South America tomorrow
It's been almost two years since the last total solar eclipse passed over the US, but there's a good chance you remember all of the hype. Now, a total solar eclipse is heading for parts of Chile and Argentina. It will arrive tomorrow, and thanks to NASA and the Exploratorium, you can catch a livestream as it happens. Beginning at 3pm ET, the agency will stream the eclipse, and at 4pm ET it will begin commentary in both English and Spanish. All three streams will be available on NASA's website.
August halts sales of View doorbell over WiFi problems
August's View doorbell hasn't had a stellar launch. The smart home company is "pausing" shipments of the View after reports of "performance challenges" in certain households. While it didn't say what those issues were, The Ambient noted that the View frequently disconnected from WiFi, rendering its camera less than useful for keeping watch over your front door. August vowed to use the shipping freeze to gauge feedback and make "critical improvements" to the smart doorbell.
Ticketmaster shows you the view from any seat in the house
When you buy a ticket to a concert or sports event, you want to make sure your view is a good one. The days of peering at a line drawing of a venue's seating plan to figure that out could soon be a thing of the past. Ticketmaster confirmed to Engadget today that its new Virtual Venue technology is ready to roll out. Created by Io-Media, Virtual Venue uses gyroscopic and panoramic views to show you the view from any seat in the stadium or concert hall. The technology is now integrated into Ticketmaster's desktop and mobile sites. There are currently 110 venues across North America with the capability.
Hands-on with the Galaxy View: A huge $599 screen for streaming
Is it a TV? Is it a tablet? As far as Samsung is concerned, its enormous new Galaxy View is a little bit of both. We took one home for some hands-on time on our own turf, and after a day the View seems to have struck a decent balance between the two. Don't get us wrong: it's still a little silly and will continue to inspire endless Twitter jokes, but the View has the chance to carve out a curious (and possibly lucrative) new niche.
Piranha Games on why MechWarrior Online is getting a third-person mode
Sometimes you find yourself railing against something at one point only to support it later on. That's the process that Piranha Games president Russ Bullock went through regarding a third-person viewing mode in MechWarrior Online. Bullock addresses player concerns about the inclusion by detailing his own experience with the project and how he went from vehemently opposing a third-person view to arguing that its inclusion is necessary for the long-term health of the game. One of the key elements to understand about movement in MechWarrior Online is that your machine moves more like a bipedal tank with an independently rotating torso. Bullock states that he's watched new players trying the game in first-person and third-person modes, and being able to see how 'Mechs move on the screen instantly translates to better play. He also remains adamant that the inclusion of this new view mode is not meant to unbalance the game by allowing players to see things outside of their normal fields of vision. [Thanks to Dire Phoenix for the tip!]
Alcatel's One Touch View with Windows Phone 7.8 somewhat teased in promo video
To say Alcatel just teased its Russia-bound One Touch View would be a mild overstatement, as most of the company's new promotional vid has a certain "Ricky" taking much of the precious screen time. Still, it's nice to get a slightly better look at the company's upcoming Windows Phone 7.8 handset, even if that means only seeing it make a full and very colorful appearance right towards the end of the ad. The rest of the video, meanwhile, doesn't exactly focus on the One Touch View's previously announced specs (4-inch, WVGA screen, 1GHz CPU, 5-megapixel camera, to mention a few) -- instead, it hints at how Ricky himself can easily keep up with his every-day things on Microsoft's tile-based, soon-to-be-here mobile OS, which isn't exactly a surprise in itself. We'll say no more, though -- you can enjoy the video yourself right after the break.
Visualized: Mars' Gale Crater in seamless 360 degrees
Have you been lapping up every pixel Curiosity sends back, but wishing you could somehow see those panoramas as nature intended? Well, thanks to kind 360 Cities user Andrew Bodrov, you can. The controls take a little getting used to, but persevere and you'll be rewarded with a view as if you were atop Curiosity itself. We're already imagining the fun if this was in the next Google Maps update, who knows what might turn up. Land on the source for the mind-blow.
Nokia 808 PureView flashes backstage pass, shows off video chops
When it comes to smartphone photography and videography, the Nokia 808 PureView is the truth. We glowed about the device's optical prowess in our in-depth review, but some of you still may not be convinced. For the skeptics still out there, we present you with Exhibit A: a clip from an 808 taken at a Foo Fighters cover-band gig. Cacophonous sound, constant lighting changes and front men with long flowing locks swaying to and fro... there's no doubt that a rock concert is the place where a video camera can prove its mettle, especially when it comes to audio. Slide past the break, crank the video quality up to 1080p and watch Nokia's 41-megapixel machine do its thing. Be sure to pay special attention to the audio clarity and feel free to pay homage to the 808's Rich Recording engine in the comments.
Daily iPhone App: Alien Blue
Here's an app that lets you browse through the popular link board Reddit. You probably don't want to see everything there is on Reddit -- just like Digg in its day and other message boards like 4chan, some of the discussion over there can get pretty wacky. But Reddit is definitely a great community of people, and if you ever want to take the temperature on what the 'net is thinking about the news of the day, browsing through Reddit's links can be very informative. There is an official Reddit app called iReddit, and it works pretty well. But Alien Blue is really the better option. I like the layout better, and it has excellent features like inline comments, Instapaper and Read It Later support, and the ability to actually post and edit your own comments on the service. The app itself is free to check out, but you can spend US$1.99 for an excellent pro upgrade that opens up a "Canvas" view for pictures and a host of other streamlined options for reading, sharing, and browsing Reddit. There's also an iPad version available for a straight $3.99 price. You may balk at that, especially if you're happy with the free official app (or willing to read the site through an RSS reader). But for regular readers and commenters on Reddit, odds are that Alien Blue is worth the extra few bucks.
iOS 5 features: Calendar
iOS 5 has arrived, and with it come some really nice updates to the Calendar app. There aren't a whole lot of new things; the app's basic functionality of saving events on dates and showing them back in various views hasn't changed, but there are a few new elements. First up are the new views. On the iPhone and iPod touch, you'll be able to see a week view where you can scroll all the way through from Monday to Sunday. On the iPad there's a new year view, where you can pick up a wide angle look of what your schedule is like. In the views where it's appropriate, you can now drag event borders around to set up the various end and start times for each event (dragging a meeting from 1 pm to 2 pm to last for an hour, for example). You can add, rename, and delete whole calendars right on your iOS device. And there are some subtle features that really make the app more polished. You can now see event times on the month view -- before iOS 5, you could only see that there was an event there, not when it started -- and when you turn pages, you'll get a nice iBooks-like effect. Calendar is better than ever in iOS 5. Whether you're a longtime Calendar user or are just setting it up to sync up with your standard calendar service, these new changes should be quite helpful.
YouTube testing new mobile layout
Of course, everyone's got the official YouTube app already installed on the iPhone, and whenever you want to browse the extremely popular video-sharing site, that's probably the best way to do it. But I often see YouTube videos on my phone when following links in email or on Twitter, and so I'm glad to hear that Google is playing around with testing a brand new YouTube layout. The new design is streamlined and darkened, and allows users to like, favorite, subscribe to a channel or comment on videos. All of the usual features, such as playlists and the dashboard, feature the new look as well. The only catch is that you have to opt in to the new look for now, but the good news is that you can do that on mobile Safari through the URL http://m.youtube.com/new_visual_design. The new update is sleeker and makes browsing YouTube in mobile Safari environment a little easier on the eyes.
TCO study compares active and passive 3DTV glasses, doesn't really favor one over the other
The debate over active and passive 3DTV glasses has, for the most part, been riddled with biased claims (and more than a little mudslinging) from TV manufacturers on both sides of the aisle. Now, however, an independent study from TCO Development has finally shed some light on how the two glasses can actually affect a user's viewing experience -- and yes, there are some differences. When researchers tilted the passive, film pattern retarder (FPR) above or below a vertical viewing angle of 15-degrees, 3D images tended to bleed into one another at a higher rate. Active glasses, meanwhile, transmitted white images at a luminance that was three times lower than what FPR-equipped shades delivered. But because passive 3D glasses display images at different polarizations for each eye, they don't offer as much vertical resolution as their active counterparts. Unfortunately, TCO didn't look into how each pair of glasses affects a viewer's health and comfort -- which, for most of us, would probably be the deciding factor. But as soon as it does, expect either Panasonic or LG to jump all over the results. Dive into the full PR after the break.
Sprint makes EVO View 4G tablet official: 1.5GHz, WiMAX, 7-inch screen, and a stylus to boot
Sprint has stopped playing coy about one of the worst-leaked devices in recent memory and has at long last made it official. The EVO View 4G is a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 Android tablet with a 1.5GHz processor, 5 megapixel rear- and 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, a WiMAX radio, and HTC's loving application of Sense for a UI. If all this sounds familiar, it'll be because we're really talking about HTC's Flyer tablet, introduced at last month's MWC, and just like it, the EVO View will also feature the HTC Scribe capacitive stylus. The Evo View 4G will ship with 32GB of storage "this summer." You'll now find the full press release and spec sheet (including a healthy gigabyte of RAM and a 4000mAh battery) after the break, and some preliminary shots below. Full hands-on to come! %Gallery-119505%
Eye-Fi gets social with the Eye-Fi View online picture portal
Yeah, we know. E-mail is like so 1999. Kids today are all about their tweets and their texts, but if grandma can decode a digital picture at all pretty much the only way she's going to get it is via e-mail, and Eye-Fi is making that easier. It's launched Eye-Fi View, an online sharing site not unlike your Picasas or your Flickrs, except that pictures are (nearly) instantly and automatically uploaded straight from the camera, where they can be shared (or not shared) with others. Users can also set up e-mail alerts so that grandma can get a private link to Gerard's graduation photos. Eye-Fi View is free if you don't mind your pictures disappearing after seven days, but if you want unlimited storage for an unlimited time you'll need to step up to the $4.99 monthly or $49.99 annual plans. The disembodied hand? We're pretty sure that's not included.
YouTube courting Hollywood for pay-per-view movie service by end of 2010, says Financial Times
For all the stupid pet tricks, first-person confessionals, and clips from Conan O'Brien's formative years that form YouTube's content, the one territory it doesn't really venture is pay-per-view à la Apple, Amazon, and others. Well, it'll be a Brave New World for the service -- and parent company Google -- if this Financial Times report is worth its weight in 3mm. According to the publication, the G-Men have been in talks with "Hollywood's leading movie studios" for several months, touting its reach as one of the main draws for the players involved, for the launch of an international pay-per-view service by the end of this year. Some prices are also thrown around here, to the tune of about $5 for new titles (streaming, not download) available the same time as the DVD releases. The video site has been doing rentals on a trial basis since early this year, with just a smattering of indie titles. The thought of paying to watch Blockbuster titles in the same window we watched three dozen (if not more) remixes of Keyboard Cat is still a bit of a new concept, but hey, that's the future for you.
Voices that Matter iPhone: Five iPhone app design mistakes, and how to fix them
TUAW is at the Voices that Matter iPhone developers' conference this weekend, talking to iPhone OS developers of all walks of life. All weekend long, devs are here learning about how to code and design better iPhone applications from some of the best minds and artists on the App Store. We've gathered some wisdom from the hallways and discussions here at the conference, and boiled them down into five different design mistakes that developers need to address before moving into the iPad arena. Hit the link below to see what's going wrong with typical iPhone practices when they are applied to iPad development, and how to do it right.
Mac 101: Supersize your icon views
Welcome back to Mac 101, our occasional series of tips for new and novice Mac users. Over the past 25 years, icons may have become ubiquitous almost to the point of fading into the visual background; still, the little pictures that began in 32x32 black and white format have grown up quite nicely into the massive 512x512 icons we enjoy in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Although the list and column views are more utilitarian for most file management tasks, there are times when icon view is the way to go. You can control whether or not a particular Finder window displays in Icon view via the View Menu ("as Icons," or ⌘-1), and then adjust the display size of the icons via the View Options inspector panel (⌘-J). You can get up to 128px square icons in Finder windows, which is plenty big, but what if you want to see all the graphical power of those fully operational battle icons? One way to see the full-size icons is via Cover Flow -- simply switch your Finder window to "as Cover Flow" (via the toolbar button, the View menu, or with a quick ⌘-4) and you can scale your icons at will by adjusting the window size. If you prefer not to have that black background around your icon, however, what is there to do? Thanks to Rob Griffiths at Macworld & MacOSXHints, here's a great tip for getting the maximum size out of your icon previews in the Finder without resorting to Cover Flow. To view icon previews up to 512x512, hit the Spotlight search field at the top right of the window; search for a null string (two quotation marks next to each other, no space in between, like so ""), then change the search target from This Mac to Current Folder and the search type from Contents to File Name. Switch to icon view and you'll see, at the bottom right corner of the window, a scaling slider. Push it to the right to maximize your icon size. It's just the thing for appreciating the fine detail on your bottle of unicorn tears. (If you're looking for the CHOCK LOCK and Rick Astley icons above, they're in the QuickPix 2008 pack from the Iconfactory.) Rob also hazarded a guess that we might see a more accessible version of this feature in future Mac OS X versions. If you watched the Snow Leopard stealth preview video posted earlier, you know he may well be right.
The View to spend in a week in Las Vegas, tape show in HD
Just after hearing that the Ellen Degeneres Show would be going HD in a few short long months, another daytime favorite (or not, depending on perspective) will also be dipping its toes in the wondrous waters of off-site high-definition. Reportedly, the infamous chit-chat show is set to tape a week of episodes from Sin City next month, as it swoops in on Caesars Palace in Las Vegas from June 23rd through 27th. The excursion will mark the first time The View has broadcast in HDTV while on location, though no details of further involvement were mentioned. [Image courtesy of Yahoo!]
Poll: Do you still watch SD programming?
With just south of a hundred HD channels on carriers like DirecTV, and even dozens on the average cable operator, one may wonder if there's even a reason for turning to an SD station anymore. Here at the Engadget HD lair, there's only a few programs still shot and delivered in standard-def that we catch ourselves watching, but we'll admit, it's been an awful long time since SD programming consumed more than 10-percent or so of our viewing. Not too tough a question for you this week: do you still find yourself flipping to SD networks with the growing amount of HD content out there? If so, how much? And be honest -- is it solely due to your wife's obsession with America's Next Top Model?[Image courtesy of Rickey] %Poll-14248%
