Laura June Dziuban

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In pursuit of our mission to provide accurate and ethical coverage, the Engadget editorial team consistently fact-checks and reviews site content to provide readers with an informative, entertaining, and engaging experience. Click here for more information on our editorial process.

Stories By Laura June Dziuban

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    Mobile
    Mobile By Laura June Dziuban

    London Underground to get 120 WiFi hotspots in advance of the 2012 Olympics

    A big announcement arrived today if you live in or around London: to prepare to the onslaught of data-hungry visitors for the 2012 Olympic games that the city is hosting, 120 WiFi hotspots are being added to various locations along the Underground subway system's stations and platforms, in addition to other measures being taken to beef up tech. No WiFi will be in the actual tunnels, mind you, but it should definitely come in handy for all those tourists trying to find their way around the city. British Telecom has already tolled out a trial run at the Charing Cross station, with further installations expected in the lead up to the games.

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    TV & Movies
    TV & Movies By Laura June Dziuban

    Film recreation of Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin's historic spaceflight to be shown off next month

    If you know anything about the history of spaceflight, you're probably already familiar with the historic journey of USSR cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who flew around the Earth in 1961, making him the first person to ever travel beyond our planet's atmosphere. While audio recordings of Gagarin's observations exist, there are no video recordings except for those recently shot at the ISS following a similar plot of his trip, directed by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who currently lives on the space station. This video has now been matched up with Gagarin's audio, and made into a film to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his flight, which is on April 12th. The movie will be made available on that date for free download on YouTube.

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    Entertainment
    Entertainment By Laura June Dziuban

    iPad 2 international launch causes people to line up in line all over again (updated)

    You may or may not know this, but the iPad 2 became available in 22 countries today, and from the looks of it above (snapped at London's Regent Street store), waiting in line was part of the deal. Now, we have this theory that people love to line up for anything, so we're not going to draw any conclusions about how dreamy the product is, but please, if you shot any line photos today, feel free to send them our way and we'll throw them in our post after the break.

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    Science
    Science By Laura June Dziuban

    Alexander Graham Bell's sketchbook reveals ridiculously wonderful imaginings

    The image above is a page from Alexander Graham Bell's sketchbook, a self-portrait from the 1870's, is just one page from the large collection of the inventor's papers, now housed at the Library of Congress. Bell's sketches which document the invention of the telephone are the most fascinating of the lot, and happily, the Library has digitized them and made a large selection of them available online.

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    Science
    Science By Laura June Dziuban

    Dutch researchers dust off X-ray machine from 1896 to compare it to modern equipment

    This one is a bit shocking to us. X-rays were discovered in 1896, and recently, a team of researchers at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands pulled a machine from 1896 off the shelf for the purpose of comparing its results to modern equipment. The researchers say that this original equipment pumped out around 1,500 times more radiation than new equipment in order to produce its results. Speaking of those results, they are unsurprisingly less sharp and detailed than modern X-rays, but they still look pretty impressive if you ask us. The X-rays were conducted on a cadaver this time around rather than a living person because of the high levels of radiation. Full results will be published in the Journal Radiology this month.

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    By Laura June Dziuban

    First fine for libel via Twitter issued against politician by British court

    British politician and former Mayor of Caerphilly, Wales, Colin Elsbury, has been ordered to pay a fine for the charge of libel against an opponent. The lawsuit was filed by Eddie Talbot, an independent challenging Elsbury, after Talbot claimed that Elsbury had Tweeted that Talbot had been forcibly removed from a polling place by police. Well, Elsbury definitely Tweeted that, but, unfortunately for him, the person was not Eddie Talbot. Although Elsbury quickly and publicly corrected himself, Talbot took him to court, and in Cardiff on Friday that Elsbury will have to pay a £3,000 fine plus costs of around £50,000. A cursory glance over Elsbury's recent Tweets indicates that he still may not have the hand of the medium, but we'll keep our eyes on his stream for any new instances of #twibel.

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    News
    News By Laura June Dziuban

    Survey shows the many advantages of virtual offices (beyond the ability to work sans pants)

    Those of us who do almost all of our work from the comforts of our homes will not be surprised by what follows, but the rest of the world should take note. A new survey of directors of 600 small to medium sized business reveal that upper-management sees major benefits of so-called "virtual office" work environments. So what are those advantages? Well, no shockers here, chief among the perceived advantages are lowered costs, flexibility for employee (such as the ability to hire people in different geographic locations), and cutting down on pollution and commute times and costs. In fact, over half of businesses reported a cost savings of around $10,000 a month by using the "virtual" environment. So... welcome to our world, world!

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    News
    News By Laura June Dziuban

    iFixit has an iPad 2, and they're ripping it apart (video)

    It only took a few short hours for iFixit to get its hands on an iPad 2 (the WiFi variety), and of course, they immediately started to tear it apart. It's a necessarily delicate task, but they're making progress as we speak, and here are the first things that jump out to us: there is much less open space inside the iPad 2 than the original model, and the battery is very large. There aren't any huge surprises in here internally yet, but it's got the 1GHz A5 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 16GB of Toshiba TH58NVG7D2FLA89 NAND Flash. Like we said, they're still at it with this one, and we'll update as they do. Until then, hit up the source for all the photos. Update: And they're done! Head over to check out all the shots of the iPad 2 in its exposed form, but don't try it out on your own. The new glass adhesion makes it practically impossible to open this thing without shattering the screen, so the crew will be working hard for a better solution. Vid's after the break, though.

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    Computing
    Computing By Laura June Dziuban

    Twenty pilot programs to bring off-campus broadband to low-income school districts

    The FCC announced on Wednesday the approval of a plan that will ramp up twenty pilot programs in fourteen states. The program -- called Learning On-the-Go -- will bring wireless broadband connections to students off campus. The devices will include mobile phones and laptops, enabling students to have internet connections when they're not at school. Starting in the 2011-2012 school year, 35,000 elementary and secondary school students will be impacted in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, California, New Mexico and Iowa. The total cost of the program is estimated to be $9 million, but it'll certainly be paid back in all those Facebook visits during off-school hours, right? Hit up the source link for the full document (warning: it's a PDF).

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    Mobile
    Mobile By Laura June Dziuban

    Swedes to start text message-based postage system, girl with dragon tattoo reportedly pleased

    The Swedish Postal Service has announced that it will soon replace traditional postage stamps with a text message-based system. The system will work pretty simply -- customers will send a text message to a particular number, and a special code will be texted back to them which they can then write on the letter. A spokesperson for Posten AB, the Swedish Postal Service, says the system will work for packages weighing up to two kilograms, and that it will be just as secure as traditional postage. That's all well and good, but how will they adorn their letters with famous Swedish crime writers?

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    News
    News By Laura June Dziuban

    Early mid-week shocker: research says we are overly reliant on GPS

    Well, this can't be good, but it's certainly not surprising, either. Researchers have concluded that people living in developed nations have become overly reliant on satellite navigation such as GPS devices, and that the results can be... dangerous. Anyone with a think tank could probably figure this one out on their own, but the research shows that such over-reliance on the devices can produce some bad results when said devices inevitably fail out. The report goes a lot father than warning individual drivers, however, and says that systems such commercial airline traffic and those which direct train doors to open also rely on the US-based GPS system, which are all vulnerable to widespread failure should the system encounter any interference or downtime. The report does suggest further development of backup systems -- such as the European-based Galileo system, but essentially concludes that the vulnerabilities are likely to remain. Comforting, huh?

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    Meta
    Meta By Laura June Dziuban

    Editorial: Facebook, single identities, and the right to be anonymous

    Here in the small but intense world of writing for tech blogs, trolling and spam are a daily nuisance. In fact, on a highly commented-upon blog such as Engadget, dealing with them (i.e., deleting comments, banning spammers, and responding to irrational people) can sometimes feel like a full-time job. I know this firsthand, as I have, possibly more than most of the other editors here over the past few years, made it one of my primary daily tasks (along with our three amazing interns). By engaging with our commenters, I've made a few friends. Mostly though, it's a thankless task, an unending, uphill battle for Engadget, which ranges between 10 and 20,000 comments per day. The low quality of many comments is largely caused by anonymity on the internet, and the fact that anyone can sign up for as many Disqus accounts as they wish. Sure, people can log in using Twitter or Facebook, and while the number of people who choose to do so has risen drastically, nearly half of our commenters still use the Disqus option, which is the most anonymous. I'd venture to guess that 100 percent of our spammers and trolls do so. It's a major headache, and one which we've spent an incredible amount of time combating and discussing, and occasionally, just giving up on.

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    Cybersecurity
    Cybersecurity By Laura June Dziuban

    Internet access blocked across much of Libya

    It's sort of becoming the "thing to do" when people are revolting: find a way to cut people's access to the internet. This happened across most of Libya yesterday, according to various traffic monitors. Traffic from the country to sites like YouTube and Google nearly disappeared, even though it seems that technically, the servers are still up and running. Unlike the previous actions of the Egyptian government, which took down entire servers, it appears that in this case, some wicked throttling is occurring. While it's not completely clear who is choking the bandwidth, the assumption that it's the Libyan government is probably not an insane one. Hit up the source links for more.

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    Apple
    Apple By Laura June Dziuban

    Apple slashes original iPad price to $399, iPad 2 not up for pre-order yet

    Steve Jobs told us earlier that the new iPad pricing will stay exactly the same as the original iPad -- meaning a base price of $499 for the 16GB WiFi version. Well, even though you can't get an iPad 2 until March 11th (nor can you even pre-order it yet), Apple is already putting the original models on sale. Right now you can grab up that base model, 16GB WiFi only iPad for $399, with prices ranging up to $729 for the 64GB 3G model. Moreover, you can also snatch a refurbished one for a starting price of $349. If you're in the market for yesterday's model, now is certainly the time to grab one.

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    Apps
    Apps By Laura June Dziuban

    iMovie, GarageBand for iPad announced -- $4.99 on March 11th

    In addition to the announcement of the iPad 2, Steve Jobs just unveiled iMovie for iPad, so all your tablet video editing dreams are about to come true. So what does this new version of iMovie have in store for you? A precision editor, multitrack audio recording, some brand new themes, AirPlay to Apple TV, and the ability to share videos in HD. It'll be available on March 11th (the same day as the new iPad) for $4.99. %Gallery-118179% Apple's also just outed GarageBand for iPad. The app will boast several touch instruments, guitar amps and effects, 8-track recording and mixing, over 250 loops, the ability to email your AAC files, and it's compatible with the Mac version. GarageBand for iPad will also run you $4.99 when it's released on March 11th. %Gallery-118190%

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    Tablets
    Tablets By Laura June Dziuban

    Barnes & Noble now selling the Nook Color on eBay for $199

    Well, this one strikes us as a little... odd. Barnes & Noble is currently selling its Nook Color on eBay (along with plenty of other things). The truly interesting part, however, is that the price, once a $50 coupon code is applied, is $199, which is of course $50 less than it sells them for in stores or on its own website. We aren't sure what the motivation behind this move is, but we'd guess that the bookseller is attempting to compete with other, unofficial eBay retailers selling B&N's goods. Either way, if you're in the market for a Nook Color, eBay seems to be the place to get one, for now.

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    News
    News By Laura June Dziuban

    Want to write for us? Engadget is looking for a full-time, New York-based Editor

    Yes, it's true, Engadget is hiring. In fact, we're looking for a full-time editor. There are a few requirements which differ from our usual call for applications, so we wanted to state them up front: we're hiring a full-time, New York-based editor, and we want that person to have previous experience writing about technology professionally. We'd love to hear from you, so read on below to find out how to apply.

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    Entertainment
    Entertainment By Laura June Dziuban

    Tiny EGO pseudo-submarine for the super rich is aptly named

    Imagine you are so rich you want your own underwater pleasure vehicle, and you don't mind dropping what is likely to be a boatload of cash get it, today may be your lucky, lucky day. A company called Raonhaje has developed the EGO mini-submarine which floats atop the water, but which boasts a submersible capsule for passengers to check out what's going on beneath the surface. Sounds intriguing, right? Sure does! The relatively eco-friendly EV vehicle cruises at just less than five knots for four hours on a full charge. There are no details on price yet, but we expect it will be quite a lot. Video of the rendered model is after the break.

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    News
    News By Laura June Dziuban

    The winners of the 2010 Engadget Awards -- Readers' Choice

    .post_body img { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .hubs_content_item_list { margin: 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; } .hubs_content_item { list-style-type: none; } .hubs_content_item .hubs_content_item_image { height: 180px; margin: 0; padding: 0; } .hubs_content_item .hubs_content_item_image img { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .hubs_content_item .author_name { color:#333333; font:bold 13px Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; } .hubs_content_item .author_title { margin-top: 2px; } .hubs_content_item .author_title a { color: #00BDF6; } .hubs_content_item .author_title a:hover { text-decoration: underline; } .hubs_content_item:hover { border-color: #00BDF6 !important; } .author_landing_top { margin-bottom: 0 !important; } #awards-header { text-align: center; } #choice-selector { text-align: center; margin: 50px 0 25px; } #choice-selector a { color: #00BDF6; font-size: 1.1em; } #my-spacer { height: 50px; } The results are in, and well over 100,000 of you voted in the 2010 Engadget Awards. We'll have our own Editors' picks later this week, but for now, head on after the break to see who won our Readers' Choice awards. You can check out the voting results right here.

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    Apple
    Apple By Laura June Dziuban

    US Justice Department and FTC looking into Apple's new subscription policy

    Apple unveiled its new app store subscriptions earlier this week with a decent amount of controversy and even an official statement from Rhapsody saying it would not comply with the new regulations. The new policy requires any company offering subscription services to offer the same service, at the same price (or less) through Apple, with Apple skimming 30 percent off the top. It also no longer allows apps to have links to external sites where purchases can be made. Now, reports the Wall Street Journal, antitrust enforcers in the US are having a preliminary look into the new arrangement. So, what does that mean? Well, these kinds of pre-investigations are pretty common, so it could mean nothing at all. Or, it could lead to a more formal investigation into if the policy violates antitrust laws. When asked for comment on the story, unsurprisingly, no one at Apple, the FTC, or the Justice Department would comment. We'll keep our eyes on this one and let you know if anything more exciting happens.

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    Entertainment
    Entertainment By Laura June Dziuban

    The Met's upcoming opera to boast glasses-free 3D effects that nobody requested

    We don't mean to sound negative or anything, and we're not 3D naysayers by any means. But the news that the Metropolitan Opera's upcoming production of Siegfried will include mind-blowing 3D background effects is, well, mind-blowing. While you're undoubtedly familiar with 3D effects, you may not be acquainted with Wagner's 1876 opera which portrays the story of Sigurd, a hero of Norse mythology. Robert Lepage, the director of the operation, expects theater-goers to find themselves engulfed in a three-dimensional world of his creation, which will be projected on the 45-ton set. Lepage, who is directing Wagner's entire Ring cycle at the Met, worked with Geodezik -- famous for the stage shows of famed opera performers Pink and Justin Timberlake -- to create the show's effects. The 3D you'll be seeing if you hit the theater won't be like the technology you're familiar with, however, as it makes use of fractals, and the moving parts of the set to 'trick' your eyes into seeing in three dimensions. We don't want to say this sounds like a bad idea until we've seen if of course, but we've got our reservations. Hit up the New York Times link to see one rather small image of the set. [Image: Lincoln Center]

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    Mobile
    Mobile By Laura June Dziuban

    New York DOT now adding 2-point driver's license penalty for talking on the phone while driving

    It has been illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving in New York for years now, but the state has just steeply upped the penalties associated. The $100 fine which is currently imposed has been joined by a 2-point penalty on the driver's record -- which should serve as a real deterrent for most. The DMV has estimated that one in five crashes now involve so-called distracted drivers, resulting in about 5,000 deaths last year. So please, keep your eyes on the road.

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    Technology
    Technology By Laura June Dziuban

    NEC busts out an Android Netbook, the LifeTouch Note

    NEC has debuted its first Android netbook, the humbly-named LifeTouch Note, in Japan. Spec-wise, the Note runs Android 2.2, has an NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU, up to 8GB of memory, a 7-inch backlit (800 x 480 resolution) resistive touchscreen LCD, GPS, WiFi, SD and SDHC slots, and a 2 megapixel webcam. There will also be a 3G variety for a little extra cash, of course. Other than that, there's no word of when this will be available in Japan, but we do know that it start at around ¥45,000 (that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $540). Video demo is after the break, hit up the source for a huge, attractive gallery.

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    Technology
    Technology By Laura June Dziuban

    Researchers calculate the amount of information in the world, move on to calculate how much time they wasted on silly calculations

    Have you ever wondered how much information there is in the world? No? Well, someone has. In fact, new research by a team at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, led by Martin Hilbert, has gone ahead and done some calculations to that effect, and the results, while seemingly trivial, are rather interesting. Turns out that there's a ton of information in the world, and the rate of its production is ever-increasing. A few fun tidbits: the current capacity for information, including digital and analog devices, is 295 exabytes, and by their metrics, 2002 is considered the start of the digital age. By 2007, around 94 percent of information was stored digitally. The full research is in the February issue of Science Express, and a video describing their methodology is after the break.

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    Nintendo
    Nintendo By Laura June Dziuban

    The Great Gatsby gets a beautiful, enthralling NES version, kills productivity of the literary gaming elite

    Prepare yourself for the best, most enthralling gaming experience of your life. No, it's not the newest-fangled of the fangles, it's not the latest tech around. It's just The Great Gatsby, lovingly squeezed into an NES game (well, it's really a stylized Flash game, but you know what we mean). The game itself is sort of a cross between Castlevania and Super Mario Bros., and that's just fine with us. In fact, it's the greatest thing we've seen all week. Hit up the source link and get to wasting the rest of your day.

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