The fresh trend of
Micro Four Thirds shooters is on the rise, thus it shouldn’t come as a surprise that more glass-makers are jumping on the MFT bandwagon. Joining the likes of Panasonic, Olympus and Kodak as part of the Micro Four Thirds Group, is a trifecta of third-party lens manufacturers:
Tamron,
Kenko Tokina and ASTRODESIGN. Following closely behind rival Sigma, the newcomers are looking to make a dent in the four-thirds universe. Better late than never, right? There’s still no sign of these optics being available for you to stack in your camera bag, but the news just came in, so it shouldn’t be too long before you can get some extra glass for your shiny new
GX1.
Continue reading Tamron and Kenko bring third-party glass to the Micro Four Thirds bash
Tamron and Kenko bring third-party glass to the Micro Four Thirds bash originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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MasterCard is all over the map when it comes to mobile payments. The credit company will partner with anyone, anywhere, anytime if it means getting new customers and making a buck on the deal. Its latest offering is called QkR, an Australian effort with support from the Hoyts chain of movie theaters and Commonwealth Bank. The initial trial run will be at La Premiere cinemas, where customers will be able to order and pay for food and beverages right from their seat with the QkR app. To initiate the transaction a you scan the QR code or tap the NFC tag attached to the arm rest, and a staff member delivers the trough of popcorn and kiddie pool of coke right to your seat. Now all we need is this sort of high-end treatment in American movie theaters. Check out the video after the break to see it in action.
Continue reading MasterCard’s QkR mobile payment system enters trial in Australia
MasterCard’s QkR mobile payment system enters trial in Australia originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s MacWorld, which means those providers of Apple gear are busting out wares for aftermarket insertion into your objects of desire.
Other World Computing’s latest offering is a slender solid-state drive ready to be crow-barred into last year’s
MacBook Airs. The bombastically named OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G SSD is a SATA Rev. 3.0 drive with a promised 6GB/s data speed at sizes of up to 480GB. Since the stock drives are limited to the 3GB/s SATA Rev. 2.0 (but the controllers run 3.0), you should find a significant performance bump when swapping in the new unit. The toggle-synchronous NAND drives come in a variety of sizes from 120GB ($260) all the way to 480GB ($1,150), but you’ll get a three-year warranty for all that cash. We may never give you our money, nor our funny pages, but you can have the press release that’s after the break.
Continue reading OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express SATA 3.0 SSDs doubles your (MacBook) Airspeed velocity
OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express SATA 3.0 SSDs doubles your (MacBook) Airspeed velocity originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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About a week after
suffering a legal setback in Germany, Samsung received another bit of bad news this morning, when the Mannheim Regional Court rejected the second of its patent infringement claims against Apple. As with last week’s ruling, today’s decision addresses one of Samsung’s arguments that Apple’s 3G / UMTS technology infringes upon its patents. Judge Andreas Voss officially shot down these claims early this morning, though he didn’t offer an immediate reason for his ruling. As
FOSS Patents points out, however, these initial decisions against Samsung may be based on the validity of the specific patents themselves, and would therefore have no bearing upon the outcome of the Korean manufacturer’s three other claims — all of which are based upon different 3G / UMTS patents. In addition, the company is pursuing two lawsuits based on patents not related to 3G standards, including one, apparently, that details a way to type smiley emoticons on a mobile handset. We’re still awaiting more information on today’s outcome and will update this post as soon as we hear more.
German court rejects Samsung’s second 3G patent complaint against Apple originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Wouldn’t it be absolutely splendid if you could hand your phone over to a friend (or complete stranger) without fear of them mucking up your system or digging into your personal bits? Yes, we’d absolutely love to see guest accounts become standard issue on all handsets, but until that day arrives, a new application called SwitchMe will work in a pinch. Word of caution, this app requires root privileges, which may deter many folks.
Rather than allowing multiple sessions to run simultaneously, as you’d expect on a desktop computer, SwitchMe lets users to easily jump between different installations of Android — they exist separately and don’t talk to each other. Naturally, this also allows hobbyists to easily jump between their favorite ROMs, and gives developers clean sandboxes for app testing. The first hit is free, but if you want to manage more than two installations, you’ll need to buy the unlock key for $1.98. Still, those who find the SwitchMe useful should consider tossing the developer a few bones.
Update: As a commenter pointed out, multiple ROMs are not supported at this time. The developer has verified this, stating that any content inside /system cannot be changed. Bummer.
[Thanks, Alan]
SwitchMe brings makeshift guest account to Android root users originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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