IBLOG SPACE

The T-Mobile G2x may be brand new on virtual shelves yesterday, but we’re not exactly unfamiliar with the Android smartphone. Announced officially back at CTIA 2011 last month, and launched as the LG Optimus 2X a couple of months before that (for the European market), the dual-core handset has already built itself something of a following. The T-Mobile G2x variant has landed on the SlashGear test bench: read on for our first-impressions. It’s not a small device, accommodating a 4-inch touchscreen running at WVGA resolution, and the 8-megapixel camera section at the back bulges out to spoil the lines. A silver strip runs up the battery cover to the lens but, contrary to what you’d expect, doesn’t flip out to act as a stand. Still, the blunt edges leave plenty of room for ports, and unlike on the Galaxy S II, LG has managed to squeeze in separate microUSB and mini HDMI connections. That means you can simultaneously charge the G2x and output Full HD 1080p video. Alternatively it’s tailor

We reported back in March during the CTIA Wireless expo that T-Mobile will be doubling their 4G network speeds to 42Mbps in select cities . Along with that announcement was that they will also be launching several new 4G devices including the T-Mobile 4G Mobile Hotspot sometime in Spring. We now have confirmed that the hotspot will be available starting tomorrow. T-Mobile confirmed the news via Twitter as well as their blog. The 4G Mobile Hotspot device built by ZTE will retail for $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year data plan service agreement. The device is compact and lightweight and comes with an SD card slot for up to 32GB of expandable memory. However, the device only supports up to 21Mbps. If you live in one of the select cities—currently Las Vegas, New York, and Orlando—you can take advantage of 42Mbps speeds by getting the T-Mobile Rocket 3.0, a laptop stick modem built by ZTE and the first 42 Mbps capable 4G product for the carrier. This device is set to launch

We have laptops, we have netbooks, we have tablets, we have smartphones. But here is something different-ish. The Lifebook X2 concept folds into quarters, and then fits in a nifty little case that might just take me back to my flute-playing days. When opened halfway, you have kind of a widescreen palm top, mini computer. When unfolded completely, it turns into a full size, ultra thin notebook. Of course, there is the small issue of a seam running through the middle of the screen. It’s an interesting concept though. Take a look at the gallery. What do you think, is there a market for this? The designer is Park Hyun Jin.

Apple has been hard at work developing new multitouch gestures, and also making gestures more intuitive, according to multitouch related patents from Apple recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, and uncovered by PatentlyApple . The gestures have interesting names: Star, Crossbar, Ohm, Scoop and more. The patents are for both mobile devices and desktops. The finger moves sound like they will take some getting used to, like Ohm and Wiggle (multiple short movements with sharp changes in an arbitrary direction.) There are also gestures that involve just drawing familiar shapes with a finger: star, arrow, circle, crossbar, and the infinity sign. Apple hopes that these gestures will “reduce the cognitive burden on a user while saving battery life,” since the gestures will help do tasks more quickly. There was talk of multitasking gestures being a part of iOS 4, and developers can still access them using the SDK tools. There are also apps for jailbroken devices that unlock

If you are anxious to see the BlackBerry PlayBook, you can get a little preview from a leaked guide for retail salespeople. The guide is quite thorough, and includes information about everything from hardware features to usability to accessories. It also reveals (not surprisingly) that RIM is positioning the tab for consumers, not just its business users. See the guide and read more after the cut. The company encourages reps to focus on how the device offers “stunning multimedia, true multitasking, and access to the whole internet — no exceptions,” rather than “[It] gives you the business tools you need to transform the way you work.” Though presumably, it does both? The guide offers 360 degree views of the Playbook, and very basic information (like what a touchscreen is) along with the detailed descriptions. Check it out here , and have fun. You can even take a few quizzes to test your

Garmin today announced its first ever touchscreen GPS sports watch called the Forerunner 610. The new sports watch is sleek yet robust and weather-proof. The touchscreen can withstand rain and sweat, and can even be operated with gloves on. The announcement for the Forerunner 610 is in preparation for the upcoming world-class marathons in Boston and London. Watch the video demo after the cut. The Forerunner 610 features an easy to navigate interface with an overall design that has won it the Red Dot Design Award. The display is highly responsive, however, the interface is in grayscale to save on battery life. The watch has a Training Effects feature that shows you the impact of your fitness routines and it has a vibration motor to alert you of reaching target heart rate, pace, and distance. And of course, it tracks a whole bunch of fitness metrics. The metrics recorded can then be used in a feature called Virtual Racer that lets you compete against yourself or against others via the Ga

An Air France super jumbo jet taxiing out to the runway clipped the tail of a regional Delta plane at JFK Airport last night, spinning it forcefully. The huge Air France A380, which can seat over 500 passengers, struck Comair flight 6293, which had just landed from Boston and was taxiing to the gate. There were 62 passengers and four crew members on board the smaller plane, and fortunately, no one was hurt. See the video after the cut. Air France Flight 7, carrying 495 passengers and 25 crew, was headed to Paris and as it taxiied out, the left wingtip struck the tail of the Comair plane. “It was pretty damned scary,” Poppy Lawton, 29, of London, told the New York Daily News. She was aboard the Delta flight that got hit. “You could hear things breaking, almost like glass breaking.” Another passenger, Sebastien Pinel, said: “The plane was rocking, first to the right, then to the left. Nobody knew what happened until we got out of the plane.” The plane spun around almost 90 degrees in the

With the new release of the family comedy HOP, it seemed appropriate that Doodle Jump: HOP be the app of the week. In this version of Doodle Jump you are the cute, cuddly Easter Bunny’s son, E.B. who is hoping to take over the family business. Before E.B can do so, he has to master the art of jumping. With the your guidance and Doodle the Doodler’s guidance, E.B. will be the top jumper in no time. While learning to jump E.B. will also be learning the ropes of the top-secret candy factory as well as saving Easter from Carlos, the leader of the chicks who are trying to steal Easter. This is Doodle Jump like you’ve never seen it before and yet still equally as irresistible. As much as I enjoyed the original and holiday versions of Doodle Jump, I can easily say this version is my favorite. One of the main reasons I enjoy the HOP version is because there are 25 unique levels with specific heights you have to reach in order to unlock the next level. Another feature I appreciate more is how

Toshiba today unveiled three new laptops touted to be the lightest and thinnest high performance business laptops that the manufacturer has ever produced. According to the company, the Portégé R830, Tecra R840, and Tecra R850 were completely reengineered from the ground up with thin, light, and highly durable design in mind. The Portégé R830 continues its claim as the world’s lightest 13.3-inch full-performance ultraportable laptop with an integrated DVD drive. Weighing just around 3.1 pounds, and roughly one inch thin, the Portégé R830 can be configured with 2nd-gen Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors thanks to the use of Airflow Cooling Technology. The Tecra R840 is a full 14-inch business laptop and is 25 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than its predecessor, the Tecra M11. The Tecra R850 is a 15.6-inch model featuring an additional 10-key numeric pad, and weighs around 5.3 pounds. This model is 19 percent thinner and 6 percent lighter than its predecessor, the Tecra A11. Bot

According to Bloomberg sources, Intel may be attempting to secure a spot for their mobile chips by first infiltrating the Chinese phone market. Their sources claim that Intel has submitted designs of a handset based on a version of Intel’s Atom microprocessor. The phone will be manufactured by ZTE Corp and may go on sale in China. Intel has been trying to break into the smartphone industry without much success, lagging far behind rivals, and still too dependent than they’d prefer on the personal computer market. Currently there are no phones on sale that use Intel processors. The surprise move of Nokia jumping ship from Intel to Microsoft back in February also didn’t help in the company’s efforts to make headway into smartphones. When asked about working with ZTE, a spokeswoman for Intel Claudine Mangano declined to comment. “In terms of the overall market, we recognize that we have some work to do, but we’re patient and we’re committed to the business,” Mangano said. “We have the rig

Despite the fear that rung in our hearts that T-Mobile pricing would soon shoot up as a result of AT&T’s acquisition plans , that doesn’t seem to be the case—at least not yet. T-Mobile just confirmed two new unlimited plans that continue the carrier’s competitive pricing tradition. The plans called “Even More” and “Even More Plus” offer unlimited voice calling, unlimited messaging, and unlimited data. However, there is a catch, in that the plans aren’t truly unlimited. There is a cap on usage of up to 2GB per month. If you go over your usage allotment for the month, they will throttle your bandwidth, which is nonetheless better than paying for overage fees. The Even More plan is $79.99 per month and requires a two-year contract and according to the company, saves customers more than $350 per year compared with an unlimited smartphone plan from AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint. The Even More Plus plan is $59.99 per month with no annual contract required and is geared towards the month-t

Let’s sit down for a moment and have a talk. ATRIX 4G, you’ve had an alright run. You’ve been here for a few weeks, you’ve had a great time at CTIA, you’ve been to Barcelona, and are currently sitting in houses and apartments and businesses all across the USA. Don’t you think you’ve had enough? It might be time that you throw in the towel. There may well be someone here who’s planning on taking your place. I’m sorry but you’re going to have to fight to the death for your dual-core seat of ultimate glory – it’s only fair! Behold – T-Mobile Sensation 4G. You know the players, you know their names. It’s the AT&T ATRIX 4G and the HTC Sensation, both of them set to have a nice fist-fight for the wallets of good evil-fearing Americans across this fine country of ours. Which one deserves the death belt? The answer can only be found in the minds and hearts and yes, wallets of the folks who’ll be making the decision in the next few weeks. Display HTC Sensation : 4.3-inch SLCD (qHD) 540 x 96

Fifty years ago today, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to see the earth from orbit. Riding aboard the Soviet Vostok 3KA-3, Gagarin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on April 12, 1961. His flight lasted a little under two hours … just enough time to orbit the earth once. He then reentered the earth’s atmosphere and at an altitude of about ll 7 km Gagarin ejected from the Vostok capsule and parachuted to safety. Gagarin landed in a farm field and asked a local farmer if he could borrow the phone to call Moscow. And the rest is history … “Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship, I marveled athte beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty, not destroy it!’ Yuri Gagarin, first man in space Thus ended the first space flight of a human in space. Since then, over 500 humans have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and 12 have walked on the moon. And every year since 2001, the world celebrates this event

Intel is the world’s largest maker of microchips and as such, the company has a chip for just about anything that might need one. Intel has been hinting that it might have a new chip that it is currently developing called the Cloverview chip. The chip is apparently an Atom part that has been tweaked to be more power efficient. The first mention of the Cloverview name came from a speech that Intel’s Doug Davis gave at IDF in Beijing this week. The chip is made on a 32nm process and will have power consumption aimed at netbook and tablets. Low power processors for the tablet market is one of the areas where Intel is behind rivals like ARM. ARM processors dominate the tablet and smartphone world because they are more power efficient leading to better battery life for the mobile devices that use them. Over the next two years, Intel will move from its 32nm process to a 22nm process. Davis also took the opportunity to unveil the new Atom Z670 processor that could land as early as next month.

USB 3.0 can already be found on a lot of computers in the notebook and desktop market today. All of these computers use a third party controller for the USB 3.0 ports though because neither Intel nor AMD offer native support for the USB 3.0 port in their chipsets. AMD has announced that it will be changing that. AMD has announced that it will build support for USB 3.0 into its upcoming A75 and A70M Fusion chipsets. AMD’s Phil Hughes told CNET in an email that the chipsets are shipping today. That should mean machines running the new chipsets will starting hitting the market before long bringing native USB 3.0. Intel will be the only major chipmaker that doesn’t support USB 3.0 natively. One of the reasons that support for USB 3.0 isn’t more widespread today is that both AMD and Intel didn’t offer support for the standard in their silicon from the start. Once this support is integrated, the ports will become much more common. The USB 3.0 port is backwards compatible with all older USB p

The speculation surrounding what Steve Jobs and Apple have up their sleeves is never ending. An analyst at Jefferies named Peter Misek thinks he knows what will be next for Apple and he thinks that the product will revolutionize video just as iTunes revolutionized music. Misek bases his predictions on “weeks” of channel checking with developers and content partners on Apple’s plans. Misek says that he thinks Apple has a new data center in North Carolina that has gone live or will go live very soon. He also thinks that Apple is building a second super data center next to it. He notes that Apple owns land next to the first data center and the opening ceremony had a mock up with two data centers side by side. Misek also notes that he thinks Apple is negotiating for data centers around the world including more in the US right now. Misek believes that all the purchasing and building of data centers points to one thing – Apple plans a cloud video service. The service he believes will go alon

Apple has been using a lot of aluminum in its iPhone and iPod devices for years now. The problem with aluminum is that it blocks radio signals making wireless syncing difficult to do. Apple gets around those issues today by putting the wireless hardware that needs to send and receive signals behind plastic of some sort. Recently Apple hired a Senior Composites Engineer named Kevin Kenny that previously worked for a company that used carbon fiber to make bikes. This fact has led many including Cult of Mac into believing Apple is hard at work on iPods and other device with carbon fiber cases. They reckon that for wireless sync to come to the iPod line these carbon fiber cases are needed for good radio signal transmission. The rub as Fast Company points out is that carbon fiber blocks radio signals as well. That means that any gains from moving to a carbon fiber case for the devices would potentially be no better than using a new aluminum case design. The other trade off with carbon fiber

This week marked 50 years since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter space and orbit the earth. To celebrate the anniversary of the first human in space a cool watch has turned up by designer Bernhard Lederer. The watch is a very limited edition piece and the design is inspired by the Vostok space capsule that Gagarin rode into the history books. The first watch will be auctioned off this week at Sotheby’s in New York and has a 60-second timer that orbits around the face of the watch counterclockwise to match the orbit of the historic space flight. The orbiting tourbillion is inspired by the statue commemorating the flight at the landing site of the capsule in Engels, Russia. The watch has an integrated magnifying glass so the wearer can see all the details of the gears and dials. The watch has a movement powered by manual winding with an 80-hour power reserve. The case is made from platinum 950, has a sapphire crystal display, and text highlights from Gagarin

I would bet around the holiday season you have run across those cheap beer making kits that let you brew your own beer in the home. Those are all fine and good but if you are a beer geek with the money to afford the best personal brewery around, a clear jug and a mixing spoon might not be your idea of fun. What you need is the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery. It’s made from stainless steel and looks the business for sure. It has all sorts of fancy knobs and dials on the top and a tap that you can put your mug under to get at your own personally brewed beverage. The big catch to this thing is the price; it sells for about $4,500 here in the states. The cool part is that all of the steps of the brewing process from fermentation, to carbonation and serving are handled in this one single unit. It takes about a week from start to drunk for you to taste your own brew. This thing even chills the beer for you to drink a nice frosty one after a hard day.

Intel and Apple have put Thunderbolt interface into the most recent version of the Mac notebooks that hit the market not long ago. So far, there are only a few products on the market that support the new interface, but that is changing. Many big companies are promising to support the interface like Canon for DSLR cameras and a lot more. Intel has also made an announcement that will mean more products for the interface will be coming. Intel has announced that dev kits for Thunderbolt will be available this quarter. The dev kits for the interface will help companies looking to make peripherals and devices that connect to the interface design and get the gear onto the market quicker. Thunderbolt has support for speeds of up to 10Gbps, which is enough for some serious data throughput. You could shoot a full-length HD flick across the interface in under 30 seconds. The interface supports PCI Express and DisplayPort protocols meaning one Thunderbolt port could be used for several different i

If you are a Euro Android geek there are three new tablets coming over the next few quarters that you might want to check out from Hannspree. The new tablets will land in Q1, Q2, and Q3 respectively and are called the SN10T1, the SN10T2, and the SN10T3. They all have some of the same features, but each has differences that are key. The Q1 SN10T1 tablet has a 10.1-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600. It will run Android 2.2 and has 16GB of storage. The processor inside the tablet is the Tegra II and it has WiFi and Bluetooth. The tablet will sell for €349. The Q2 bound tablet is the SN10T2 with the same 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 screen. This tablet gets a T1 processor and 8GB of storage. It too will run Android 2.2 and packs in WiFi, Bluetooth, and adds a camera for €299. The last of the three tablets heading your way in Q3 is the SN10T3. This tablet has a 10.1-inch screen with a higher resolution of 1280 x 600. It will run the Tegra II processor and has 16GB of storage. This tablet

There are a bunch of different apps on the market today that will turn your iPhone and Android device into a universal remote control. What we don’t see a bunch of are universal remote controls that run the Android operating system. The Conspin Andi One universal remote is just such an animal. This universal remote has a big 3.5-inch touchscreen for controlling your home theater gear. It runs the Android 2.1 operating system and it supports apps raising the confusing opportunity to run a universal remote app on your universal remote. The Andi One has an aluminum body. It can connect to your components via RF, IR, and WiFi and supports 5,000 brands and 10,000 devices. It charges with a charge stand via a micro USB port and the internal battery is good for 20 hours of use. Pricing and availability are unknown at this time.

The programs that DARPA runs often result in some of the coolest hardware and gear for military and civilian use being invented. One of the cool things that DARPA and its contractors have been working on are holographic goggles that give soldiers a bit of augmented reality on the battlefield. The goggles look more like sunglasses to me and have some really cool features. They will be able to interface with drones flying overhead to give the solider details on what the drone sees and what the drone is firing at. That capability will mean that the solider can get the intelligence that the drone sees directly without waiting for someone else to offer the report. Another cool feature is that the goggles could tell the solider whether that jet or helicopter on the horizon is friend or foe. The glasses were developed in cooperation with Vuzix, the same company that makes the video glasses for consumers. They would use a head tracker to know where the wearer is looking and could tell you thin

This has to be a hoax, so take this with a grain of salt the size of Everest. According to Gizmodo a file has been spied on the FBI Vault website where old documents are put for the public to peruse that is a report on the infamous 1950 crash in Roswell, New Mexico that some believe was a UFO crash. The government has long maintained the crash was a weather balloon. The document in question is a memo by an FBI agent named Guy Hottel that was working the original case and recounts what a so-called “investigator for the Air Forces” told him about the crash. The Air Force investigators name is blacked out in the memo. The reminder of the memo is an interesting read and conspiracy theorists will be riled up for sure. The memo goes on to say that the Air Force found a crashed saucer shaped flying machine about 50-feet in diameter and that the investigator believed that the high-powered military radar in the area interfered with the UFO’s controlling mechanisms. This is a crazy document to t

Let’s begin by explaining what this indy game creator’s product is: GMod, aka Garry’s Mod . There’s a game called Half Life 2, it’s a first person shooter that you play on the PC. What our homie Garry Newman has done here is to create a mod that turns the game into a sandbox game in which there are no predefined aims or goals, only allows the user to create their own worlds inside the constraints of the Half Life 2 environment. Basically this means you can do anything, and invite your friends to join in. What Newman has done to smash all pirates of this particular for-sale modification of the game is to insert an error that occurs only when pirates attempt to use an unpaid-for version of the game. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has occurred, and it certainly wont be the last, but it is a good example of a completely independent developer using a simple method to stick it to those who would take his application when he’d rather they pay for it. The exact error here, incase

If you hadn’t already noticed, SlashGear and our sibling site Android Community are in a tablety-mood at the moment, with a handful of Motorola XOOM slates that we’re simply desperate to give away to our readers. Office Depot has generously given us a BlackBerry PlayBook WiFi tablet to give away too; check out exactly how you can win this QNX slate after the cut. It’s a prize worth $499.99, and features a 7-inch touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, along with Adobe Flash support. There’s also two cameras, and RIM has thrown in Android app compatibility so that the PlayBook won’t be short on software to run when it hits the shelves. Hands-on with no less than RIM founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis The BlackBerry PlayBook goes on sale April 19, and is available to pre-order from Office Depot here . One lucky SlashGear reader will get a PlayBook of their own for doing nothing more than checking out the SlashGear Facebook page , however. Full instructions are below… To stand a chance of

It appears that the folks over at PreCentral have gotten themselves an early hands-on with the newest version of webOS, version 3.0. This is the version that’ll be on all their brand spanking new products in this summer season, and what a whopper of a system it’ll be. What this preview amounts to is a breach of contract between a developer and HP, where they were given an SDK to work with for app creation purposes, but leaked it instead to the media. Shame! PreCentral took the opportunity and ran with it – Let’s take a look at a list of new features, shall we? The first important point to consider is the fact that HP will not be including Google Maps as webOS has in the past. Instead there’ll be a new version of Microsoft’s Bing Maps – think of the ramifications of that. Next, take a peek a this extended list of updates as constructed, again, by those sneaky folks over at PreCentral, and note that all of these features are said to be NEW, meaning there’s certainly a batch of items that

It appears that Google has chosen Identive’s ACIG Technology subsidiary as their exclusive supplier of NFC stickers for at least one of the five major US cities receiving NFC window decals across America. ACIG Technology will be in charge of supplying these stickers while they’re manufactured by another Identive Group company by the name of Smartag, which is based in Singapore. These stickers are approximately 80x50mm and are currently being handed out in a big push in Austin to re-promote the Places environment. Cities with these stickers already spreading through them include Las Vegas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as Portland and Austin, which’ve been with the program for a slightly longer. What the groups involved hope this service will do is make the process of both checking in at locations as well as getting and distributing deals, coupons, and etcetera much easier to engage in. Bernardo Hernandez, senior director of consumer marketing for Google has

Cisco’s shutting down of their Flip business after only two years says not just a great deal about Cisco but about consumer markets as a whole. Primarily that they are very hard to succeed in and should be entered only with adequate strategies. Cisco had primarily acquired Flip and the Pure Digital team in order to gain a jump start to their consumer business strategy. This included not only the Pure Digital team which started and successfully built the Flip business but also the retail and channel relationship’s Pure Digital had acquired. There may have been some technology aspirations with Cisco’s networking efforts but the consumer expertise Flip brought to Cisco was the real value. That being said the shutting down of the Flip business by Cisco shows how difficult it is to succeed in consumer markets. Especially when consumers aren’t your core business. Cisco has made a comfortable living as a solutions provider for networking infrastructure. How you orient and design your business

It seems that the first Windows 8 build has leaked, and from what we can tell, this leak does indeed appear to be verified as legit. This is a very early non-complete version of the newest version of Windows, and it does appear to have a very Windows 7 feel to it. Why would this be? Because in early versions of updates to Windows, the big changes come in what’s called “Milestone 3,” while this leaked release is definitely along the lines of “Milestone 1.” Have a peek at this sneaky leaky and decide for yourself if it’s worth diving into, or if it should still be left in the developing pit for a few more months. You’ll more than likely be able to find this “Milestone 1 Build 7850″ of Windows 8 in all the usual FTP and torrent sites, but beware – this is a fresh breeding ground for viruses and hacks that’ll lead the devil right into the heart of your PC. That said, why don’t you just have a quick peek here instead and go ahead and leave it alone? Sounds great! Build Information: Build le

We mentioned before that Apple may be making a “jaw-dropping” announcement at the SuperMeet during the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event in Las Vegas this week. And now our dreams have come true. Apple just unveiled Final Cut Pro X, a much needed update to the industry’s flagship film editing software. It’s been rebuilt into a 64-bit application on Apple’s Cocoa framework with a brand new interface and support for full background rendering. The most prominent improvement is that the new Final Cut Pro has been rebuilt as a 64-bit application, which will enable it to surpass the 4GB memory available to 32-bit applications. “Final Cut Pro Ten will no longer be hamstrung by the 4GB of memory that are available to 32-bit applications, and can now take advantage of as much memory as you can throw at the application,” said Peter Steinauer, Architect of Final Cut Pro. “What this means in technical terms is larger, more complex projects, larger formats, larger frames of memory,

This is already making my day. Mogi, or Mr. Grumbles depending on how formal you’re feeling, has been making “…blarg house music for house music blargspots” (sic) for an unspecified number of time-units. Anyway, yeah, this is perfect. It’s an hour-long re-cut of the original Tron set to a new Daft Punk-esque series of beats that is currently rocking my face. This is exactly what I needed to brighten my day. How can you have a frown on your face when you have lightcycles, giant evil tanks, the MCP, and phat beats? I don’t really remember the original score to the original Tron, and I still haven’t seen the 2.0. I am no Tron expert or Tron fanatic telling you to watch this and enjoy because I love everything Tron. Really, I don’t like Tron much at all. Just between you and me, I hate Tron. I like this in spite of it being Tron. j/k I’m ambivalent. It’s cold up there in Ann Arbor where Mr Grumbles is a French / Disco House DJ. Keeping dancefloors stocked with sweaty gyrating bodies is hi

Here’s a neat little accessory to turn your Apple iPad into a retro mini arcade machine. Ion Audio first showed off this iPad arcade cabinet called the iCade at CES earlier this year but had not confirmed a date of availability. Today, the accessory just passed through the FCC signaling an on time launch for May 31. Watch the video demo after the cut. The iCade is designed to sit on top of your table and has an arcade style joystick with six numbered buttons and two “enter” blue buttons. You simply slide your iPad into the front of the iCade and connect them via Bluetooth to start playing your favorite classic arcade games. Well, you do have to go and download the games, which are thankfully free, from Apple’s App Store. The Atari Greatest Hits app is configured to work with the iCade and you can download additional games via the app. However, the iCade relies on 2 AA batteries, which can get gobbled up rather quickly as you play hours on end of Space Invaders. It would be nice if ther

Angry Birds parent company Rovio announced via Twitter today that they are in the works to make the hugely popular game sync-able across all platforms. This is awesome news for all you Angry Birds addicts out there because this means you no longer have to start the game from scratch if you switch devices. Rovio Mobile tweeted today that the plan is to sync across all platforms which is indeed a pretty big project, but they auspiciously added that they are getting close. So normally, when you switch devices, say you’re upgrading your current iPhone to a new Android phone like the HTC Sensation , you would lose the levels you’ve beat and start the game all over. Rovio is trying to eliminate this problem. It’s a move that other game makers should take note of as well. It’s not certain when they plan to unleash this new feature or how they plan to implement it except that it will likely launch before Summer.

Have you heard of Ubuntu? Of course you have. It’s the top Linux distribution worldwide. Ubuntu is the first project that made it easy for regular users to really run Linux on the desktop. Ubuntu uses GNOME as it’s preferred desktop solution. GNOME is a desktop environment package that allows a single software package to take care of just about everything your GUI hands could ever desire. The GNOME Project recently announced a major version overhaul. This is like the Linux equivalent of a jump from XP to Windows 7. Many people think of Linux as if it’s an operating system in competition with Windows. This isn’t really the case. There are some vocal users among the community that live to fight against the corporate machine, but most of us, we just like choices. Linux itself isn’t an operating system in the strictest sense of the word. Linux is just an idea about how an operating system works. The easiest way to think about it is as if every individual installation of Linux is it’s own o

Oh my goodness were you unaware of the fact that we were giving away a couple of Motorola XOOM Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets? Why, you’ve got to know! And you’ve got to enter because everyone has an equal chance at winning! And not only that, we’ve got a total of FIVE tablets up for grabs, the other three sitting pretty over on our sister site Android Community. That’s a who lotta’ tablets for you to be winning! Take a peek at the limited ruleset here, and if you’d like to know everything there is to know about this contest, head back to the original [contest post] . Then enter! Enter your heart out! To win one of these fabulous tablets, you must: 1. “like” us on Facebook: facebook.com/slashgear.com 2. Comment on the FACEBOOK wall saying something nice like “SlashGear and NVIDIA are ever so generous and kind with their dual-core generosity.” Contest begins April 11, 2PM PST, and ends April 24, 2PM PST. A winner will be announced every Monday @ 5PM PST here in the main news feed and at