IBLOG SPACE

Robot vacuum cleaners are very cool little devices that have been around for a long time now. The Roomba was my first experience with one of these things and it worked surprisingly well. There are all sorts of robot vacuums now from different companies. The most recent offering we took a hands on look at was the Neato XV-15 vacuum. Chris found the little vacuum expensive, but a solid choice if you want a robot vacuum. LG has a new robot vacuum that sounds interesting called the VR6172LVM. This little robot vacuum is a round bot that looks pretty much like all of the other robot vacuums out there. The big difference in this LG offering is that the bot has a special feature for testing itself and telling the owner what is wrong and needs to be fixed. The bot has a Self Voice Over Diagnostic that will run a series of tests on 14 different components and then uses a robot voice to tell you what isn’t working. The bot is also thin and will do your daily cleanups without you having to mess w

Last week Skype officially updated its app for Android users. The big feature that the update brought with it was video calling. There were numerous other tweaks in the update as well. The catch was that the video calling was only supported on a few handsets, among them was the Nexus S. I am sure I am not the only one that wondered why the Nexus S got Skype video calling, but the Nexus S 4G was left out. It didn’t take long for Skype to fix that omission. A hotfix for the app landed on Friday that added the Nexus S 4G to the officially supported Android devices for video calling. There is also an APK out there that will enable video calls on some devices unofficially. If you are a Nexus S 4G user, that update is welcome. The vast majority of other Android devices still lack official support. As quickly as Skype issued the hotfix to support the Nexus S 4G smartphone perhaps official support for other devices will come quickly as well. Do you use video calling? I have never seen a real n

The thing I remember most about college was the cost and weight of my textbooks. The books I needed for a semester of school were about $800 back in the day and one of the books alone weighed about ten ponds. Schlepping those books from one end of campus to the other in a rush to make class was the suck. I would have been thrilled to be able to get all my books on a tablet, but in my college days, we were still packing heavy and thick notebooks. In South Korea, the government has decided that all of the elementary-level education textbooks will be digitized and that by 2015 all of the curriculum will be delivered on computers, smartphones, and tablets. This makes a lot of sense with kids only needing a tablet rather than a backpack full of books. While South Korean officials haven’t yet said what tablet will be used for the new digital books, my money is on Samsung. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 would make for a nice little educational tablet. As the largest of the Korean electronics fir

We have talked about the Motorola Droid Bionic on more than a few occasions over the last several months. The smartphone turned up back during CES and then saw delays. The first of the delays was in April with Motorola saying they were tweaking a few things ahead of launch. Apparently, they received some feedback at CES that wasn’t too good. I am glad they postponed the launch rather than making a smartphone that they knew had issues and tossing it out onto the market anyway. The smartphone passed the FCC last Friday and the most notable thing about the required approvals for the device is that it has LTE 4G radios onboard. The LTE use would imply that the Bionic is heading to Verizon. The smartphone is expected to have a dual-core processor under the hood and a giant 4.5-inch qHD display. If the smartphone lands using the OMAP 4 dual core the Droid 3 will use, it may well be the best phone on the Verizon network.

Metamaterials are very interesting materials that can be used to cloak things from the naked eye and hide the sounds produced by things like submarines when in the water. So far, these exotic metamaterials are in the realm of scientific research and theory but they certainly hold a lot of promise for applications other than the obvious military uses of hiding troops and machinery. Previously the metamaterials that were being studied for hiding the sound produced by things like a submarine would only work underwater. A team of researchers from Duke University have created a new metamaterial that will work in air to hide sound. The team has been successful in creating and demonstrating a small acoustic cloak so far. The cloak was designed by Steven Cummer and his team and the prototype was created by layering ordinary strips of perforated plastic. When the sound waves hit the plastic and penetrated most of them appeared to have traveled all the way down to the flat surface under the tria

The notebook market is cooling right now with much of the focus from consumers on tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2 rather than notebooks. Some notebooks are still selling well enough though. Intel is trying to launch its Ultrabook concept and so far, the biggest announcement in the Ultrabook realm is theAsus UX21. According to sources cited by DigiTimes, Intel is prepared to spend some money to lure the notebook makers into building Ultrabooks. According to sources in the downstream notebook market Intel is investing heavily into the related budget and resources to attract the first-tier notebook makers. Exactly what the investment is expected to consist of isn’t spelled out by the sources. I would think that the investment might be in the form of price cuts on the chips Intel has for the Ultrabook segment. Intel is offering a pair of dual-core CPUs that will include the Celeron 787 set for September and Celeron 857 in Q4 for the Ultrabook segment. Intel is think

Dropbox has found itself at the center of a privacy storm this weekend, having changed its terms of service in a way that left many users believing the cloud storage company could share, modify or otherwise use the files they’d uploaded. According to the Dropbox blog, the TOS change – which was flagged up to all users via email – was to make them (along with the security overview and privacy policy) “easier to read and understand.” Unfortunately, references to granting Dropbox “rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display [uploaded] stuff” led to confusion over just what the company was going to do with content. That confusion quickly turned to anger and people deleting their accounts, with comparisons between Dropbox’s amended TOS and what Twitter and TwitPic had changed their own service terms to cover in recent months. The company’s decision to do so in the middle of a holiday weekend in the U

Apple has become the latest target for hackers, with a group of Anonymous users releasing a list of what are said to be usernames and passwords for one of the Cupertino company’s servers. According to a tweet from the team, “Apple could be target, too”; however, they go on to say “But don’t worry, we are busy elsewhere.” That “elsewhere” includes leaking Australian election data, the database from the pepper.nl dating site and more, all part of the so-called “AntiSec” hack campaign. The Apple data does not look to have prompted any personal information leaks, as with Sony’s huge PlayStation Network hack that saw 77m accounts compromised. Apple isn’t unused to hacker attention: the company has played an ongoing cat-and-mouse game with iOS modders over the past few years, as they attempt to open up devices like the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad to unofficial software and remove carrier SIM locks. However, it’s a big step from that to attempting to break into company servers and extract inf

Got $100,001 to spare and a taste for Apple history? An iPhone 4 prototype has shown up on eBay, reportedly of similar ilk to the original leaked handset back in early 2010, and bidding has already skyrocketed to a somewhat unbelievable $100k. According to the seller, who claims to be a cellphone repair engineer, the iPhone was bought from a dissatisfied owner “who really didn’t know who [sic] he had” and was frustrated because there was no way to activate it via iTunes. According to a check through Apple’s database, it is indeed listed as a prototype, and it has the tester code DF1692 etched onto the front panel. Other differences between the prototype and shipping iPhone 4 units include an absence of volume key labels and various X’s where the FCC ID and model number would normally be found on the rear. The screen is fully functional, but since it’s locked in activation mode there’s not a huge amount you could do with it. There are seven and a half days left for the auction still to

Sony may have confirmed that the PS4 next-gen console is in development, but the company isn’t so foolish as to announce any launch details for fear of cannibalizing PS3 sales. That hasn’t stopped the tattle-tales in Taiwan, of course, which inform DigiTimes that Sony is readying production though Foxconn and Pegatron at the end of 2011. That’s ahead of a commercial launch of the PS4 sometime in 2012, the component supply chain sources suggest. Sony supposedly expects to ship at least 20m PS4 units in 2012, though the exact release date during that year is unknown. Foxconn and Pegatron are both responsible for assembly of the current PS3. Specifications of the PS4 are a mystery, though motion-based control in a similar fashion to what Microsoft enabled with the Kinect sensor bar for the Xbox 360 is said to be a given. Comments from Sony in the past have suggested that the console will still rely on optical media rather than shifting to all-digital; Sony looks to have been burned by the

Samsung has announced that it has sold three million of its Galaxy S II smartphones in 55 days, setting a new record for the company and meaning a GSII was bought every 1.5 seconds. That’s without official North American availability; the Galaxy S II – which has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display and is the thinnest smartphone on the market at 8.49mm thick – is yet to go on sale in the US, though carrier versions have been well rumored. The original Galaxy S, Samsung says, hit the 3m sales point in 85 days, which means that the second-gen model has basically shortened that record by a month. In the UK, Samsung has been the most-sold mobile brand for 17 weeks continuous, while the company holds 36-percent of the smartphone market in Switzerland. Back when we reviewed the Galaxy S II in April, we praised its incredibly clear screen and speedy dual-core processor, as well as the impressive 1080p HD video recording and crisp 8-megapixel stills. The subsequent

Ramnaresh Sarwan, the West Indies batsman, has been dropped for the third and final Test against India in Dominica. Kieran Powell, a 21-year-old batsman from Leeward Islands, has been named as his replacement. Sarwan, 31, has struggled since his return to the Test squad after nearly one-and-a-half years for the series against Pakistan in May. He managed only 54 runs in four innings against Pakistan, and his form nosedived further in the series against India, in which he scored only 29 runs over the first two Tests. Sarwan seemed to have been informed of his axing soon after the second Test in Barbados ended in a draw. An hour after bad light ensured a draw, Sarwan tweeted: "Wishing the guys all the best in Dominica! Miami here I come." Clyde Butts, chairman of the selection committee, expected Sarwan to make a strong comeback. "Ramnaresh is having a difficult time and it is best for him to make way and allow a player in better form to contribute to the team totals,"

MS Dhoni has been fined 60% of his match fee as India maintained a slow over-rate in the second Test against West Indies in Bridgetown, while the rest of the team lose 30% of their match fee. The match referee, Chris Broad, imposed the fines after ruling that India finished three overs short of their target. The ICC code of conduct stipulates that the team's captain should be fined 20% of their match fee for every over the side fails to bowl, double what other players in the XI lose. Three offences in the same format of the game within a 12-month period will lead to an immediate suspension of the captain from the next match in that format. This is Dhoni's second over-rate fine in Tests this year, having been docked 60% of his match fee after the Cape Town Test against South Africa in January. If he is pulled up one more time in any Test till the first week of January 2012, he will miss the subsequent Test India play. The Barbados Test ended in a draw, after rain and then bad l

Sohail Tanvir has said his experience in the IPL with Rajasthan Royals back in 2008 helped him captain Rawalpindi Rams to victory in the Faisal Bank Super Eight T20 Cup. Tanvir, who was the leading wicket-taker in the first IPL and scored the winning runs in the final, made special mention of Shane Warne, his captain at Rajasthan. "My experience of playing under Shane Warne helped me," Tanvir told the  Express Tribune . "As a captain you must be on your toes when you need to make important decisions. I gave my players much-needed confidence and they performed to the best of their ability." One of the features of Rawalpindi's run in the tournament was that they relied on their young players to perform at crucial times, something Warne has always encouraged at Rajasthan. Jamal Anwar, Rawalpindi's 20-year-old wicketkeeper, was their leading run-getter in the tournament and Man of the Match in their upset of Lahore Lions in the semi-finals. Raza Hasan, the 18-y

As South Africa's former coach, Mickey Arthur, once put it: "Mother cricket has a funny habit of biting you in the bum if you mess with it". Sri Lanka's 21-year-old matchwinner,  Dinesh Chandimal , was clearly oblivious to those words of wisdom, as he and his fifth-wicket partner, Angelo Mathews, gave England a brief glimmer of an unexpected reprieve, before completing a crushing victory in the third ODI at Lord's. In the end, victory was sealed with six wickets and ten balls to spare, but Chandimal's quest for a maiden Lord's century - which he sealed with a cathartic six over long-on in the 48th over, after Mathews had played out a maiden at the other end - left more than a few anxious faces up on the dressing-room balcony. Mathews and Chandimal seemed oblivious to all the gesticulations from on high, and perhaps they had a point - despite the artificial drama, this was one-day cricket at its most one-sided. After choosing to bat first, England's 24

The chances for the smaller cricket nations to reach the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka have been reduced now that the tournament will again be a 12-team event rather than 16, but there are still two places up for grabs for Associate and Affiliate nations who are good enough. Those from the Asia-Pacific region have reached their final stage of qualifying for the global play-off in UAE early next year. Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Japan and hosts Papua New Guinea will take part in a four-day event in Port Moresby to determine which team travels to the Middle East. Papua New Guinea  have sped up the rankings in the last 12 months and now sit at No. 19 in the world, but that success brings with it added pressure of being hosts and favourites. According to wicketkeeper Jack Vare, preparations have been going exceptionally well for the team who are coached by Andy Bichel and are determined not to waste an opportunity to perform at their peak on the turf wickets of Amini Park and Colts Cricket Ground

When the Nintendo Wii launched, the future of motion gaming was in doubt. Some speculated that the console would die as soon as it launched, since they suspected gamers wouldn’t want to jump around to play titles. Others said that motion gaming was the future. Now, several years later, it’s clear motion gaming did work, and looking ahead, it will seemingly play a key role in all Nintendo products. But Nintendo isn’t the only company that’s doubling down on motion gaming, as we saw last year when Sony launched its PlayStation Move motion-gaming peripheral to some success. But it was Microsoft’s controller-free Kinect motion-gaming device that stole the show. When Kinect launched, the Xbox 360 seemed ripe for a refresh. The platform was losing ground internationally to the PlayStation 3, and it was trailing far behind the Wii in the U.S. But after the Kinect launched, the Xbox 360 got a new lease on life, and given sales of the console as of late, it likely won’t be replaced anytime soon

Welcome to our very first annual Tabletpalooza giveaway for July of 2011! This contest is one where you’ll be able to win one of several brand new NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor powered Android tablets courtesy of NVIDIA and SlashGear! Each of these tablets is unique and powerful in its own way, and between SlashGear and Android Community we’ve got five of em! Each week a new tablet will be revealed here on SlashGear and over on our sister site Android Community, available for you to win for free! What’s our first tablet going to be, you might ask? Why, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 of course! On Android Community they’re giving away an equally awesome Acer Iconia Tab A500, a full review of which you can grab there as well. As for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 we’re giving away here on SlashGear, you can grab a full review here on SlashGear and note, the review shows a slightly different version of the tablet in a Limited Edition Google I/O state, the one you’re going to win below is the newest