You Can’t Kill This Laptop

Getac X500

Getac X500

Traditionally, rugged laptops have required a military-grade surplus of tradeoffs. Typically this has meant lower-speed, older CPUs, tiny hard drives, a dearth of ports and even prior-generation operating systems installed.

Whether the manufacturers were reluctant to change configurations regularly or buyers simply didn’t care about performance is a mystery. Either way, you got a bulky and durable machine, but one that crawled along at the most basic of tasks.

Getac X500

That changes with Getac’s X500: A rugged laptop that, finally, has the tech chops to back up its MIL-SPEC cred. Certified for MIL-STD-810G and IP65 (your standard shock, water and fungus resistance) and “ready” for MIL-STD-461F (which covers electromagnetic interference), the Getac X500 is a handle-equipped, 12.4-pound slab of magnesium alloy and rubber with plenty of power under the hood.
Internally, the X500 is powered by a 2.67GHz Core i7 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 160GB solid state hard drive. Integrated graphics, you say? No: The X500 springs for an impressive Nvidia GeForce GT 330M. The 15.6-inch LCD only provides 1366×768-pixel resolution, but it’s designed for outdoor viewing, giving it a blinding level of brightness. (In fact, it’s quantitatively the brightest display I’ve ever tested.) The display also features a (resistive) touchscreen: It works with your fingertip, but the included stylus is a better bet for accuracy.

Getac X500

Performance is off-the-charts stellar. The X500 turned in near-record marks on both general productivity apps and, shockingly, gaming framerates. That’s excellent news for our military readers: The X500 is just as good for killing actual insurgents as it is for virtual ones.

I also tested the X500’s rugged chops by dropping it several times, dousing it with water and even parking a Subaru Forester on it. Damage was never worse than surface scuffs and cosmetics: The pavement scraped up the underside of the laptop and shredded the rubber feet, but those appear to be easily replaceable and designed to take some punishment. The photos above were all shot after I rained abuse upon it, and as you can see, it doesn’t look battered or frayed.

Getac X500

Gripes, aside from the beastly size, are moderate. The fan is so loud and powerful that it blew papers off my desk from a distance of 18 inches. There’s no optical drive, and the touchpad is dismally unresponsive, making it one of the few times I actually preferred to use a laptop’s touchscreen to the traditional pointer.
Whether you’re out there in the field or find yourself playing the role of Chairborne Ranger, Getac’s latest has guts enough for the toughest of tasks. Of course, if the weight doesn’t give you a hernia, the price might. But since it’s likely being bought on Uncle Sam’s dime, well, what do you care?

Getac X500

WIRED Amazingly tough. Doesn’t skimp on performance. LCD viewable in everything short of direct sunlight. All ports protected under secure, but easy to use, snap closures.

TIRED Puny battery life — barely two hours — will not outlast forced march to Kandahar. No USB 3.0. Two serial ports but no parallel port? Come on, Getac! Hulk-inspired looks won’t exactly help you out with the ladies at Starbucks.

DataDeposit: Nifty Jailbreak App Allows You To Save iPhone App Data In The Cloud (Dropbox)

iPhone Hack

DataDeposit is a nifty little jailbreak app that allows iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users who have jailbroken their iDevice to save application data to their Dropbox account.

It not only helps you to keep a backup of your application data in the cloud so that you can always restore it, but it also provides a neat way to transfer the latest game saves from your iPhone to an iPad or iPod Touch.

The official Dropbox app (iTunes link) currently only allows users to upload the photo library to their Dropbox account as that is what is possible using the official APIs.

Here’s a brief description of the app from Cydia:

Backup iOS application save data to your Dropbox account, and restore to another device! Great for synching your Angry Birds save from your iPhone to your iPad, or ensuring that you never lose any data.

It’s quite easy to use, when you launch the app, it gives you the list of apps you’ve installed and you have to select the app, you would like to create a backup for. Once the application data is backed up, you should be able to see a zip file for that app in the “DataDepositApp” folder created in your Dropbox account.

If you want to transfer the application data from your iPhone to an iPad or iPod Touch then install the app from Cydia on that device. When you launch the app and select Restore from Dropbox. You’ll see the list of apps that can be restored from Dropbox. Tap on the app to download the application data from Dropbox and restore it.

Please remember to close the app if it is running in the background (via the multitasking bar) before taking a backup to avoid any issues. Though the backup process worked for the few apps we tried, it might be a good idea to double check your Dropbox account to confirm that the application data has been successfully backed up.

DataDeposit is available for free on Cydia. If you don't have a Dropbox, then you can create a free account (using the app or going to Dropbox's website), which comes with 2GB storage that should be ideally be sufficient for this purpose.

If you give it a shot then let us know how it goes in the comments.

Wifi Enabled Weight and Body Fat Scale

Weight and Body Fat Scale

Keep you weight and diet on track with this internet enable scale! You can easily monitor you weight and body fat directly to your own computer or iphone. Even your whole family could use it because it works monitoring up to 8 users.


Keep track of your fat mass, lean mas and bmi with the free iphone application available for download.

Rumor: Apple working on 'iPad HD'

iPad HD

 Tech blogs are never short on Apple rumors.


Here's the latest: The company reportedly is working on a new iPad, due out later this year, that will have a higher-resolution screen.

Dubbed the "iPad HD" by a blog called This Is My Next, which is run by former editors from the respected tech site Engadget, the new iPad is said to be a "pro" device that could be used for high-end video editing and photography.

"Think MacBook and MacBook Pro," writes Joshua Topolsky, referring to Apple's lines of laptops.
The iPad HD, which would have a screen with twice the resolution of the current model, will be introduced in September alongside new software that will cater do these higher-end applications, the blog says, citing unnamed sources.

Ars Technica, another tech site, says the rumor makes sense given the fact that Apple has been releasing high-resolution versions of tablet content.

"Apple started including pixel-doubled artwork in versions of iBooks for iPad some time ago. It recently added yet more 2048 x 1536 pixel artwork in iOS 5 betas for newer features like Twitter and Newsstand. So it seems a pretty safe bet that a future iPad will definitely use this resolution," that site writes.
But Ars Technica doubts Apple would start a second, high-end line of tablet computers.
The high-resolution screen could boost the price of the Apple's popular tablet computer, which is the best-selling on the market, says the Time blog Techland. Full disclosure: Time shares a parent company with CNN.

"The screen itself would be so expensive that it'd be impossible to hit the $500 starting point pegged to the consumer versions of the iPad," Techland says.

This is all conjecture, of course -- which is part of Apple culture these days. The conventional wisdom says Apple will hold some kind of product announcement in September, when a new iPhone and possibly an iPad could be unveiled.

Apple's second-generation iPad went on sale in March. The company faces a host of competing tablets -- most running Google's Android operating system -- but none have sold as well as the iPad.

Apple girding gadgets against hackers

IPhone Vulnerability

Apple on Friday said it was working to patch a vulnerability that hackers could use to break into the company's popular iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch gadgets.

Engineers at the California firm are fixing a weakness pointed out by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

"Apple takes security very seriously," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"We are aware of this reported issue and developing a fix that will be available in an upcoming software update," she said.

BSI warned this week of a flaw that would let hackers infiltrate Apple mobile devices by duping users into opening PDF document files booby-trapped with malicious computer code.

Although no attacks have been observed, hackers are likely to try to exploit the weakness, according to a posting on the agency's website.

Possible "attack scenarios for cyber-criminals" include accessing passwords, email messages, contact lists, or built-in cameras and eavesdropping on phone conversations or getting location information, according to BSI.

The agency recommended that Apple device users guard against hackers by not opening PDF documents from unfamiliar sources.

Apple gadget users should limit Web browsing to reliable websites and avoid clicking on links in emails unless they are certain where they lead, BSI advised.

Why Google+ is the next Facebook?

Eliot Van Buskirk - Evolver —Google's social network, Google+, is late. Facebook has a big lead, having ousted MySpace, which in turn deposed Friendster, the site that started us all on this path towards recreating our social fabric as a network of connected personal nodes.
Facebook is an excellent tool for sharing music—usually in the form of Google's YouTube videos—but even the developer of the top music app on Facebook says it doesn't do enough, music-wise.
And when we canvassed the top 20 Facebook music apps, we were shocked by what we found. The list of the most popular music apps on this, the most popular social network, included werevertumorro and Shane Dawson TV, which aren't even music apps; they merely alert fans when one of those videobloggers throws up another video on YouTube.
Evolver.fm contacted Google to try to talk about its music strategy for Google+, mentioning Facebook's apparent shortcomings in that area. A spokeswoman declined to comment –in part, she said, because Music Beta by Google is still in, well,  beta. But even without discussing it with Google directly, we can spot five ways in which Google could become "besties" with music enthusiasts to Facebook's detriment.
1. Easy Sharing
YouTube music videos, which comprise many of the most popular videos on YouTube, are all over Facebook in the United States, and from what Google itself told us, the same is true for Spotify song links in Europe. Facebook is reportedly planning to integrate more tightly with multiple music services, the way it recently did with MOG, but still has a ways to go on that front.
Meanwhile, Google has thousands of engineers, all of whose yearly bonuses will be tied to how "social" they can make its offerings. Clearly, Google+ could give Facebook a run for its money when it comes to sharing music from—and across—all of the music services (read: silos) upon which we depend.
The preponderance of YouTube music on Facebook is an indication that music fans want to use it to share music... so why doesn't Facebook help us?
2. Group Listening Parties
If you haven't used Google Hangout yet, Google+'s online video chatroom that lets you know when your friends are hanging out, consider that my former colleague Jenna Wortham of the New York Times thinks it just might be Google's "killer app," which is really saying something, when you're talking about a company with as much to offer as Google has. And if you've yet to sign in to group listening service Turntable.fm, consider how many music fans already love the way the recently-launched service lets them get together to spin music and talk about it.
By combining those two concepts—with or without the video component—to create real-time music listening parties with push notifications, Google+ could run "circles" around Facebook in the group listening department. And music fans would start evangelizing Google+ in order to get their friends involved, the same way they are currently doing with Turntable.fm.
3. Live Musicians Plus Live Music
Google+'s Hangout feature could do something else, and surely this one has already occurred to Google engineers pining for that "social bonus." Hangout could be a great way for stars to hold meet-and-greet sessions with their fans. Plenty of other ways exist for this sort of thing, of course, but Google has money and famous people make appearances in exchange for it. If Google doesn't do this, one has to wonder how else they're spending their money.
And, of course, the company could archive these talks on YouTube, creating valuable content that would still be of interest 20 years from now, in many cases, and which wouldn't appear on Vimeo or any other competitors. Speaking of YouTube, it's been slowly edging into the live online music business. Clearly, those shows could find a place on Google+, with plenty of social-bonus-friendly features for talking about the show in real time.
4. Google Music Integration
Oh yeah, Google already has its own music storage solution for fans, unlike Facebook, which uploads photos and videos for easy sharing but ignores your music collection. If Google+ doesn't do something interesting with the service still known as Music Beta by Google, its engineers don't just deserve to miss out on those bonuses; they should probably be fired. There are many ways to go with this, but for starters, they could make your music collection visible and searchable on Google+, use it as a way to introduce people to each other, work on creating DMCA-compliant streams that would allow people to listen to each other's taste, and use taste-combining algorithms to create stations out of multiple Music Beta by Google accounts too. Just a thought.
5. Android Apps For The Win
Facebook doesn't have a popular smartphone operating system, and Google does. I'm not an engineer, and have never even played one on TV, but Google's finest should be able to figure out how to use Android APIs for slicker integration between music apps and Google+ than Facebook can manage on mobile platforms it doesn't control.
Any other ideas? Let me know.

Open Source Arduino

Arduino

I am a big fan of gadgets and this one really got my eye. Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. It comes with Schematic, manual and mounting diagrams. Just about everything you need to modify it to your liking.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

The boards can be built by hand or purchased preassembled; the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license, you are free to adapt them to your needs.

Knowing that there are open source software and programs, I always wondered if there were any open source hardware and here it is. I think, this is a beginning of something. Watch out IBM and Microsoft! :)