AT&T is ordered to pay damages of $850
From Engadget: NuForce Air DAC wireless audio streamer on sale: $199 for iDevices, $179 for everything else
We may live in a digital world, but analog still rules the roost when it comes to audio, and a dedicated DAC can improve the quality of your tunes considerably. Back at CES, we teased you with NuForce’s Air DACthat wirelessly streams music from mobile to your home stereo on the 2.4GHz band at a range of 30-65 feet (10-20 meters). Well, it’s been priced and is now officially available. For those with Apple devices, the 30-pin iTX dongle will set you back $79, and those keeping their music elswhere can grab the uTX USB transmitter for $59. On its own, the DAC receiver costs $149, though the whole iOS-compatible kit can be had for $199, while the USB version’s yours for $179. PR’s after the break.
from Engadget
From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: Stop Motion LEGO Millennium Falcon Assembly Video
Assembly of the Lego set 10179 from Star Wars Ultimate collector series in stop motion in 3d. Created using 3ds max and V-ray. A very long work over 3 years, modelling all the pieces by myself. and rendered frame by frame.
From Gizmodo: Breakthrough Quadcopter Does Previously Impossible Acrobatics
Looking at their latest invention, Mark Cutler and Jonathan P. Howe will get an awesome job at some military aerospace company. They have created a quadrotor drone with variable-pitch, something that didn’t exist before in these kind of machines. Not they can do some crazy acrobatics. More »
from Gizmodo
From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Kickstarter Is On Track to Out-Fund the National Endowment for the Arts
Kickstarter, Haulin’ It In Kickstarter
Yancey Strickland, a co-founder of Kickstarter, said today that the crowd-sourced funding machine is on track to distribute over $150 million in 2012–more than the National Endowment for the Arts, which has a 2012 operating budget of $146 million. That’s incredibly impressive for Kickstarter, which has been on a roll lately, what with sending 31 Kickstarter-funded films to SXSW and breaking records with the new Double Fine Productions adventure game.
It also goes to show just how underfunded the NEA really is. As a comparison, the Canada Council for the Arts, the roughly equivalent organization up north, has a budget of around $181 million USD–supporting a population a tenth the size. But it’s not a one-to-one comparison. Kickstarter funds all kinds of things the NEA doesn’t, especially consumer items like the big-money-earning iPod Nano watch kit and this iPhone dock. Kickstarter has very little overhead cost compared to the running of a government agency, and (so far, at least) doesn’t have to fight off congressional attacks every few years. And the NEA has very different responsibilities in terms of what it does and does not fund; Kickstarter, for example, is under no obligation to fund traditional or folk artists, and the NEA is unlikely to even attempt to fund your college roommate’s documentary about the wild raccoons of Jackson, Mississippi. So it’s not entirely fair to plant them side-by-side and shake a finger.
Still, it’s great news for Kickstarter, and for us as well–it can only be a good thing to have an influential, democratic system to fund the creative projects that can’t get funding through the NEA, or the major publishers of games, movies, and music.
[via Talking Points Memo]
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
From Engadget: Fraunhofer’s Full-HD Voice brings high fidelity VoLTE to Android smartphones
The audio nerds at Fraunhofer are set to raise the bar for Voice over LTE next week in Barcelona, as the company has announced a new technology known as Full-HD Voice. By leveraging the AAC-ELD codec, Fraunhofer claims that consumers will experience audio quality that rivals the experience of chatting face-to-face. Technically speaking, it’s said the codec offers four times the audio bandwidth of regular phone calls and twice the bandwidth of HD voice services, all without an increase in bit rate. The technology will only be available for Android phones initially, but that seems like a fine place to start. The full PR is after the break — presented in Full HD, of course.
Continue reading Fraunhofer’s Full-HD Voice brings high fidelity VoLTE to Android smartphones
Fraunhofer’s Full-HD Voice brings high fidelity VoLTE to Android smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Feb 2012 08:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from Engadget
From Ars Technica: Apple, labor group comment on Chinese factories ahead of shareholder meeting
The Fair Labor Association (FLA), which has partnered with Apple in order to perform independent audits of its suppliers in China, says it has so far found “tons of issues” at a Foxconn plant in Shenzen. The comments came during the same week as an ABC News television report on Foxconn, which has prompted Foxconn, Apple, and the FLA to each issue their own response to parts of the report. Meanwhile, it seems likely that Apple CEO Tim Cook will be asked by labor groups to address working conditions at Apple’s suppliers during the company’s shareholder meeting scheduled to take place today.
from Ars Technica