VNC on the Palm Pre lets you look at your desktop from afar, but not touch it
It didn’t take long for the the iPhone’s release for it to get a VNC client enabling remote desktop access. No surprise, then, that it’s taken even less time for Palm’s Pre to get similar functionality — well, the beginnings of similar functionality, anyway. As the thrilling video after the break proves, it’s possible to get today’s hottest smartphone to connect to a VNC server, but rather sadly keyboard and mouse support aren’t there yet. So, while you can watch all those wonderful command prompts and other windows majestically move across the screen, you can’t touch a single one. Surely that’ll be fixed soon, but will it be soon enough?
ContourHD helmet cam now shipping for aggro dads everywhere
Some dads like grilling, some dads like football, and some dads like tacoing wheels on rocky downhill mountain bike runs. For that latter group (and any other similarly action-oriented folks of either gender), the VholdR ContourHD is now shipping just in time for Father’s Day — and the summer injury season. The 720p wearable cam was announced back in April and we recently received one for in-house testing. We’ll provide our full impressions on it soon, but for now enjoy the thrilling red-light footage after the break captured at last week’s Brammo Entertia test ride, or go ahead and pick up your own. MSRP is $299.99, but Amazon’s selling them for $20 less and throwing in a $50 gift card to boot — savings that will do little to offset the cost of fixing your broken clavicle if you don’t take it easy on the whoopties.
LG 15-inch OLED TV on sale in December
We knew that LG’s 15-inch OLED TV was entering into production this summer, now we’ve got a ship date: December. This according to an interview with Won Kim, LG’s VP of OLED sales and marketing. While 15-inches is small, it easily trumps the world’s first production OLED TV, Sony’s $2,500 11-inch XEL-1, and is a reasonable size for the bedroom (if you must) or kitchen counter. No word on specs but we expect the production set to offer the same million:1 contrast, 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution, and 30,000-hour shelf life as the prototype unveiled in January. The TV will launch first in Korea for an undisclosed price that is bound to be punishingly expensive.
Stop hitting F5, iPhone OS 3.0 release still hours away?
You can refresh all you want but that won’t make the 3.0 update for your iPhone appear any faster. In fact, you might want to give your trigger finger a rest for a few hours — Engadget bud, Richard Lai, noted in a tweet that Apple’s Singapore site says that the iPhone OS 3.0 update will release on the 18th while Apple India says the 17th, the date announced by Apple — the difference presumably accounting for the 2.5-hour timezone offset between the two countries. That would peg an OS 3.0 release anytime between 1700 and 1930 in London or between noon and 2:30pm in New York. But don’t let a little knowledge ruin your obsessive behavior, where’s the fun in that?
Update: The theory is supported by reports that carrier 3 in Hong Kong sent a network-wide SMS notifying iPhone owners that OS 3.0 will be available on June 18th, 01:00 local time. That’s 1pm on the 17th in New York, 6pm in London, and 1900 in central Europe.
Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXVI: HiPhone F06-Slim is brewing up a Storm
Oh hi, HiPhone. Not much of a surprise to see you here, again. The latest masterpiece, the HiPhone F06-Slim, is a Frankenstein amalgamation of KIRF favorite iPhone and RIM’s first foray into the world of touchscreen phones, albeit with a slightly smaller, 3.2-inch display. We’re also looking at a 1.3 megapixel camera, FM radio, microSD support, GPRS, Bluetooth, dual SIM card slots, and “TV phone” capabilities, which we’re taking to mean a mobile receiver of some sort. Looks like it forgot the refresh button on the bottom of the device, but with any luck, it left out SurePress as well. If you hang out with the kind of friends who respect a good knockoff, the price of raising your street cred is just a penny under $190 before shipping.
Intel’s Nehalem-EX - 8 cores & 16 threads…mmmmm
Intel’s latest, the Nehalem-EX. It’s an evolution of the architecture that some of you may be spinning in your Core i7 machines, but boosted to support up to 16 threads and 24MB of cache. 2.3 billion transistors make the magic happen here, and Intel is pledging a nine-times improvement in memory bandwidth over the Xeon 7400. Chips are set to start hitting sockets sometime later this year, and while nobody’s talking prices, staying hip in the enterprise server CPU crowd doesn’t come cheap.
Google algorithm spots would-be quitters
Google, concerned by the recent departures of several top executives, has developed an algorithm to try to identify which employees are likely to quit, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Journal said the internet search and advertising giant had turned to mathematical formulas because it was “concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete.”
The newspaper said Google examined data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories to try to identify which of its 20,000 employees were most likely to leave the Mountain View, California-based company.
Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources for Google, told the Journal the algorithm helps the company “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave.”
The newspaper said Google officials were reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested, but it had already identified employees “who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.”
Edward Lawler, director of the Centre for Effective Organisations at the University of Southern California, told the Journal Google was “clearly ahead of the curve” in taking a more quantitative approach to personnel decisions.
The Journal quoted current and former Google employees as saying the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures.
Recent departures from Google include Tim Armstrong, a senior vice president, who left in March to head AOL, display-advertising chief David Rosenblatt, and Asia-Pacific and Latin America president Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.
Others who have left recently for start-ups such as Facebook and Twitter include lead designer Doug Bowman, engineering director Steve Horowitz and search-quality chief Santosh Jayaram, the Journal said.
