Omate has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for its TrueSmart smartwatch. It looks like a wristwatch, but it has the guts of a smartphone — and unlike some smartwatches which only work as companions to your phone, you can actually use the TrueSmart to make phone calls. The developers started showing off the […]
Jolla closes first round of Sailfish smartphone pre-orders, coming soon for $500
Jolla Mobile plans to launch its first smartphone by the end of the year. It’s a 4.5 inch phone with a dual-score processor, 16GB of storage, and the Sailfish operating system. That’s a Linux-based operating system that rose out of the ashes of the discontinued MeeGo Linux project. The company started taking pre-orders a few […]
Microsoft to reward schools with free Surface RT tablets for using Bing search
Microsoft’s got a search engine called Bing. You may not have heard of it, since Google gets most of the attention in the search market. But Microsoft would really like to get a few more people using Bing — and the company’s willing to give away free hardware and even forego some profit in order […]
LG introduces a 5.5 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel display for some reason
Remember when Apple blew us away with a “Retina” quality 3.5 inch, 960 x 540 pixel smartphone display? Since then we’ve seen smartphone screens with 720p and even 1080p resolutions. Now LG is taking the next (il)logical step and showing off a 5.5 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel display. LG calls the screen a Quad […]
Fling streams videos from PC to Chromecast (no browser required)
Google’s Chromecast lets you stream videos from the internet to your TV using a smartphone, tablet, or PC web browser as a remote control. But developers have been figuring out how to stream videos directly from a mobile device to the Chromecast, and now there’s an app that lets you do the same thing with […]
Lilbits (8-20-2013): Google Maps gets crowd-source traffic updates
It’s been a few months since Google acquired mobile mapping service Waze and promised to bring crowd-sourced data about traffic accidents and other conditions on the roads to Google Maps. Now it’s available. Waze incident reports about construction, road closures, and other conditions will start showing up in Google Maps for Mobile in the US, UK, […]
Google to test its balloon-powered internet network in California (Project Loon)
Google’s latest crazy idea to change the world involves using balloons to blanket hard-to-reach areas with internet access. It’s called Project Loon, and in June the company announced it had already been running a limited test in New Zealand. Now it looks like Google is ready to expand that test — and this time it’s […]
Google Play Services 3.2 brings remote wiping to most Android phones, tablets
Google has finished rolling out Google Play Services 3.2 to most Android phones and tablets around the world. What that means is that folks running Android just received updates that should save battery life when using location services, enable support for a few new key features in third party apps, and you can remotely locate […]
Deals of the Day (8-20-2013)
The HP Split X2 is a 13.3 inch notebook or a 13.3 inch tablet, depending on how you use it. The tablet has an Intel Core i3 processor, at least 4GB of RAM, and 64GB or more of storage. Connect the included keyboard dock and you get an extra battery, extra ports, and… you know, […]
Intel Celeron powered mini-PCs for under $200
A handful of new mini-computers featuring Intel Celeron dual-core processors, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of solid state storage have popped up at AliExpress. These little computers are about the size of a Nintendo Wii, but they’re full-fledged computers. They come without an operating system, but they should be able to run most versions of Windows […]