Author: Nic Boerma

The next iPhone to issue forth from Apple will feature a 4.6″ Retina display, according to a report from Reuters. The report cites an unnamed source who spoke to South Korean newspaper Maeil Business.  The source also claimed that the handset will be launching some time in Q2 this year. Apple have apparently already started placing orders for screens with suppliers. When the information was queried by Reuters Apple suppliers LG Display and Samsung Electronics Co. declined to comment. Rumours have being doing the rounds of an edge-to-edge iPhone screen for some time so the speculation regarding the increased display…

Samsung’s Galaxy Note tablet will be getting its upgrade to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the second quarter this year, pushing the update date back from Q1. Included with the Premium Suite edition of the update will be new apps. S Note will allow users to combine notes and sketches with other digital media and will come with minutes and diary templates. My Story will allow users to create digital cards using a range of media content. The Android 4.0 update itself will ship with Face Unlock and Android Beam, which enable facial recognition and NFC (near-field communications) respectively.…

Google is now offering tours of the Amazon (the river, not the company) as part of their Street View feature in Google Maps. The inclusion of the Amazon in Street View was unveiled as part of World Forest Day, which took place on 21 March. Prospective users can “…a virtual boat ride down the main section of the Rio Negro, and float up into the smaller tributaries where the forest is flooded. Stroll along the paths of Tumbira, the largest community in the Reserve, or visit some of the other communities who invited us to share their lives and cultures.…

No, Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t gone off the deep end. Two men, Jasper van Loenen and Bartholomäus Traubeck, have come up with a machine that translates Facebook pokes into the real thing, thanks to a device that straps onto a person’s body. The designers like to think of their device as adding a little haptic interaction to a boring old ‘poke’ but there probably isn’t much of a market for it, unless you’d like to lose friends in a hurry. Jasper van Loenen explained a little bit about why they built it. “The Poking machine converts the message into an actual…

One man has started work on luggage that follows its owner. Ben Heck has created Doug, a robotic assistant tracks its owner and follows along behind. Doug the luggage robot isn’t the most elegant robotic companion but the structural resemblance to R2-D2 could have Star Wars fans considering converting the little fellow’s appearance. The little robot uses ping sensors to track where its owner is. A sensor attached to a person’s belt allows Doug to see where that person is, how far behind them Doug should be and when he should stop. It comes fitted with conventional handles, which is…

Samsung’s Galaxy S III was previously expected to launch in May this year but Samsung Electronics China CEO Kim Young-ha may have outed an earlier release date. Speaking at the Samsung Forum 2012 in Beijing Kim said, “In order to increase sales of the Galaxy S3 as well as the Galaxy Note which is already very popular in China, the company is considering rescheduling the roll-out of the Galaxy S3 from May to April.” It isn’t certain that the Galaxy S III will be arriving a month sooner than expected but at least Samsung is considering moving the launch date…

The Pirate Bay is apparently planning on experimenting with airborne proxy servers that will be used to redirect site traffic to another (secret) location. According to a blog post by The Pirate Bay’s MrSpock the group intends to use “…GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi” to create roving aerial servers. Apparently they want an attack on their servers to be a “real act of war.” “With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we’re building, that’s more than enough.” The…

Panasonic is introducing a rice cooker in Japan that can be controlled via smartphone. The implementation of smartphone control in Panasonic’s SR-SX102 range of rice cookers, via FeliCa-enabled handsets (an RFID technology from Sony), is not quite what you’d expect. FeliCa-enabled phones can connect with the appliance when hovered over the marked area, allowing users to push buttons on their phones to get things cooking rather than on the device itself. Up to six presets can be stored for the rice cooker on compatible Android devices and users can sync and store up to 100 recipes on the Panasonic Cooking…

RIM and Samsung have been hit with yet another patent suit, this one related to the use of emoticons. A company called Varia Holdings Inc. has instituted legal action against the two handset manufacturers for violating an “emoticon input method and apparatus” patent. “It is known that for many users, their email and instant messaging communications… often involve the use of emoticons, such as the ‘smiling face’ or the ‘sad face’. However, few email or instant messaging applications offer any assistance to a user to enter and use emoticons in their communications.” The suit filed by Varia alleges that several…

Seagate says that they have made a breakthrough in hard drive storage that, they claim, will see HDDs reaching capacities of 60TB within the next decade. Seagate announced that they have managed to achieve a storage density of a terabit, or a trillion bits, per square inch, making them the first company to do so. This was reportedly achieved with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). Conventional recording technology, known as perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) has been around since 2006. According to Seagate HAMR is capable of improving considerably over existing technology. The company plans to introduce the breakthrough to consumers in…