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Stories by Alessondra Springmann

  • Seven minutes of terror: NASA's Curiosity Rover to land on Mars this weekend

    How do you get the largest Mars rover yet--one the size of a Mini Cooper with six wheels, a host of scientific instruments including a rock-vaporizing laser with a seven-foot range, and a plutonium power supply--from space to the surface of Mars? The last two NASA rovers to land on Mars were the size of shopping carts and used a bouncing airbag system to deliver those rovers safely. This time, with the larger Curiosity, NASA is going sci-fi: It'll use a sky crane to gently land the largest rover yet on Mars.

  • New Nvidia GPU Does Wireless Video, Looks Ridiculous

    Nvidia, makers of graphics cards, took a step into a strange future recently when they announced a wireless graphics card, the KFA2 GeForce GTX460. What are you going to do with a wireless graphics card? For one, it’d give that TV that you’ve been watching YouTube on in your living room a graphics boost without requiring a laptop or desktop.

  • Rumors: The mythical Google Chrome OS netbook is coming

    There have been the rumors (would Google release a tablet in time for Black Friday?). There have been the hints (a Chrome browser beta optimized for touch). But if an Engadget report has any merit, it sounds like Google's gearing up for an announcement on Tuesday, December 7 that'll relocate a rumored Chrome OS notebook from the land of unicorns to the land of real tech products. Well, almost.

  • Apps going viral: When your smartphone gets hacked

    How secure is banking on your iPhone? How sure are you that those app developers have plugged those security holes? So far, there isn’t much malicious code out there targeted at smartphones, but that soon may change as smartphone sales surpass those of laptop and desktop machines.

  • Control a game of Tetris with your body and a buddy

    A new take on Tetris called Lummo Blocks lets you use your body as the controller for directing the motion of the famous falling blocks. Playing with a buddy, one of you takes charge of moving the blocks left to right, and your partner controls the blocks' rotation, all in the public space of a Spanish plaza. Will strangers help or hinder you as you try to create lines of blocks?

  • Unrooting the G2: Is HTC’s smartphone unrootable?

    HTC’s G2, a new smartphone from the Taiwanese manufacturer, is apparently roofproof, and resists attempts to jailbreak the system’s operating system. When the G2 detects that you’ve tried to unlock the software so that you can add custom apps, a special chip reinstalls the stock Android software that shipped with your phone, effectively undoing your modifications.

  • First 12TB network storage server from Seagate

    Has your small business outgrown its current network storage? Do you want space for all of your TV shows, games, and HD videos? Seagate might have the solution for you with its BlackArmor network-attached storage (NAS) system, with four bays that can take 3 terabyte drives for a grand total of 12 terabytes of sweet, sweet storage.

  • A browser cookie that won't go away?

    "Evercookie" is the browser cookie that just won't go away. If you're concerned about having your Web browsing history tracked, you, like most people, will probably delete your cookies and clear your browsers' caches. However, evercookie, written in JavaScript, produces "extremely persistent cookies" that can identify a client even after you've removed standard or Flash cookies.

  • Toy camera from Japan does 3D for only $70

    Printing 3D images can be an expensive undertaking. But for those of us who can't shell out a ton of green for a 3D camera and printer, toy company Takara Tomy has come out with a "toy" 3D camera called the 3D Shot Cam that'll give you stereoscopic 3D images in a small form factor.