From the Editor's Desk: A slow CTIA, whose app is it anyway, the EVO 4G LTE isn't as bad as you thought, eh?

Two thirds of these guys busted their butts at CTIA in New Orleans. One of them was not me.

Another CTIA has come and gone. I'm not usually one to gripe about the pace of a show, given that at these things we're essentially on a working vacation in cool city. But this spring's CTIA was pretty meh. The biggest announcement was, what, Verizon's Droid Incredible 4G LTE? Not an unimportant phone, I suppose, and it should sell just fine. But while Sprint and AT&T and T-Mobile are rocking phones from the new-and-improved HTC One line, with much-improved cameras, Verizon's missing out.

Samsung missed a pretty big opportunity in New Orleans, too. Not even a week after it unveiled the Galaxy S III to a worldwide (or at least European) audience in London, Sammy squandered a great chance to get the U.S. even more excited about it, and to get CTIA attendees (mostly of the American variety, we wager) proper looks at the new flagship phone. Strike while the iron is hot, they say.

Of course, the U.S. carriers will put their own spin on the Galaxy S III. And it's pretty likely that we'll see some sort of event to show them off, just like what we had with the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II. But it was pretty surprising to see a minimal showing from Samsung here in New Orleans. No both. Just a brief appearance at the Mobile Focus event, where journos and companies cram into a ballroom for food, drink and a slightly more intimate look at products than on the show proper. The Galaxy S III is an important phone that was mostly kept off the floor, and that's a shame. Good thing we went to London to get a proper introduction. (By the way, if you haven't read Alex Dobie's piece -- "Hype, expectation an the Galaxy S III" -- you've missed out.)

The roundtable keynote featuring the CEOs of Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, moderated by CNBC's Jim Cramer, was entertaining if not overly substantive. (It also went a bit long, with each of the four's intro remarks taking more time than many of us would have preferred.) But Sprint CEO Dan Hesse hit home a little bit with a renewed push for mobile privacy, security and safety. Those are three things that will only become more important in the coming years. The Sprint Guardian program, which covers all applicable lines on an account for a relatively small fee, should be an interesting way of going about it.

Otherwise, no real showstopping announcements. No real major releases. Will CTIA in the fall (back in San Diego) make up for it? Or is the usefulness of trade shows starting to run its course for manufacturers?

Oh, by the way. Those two guys in the picture above -- Jared "The Body" DiPane and Anndrew "Yes that's how it's spelled" Vacca kicked some serious ass last week. Cheers, boys.

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Halfbrick?s iOS Hit ?Jetpack Joyride? Touches Down On Facebook

Here's a little something to file away for when your weekend gets dull -- the Australian devs at Halfbrick have brought their premier flying-around-and-dodging-things game to its new home away from iOS. Starting today, users looking to waste a few minutes playing Jetpack Joyride don't need to look any further than Facebook for their fix.

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Video: Chris Matthews and Barney Frank vs. Hate Group Leader Tony Perkins (Little green footballs)

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Nina Dobrev Understands Elena's Decision On 'Vampire Diaries'

'Diaries' star tells MTV News about her character's game-changing decision on Thursday night's season finale.
By Jocelyn Vena

Nina Dobrev
Photo: MTV News

The "Vampire Diaries" season finale Thursday night answered some questions (like which Salvatore brother Elena wanted), but also posed a bunch more.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

As the episode, titled "The Departed," came to a close, a tear-filled Elena told Damon that while she cared for him, her one true love is his good-guy brother, Stefan.

"I understand why she made the decision," Nina Dobrev told MTV News about her character Thursday night in New York. "I respect her decision, and I think, having seen the last three years, what's happened in her life, everyone will also. They may not be happy, half the people will not be happy regardless, but they'll get it, and it's her decision at the end of the day."

And, the drama didn't end there: After Elena broke the news to Damon, she and her friend Matt drove off the same bridge her parents did years before, their car sinking into the river.

Much like that other time, Stefan plunges into the water to save her, except she sacrifices herself to save her pal. Cut to the very last second of the episode, where her dead body lies still while Stefan looks on, mourning her loss. But, nothing is what it seems, and her eyes open. Little did anyone know, she had vampire blood in her, courtesy of Dr. Meredith Fell, from a previous injury.

Dobrev said "it doesn't matter" what she thinks Elena should have done, adding, "I have absolutely no say in who she chooses or how that all goes down. That's a Julie Plec question."

Well, Plec, the show's executive producer, said that for Elena, life as a vampire is a distinct possibility. "The ending had been in the works for about two years," she told Entertainment Weekly. "It felt like now was the time — when you're left with no grownup, no adult supervision, no parent, no guardian — for Elena to experience the next evolution of her journey."

Over the course of season three, Elena certainly faced a number of hardships, including the loss of her mentor, vampire hunter Alaric. "All the stuff that we did with having her get stronger over the course of the year, training and getting in touch with her physical self, and all the grief and all the emotion that she went through, all the compassion that she has for everybody, it will all play into next year and what kind of person and vampire she will actually be — if she should choose to see the transition through," Plec explained.

So, will she transition? The executive producer noted, "There will be a discussion to be had about it at the beginning, but the road we're going down is pretty balls out."

Share your reaction to the "Vampire Diaries" season finale in the comments below!

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How a solar flare could send us back to the Stone Age

A powerful enough solar flare could knock out our power grids, disrupt our GPS satellites, and bring the global economy to a halt, warns a British scientists.

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt.

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This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before ? and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England.

Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms. But the world is still not prepared for a truly damaging solar storm, Hapgood argues in a recent commentary published in the journal Nature.

Hapgood talked with the Los Angeles Times about the potential effects of such a storm and how the world should prepare for it.

Q: What exactly is a solar storm?

A: I find that's hard to answer. The term "solar storm" has crept into our usage, but nobody has defined what it means. Whether a "solar storm" is happening on the sun or is referring to the effect on the Earth depends on who's talking.

I prefer "space weather," because it focuses our attention on the phenomena in space that travel from the sun to the Earth.

Q: People often talk about solar flares and solar storms in the same breath. What's the difference?

A: Solar flares mainly emit X-rays ? we also get radio waves from these things, and white light in the brightest of flares. They all travel at the same speed as light, so it takes eight minutes to arrive. There are some effects from flares, such as radio interference from the radio bursts.

But that's a pretty small-beer thing. The big thing is the geomagnetic storms (on Earth) that affect the power grid, and that's caused by the coronal mass ejections (from the sun).

Coronal mass ejections are caused when the magnetic field in the sun's atmosphere gets disrupted and then the plasma, the sun's hot ionized gas, erupts and send charged particles into space. Think of it like a hurricane ? is it headed toward us or not headed toward us? If we're lucky, it misses us.

Q: How are solar flares and coronal mass ejections related?

A: There's an association between flares and coronal mass ejections, but it's a relationship we don't quite understand scientifically. Sometimes the CME launches before the flare occurs, and vice versa.

Q: What happens when those particles reach Earth?

A: There can be a whole range of effects. The classic one everyone quotes is the effect on the power grid. A big geomagnetic storm can essentially put extra electric currents into the grid. If it gets bad enough, you can have a complete failure of the power grid ? it happened in Quebec back in 1989. If you've got that, then you've just got to get it back on again. But you could also damage the transformers, which would make it much harder to get the electric power back.

Q: How else could people be affected?

A: You get big disturbances in the Earth's upper atmosphere ? what we call the ionosphere ? and that could be very disruptive to things like GPS (the network of global positioning system satellites). Given the extent we use GPS in everyday life (including for cellphone networks, shipping safety and financial transaction records), that's a big issue.

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iPhone 5 design still not finalized, still no big screen, still no metal back, still on track for October release

Despite some rumors to the contrary, according to our sources Apple still hasn't finalized the design of the next generation iPhone 5 (or whatever Apple ends up calling iPhone 5,1). No giant screen. No 16:9 aspect ratio. No metal back.

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Nikon D800 review roundup: significant upgrades to an already top-notch DSLR

Three years is quite a long time for any one gadget to complete its product cycle -- even a high-end DSLR. The D700 remained on its flagship DSLR perch since its launch in the summer of 2008, all the way through Nikon's D800 announcement earlier this year. During that tenure, the full-frame camera became the primary workhorse for a bounty of photography pros, and it appears safe to confirm that its successor is up to the same task. The 36.3-megapixel D800 has completed its labs tour, leaving reviewers with positive impressions across the board.

As always, DPReview offers some of the most comprehensive analysis on the web, and highlights several advantages over the D800's competitor, the Canon 5D Mark III, including a higher megapixel count (36MP vs. 22MP) and a significantly lower price tag ($3,000 vs. $3,500). CNET struggles to identify cons, and praises the cam for its "stellar photos, excellent videos, speedy performance, and a relatively streamlined shooting design." Ken Rockwell brings a D800E into the reviews mix, concluding that the low-pass-filter-less flavor isn't the best fit for everyone. Finally, newcomer The Photo Brigade put the camera in the hands of Preston Mack, a professional on assignment who used the DSLR to capture a GigaPan photo for MLB.com and offered this takeaway: "I am very happy with the Nikon D800 camera. It is an amazing value." Overall, seems like quite a hit -- you'll find links to all of the above reviews just past the break.

Continue reading Nikon D800 review roundup: significant upgrades to an already top-notch DSLR

Nikon D800 review roundup: significant upgrades to an already top-notch DSLR originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 19:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xtina Apologizes for Bashing 'Voice' Finalist Tony Lucca

Now that the second season of The Voice is over, coach Christina Aguilera is making nice with third-place finisher Tony Lucca. The pop singer and the aspiring musician had a prickly relationship throughout the season, starting when Lucca revealed that he had been on The Mickey Mouse Show with Aguilera -- who claimed she didn't remember him. Things came to a boiling point during Monday's final performances, when Aguilera belittled Lucca's rollicking cover of Jay-Z's "99 Problems." Watch below!

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Facebook starts App Center beta, readies itself for paid web apps

Facebook is no stranger to letting members use real money in web apps, but only for in-app purchases. Its new App Center on the web and in mobile versions will let you buy web apps that have an up-front cost to use rather than shoehorning you into a freemium or subscription model. The portal will even have its own shopping portal, although it'll mostly be based around -- surprise -- recommendations coming from your social network profile. The addition should, in theory, lead to premium games and other apps that wouldn't fit into the Facebook Credit mould. Facebook is taking developer beta sign-ups now, although the apps themselves will have to wait.

Facebook starts App Center beta, readies itself for paid web apps originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 18:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Top Windows 7 Registry Cleaner - Computers|Gadgets|Games ...

Windows 7 is really a extremely popular program, along with 1, 000?s of individuals improving into it every single day. Nevertheless, despite the fact that this technique is really brand new, it is nevertheless very susceptible to harm brought on by the actual registry. To repair this particular, you should utilize the registry solution, however which is the greatest?

Locating the greatest Windows 7 registry solution is like selecting a brand new vehicle ? there are lots of resources available however just a few that will meet your requirements as well as preferences. They?ve just about all already been made to perform exactly the same work, which means you?ll want to make use of the device which will which work within the easiest way. Which work would be to cleanse part of Windows known as the actual ?registry?.

The actual registry is really a data source within Windows that shops the actual configurations as well as choices which permit the Windows program to operate because efficiently as well as successfully since it is actually famous with regard to. Nevertheless, the issue by using it is actually which because it is continuously getting used because of your pc, Windows is really vulnerable to obtaining baffled concerning the configurations it?s within the registry that leads this in order to save most of them within the wrong manner. This particular can make the actual configurations hard to see as well as leads to Windows to operate gradually with mistakes since it attempts in order to procedure all of them.

Utilizing a registry solution upon Windows 7 may increase the pace of the program and prevent all of the mistakes?. however only when it will it?s work nicely. These types of resources check out car registry data source and appear from each and every registry document to determine when there is any difficulty together. In the event that this discovers the damaged or even broken document, after that this treatments this. Which means that the very best Windows 7 registry device requirements every single child determine all of the most recent registry mistakes that may arrive on to this technique. Numerous registry cleansers can?t do this as well as wind up attempting to get rid of numerous wholesome registry documents rather.

A person should also look for a device which has a back-up service. Simply because Windows 7 is actually this type of brand new program, there are lots of brand new documents which actually the very best registry cleansers are having issues determining. You should utilize the registry solution that may support the body simply because that is the only method to maintain this operating properly as well as dependably. The majority of the top cleansers possess a back-up service, however whenever you are considering someone to make use of you have to look for that function.

The very best registry solution with regard to Windows 7 may be the device that may discover the the majority of difficulties on your computer as well as take them off within the most secure method. In spite of presently there becoming a variety of cleansers that say to get this done, merely a small number work well. We have discovered that there are something known as ?RegCure? that functions the very best upon Windows 7. RegCure may be produced by a sizable software program organization within North america and it is held current every week. It is in a position to discover as well as repair probably the most Windows 7 mistakes and it has already been made to operate because dependably as you possibly can, using its personal back-up service built-in.

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Nokia City Lens augmented reality browser hands-on (video)

It warms the heart to see Nokia's Beta-Labs delivering goods we actually want on our handsets -- and even more so when we really want the handsets themselves. Espoo's revered Lumia line has been treated to a new toy and it costs not one red cent: Nokia City Lens. Using an augmented reality browser, the user is offered a virtual view through walls and buildings of various points near you that can be browsed by categories such as food, nearby, sights or searched for with text. Better still, searching for AT&T WiFi will find access points nearby and all you then need to do is hoof it in the direction shown by the small icon on the display. Sound neat? We agree. Follow the break to see a video of it all in action then take your Lumia owning self on over to Beta-Labs to grab a copy.

Continue reading Nokia City Lens augmented reality browser hands-on (video)

Nokia City Lens augmented reality browser hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 21:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google's Vic Gundotra tries Project Glass on for size

Looks like we're starting to get a little insight into Google's Project Glass testing process. Seems like the augmented reality glasses need to make their way onto every head on the Google staff, before the company feels confident moving ahead with them. First we caught sight of co-founder Sergey Brin, then it was Sebastian Thrun of Project X fame, and now social exec Vic Gundotra is getting a crack. He looks reasonably happy, so that's probably a good sign, right?

Update: Looks like Google employee Sebastian Thrun actually tried one on... and got a photo of what it looks like from the inside. Head on the past the break for a glimpse.

Continue reading Google's Vic Gundotra tries Project Glass on for size

Google's Vic Gundotra tries Project Glass on for size originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 14:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Editorial: Apple isn't making a 'converged' laptop / tablet hybrid, but I still want one

Deflated. Disappointed. Let down. Unsurprised. All of those emotions ran through my being at one point or another following Apple CEO Tim Cook's comments regarding "converged" devices, but if anything, his denial has made me all the more hungry for this particular device. For months -- heck, maybe even years -- I've waited for Sir Jonathan Paul Ive and co. to finally nail the concept of a laptop / tablet hybrid. In many ways, Apple managed to get right on a smartphone in 2007 what I felt was wrong holding a BlackBerry. I still think the iPad's screen is about 2.7-inches too large for my own personal tastes, but the world at large has affirmed that it nailed that design, too. Oh, and the MacBook Air? C'mon -- we all know it's the thin-and-light you always wanted, and given that it'll run Windows with poise, it's arguably the sexiest Windows laptop currently on the market.

The point? Apple has waited for companies to flounder about with certain designs before, all while perfecting its own take for a future release. Windows-based tablets were flooding out in the early noughties, and believe it or not, Toshiba was already giving the tablet / laptop hybrid thing a whirl in 2003 with the Portege 3500. Apple waited over half a decade to usher in the iPad, and the rest -- as they say -- is history. The iPhone followed a similar path; companies came before it and did their best to produced pleasing, long-lasting, highly usable smartphones, but the iPhone completely changed the trajectory of everything that came after. Love it or hate it, it's hard to imagine a 2012 with Windows Phone in it had Apple not pinned Windows Mobile in a corner back in '07.

So, if Apple has shown an ability to thrive with designs that others have experimented with, why is the "converged" laptop / tablet a nonstarter?

Continue reading Editorial: Apple isn't making a 'converged' laptop / tablet hybrid, but I still want one

Editorial: Apple isn't making a 'converged' laptop / tablet hybrid, but I still want one originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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