June 11th 2010

Well, everyone welcome back! Alot has happened this week in technology, here is the short and sweet. Some amazing things are happening in technology, at least in the mobile part anyway!Haha! Cell phone are becoming the largest consumer market, and have officially out performed other technologies, like HDTV, and Computers! What does this all say about mobile? That we Americans are happy to pay big money for small and powerful devices! Hope you enjoy! Thanks...
Packard Bell's launched a refresh of its Dot line -- at least internationally -- with the 10.1-inch S4. The company's thinned it down considerably here, and stuffed an Intel Atom N450 Pine Trail CPU, GMA 3150 graphics, up to 2GB of RAM, and an up to 250GB hard drive. Other than that it's got 802.11b/g/n WiFi, an up to 6-cell battery, and comes with Windows 7 Home Starter edition pre-installed. There's another image below -- one that shows off the fashionable design elements a little better -- plus a quick demo video. No pricing information yet.

Despite Steve Jobs's ethical reservations, it's clear that people want Flash on their iPads (or at the very least, developers want to find ways put it there). Recently we saw Smokescreen, a browser plug-in that pulls apart SWF binaries and reassembles them into something Apple-friendly. Taking a slightly different tack, the kids at the Artefact Group have been working on a service called Flash In A Pinch. Right now, it's but a proof-of-concept, but it's a pretty sweet concept at that: Flash is rendered on Artefact's servers, which streams the images to the user's Safari browser. By placing a Javascript layer on top of the content, the user's touch interactions can be sent back to the server, making the whole megillah fully interactive. At present, the whole affair is a little too slow to use, and as of yet there is no sound, but all in all it's a great start. Video after the break. Hit the source link for more technical details (and yet more videos)

As promised, Adobe has now released an update to Flash that fixes the critical vulnerability discovered earlier this month that could allow your computer to be remotely hijacked. The update naturally covers Windows, Mac and Linux users (and even Solaris, for that matter), and is recommended for anyone running Flash Player 10.0.45.2 or earlier -- the update will also, of course, bump you up to Flash 10.1 if you haven't made the jump already. Adobe AIR users are also advised to upgrade to the latest version released today but, as reported earlier, Adobe Acrobat and Reader users will still have to wait a bit for their fix -- while they're also affected by the vulnerability, they won't be getting an update until the end of the month.
Not sure if you knew, but today marks the launch of ESPN's first dedicated 3D channel, predictably titled ESPN 3D. For now, the channel will only be active whenever 3D sporting events are being aired, starting with a full 25 FIFA World Cup matches from the Republic of South Africa. It's a pretty monumental launch for the world leader in broadcast sports, and it's obviously taking a pretty big leap with only a smattering of 3D sets available and an obviously limited amount of content at its disposal. That said, there's hardly a better way to enjoy 3D content than to see sports in the third dimension, which makes the appeal of this new station that much stronger. We're here live at the company's kickoff event in Bristol, Connecticut, and we'll be bringing you lots of coverage from behind the scenes.
One important piece that has yet to be revealed to the public is exactly how this material is getting from the field to the consumer, with Comcast, DirecTV and AT&T (U-verse) signed on from day one. During our shooting for The Engadget Show (don't worry -- we'll be cutting it up and getting it live as soon as possible!) we were able to stop by ESPN's 3D Master Control room, a box no larger than the average American kitchen but infinitely important in the grand scheme of things. Amazingly enough, the room pictured in the gallery below didn't exist six weeks ago, and in an insanely short period of time ESPN has managed to create a control room that sucks feeds in from all over the world, adds graphics (along with a specialized ESPN 3D "bug"), ensures that everything is aligned properly and then pipes it out to the aforesaid carriers.

Well, this one's come a bit out of left field, but it looks like Chrome OS could be set to get a pretty big new addition: a remote desktop feature dubbed "Chromoting" (at least for now). That word comes courtesy of an apparently authentic message from Google software engineer Gary Kačmarčík posted on a Chrome OS mailing list, which goes on to explain that the feature would let you run "legacy PC applications" right in the browser, and that it would be "something like" Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection. No more details than that, unfortunately, nor is there any indication that the feature will actually be included in the initial release of Chrome OS that's launching this fall, with Kačmarčík only going so far as to say that Google is "adding new capabilities all the time."