Preliminary Q1’12 Worldwide Top Five Tablet PC Shipment Rankings by Brand

It looks like consumers are growing tired of the Kindle Fire as Samsung releases aggressively priced tablets of its own. According to NPD DisplaySearch, Samsung knocked Amazon out of the No. 2 tablet spot in the first quarter, garnering 7.5 percent market share worldwide compared to 4 percent for the Fire. And Samsung’s lead will likely continue to grow with affordable new models like the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 2 7.0.

Barnes & Noble is out of the top 5 completely, which is pretty sobering when you consider RIM’s poorly reviewed BlackBery PlayBook is in fourth place. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a hard drive only a spy, or possibly a pyromaniac, could love.

The InVincible series of solid-state hard drives made by Chinese manufacturer RunCore have two dramatic optional security features, both activated by wires connected to the drives through the power connectors.

Press the green button, and the “Intelligent Destruction” feature activates, overwriting each memory cell with junk data and “uninitializing” the hard drive so it can’t be read. Read the rest of this entry »

The voice call just got re-invented. Sidecar is an ambitious app that goes well beyond video chat apps like FaceTime or Skype and builds on apps like Pair, which lets you share various items like photos, your location and more with another person. Basically, Sidecar lets you call and share what you’re doing while you’re talking — including things like real-time video, photos and location. But how well does the app work?

Sidecar Video Demo

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Good news for those who preordered or want to purchase the HTC EVO 4G LTE. Your long national nightmare is over as the smartphones have finally cleared customs and Sprint says that customers should start receiving them as soon as this Thursday, May 24th. The phones had been held up in customs due to a patent dispute between HTC and Apple, but apparently the dispute has been resolved.

The patent issue revolved around a feature in HTC’s Sense UI that allowed users to choose which application would launch when tapping a phone number, email address or other piece of data. HTC modified the version of its phones sold in the U.S. so that tapping a phone number simply launches the dialer app or an email launches the email client. Users can use a screen in the settings menu to change which app launches when you tap each kind of text. Read the rest of this entry »

The mouse may be a piece of technology that children born today won’t need in future, but if the new 3D motion-control technology from Leap Motion is any indication, fingers may become obsolete as well. Leap, a tiny oblong box featuring a very Mac-like aesthetic, purports to be the most accurate motion-control device for computers yet created.

The USB-powered system boasts finely-tuned motion sensing technology, allowing it to track all 10 of a user’s fingers independently down to 1/100th of a millimeter. Watch a video below to see the Leap in action:

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Users pining away for tiny computers like the FXI Cotton Candy or Raspberry Pi have another option, albeit one that is now also hard to come by. Last week a Chinese retailer called Aliexpress began selling a $74 USB key sized computer with an AllWinner A10 1.5-GHz CPU, 802.11g Wi-Fi, HDMI-out, both micro USB and full USB 2.0 ports, 512MB of RAM, 4G of Flash memory which is expandable up 32GB via a microSD card slot and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Unfortunately, the .44-pounds device, which is listed as a Rikomagic brand, is now listed as sold out, though Aliexpress says a new batch will be released sometime close to June 10th.

Though the Rikomagic device appears to be similar to the long-awaited FXI Cotton Candy, it has a few key disadvantages. First, the Cotton Candy can launch a virtual desktop when plugged into any PC or Mac while the Rikomagic device is only made to work as a standalone computer, something the Cotton Candy can also do. The Cotton Candy is powered directly over USB while the Rikomagic appears to require a separate power plug.

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Now that it’s vacation season, you’re going to want to nail down an efficient method for editing all the photos you’ve been taking on your summer trips. In the past, this might have meant lugging around your laptop. Now, that’s unnecessary. Arm yourself with an iPad and the official iPhoto app ($4.99), and execute the same pro-level effects with a few simple swipes and taps on your tablet.

See iPhoto in action:

It is possible to remove acne and other skin imperfections with iPhoto with the Repair brush. Below you’ll see this process in action. You can find 12 more iPhoto tips after the jump. 

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iPhoto for iOS Intro and Video Tutorial

• Tips 1-6
• Tips 7-12

Google’s Chrome is officially the most popular browser on the Internet and with good reason. Chrome has several unique features, the best of which is its ability to sync your personal settings across multiple devices. But before you can start viewing your tabs and bookmarks on your laptop and smartphone, you’ll have to make some changes to your browser settings.

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Getting online at the local coffee shop is about to get easier. Five major cable providers announced a new initiative today to bring easy-access Wi-Fi connectivity to the kinds of hotspots found at cafes, book stores, and small restaurants nationwide. The newly-formed CableWiFi service unites the subscriber-based Wi-Fi programs of Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable under one umbrella.

When a customer from any one of the above providers enters a place of business with CableWiFi, they’ll be able to access the service using the same log-in information that applies to their home account. What’s more, it doesn’t matter which prodvider supplies your service. So if your home Internet payments go to Cablevision but you get your latte on at Cute Barista Central coffee shop in a Time Warner Cable area code, you’ll still be able to sign on using the same credentials as your home account

The new initiative–already underway at 50,000 hotspot locations in the New York City and the greater Tri-state area, as well as Los Angeles, Tampa, Orland0, and Philadelphia –is billed as a service of convenience for the companies’ current customers. In a world where hotspots are ubiquitously built into Chic-Fil-a and McDonald’s fast food restaurants, broadband providers are banking that the added convenience of connecting to a Wi-Fi network with ease will put a smile on subscribers’ faces. And to spread those smiles farther and wider, the CableWiFi team plans to do two things:

• Roll out branded CableWiFi routers to more locations.
• Store your credentials across the network so that users can auto-connect devices to the CableWiFi hotspot.

If you’re a hotpsot addict and are eager to delete the long list of your many Wi-Fi networks and passwords, check CableWiFi.com to see when the service starts in your area.

• In-Flight Wifi: 5 Essential Tips
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