gravity

Scan receipts and reverse gravity: iPhone apps of the week

The big Apple news out this week was the event that launched the new MacBook Pros--and they are certainly drool-worthy. All three new models are twice as fast as their predecessors, featuring quad-core Intel i7 processors for the 15- and 17-inch models, and dual-core i5 and i7 processors for the 13-inch models. The AMD Radeon graphics processors have been improved along with newly added Thunderbolt technology that lets you use a new port (along side your USB ports) to transfer data at up to 10GB per second. Read our full coverage here.

I'm not sure whether I'll rush out and buy one of these new MacBook Pros with the iPad 2 coming out in April, but that's mostly because I don't have as much use for the high-powered graphics and processing power in my line of work. I also can't afford to buy both.

Are you in the market for a new laptop and thinking about getting a new MacBook Pro? Are you waiting to see what the iPad 2 will offer before pulling the trigger? Are you going to buy both? Let us know in the comments.

This week's apps include a handy image-scanning app for getting quick copies on the go and a 2D side-scrolling game where you can reverse gravity with a touch of your finger.… Read more

Revenge of the birds!

Angry Birds Lite is an addictive physics-based puzzler with a lot of personality. It's so easy to pick up and play, it's hard not to recommend this game to every new iOS device owner.

You're helping a bunch of birds as they wreak vengeance upon a crew of smug little egg-stealing pigs. Basically a one-player, turn-based artillery game, Angry Birds has a dead-simple interface: you just pull back on a slingshot to launch birds one at a time, with your finger position determining the speed and trajectory of each bird. The only other interaction comes when new … Read more

You need a very steady hand!

Glass Tower 2 is a physics-based arcade puzzler with some similarities to falling-block video games and the tabletop classic Jenga.

You start each level with a precarious tower of glass blocks--blue ones, which you need to break, interspersed with red ones, which you need to drop safely to the bottom of the screen. You get points for every blue block you break, and you lose points and a life (out of 10 lives to start) for every red block that falls over the side. The challenge comes in choosing which blue blocks to break, and how quickly, as you try … Read more

Samsung announces Gravity 3, Gravity T, and :)

We've always thought there must be people at Samsung who randomly pick a word from the dictionary to name the company's phones. Now we think they must have run out of words.

That's because one of the latest Samsung phones for T-Mobile, announced Wednesday, is called--we kid you not--the Samsung :). Thankfully, Samsung "Smiley" is an acceptable substitute, because otherwise we would have a hard time trying to order the darn thing over the phone ("You know...The Samsung colon with the right bracket?"). What's next, the Samsung :-p ?

The Smiley is, as … Read more

$2,000,000 speaker can be yours for just $500,000

Moon Audio claims the Signature Titan was designed to outperform any speaker system in the world. It's a strictly limited edition of three pairs, and each pair is hand-signed by the designer. Each pair will also be named after its buyer and once the third pair is built, the Signature Titan is history.

Even by high-end audio standards the pricing structure is a little unusual: Signature Titan #003 can be yours for $500,000 per pair, but the cost for #002 doubles to $1,000,000! Sounds crazy, but #001 has already been sold for $2,000,000!

I spoke with Moon Audio's founder, Chris Moon, yesterday about the Signature Titan, and learned the speaker grew out of Moon's dissatisfaction with the world's best production speakers. He went out and built the Signature Titan just to see how far he could take speaker design. Moon isn't your average high-end guy, he told me that he discovered, recorded, and produced Prince, along with Morris Day, Alexander O'Neal, Dez Dickerson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Moon wrote and produced music for companies such as Northwest Airlines, music scores for films and television.

Moon claims the designers of the 72-inch-tall speaker have been involved in the high-end audio industry for 25 years. Installation and setup in the customer's home anywhere in the world is included in the purchase price. They better have strong floors; the pair of speakers weighs 2,800 pounds!… Read more

Manuscript recalling Newton apple story lands online

Another famous apple has been in the news this week. A 1752 manuscript revealing how Sir Isaac Newton formulated the theory of gravity is now online for people to view and read.

A conversation between Newton and scholar William Stukeley about Newton's life, notably his alleged encounter with a falling apple, prompted Stukeley to write Newton's 1752 biography "Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life." Experts carefully transformed the delicate 250-year-old book into an electronic version that now is on display at Britain's Royal Society Web site.

The online interactive manuscript can be viewed in full 3D or as a Microsoft Silverlight presentation where you can turn each page, zoom in or out, and magnify any section. Some of the passages beautifully handwritten by Stukeley can be a bit difficult to read, but floating commentaries along the way do a fine job of explaining key sections. The interactive 3D effect is nicely done--you do feel as if the actual manuscript is sitting in front of you.… Read more

T-Mobile churns out Samsung Gravity 2

Samsung and T-Mobile have just announced the availability of the Samsung Gravity 2, which is the upgraded version of the Samsung Gravity from late last year.

It has a much thinner design and revamped navigation controls, and features a few notable improvements: 3G connectivity, A-GPS with TeleNav, and a 2-megapixel camera. Aside from that, it still rocks a microSD card slot, a music player with MP3 and AAC support, Bluetooth, and e-mail support.

The Gravity 2 will be available for $29.99 with a two-year service agreement in two colors: metallic pumpkin and berry mauve.

The 404 407: Where we pack Vienna Teng's lunch into the PS3 Slim box

On today's show, we've got Vienna Teng--singer, pianist, and former computer programmer. But before we get to her music, we have the PS3 Slim in the studio. Afterward, we talk to Vienna about her journey from software engineer at Cisco to touring musician.

At the top of the show, we do a little unboxing of the new PlayStation 3 Slim. While Vienna and Justin may not care too much about the game console, Jeff and Wilson don't particularly like its new finish. In almost all respects, however, it functions just like the original 80GB model that it replaces, plus it comes with a 120GB hard drive. (No Linux for those homebrew fans out there.)

The star of the show is Vienna, a singer, songwriter, and pianist from the San Francisco Bay Area who graduated from Stanford University. Vienna later took up a job at Cisco as a computer programmer and made the leap to musician during her time there. We end the first half of the show with a track from her first album "Waking Hour," called "Gravity." The song is about the ups and downs of her roommate's relationship.

On the second half of the show, we listen to her song "Radio" from her current album "Inland Territory." And we talk about how now one in four songs sold in the United States is through iTunes. Finally, we end the show with her song "Augustine." You can find her music on iTunes, Amazon, MySpace, Last.fm, and her own Web site. (Editor's note: Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET.)

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Samsung Omnia 2 coming August 23?

Since we posted a First Take of Samsung's Omnia 2 back in June, a lot of readers have been asking when Verizon would actually begin selling it. Well, according to the good folks over at the Boy Genius Report (who have a "trusted mole" at Best Buy Mobile), the much-anticipated iPhone pretender will be launching August 23, along with several other phones from different carriers.

Here's the complete list that leaked:

Omnia 2 (Verizon) Global AirCard G2 (Verizon) Samsung Rogue (Verizon) LG Chocolate Touch (Verizon) Samsung u450 Intensity (Verizon) Samsung Gravity 2 (T-Mobile) Samsung Solstice (AT&… Read more