In High School civics class we learned that besides voting, feeding the meter is one of the most important things we Americans can do. But just like e-voting, it looks like you can add parking to the list of things that hackers have spoiled for law and order-types everywhere. According to the kids at CNET, a group of nogoodniks were able to decode the smartcards used by Guardian XLE-series meters manufactured by J.J. MacKay Canada — from which point it was a simple matter of boosting the card’s value to $999.99. Its unclear how the city of San Francisco (one of several around the country that have dealt with the company) is going to address the problem, but one possibility is flagging accounts with suspicious activity and reprogramming parking meters to ignore the offending cards. Is nothing sacred, people?

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In San Francisco, hackers park for free originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Joseph L. Flatley

We know that DSi of yours is all the rage, but you did hang on to that DS / DS Lite, didn’t you? Phew. Starting this November in Europe and other PAL regions, you’ll have a remarkably good excuse to bust that unit back out, as this new peripheral looks to require that all-but-forgotten GBA slot. At any rate, the title (which goes by Easy Piano in case you glossed over the headline) will allow players to bang out masterpieces such as Bittersweet Symphony, Every Breath You Take and Pachelbel’s Canon on the 8-note, full-octave keyboard accessory. All told, 40 songs will be made available, and there’s even a “creation mode” that enables owners to record up to four 3-minute-long jams. Now, if only we had a North American price and release date to pencil in, we’d be all set.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Easy Piano title lets DS Lite users tickle the ivory originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

See that image there on the right? Yeah, it’s a pretty drastic departure from the Sad Moto[TM] face that had become all too common when talking about the company’s financials. Just a quarter after posting a dreadful $291 million loss, the outfit responsible for creating the RAZR and then doing nothing for half a decade is finally showing a profit once more. The Q2 numbers show an “unexpected” $26 million profit on sales of $5.5 billion, $1.8 billion of which came from the handset division. Of course, that very division managed to lose $253 million and see its global market share slip to 5.5 percent, but with a big bang from Android reportedly just months away, CEO Sanjay Jha ain’t taking time to frown.

Just hours after the Verizon-branded Sholes smartphone surfaced, Mr. Jha was quoted as saying that two Android devices would be “in stores for the holiday season,” with launches occurring on “two major carriers in North America and multiple carriers outside the US.” He also noted that plans were in place to ship “several additional Android-based devices in the first quarter of 2010,” but details beyond that were vague. So, is this the beginning of a new, happier Moto? Our aged copy of Photoshop certainly hopes so.

Read – Motorola’s Q2 results
Read – Jha on future Android devices

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Motorola posts $26m Q2 profit, promises loads of Android fun, does a little dance originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Motorola, Misc

See that image there on the right? Yeah, it’s a pretty drastic departure from the Sad Moto[TM] face that had become all too common when talking about the company’s financials. Just a quarter after posting a dreadful $291 million loss, the outfit responsible for creating the RAZR and then doing nothing for half a decade is finally showing a profit once more. The Q2 numbers show an “unexpected” $26 million profit on sales of $5.5 billion, $1.8 billion of which came from the handset division. Of course, that very division managed to lose $253 million and see its global market share slip to 5.5 percent, but with a big bang from Android reportedly just months away, CEO Sanjay Jha ain’t taking time to frown.

Just hours after the Verizon-branded Sholes smartphone surfaced, Mr. Jha was quoted as saying that two Android devices would be “in stores for the holiday season,” with launches occurring on “two major carriers in North America and multiple carriers outside the US.” He also noted that plans were in place to ship “several additional Android-based devices in the first quarter of 2010,” but details beyond that were vague. So, is this the beginning of a new, happier Moto? Our aged copy of Photoshop certainly hopes so.

Read – Motorola’s Q2 results
Read – Jha on future Android devices

Motorola posts $26m Q2 profit, promises cheap Android thrills, does a little dance originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Handsets, Samsung, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA

The word “Rogue” conjures images of awesome X-Men characters, small Nissan SUVs, and badasses who don’t take crap from nobody — but QWERTY sliders on Verizon? We’ll admit, we didn’t see that one coming. The would-be Glyde replacement is apparently lined up for a release date around the 15th of August, and we’re seeing it now for the first time in pristine press shots following some in-the-wild action early in the month. We can tell already that it’s going to be a better-looking phone than its predecessor, and the word on the street is that it works as good as it looks; if anything, it’s a shame they didn’t just go ahead and slap WinMo on here and call it an Omnia Pro. Can’t win ‘em all, we suppose.

Samsung’s u960 Rogue for Verizon has best name ever; looks alright, too originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Just a few weeks too late for a Transformers 2 tie-in, Acer has announced a new revision of its Aspire G desktop, a.k.a. Predator. It shares the same case with the earlier edition that hit the US of A late last year, but naturally has some better specs this time ’round. The CPU is now one of Intel’s new Core i7 950‘s running at 3.06GHz, up to 12GB of DDR3 RAM is on offer, while more permanent storage is offered by a 1TB HDD and a Blu-ray reader. A pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 graphics cards keep the pixels flowing over four DVI-D ports, and dual Gigabit Ethernet is on offer for those about to rock shotgun network connections. All that clad in a brilliant orange case that looks like it rolled off the Lamborghini production line, though at ¥259,800 ($2,700ish) it’s a lot cheaper than the Murciélago LP 670-4 Superveloce you’ve been drooling over. No word on American availability, but since the last one took about four months to make it this way perhaps we’ll see this one by year’s end.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Acer’s Aspire Predator gaming rig gets even faster, stays just as orange originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Tim Stevens

We’ve nothing much to go on outside of a few good renders and a smattering of machine translated paragraphs, but it sure sounds as if China Mobile is entertaining the idea of bringing a 7-inch Android-based tablet to its airwaves. As the story goes, said slate would boast China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G connectivity, support for video calling, a full-fledged web browser and an OPhone operating system — which is essentially a customized version of Android for the Chinese market. Sadly, no further information was given, leaving us to wonder what kind of innards are scheduled for implant and what kind of price tag / release date we’re looking at. Oh, and those “call” and “end call” buttons are pretty darn evident, leading us to believe that China Mobile might actually expect you to use this as your primary mobile. Can you say… Sidetalkin‘?

[Via Pocketables]

Continue reading China Mobile’s 7-inch Android slate gets rendered

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

China Mobile’s 7-inch Android slate gets rendered originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: ATT, Studies, Apple

You know, there’s something to be said about making something easy: people usually take advantage. So seems to be the case with AT&T’s WiFi connections after the release of iPhone OS 3.0, which finally became useful when users could seamlessly connect to one of the thousands of AT&T hotspots around the nation rather than having to stumble through a painfully long process on iPhone OS 2.x. According to an AT&T spokesperson speaking with AppleInsider, the amount of iPhone users linking up with AT&T’s WiFi network tripled in June, and overall, it saw a 41 percent increase in connections compared to the prior quarter. It comes as no surprise to hear that AT&T is working feverishly to expand said network in order to relieve strain from its house of cards-styled 3G network, and while we’d definitely prefer a bit more reliability with the latter, we’ll happily accept more WiFi in the meanwhile.

Captain Obvious reports: AT&T sees surge in WiFi use post-iPhone OS 3.0 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph