Kenny Rowe

Comcast announced on Thursday that it is transitioning away from its static data limit policy into a more flexible allotment model.

In the coming months, the company will start testing new options that will offer users more bandwidth as part of their cable Internet plans, as well as the ability to purchase additional bandwidth if necessary.

In 2008, Comcast started enforcing a 250GB usage cap amongst its residential subscribers. Comcast’s rationale at the time was that only a small fraction of users ever came close to using 250GB of bandwidth each month — and that even fewer users actually exceeded that cap.

The move was enacted in part to limit what Comcast deemed “illegal” uses of the Internet; in other words, they wanted to stop users from downloading movies and music over BitTorrent.

At the time, there was a lot of user outcry over the new usage cap limit, however in practice, few users actually reached that limit. (I was one of those Comcast users who bumped against the usage limit on more than one occasion, thanks in part to my $100-a-month business-speed Internet plan.)

These days, the situation has changed. Users frequently use more bandwidth. Not only are average access speeds faster (which makes it possible to consume more data), the way we consume content has changed.

Thanks to connected devices such as Roku and Apple TV, over-the-top streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime are increasingly becoming the way that many users watch content on their television sets.

Even though this content is consumed on a TV set, the bandwidth still counts against a customer’s data cap.

In Comcast’s case, the network has made an exception for its OTT-delivered Xfinity On Demand Xbox app. The data that Comcast users who use the Xfinity TV app on their Xbox 360 use is not counted against their overall limit. Netflix’s Reed Hastings criticized Comcast over this move, arguing that the company is violating rules of Net Neutrality.

How the New Bandwidth System Will Work

As Comcast explained on its blog, in the coming months, all customers will get at least 300GB of bandwidth to use each month. Additionally, users in higher package tiers — like Blast and Extreme — will have higher base allotments each month.

All users, regardless of their plan, will be able to get additional data at a nominal price. The pricing right now is expected to be $10 for 50GB.

Comcast will start trialing the the new management system in several markets and will suspend the data caps in markets not getting the trial. Comcast didn’t lay out a timeline for these bandwidth changes, and on a press call, was unable to give hard dates.

At this time, Comcast is also unsure what the specific starting data allotments will be for Blast and Extreme customers.

Why Now

On a press call, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen repeatedly denied that the change in bandwidth structure had anything to do with changing customer usage. “We are absolutely not doing it because customer needs are approaching the cap,” Cohen said on a call.

When pressed for specifics such as how many customers are approaching or exceeding current bandwidth limits, Cohen refused to say anything other than “a very small fraction of customers ever even come close to using the existing data cap.”

Instead, Cohen tried to spin the news as a consideration Comcast has been undertaking for some time.

“Times have changed. Things are very different than they were four years ago. We’re ready to transition from what might have been a state-of-the-art approach four years ago to a different approach that is more pro-consumer.”

It appears that the reason Comcast is making this announcement now — and without hard dates or specific plan information — is because it has come under increased scrutiny for how it segments its own OTT data, compared to competitors such as Netflix.

Rather than focusing on how Comcast counts bandwidth, it wants to frame the conversation in a way that suggests that customers have no bandwidth caps.

It may be true that most Comcast users don’t approach the 250GB limit, but as the usage of services such as HBO Go, Netflix and Hulu continues to increase, that won’t be true forever.

What do you think of the new bandwidth policy? How much bandwidth do you use a month? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, luismmolina

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"We've set up the hottest club in East Berlin, and we're going to start letting people in next week," Simon Hossell told me in an interview last Friday. He's talking about Pipe, a new app launching soon that lets you send files up to 1GB to friends in real-time and without leaving a trace. There's no upload or download — you simply drop a file into an onscreen pipe and it pops out the other end on a friend's computer — just like in a German discotheque?

Hossell envisions Pipe as a party, of sorts, because 900 million people on Facebook instantly have access to it without installing any software, and without signing up for yet another service. So Hossell thinks of himself as the party planner, but is Pipe anything to celebrate? The...

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"The internet of things" — the concept wherein virtually all physical objects are digitally connected to each other at all times — becomes more realistic by the year as the necessary components shrink in size, cost, and power draw, and a startup by the name of Electric Imp is looking to kickstart the trend. Founded by veterans of Apple's iPhone and Google's Gmail teams, the company's Imp module looks like an SD card but integrates Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n support (a little like an Eye-Fi) plus a Cortex-M3-based processor and software-controllable I/O pins. Developers use web-based software tools to connect to the card — wirelessly — where they can write and debug code and get realtime logging information returned from the hardware. On...

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“Social magazine” Flipboard may have to think up a new tagline for itself, as tonight the company is rolling out an update which greatly expands its focus beyond text-based content to also include audio. The rollout features integrations from NPR, PRI (Public Radio International) and social sound platform, SoundCloud.

Also of note, Flipboard is launching its third localized edition with the debut of a Flipboard app for Japan, following its previous launches in China and France. And there’s an update which will matter a lot to a smaller number of users: integration of Apple’s VoiceOver controls to provide better access for the visually impaired.

Unless you’re based in Japan, the biggest news today is the introduction of the audio content to what’s primarily been a text-focused, magazine-like platform for reading news, blogs and updates from your social networks. But when you think about it, the addition makes sense – news is often delivered through multiple formats, not just text. And Flipboard already has a video section, we should point out.

The audio integrations will be highlighted in a newly added category, simply called “audio,” which will appear after the Flipboard app update (version 1.9) gets pushed out tonight. The section will showcase the curated selections from NPR and PRI including content like NPR’s “Fresh Air” and PRI’s “The World,” for example, as well as content from SoundCloud. However, a search option will also be available so users can find any audio content that Flipboard might now host. SoundCloud users will be able to listen to their sets, favorites, and people or artists they follow, but you won’t need to have a SoundCloud account to take advantage of the new offering.

Audio is background-enabled, too, allowing you to exit the app while continuing to listen, or while continuing to browse through Flipboard.

In speaking with the company earlier today, it becomes clear that the new audio integrations are only the start of what’s next for Flipboard, which is aiming to move from “magazine” to more of a digital entertainment hub. While the company won’t go on record with detailed plans to integrate more audio sources, it does intend to “do more with audio,” given that there are already “lots of great services to work with” out there right now, including on-demand streaming music and radio offerings like Spotify, Rdio, MOG and Pandora, for example.

While deals with those would help Flipboard beef up its music selections, another obvious focus for the company would be the integration of more podcasts – a part of iTunes which today is somewhat of a sub-par experience. (There’s a reason why iTunes/Apple users often turn to third-party apps, like Instacast, e.g).

Further down the road, Flipboard will look into other ways it can do more with video, too, which could mean that it one day will compete with social video services like Twitvid, Showyou, Shelby.tv and others.

As for all that buzz about the Flipboard Android app, which is arriving on the Samsung Galaxy S III and already available as a hacked version, the company would only say that it’s currently working on a broader Android release. But the unintentional beta Flipboard found itself in is somewhat of a blessing and curse for the company. On the one hand, it’s getting much-needed feedback on how Flipboard works on unsupported phones and tablets, but on the other hand, for many Android users, their first experience with the app may be one that’s less than ideal.

Flipboard says it plans to officially come to market this summer on Android, but doesn’t have a date to announce yet.

The Japanese version, audio integrations and voiceover controls are all rolling out tonight on iOS. Or, if you’re new to Flipboard, you can grab it from iTunes here.

When I was younger, my parents liked to listen to the big soft rock stations in Los Angeles. Once in a while, the sappy love songs would be interrupted by an emotional dedication from a boy/girlfriend to their significant other. It was awkward, but also kind of beautiful. But mostly awkward.

Now it sounds like Pandora has made an impressive gesture toward keeping that tradition alive, while also demonstrating the power of its ad targeting.

So yeah, this happened: Someone, specifically someone named Kyle Taylor, used a Pandora ad to propose marriage to his girlfriend of almost six years. You can read the full account in his blog post, but the Pandora-relevant bit begins after Taylor has decided that this is a great idea, and has sent off a customer support request:

I started to work with the team at Pandora and they told me this has never been done before, so they would be more than happy to help… that’s when I knew this was going to be it. After working with the creative and technical teams to figure out the best medium, getting passed to their audio advertising team to get a script together and recorded by an awesome voice actress, and once it was finalized it went back to ad trafficking to test out my ad and see if it worked. Of course, it worked out perfectly. (Throughout this whole process, I had to lock down my email account and step out for “unexpected” phone calls a lot – luckily I’m a planning ninja.)

That’s the set-up. As for popping the question itself, Taylor decided to do it on the night of his graduation dinner from University of North Texas. It was carefully planned — he picked a restaurant whose driving distance would create the perfect timing for the ad. So he turned on Pandora (which was built in to his girlfriend’s Hyundai Veloster), and as he pulled onto a service road, the marriage proposal started to play.

Now, you might be thinking that while this is pretty damn impressive, it was incredibly awkward for anyone else listening. In fact, CTO Tom Conrad says that’s “very, very unlikely” that anyone else heard the ad, thanks to the targeting that’s powering Pandora’s efforts to steal local advertisers from terrestrial radio. In this case, the ad was targeted at “very old listeners” in a “sparsely populated zip code,” Conrad says. So Taylor entered some fake demographic information to put himself, and no one else, in the target. The result? He used Pandora’s advertising to deliver a genuinely personal message.

Oh, and by the way: She said yes.

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a rather remarkable device known as ZeroN — a "tangible interface element" that can levitate and move within a three-dimensional space. Created by research assistant Jinha Lee and Rehmi Post of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, ZeroN can be manipulated by both humans and computers. Once a user places the ball-like magnet within the simulation space, he or she can digitally program its movements, or physically guide it themselves. Because the device can "remember" its trajectory, any gesture-controlled paths can be played back indefinitely.

To do this, Lee and Post created a magnetic control system that can levitate the ZeroN, along with an optical tracking and display setup that projects...

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There are few things out there that can send you into a shame spiral of career despair quite as quickly as watching a group of people with arguably one of the funnest jobs in the world. People like the MakerBot 3D design team, who were tasked with assembling an army of cuddly robots a "petting zoo" for this weekend's Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now, granted, we're sure they all work hard, but we can't help but feel a little jealous at the opportunity to design kid-friendly 'bots using the company's Replicator 3D printer. Check out a video of the team in action after the break.

Continue reading MakerBot uncovers the miracle of 3D printed 'bot making (video)

MakerBot uncovers the miracle of 3D printed 'bot making (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 20:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Is that an Ice Cream Sandwich riding shotgun atop your Cotton Candy stick? It may sound like a delicious carnival delight, but munching on this bad boy will send you to the hospital faster than a family pack of deep-fried Oreos. Keeping up the confection theme, FXI has coined the treat in question as Cotton Candy, and we got our first taste of the refresh back in February at Mobile World Congress, where we went hands-on with the bite-size computer-on-a-stick. FXI reps promised a March ship date at that point, but the refreshed model appears to have been worth the wait, with a 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, quad-core ARM Mali-400MP graphics and support for Android 4.0 and Ubuntu, along with embedded virtualization clients for Windows, Linux and Mac.

There's a gig of DRAM on board -- up to 64GB of storage will come in the form of a bring-your-own microSD card. There's a 1080p-ready HDMI port at one end of the 3-inch stick and a USB 2.0 connector on the other side, along with a female micro-USB port for peripheral connectivity. Customers with pre-orders in Scandinavia (FXI is based in Norway) should expect their $199 Cotton Candy devices by the end of the month, while those in the rest of the world (including the US of A) will need to hang tight until the end of the summer. There's a MWC-era hands-on awaiting you just past the break.

Continue reading FXI Cotton Candy ICS-on-a-stick gets May release date, sweetened design

FXI Cotton Candy ICS-on-a-stick gets May release date, sweetened design originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 22:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As first reported by Bloomberg, Saverin’s name is on a Federal register called the Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Repatriate. That means he renounced citizenship before April 30, according to the IRS.

“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Saverin’s spokesman told Bloomberg in an email. He said the switch happened “around September.”

Why do it? One word: taxes. With Facebook’s IPO approaching, the 30-year-old Saverin stands to become a very rich man indeed. He owns around 4% of a company that is set to be valued in the range of $100 billion. (And that’s his share after it was diluted by Zuckerberg and Co, which was the reason for that smashed laptop.)

The high-tech Asian powerhouse of Singapore isn’t just a nice place to settle — it also doesn’t have any capital gains tax.

Saverin will still have to give some cash to Uncle Sam in the form of an exit tax, which looks at potential capital gains on stock that hasn’t been sold.

Would you renounce your citizenship in Saverin’s position? Should billionaires pony up and pay more in capital gains? Let us know your take in the comments.

More About: Eduardo Saverin, Facebook, trending

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In an interview published by China Daily today, Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, confirms the massive manufacturing company is making preparations for an Apple television set called iTV. Gou also states that neither development nor manufacturing has begun. Apparently, per China Daily at least, the television set will have an aluminum construction, Siri voice controls and FaceTime video calling.

This is the most solid report to date of the long-fabled Apple HDTV. The product has been rumored for the last several years. So far both Steve Jobs and now Tim Cook have called the Apple TV, the company’s set-top box, a hobby. But it seems the company is almost ready to turn its avocation into an occupation.

Gou’s claims published in today’s China Daily report line up very nicely with previous rumors including Cult Of Mac’s claims from last week. The iTV, or as I have long called it, the Apple HDTV, seems like it would be an iMac designed for the living room. An Apple HDTV will likely use a very similar branding and design plan as the iMac with near-edgeless glass and aluminum frame. It would also hopefully have a similar I/O port design, allowing consumers the luxury of having all the ports located in one location. China Daily also indicates that Foxconn is teaming up with Sharp to produce this set, which makes sense given Sharp’s dominance in LCD manufacturing.

But as China Daily indicates, production nor development has started on this product yet, seemingly indicating that it won’t hit the market in 2012. It’s been also rumored that Apple is trying to line up more content partners to bolster iTunes’s library or even perhaps cobble together a legitimate alternative to cable TV. Whenever it hits, the iTV, Apple HDTV, or whatever it will be called will likely be the biggest TV news (albeit perhaps not the most popular selling unit) since the Beatles appeared on Sullivan.

Granted, Apple and Google aren't quite the bosom buddies they once were, but how far is Cupertino going to free itself from the Android-maker? Well, Apple's picked up a number of mapmakers and is now reportedly getting ready to unveil a Google map competitor for iOS. 9to5Mac is reporting that the mapping solution will be in-place for the next major version of the mobile operating system, combining technologies gathered with the acquisition of Placebase, C3 Technologies and Poly9. The star of the show is said to be the 3D mode with graphics nabbed from C3. All Things D has "independently confirmed" the forthcoming app reinvention, with sources adding, (hopefully a bit hyperbolically) that it will "blow your head off." According to rumors, we'll be finding out a lot more come WWDC next month.

Update: To add more fuel to this rumor, a TechCrunch source notes that the iOS 6's "Sundance" codename is aptly named after a resort, just as previous versions have. Hit up the more coverage link below for further insight.

Report: Apple dumping Google for own Maps app in iOS 6 (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 13:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Finding ways to throw money at Mark Zuckerberg is notoriously difficult, but a new 'highlight' feature could be just the trick. Currently being tested with a small population of users, it allows an ordinary member to pay $2 to ensure that their latest status update crops up in more of their friends' news streams. Ordinarily, the degree to which a status update is streamed depends on the number of likes or comments it has, which ensures that users generally only see the juiciest gossip, but paying this little premium would cause Facebook's algorithms to distort that in your favor. In other words, it's money replacing popularity, or simply -- sigh -- life.

Facebook testing 'highlight' feature, lets users pay $2 to promote their status updates originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 06:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Not all iPads are made equal, even if they're all packaged and branded identically. There's a major new mutation within the 2nd generation tablet and it brings significantly better battery life. Specifically, the fourth and latest production model of the iPad 2 (known as iPad2,4) has not only a lower price tag ($399) but also a new 32nm processor, which is significantly smaller and more efficient than those in previous iPad 2s (which had 45nm chips and an older transistor design). According to AnandTech, this results in an overall 16 percent increase in battery life during web browsing and as much as a 30 percent boost when playing games. Obviously that's worth having, but how can you tell if a boxed-up iPad 2 has the new processor before taking it to the checkout? Here's the downer: you can't. Until retailers' inventories naturally flood with the updated type, the only way to tell is by switching the slate on and running a utility like GeekBench -- and perhaps there'll be circumstances where you can give that a go on the shop floor. Alternatively, if third-party sellers discover that their stock is the iPad2,4, they could pull off a Darwinian win-win by marketing that fact to buyers.

Buying an iPad 2? Here's the rarer, more efficient specimen you need to (somehow) track down originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 05:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Smart shopping service Decide.com, which started off with a focus on consumer electronics before its recent addition of home appliances, is a unique player in the comparison shopping market. The service doesn’t just return prices and reviews, it actually tells whether to buy or wait to buy a given product by analyzing market conditions, trends, news, product release history, and more. Today, that same shopping experience has arrived in a handy new format: an iPad app.

The company also talked today about its plans to expand to new verticals in the months ahead.

Already live on iPhone and Android, the Decide.com iPad app now sources the same content – over 500,000 products – which can be swiped through via the HD/Retina glow of the iPad’s screen. The app also allows users to track favorite items and set alerts which work across all of Decide.com’s properties, including its iPhone and Android apps, as well as its website.

Plus, the iPad app offers access to Decide’s newly launched “daily deals” lineup, which consist of selected products backed by price guarantees. If you end up purchasing a daily deal item, and the price drops within two weeks at any participating retailer, Decide.com pays you the difference.

The Seattle-based company, founded by former Farecast engineers, has been ramping up quickly over the past few months. In addition to its daily deals and expansion to home appliances, the company also recently brought Shauna Causey on board as the VP of Marketing. Causey previously managed communications, community relations and social media strategy for companies and organizations including the Seattle Mariners Baseball Team, Fox Sports Net, WB, Comcast and, most recently, Nordstrom.

The move to the iPad platform should help Decide.com see a jump in usage, as already 40% of its traffic comes from mobile devices. (Incidentally, 40% is Fab.com’s mobile number, too.). In fact, even prior to today’s launch, the iPad was the source of the most mobile traffic for the company before the iPhone app hit.

Since the Seattle-based company’s launch in 2011, its price predictions have been 77% accurate, and the average savings are at $87 per product, the company claims. To date, those savings – over some 18 billion price observations – would total $72 million+ in potential savings for shoppers.

CEO Mike Fridgen tells us that Decide has increased its product coverage by 25 times since launch, and today covers over 77 electronics and appliance categories. He adds that the company is now planning to expand into every major household category this year. Meaning what, exactly, we asked Fridgen?

“All ‘highly considered’ purchase categories, including Sports & Outdoors, Home & Garden, Tools & Hardware, Baby & Kids, Jewelry & Watches,” he explained. “We are targeting these major categories by year-end. From there, going into next year, we plan to explore other categories, such as cars,” he added.

I guess you can’t call Decide a gadget search engine much longer.

Also of note, the company has been piloting a program where its buy or wait recommendations are served up on Bizrate, and it will expand to cover more of its appliances and electronics categories in the coming weeks.

It probably comes as no surprise that the human race is generating more data than it knows what to do with. But the numbers behind this insane, exponential buildup of bits may still shock you: In a recent editorial, IBM's VP of supercomputing, Dave Turek, mentions that if we start in the year 2003 and go all the way back to the beginning of human history, we'll find that we as a species have created 5 exabytes (5 billion gigabytes) of information. In 2011, we began creating that same amount of data every 2 days, and by 2013, IBM and others expect we'll be doing the same every 10 minutes.

So yes, there is no question that we are now producing an unimaginable amount of data at an astronomical rate. The question we should now be asking –...

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Heavy Google users out there are likely very familiar with how new features get added to the company's services: employees create "Labs" that are available at first in beta, and then the most popular ones get promoted into full-fledged options. That's what's happened today to a few Gmail Labs, chief among them being Automatic Message Translation, which uses Google Translate to give you emails in your native language. The labs feature has been around since 2009, but in case you're not familiar, it automatically recognizes foreign-language emails and offers to translate them for you, much like how Google Chrome will when you visit a website in another language. The other, more minor changes that have been promoted from labs include a tweak...

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3D systems trumpeted its forthcoming Cube printer back at CES, and it looks like its easy-on-the-eye curves are nearly ready for your earnest crafting. The good part is a lack of them. If you've assembled a more typical printer in the last ten years, you should be able to put these associated pieces together. It's a sharp contrast to plenty of 3D printers that more closely resemble an engineer's tantrum. The printer is priced up at $1,299, so it's not the cheapest, but we are promised a pretty concrete May 25th release date. Hit up the source to place your order, alongside some extra color cartridges. How would you make those turtleshell racers without some blue and red?

Cubify's 3D printer up for pre-order, wants to make you make trinkets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 May 2012 08:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

But first, the co-founder of the Singularity University, Peter Diamandis, gives us our instructions for the day. Your task, he says, is to pick one of the "grand challenges of humanity" – the lack of clean drinking water, say. And then come up with an idea that "can positively impact the lives of a billion people".

There's about 50 of us present and the room has been divided up into tables, one for education, another for poverty, another for water, and I'm not sure where I should sit. Diane Murphy, the university's PR executive, hesitates for a moment and then directs me over to the table marked "food". "Tell you what," she says. "Why don't you take Ashton Kutcher's chair over there. He's not coming until later." (When he does arrive, he pulls up a chair at the next table over. What can I say? If Ashton Kutcher fails to solve global hunger, it will be my fault.)

Half the people in the room actually have done things which have had a positive impact on a billion people. Or, in some cases, more. Not just Venter, who has flown in on his private jet; there's also Vint Cerf, who is considered one of the fathers of the internet – he worked on Arpanet, the internet's predecessor – and is now "chief internet evangelist" at Google. And Sebastian Thrun, the man behind one of Google's latest and potentially most disruptive technologies yet, the self-driving car. He's also the head of the top-secret Google X lab.

Elon Musk, the co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, who created the world's first electric car, and is working on a replacement for the space shuttle. In the audience is Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. And Troy Carter, Lady Gaga's strategist. Later in the day, Buzz Aldrin shows up. He is, in this company, a genuine celebrity. All the scientists want to have their photo taken with him, and even Kutcher has the good grace to look a bit bashful. "What do you make of the Singularity University?" I ask Aldrin. "I'm a pretty high achiever," he says. "But I come here and think 'Gosh. I've just got to do better.'"

Y Combinator might be best known for software plays like Dropbox and Airbnb. But it’s also harbored a few hardware companies, notably the one that blew out Kickstarter funding records with Pebble Watch this month.

There’s actually one more waiting in the wings.

Per Vices is a startup from the latest class that’s looking to disrupt how wireless communications are sent. They’ve built a device called Phi that can interact with any wireless or radio signal. It’s a transceiver that can demodulate and process signal data up to 4 Gigahertz.

In plain English, that means one of Per Vices’ devices can re-route your cell phone calls through your landline connection, if for example you have bad 3G service in your house. In theory, that means you could set up a decentralized wireless network where mobile devices and desktops are sending communications to each other instead of one where all mobile phones have to send and receive signals from carrier-operated cell phone towers. It’s a critical issue the industry needs to solve as data-hogging mobile subscribers eat into the profit margins of the carriers.

For now, however, the company is focusing on the hacker and hobbyist market as the device is a PCI card that supports Linux machines. (So yes, that limits the current potential audience size).

However, the longer-term goal is to build something that’s both accessible and affordable to the mainstream market. On their site, Phi retails for $666 for just the card or $750 with antennas, but the cost of producing it (as with many interesting hardware products) is getting lower every year. Comparable products from rivals like Ettus Research sell for $1,300 or higher.

They’ve hacked a few demos with the product, including one where you can pick-up HDTV transmissions and watch shows on your phone or call a walkie talkie using your mobile phone. They’re hoping that hackers will find even more interesting ways of using the Phi, like how some developers figured out how to subvert Microsoft’s Kinect.

Per Vices founders, Victor Wollesen and Yi Yao, are a physicist and an electrical engineer who used to work in the defense industry. But sales cycles there are endlessly long, so going the consumer route promises a faster time to market.

Today, SpaceX is test-firing the engines of its Falcon 9 rocket in preparation for that oft-delayed May 7th launch for its Dragon capsule. You'll be able to watch the static-fire test from the comfort of your own desk by pointing a browser at the company website (link below) from 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT. If successful, then the rocket will lift-off properly in a week's time, with designs on being the first commercial craft used to resupply the International Space Station.

Update: For those who missed the live stream, you can check out a replay of today's event just after the break.

Continue reading PSA: Space X streaming test-firing of Falcon 9 at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT (update: video)

PSA: Space X streaming test-firing of Falcon 9 at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.