Remember the Square iPhone Payment System we told you about back in August? If you'll recall, the device -- which involves an iPhone app and associated dongle -- enables an iPhone or iPod touch to become a kind of mini credit card reader, allowing payments to be taken on the spot, no matter where you are or how big (or small) the transaction may be. When we'd first reported the device, word on the street was that it was only being alpha tested around New York City, and there wasn't much else to say. Now, we may have a little more insight on just where this device is headed, and who's behind the project.
Jack Dorsey, the man who all but built Twitter in a matter of two weeks, has been working on a half-secret start-up project since around May. His new venture -- dubbed, funnily enough, Squirrel -- is based around the concept of using the iPhone as... yep, a portable, personal cash register; essentially the exact device which Square has created. And that's no accident. In the images we ran of the Square system, you can see a domain name on a receipt: squareup.com. Squareup.com is the domain of the Square System (obviously), and a casual investigation into the site's WHOIS profile reveals registrant info that points to an office in San Francisco, and a contact email address which reads... billing@paybysquirrel.com. Square, squirrel, square... are you getting it? So the cat, er, squirrel appears to be out of the bag. Now the question is whether or not Dorsey and co. can turn this fairly obscure piece of tech into the kind of firestorm which Twitter has become -- and who knows, maybe there'll even be a business model this time.
[Thanks, Little Birdie]
Filed under: Cellphones
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Squirrel project revealed... as the Square iPhone Payment System originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We've got one of HP's sexiest laptops ever staring us down here, the brand new Envy 13. It hits the streets on October 18, running Windows 7 and brazenly demanding a $1,700 base price tag. Worth every penny? Perhaps. We'll be going more in depth with the laptop over the next few days, but here are a few first impressions.
- This is one sexy laptop. It's incredibly quality in its construction, and intensely attractive. The screen in particular is a knockout, showing up very bright and vibrant behind its glossy, mirror-tastic sheen
- The single button trackpad is severely miscalibrated, and perhaps an altogether bad idea. We're having trouble scrolling consistently, but clicking is also a hit or miss affair -- having multiple fingers on the trackpad at the same time seems problematic, with our cursor glitching this way and that. It's also actually possible (likely even, if you're as bad at mousing as we are) to "click" the pad and yet have nothing happen, which seems very counterintuitive.
- The keyboard is comfortable, but has a bit of a loose, pushover feel to the key action -- not cheap, but not really best-in-class either.
- Boot time is pretty snappy, even with the quick boot Envy "Instant-On Solution" Linux acting as a pit stop along the way.
- With a full Core 2 Duo processor inside and a real feeling of heft and thickness compared to other laptops in "thin and light" land, it's surprising that the Envy 13 goes with the same external Ethernet dongle of its predecessor, the Envy 133.
- That full-powered processor? Snappy. It takes on YouTube HD, the real computer killer of our times, without breaking a sweat.
The great thing about a "luxury" laptop like this (as HP dubs it) is that there's so much more to explore, including an external Blu-ray drive in the box, the endless wire-free adventures promised by the optional slice battery, and of course the real prowess of the GPU when faced with 3D gaming and some HDMI output. Good times shall be had, we promise you that.
Filed under: Laptops
HP Envy 13 unboxing and first impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Remember how Intel showed off its new, advanced optical standard -- Light Peak -- this past week on a Hackintosh? Well it turns out there's more to that story than you probably know, and it all leads back to some revealing facts about the connection... literally and figuratively. Engadget has learned -- thanks to an extremely reliable source -- that not only is Apple complicit in the development of Light Peak, but the company actually brought the concept to Intel and asked them to create it. More to the point, the new standard will play a hugely important role in upcoming products from Cupertino.
Continue reading Exclusive: Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010
Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Handhelds, Laptops
Exclusive: Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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See that tiny little thing? That's not just a CPU, it's Intel's next-gen Atom Pine Trail CPU / GPU hybrid, and it's set to pop in all sorts of devices here at IDF. Intel was demoing it in a nettop running 480p video, but they assured us it was capable of 1080p playback -- we'll believe it when we see it, obviously. Also on display here at IDF: demo machines running 32nm Arrandale chips, with Intel's Clear HD video playback system, and the next-gen Gulftown gaming chip, which has six cores and will slot right into your X58 mobo to provide more power than you possibly need sometime next year. Check it all in the gallery!
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
Eyes-on with Intel's Pine Trail CPU/GPU hybrid and new Gulftown gaming chip originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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