Saturday, March 17, 2012

Lenovo plans to be first to make a Windows 8 tablet

(Mashable) -- Windows 8 won't be ready for consumers until fall, but that's not stopping hardware makers from fighting to be first in line to build hardware for Microsoft's new operating system. Lenovo is planning to be the "first to market" with a Windows 8 tablet, The Verge reports. Citing a "source," the report says Lenovo is planning to be ready to ship the device in October and that it will have an Intel chip, so it clearly won't be a Windows-on-ARM device. Other than that, there aren't any details on exactly what the machine will be, although given those basic criteria (tablet, Intel, Windows 8), there's at least one suspect: the IdeaPad Yoga. Lenovo showed off the Yoga at CES earlier this year, and it got a lot of attention due to its unusual form factor: a laptop with a keyboard that...

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Anthony Bourdain: 'We are food pornographers'

Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Food-travel TV host Anthony Bourdain doesn't really get why people snap photos of all their meals and share them on blogs, Facebook or other social networks. He'd rather just eat his beef-tongue tacos or sea-urchin sushi than treat them like starlets on the red carpet. But he doesn't want to be a hypocrite, either. "We are food pornographers ourselves," he said of his popular shows, "No Reservations" and "The Layover," which follow him around the globe in search of authentic, exotic regional grub. Bourdain seems to have mixed feelings about social media, which he called "a big bathroom wall where anyone can write anything." But he's pretty adept at it. He has almost 800,000 followers on Twitter and more than 1.4 million fans on Facebook, where he posts jokes, show plugs...

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

First gorilla genome map offers clues to human evolution

(CNN) -- The first complete gorilla genome has been mapped by scientists giving fresh insights into our own origins. Gorilla are the last of the genus of living great apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans) to have their DNA decoded, offering new perspectives on their evolution and biology. "The gorilla genome is important because it sheds light on the time when our ancestors diverged from our closest evolutionary cousins around six to 10 million years ago," says Aylwyn Scally, postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge and lead author of the report. "It also lets us explore the similarities and differences between our genes and those of gorilla, the largest living primate," he added. Read more: Mapping out a new era in brain research A team of researchers...

Monday, March 12, 2012

Instagram hits 27 million users, says Android app coming 'soon'

Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Instagram, the iPhone photo-sharing app that turns almost anyone into an artful photographer, is growing at an astonishing rate. The app now has 27 million registered users -- up from 15 million in December, its co-founders announced Sunday. And a long-awaited version of Instagram for the Android platform is coming soon. "We've been able to put together one of the most incredible Android apps you will ever see," said CEO Kevin Systrom told audience members during a session at the South By Southwest Interactive conference, waving an Android phone with a prototype on it. "It's extremely fast." Systrom said he's been using the Android phone since shattering his iPhone while climbing out of an Austin pedicab. Systrom said the Android app is in private beta but will be...

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Google exec: We won't break users' trust

Austin, Texas (CNN) -- After concerns over a revamped Google privacy policy surfaced last month, some questioned whether the Web giant is still living up to its longstanding motto: "Don't be evil." Absolutely, says Vic Gundotra, the man behind social network Google+. The company has to. "If we do things that are evil, with one click you can leave Google," Gundotra said on the opening day of the South by Southwest Interactive festival on Friday. "If we break the users' trust, we can lose to competitors very quickly." Under the policy, which went into effect on March 1, Google doesn't collect any more information about users than it did before. But all of that data, from tools like Gmail, Google search, YouTube and Android mobile devices, is now compiled into a single profile of each user's...