Vodafone UK making their '4G promise,' offering deals for early upgrades to 4G contracts

Despite not having a licence at present, or any firm plans for a 4G LTE network, UK carrier Vodafone has come out fighting with their "4G Promise." Rival carrier, EE, is set to launch the UK's first 4G LTE network within days. Eager not to lose out too much to the new service, Vodafone is offering some pretty impressive deals for customers who upgrade to their 4G network when it eventually arrives. 

The meat of the offer is pretty straight forward: 

So if you’ve bought an iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy SIII (purchased after October 26th 2012) or Galaxy Note II, simply bring it back to one of our stores. Even if you’re still in contract, we’ll knock off 70% of your remaining contract charges, letting you upgrade your phone early and start a fresh contract.

70% is a huge amount to reduce an outstanding contract fee by, and shows that Vodafone is keen to not only retain their current customers who may think about switching, but attract those who are unable to get EE 4G LTE at the services launch. The deal only applies when taking out a new 4G contract in the future, and for devices bought between September 12 2012 and March 31 2013.

[Source: Android Central]

T-Mobile also cancels NYC event on account of weather

We've been through this before. This notice has just landed in our inbox:

Hi,

Apologies for the late mail, but due to the expected weather in New York, T-Mobile will be postponing its showcase event (which was scheduled for October 29) to a later date.  We will keep you posted on a rescheduled date as soon as we can.

Thanks for your flexibility and patience and apologies for the inconvenience.

The weather is getting nasty out there, and T-Mobile has decided that holding its event in New York Cityisn't the best choice. Since Google has also decided to postpone its impending Nexus event, we're not going to blame T-Mo for taking the safe route. No reason to risk having extra people traveling in Hurricane Sandy.

[Source: Android Central]

Apps and tips for coping with Hurricane Sandy

All of us in the northeast US (which includes myself and TUAW colleagues Megan Lavey-Heaton, Dave Caolo and Kelly Hodgkins) are keeping a wary weather eye on the approaching maelstrom that is Hurricane Sandy. While we continue to hope for minimal impacts to life and property, it's overwhelmingly likely that millions of people will be facing days or weeks of power outages, constrained transportation and other serious challenges.

As we noted last year with the approach of Irene, there are several apps and simple tips that can help keep you safe and secure in emergent conditions. Of course, the most important advice is also pretty simple: follow the instructions of local authorities with regard to evacuations, road closures and travel restrictions.

[Source: TUAW - Click here to read the full story]

East Coast Apple Stores batten down for Hurricane Sandy

Just like most everyone else on the East Coast of the United States, Apple Stores in five states, D.C. and Canada are making preparations for "Frankenstorm" Hurricane Sandy. ifoAppleStore.com reports that between35 and 50 stores may close in the northeastern US and Canada (if they haven't already), as they are either within the expected landfall zone of Sandy or just outside it.

One of our readers has confirmed that Rhode Island and Boston area stores are shut. Meanwhile, two of Apple's flagship New York City stores have surrounded themselves with sandbags, with the Fifth Avenue store even wrapping Macs and other products in plastic bags as an extra precaution against water damage.

All of this goes to show that if Apple isn't taking chances with this megastorm, neither should you. If you live in the area expected to be affected by Hurricane Sandy, please take every precaution possible. Forewarned is forearmed.

[Source: TUAW]

Livescribe outs Sky WiFi Smartpen for $170, lets you record written notes and audio straight to Evernote

The Pulse pen couldn't do it. The more recent Echo couldn't manage it either. But sending notes and linked audio wirelessly is what Livescribe's latest digital pen is all about. Branded the Sky WiFi Smartpen, it works with proprietary physical notebooks to preserve your handwritten notes and linked audio files on a minimum of 2GB of onboard storage, and then it sends them directly to your Evernote account via WiFi -- from where you can access them on pretty much any PC, tablet or smartphone. If you're wondering a how the pen selects the right network and enters a password, then it's actually pretty straightforward: Livescribe's new stationery is printed with connection buttons that, in conjunction with the OLED display on the pen itself, guide you through the procedure in a few seconds. The latest notebooks also have buttons for sending your captured thoughts to Google Drive, Dropbox and Facebook, although those services won't be activated until early next year.

[Source: Engadget - Click here to read the full story]

Microsoft adds WP8 app to Windows Store just in time for launch

If you're aiming to get your hands on one of the many Windows Phone 8 devices launching later today, it would be nice to be able to sync it with your Windows 8 PC, no? Redmond has you covered in the nick of time, as it's just released the free Windows Phone app to its Windows Store. That'll let you get music, photos, or video over to your computer and back, use Windows 8 apps to share things like searches, automatically save photos or videos taken with your phone to your PC and check your phone's storage to see how it's being used. It'll also let allow you to download phone apps and learn more about your device, while pulling off a trick we've saw first with Apple, then WP7 -- letting you track down your smartphone if it goes missing. You can grab it at the source, then all you'll need is a WP8 (or 7.8) handset -- so stay tuned for our liveblog at 10:00 am PST / 1:00 pm EST to see when that might happen.

[Source: Engadget]

Cray's Jaguar supercomputer upgraded with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, renamed Titan

Cray's Jaguar (or XK7) supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been loaded up with the first shipping NVIDIA Telsa K20 GPUs and renamed Titan. Loaded with 18,688 of the Kepler-based K20s, Titan's peak performance is more than 20 petaflops. Sure, the machine has an equal number of 16-core AMD Opteron 6274 processors as it does GPUs, but the Tesla hardware packs 90 percent of the entire processing punch. Titan is roughly ten times faster and five times more energy efficient than it was before the name change, yet it fits into the same 200 cabinets as its predecessor. Now that it's complete, the rig will analyze data and create simulations for scientific projects ranging from topics including climate change to nuclear energy. The hardware behind Titan isn't meant to power your gaming sessions, but the NVIDIA says lessons learned from supercomputer GPU development trickle back down to consumer-grade cards. For the full lowdown on the beefed-up supercomputer, hit the jump for a pair of press releases.

[Source: Engadget]

Best things to use the iPhone 5 for

One of the best things about the iPhone 5 is its camera. If you are a keen photographer and videographer, then this is the phone for you for those moments on the go. It is much faster which means that you now do not have to wait between shots. The speed is a great asset and in situations like photographing children, you can get lots of frames, ensuring that you don't miss that vital expression! It also has an interesting panorama feature. As you take pictures and turn the camera, it stitches the pictures together. 

It has on screen directions which tell you to slow down if you are moving too fast and an arrow also helps keep you on the same horizontal line so that at the end you will have a full rectangle sized panoramic image.  The front facing camera is a 1.2 mega pixel, 720p camera and massive improvements have been made to this. It means that your face time calls will be much clearer, and your front facing pictures are of a much higher quality. It doesn't match up to the quality of the camera on the back, but that's still a great quality camera. 

Video on the new iPhone is shot at 1080p, so the quality of your video is much higher than ever before on smartphones. Stabilization is much better too, so you won't have as much of the unsteady guerrilla style filming you will have encountered before.

Another fantastic feature is that you can snap pictures while you are recording video. Although the improvements between the iPhones 4s and iPhone 5 are small, if you are someone who spends your life capturing a lot of photographs and video, then this alone would be a good enough reason to upgrade to the iPhone 5.

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Valve opens Steam for Linux beta registration, wants pros only

Right on schedule (ahem), Valve has begun requesting applications for the first Steam for Linux beta test. There are only 1,000 spots available, but the company is looking for "experienced Linux users" only -- presumably, ones that will be better at debugging than spilling zombie brains. So, if you've got a rig running Ubuntu 12.04 or above and decent Linux knowledge, head to the source link to register your interest.

[Source: Engadget]

Schiller says not to expect Blu-ray from Apple

In Time's interview with Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, he addresses the long-standing question of whether or not Apple will ever jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon. It seems that barring any unforeseen circumstances, you'll likely never see a Blu-ray option from Apple on any machine.

"Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology," Schiller explains. "So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks."

[Source: TUAW - Click here to read the full story]

Evernote 5 for Mac announced, beta coming week of October 29

Evernote has become something of an indispensable tool for compulsive note takers, a group that will no doubt be happy to hear that a major update to the Mac version of the app has been announced. Evernote 5, as it's called, has been in the works for more than a year according to its developers and will feature a refreshed UI in addition to more than 100 new features.

[Source: TUAW - Click here to read the full story]

Google postpones October 29th event over Hurricane Sandy worries

We hope you weren't basing your calendar around Google's big Android event on October 29th. The company has confirmed to us that it's postponing the event to an as yet undetermined point in the future due to Hurricane Sandy, whose East coast arrival will follow so closely before the New York City gaterhing that Google isn't willing to take the chance on its big day. If you're experiencing a sense of déja vu, you're not alone -- Google delayed last year's event revealing the Galaxy Nexus out of respect for the late Steve Jobs. While it's not what we'd call an auspicious start to Google's holiday launches, we can at least hope for an abundance of riches when the company is ready once again. The full statement waits below.

"We are canceling our Monday morning event in New York due to Hurricane Sandy. We will let you know our plans as soon as we know more."

[Source: Engadget]