Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: laptops

Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! We're well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties surrounding the seasonal shopping experience, so we're here to help you sort out this year's tech treasures. Below is today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.

Let's get this out of the way: a laptop is an intimate gift. Even if you were to get away with paying just $400, it's a lot to spend on even your spouse (ten years is the netbook anniversary, right?). Not to mention, your lucky giftee will be spending more time with it, perhaps, than they do their friends, families and pets. At the same time, the selection is nothing if not overwhelming, and if you were to make a spreadsheet tallying prices and specs, you'd notice an uncomfortable similarity across different brands. So, we rounded up some of the best we've seen -- everything from all-purpose notebooks to Ultrabooks to high-end dream machines. If you're thinking of pulling the trigger, hop past the break for a few ideas and the (very brief) low-down on the trade-offs you'll be making.

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Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Try Out Spotify's New Apps Right Now [Video]

If you're intrigued by Spotify's new app platform, the beta version of their desktop client is available here. There's no apps functionality in the mobile version for now, but Spotify says it's something they're working on. [Spotify] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/99FQPjaW1_M/try-out-spotifys-new-apps-right-now

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Berg's Little Printer churns out RSS feeds with a receipt and a smile

It's hard to think of a device more aptly named than BergCloud's Little Printer. It's little. It prints. It even smiles at you. And why wouldn't it? It's adorable. Equally notable is what it produces -- RSS feeds printed out on grocery store-style receipts. All you have to do is hook it up to your router, configure your RSS subscriptions from your smartphone and press a button to print them out. The Little Printer connects wirelessly to a small box that's plugged into your router. This box, in turn, interfaces with the Berg Cloud (also unveiled this week), providing constant updates and pulling down any web content you've selected. If, for instance, you want to print out Foursquare updates, you can use the app to add them to your queue and print them out for later reading. It's basically like InstaPaper... with more paper. BergCloud has already struck partnerships with ARUP, Foursquare, The Guardian, Nike and Google, though more are on the way. No word yet on pricing, but the device is slated to go up for pre-order sometime next year. Check it out in action, after the break.

[Thanks, Dave]

Continue reading Berg's Little Printer churns out RSS feeds with a receipt and a smile

Berg's Little Printer churns out RSS feeds with a receipt and a smile originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quadcopter Fleet Builds the Leaning Tower of Styrofoam [Video]

What's six meters tall, composed of 1,500 individual bricks and assembled with nary a human hand? This new art installation in Orl�ans, France—it's the handiwork of an industrious swarm of airborne robots. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/MXrCVmA-h7U/quadcopter-fleet-builds-the-leaning-tower-of-styrofoam

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Sony Ericsson Added WebGL to Xperia 2011 Line Without Telling Anyone [Video]

In its Gingerbread update last month, Sony Ericsson sneaked in some WebGL support. That means that any of its current 2011 line up, including the Xperia Arc, can now take advantage of WebGL graphics directly in their browsers without plugins. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/8gQ8DXANI-w/sony-ericsson-added-webgl-to-xperia-2011-line-without-telling-anyone

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SSTL designs cheap radar satellite, UK government kicks in �21 million to build it

While we have an innate fear of the eye in the sky (and the role it'll play in the coming robot apocalypse), there's no doubt that observation satellites do a lot of good -- from recording weather and climate changes to helping coordinate relief efforts in the wake of natural disasters. Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) has plans to beef up planetary monitoring capabilities with its new NovaSAR satellite, and the company just received £21 million from the UK government to make it happen. NovaSAR works using synthetic aperture radar, so it can see through clouds (unlike optical satellites) and offers its services for £45 million -- or 20 percent of the cost of existing space radar platforms. With governmental funding in hand, SSTL can begin to develop and build its first such satellite, and the plan is to put it in orbit in two or three years. If NovaSAR does what it's been designed to do, SSTL hopes it can sell and launch enough of them so that any place on earth can be under its gaze in less than 24 hours. We're all for improving disaster relief efforts, but if you spy these sats overhead on a clear night, we recommend keeping an ear to the ground in case they're guiding an army of Alpha Dogs your way.

Continue reading SSTL designs cheap radar satellite, UK government kicks in �21 million to build it

SSTL designs cheap radar satellite, UK government kicks in �21 million to build it originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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YouTube got nearly 21 billion hits in a month, mostly thanks to naughty Fenton

The latest report from comScore makes for eye popping reading -- Google's video sites, of which YouTube is the most important, received 20,933,113,000 views in October. To put that into some context, that's roughly three videos watched by every person alive on the planet. According to the statistics, YouTubers spent an average of seven hours watching the month's hottest videos (such as Community's Beetlejuice easter egg and Naughty Fenton). Surprisingly, Facebook came second, but viewers spent an measly average of 18 minutes watching last night's karaoke. In other news, Hulu came top for online advertising and Vevo was the most watched partner site, you guys obviously love your Lady Gaga.

YouTube got nearly 21 billion hits in a month, mostly thanks to naughty Fenton originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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