Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Wikipedia rolls out VisualEditor, lets you edit without the cumbersome markup

Wikipedia rolls out VisualEditor, lets you edit without the cumbersome markup data = {blogUrl: "www.engadget.com",v: 322};when = {jquery: lab.scriptBs("jquery"),plugins: lab.scriptBs("plugins"),eng: lab.scriptBs("eng")}; var s265prop9 = ('20645241' !== '') ? 'bsd:20645241' : ''; var postID = '20645241'; var modalMNo = '93319229', modalVideoMNo = '93320648', modalGalleryMNo = '93304207'; when.eng("eng.omni.init", {pfxID:"weg",pageName:document.title,server:"acp-ld39.websys.aol.com",channel:"us.engadget", s_account: "aolwbengadget,aolsvc", short_url: "",pageType:"",linkInternalFilters:"javascript:,",prop1:"article",prop2:"internet",prop9:s265prop9,prop12:document.location,prop17:"",prop18:"",prop19:"",prop20:"", prop22:"zach-honig", prop54:"blogsmith",mmxgo: true }); adSendTerms('1')adSetMOAT('1');adSetAdURL('/_uac/adpagem.html');lab._script("http://o.aolcdn.com/os/ads/adhesion/js/adhads-min.js").wait(function(){var floatingAd = new AdhesiveAd("348-14-15-14d",{hideOnSwipe:true});}); onBreak({980: function () { adSetType("F");htmlAdWH("93319229", "LB", "LB"); adSetType("");}}); EngadgetMenu NewsReviews Features Galleries VideosEventsPodcasts Engadget ShowTopics Buyers Guides Sagas Store Hands On More Betterer HD Mobile Alt Announcements Cameras Cellphones Desktops Displays Gaming GPS Handhelds Home Entertainment Household Internet Laptops Meta Misc Networking Peripherals Podcasts Robots Portable Audio/Video Science Software Storage Tablets Transportation Wearables Wireless Acer Amazon AMD Apple ASUS AT&T Blackberry Canon Dell Facebook Google HP HTC Intel Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Nokia NVIDIA Samsung Sony Sprint T-Mobile Verizon About UsSubscribeLike Engadget@engadgettip uswhen.eng("eng.nav.init")when.eng("eng.tips.init") onBreak({980: function () {htmlAdWH("93308280", "215", "35",'AJAX','ajaxsponsor');}});Wikipedia rolls out VisualEditor, lets you edit without the cumbersome markupBypostedJul 2nd, 2013 at 5:26 PM 0

Wikipedia rolls out VisualEditor, lets you make WYSIWYG edits without the cumbersome markup

Making simple edits to a post on Wikipedia hasn't traditionally been an impossible undertaking, but Wiki markup (the syntax used to add and adjust formatting) wasn't nearly as intuitive as it could have been. And editors dropped like flies as a result of confusing tags and a generally frustrating workflow. Now, in an attempt to simplify the editing process dramatically, the site's management team is adding a brand new What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tool called VisualEditor. Making corrections is now as simple as hitting "Edit" and typing in your changes -- intuitive buttons for text formatting, list creation and adding headings enable you to make pages look nice and consistent without a lot of work. Assuming you're using a recent version of Chrome, Safari or Firefox, manual page overhauls should take minutes, rather than hours.

when.eng("eng.perm.init")

Rihanna Wears Giant Cardigan, Shows Nipple Piercing at Chanel

The baggy white cardigan, usually a staple of balding golfers, got a fresh interpretation at this morning's Chanel couture show in Paris. Rihanna showed up in a white, ankle-length sweater with buttons down the front, all but two of which were left undone to reveal her torso and legs. At first blush, it looked like she was wearing a lacy black bra underneath a pile of of pearl necklaces, but it turned out to be one of her latest tattoos, an elaborate design just beneath her cleavage. The wool material was a bit sheer, but no matter! This was a great opportunity for her to show the world her right nipple piercing, which consists of a silver bar. It's about time we did away with that double standard of models getting to show their boobs on the runway while guests must cover theirs up, right?

This outfit is actually brilliant. It's always fun when something dowdy, like a bathrobe-length cardigan, is subverted into something sexy. (Side note: This may be the closest Rihanna ever comes to wearing something similar to Michelle Obama.) It's also very Karl Lagerfeld, who has turned Chanel into a house where grandma-esque tweeds and stuffy quilted bags are made to look cool and young. 

She Chanel-ed it up further with a white flower pin, a quilted bag, and tons of pearls, because nothing says "this outfit is not a mistake" like thousands of dollars' worth of accessories. Speaking of, she had to be very careful while walking in this getup.

Here she is with her stylist Mel Ottenberg, who deserves the real credit for this look. 

Also present at the show: Kristen Stewart! She was decidedly more covered up, even though she wasn't wearing bottoms.


View the original article here

Selfloops bridges sport gadget divide on Android with combo ANT+ adapter and battery pack

Selfloops Accessory Brings ANT+ Capability to Over 400 Million Active Android Smartphones

Android ANT+ Accessory enables Android devices to connect to ANT+ sport, fitness and health
sensors while charging smartphone at the same time

Cochrane, Alberta – July 2, 2013 - Selfloops, an Android-based innovation company, and ANT+™, the world's leader in ultra low power (ULP) wireless technology, have announced the release of the Android ANT+ Accessory - a smartphone charger that enables Android connectivity to the ANT+ ecosystem of sport, fitness and health products. The Android ANT+ Accessory allows the millions of existing Android devices (with versions 2.3.4 and higher) to display data such as heart rate, foot speed and distance, bike speed, power and cadence from any certified ANT+ sensor. This links Android applications to the millions of available ANT+ products manufactured by top brands such as Garmin, Timex, and Geonaute.

"We're extremely excited to now offer this innovative accessory to consumers," said Selfloops co-founder, Christian Del Rosso. "This is the only smartphone accessory that will enable ANT+ in Android devices with versions 2.3.4 and higher, which covers over 85% of the Android installed base. Existing solutions only cover Android 3.1 and upward (43% of the installed base) so we are thrilled to offer a device that brings ANT+ to the mass population of Android users."

The Android ANT+ Accessory connects to an Android device via USB and also functions as a charger, extending the battery life of a connected smartphone. The accessory adheres to the Android USB Accessory Protocol and supports devices that do not have USB OTG (on-the-go) capabilities.

"The Android ANT+ Accessory has created a new innovative category of devices we call 'smart'
smartphone chargers," added other Selfloops co-founder, Piero Ribichini. "In this case, the accessory enables ANT+ in the majority of existing Android devices all while charging the phone at the same time."

"It's very evident that consumers want ANT+ in their smartphones," said ANT Wireless Vice President, Rod Morris. "We're pleased to have an ANT+ Alliance Member bring a product to market that gives existing Android app developers and users an option to connect to ANT+."
Applications created using the official Android ANT APIs from ANT Wireless will automatically be
compatible with the Selfloops Android ANT+ Accessory. Selfloops has developed two ANT+ Android apps (Selfloops and Selfloops Group Fitness) that are currently available on the Google Play Store.

The Selfloops Android ANT+ Accessory is available at a cost of $115.00 US and can now be pre-ordered at www.selfloops.com/products/accessories.html. The device is expected to start shipping in October.


View the original article here

Everyone Is Showing the Centers of Their Bras

Demi Lovato appears on Cosmopolitan's August cover in a plunging orange dress that reveals the underwire-buttressed center of an ornate teal bra. When it comes to bra-flaunting, center-bra is notoriously difficult since wearers basically end up naked from neck to sternum. But in our modern era of midriff exposure and ribcage cutouts, exposed center-bra is on the rise. (And perhaps approaching its peak.) Come, let us explore this bra-exposure variant more overt than side-bra, more daring than back-bra, and more come-hither than bra-strap.

Demi's Cosmo center-bra seems to be an outgrowth of the midriff peephole trend. A plunging V-neck with bandeau-style breast coverage is a common and less focus-pulling strategy. (See Alina Cho's dress here.) Her lacy bra is both unmistakable as lingerie and has been styled with a sharply contrasting dress. The bra is frilly and has two colors; the dress is one color, solid, and unadorned. The resulting image is a declaration of décolletage: Look at the center of my bra, and at the boobs that reside there.

Yesterday, Versace's Fall 2013 Couture show took a similar approach to lingerie. Ornate, romantic underwire foundations were front and center.

Versace also featured the archetypal form of center-bra exposure, bras worn under suit jackets without shirts. Bra-under-jacket is a staple in magazine photo shoots; in men's magazines, it signals disrobing. As a regular outfit, however, bra-under-jacket is merely a variation on exposed center-bra and other torso-baring trends. Above, Cara Delevingne and Rihanna demonstrate bra-under-jacket as streetwear.

Even when Rihanna goes braless, her chest tattoo creates the illusion of center-bra, as it did when she attended today's Chanel Haute Couture show in a skimpy cardigan-dress. As the nexus of all bra- and boob-related trends, Rihanna's tattoo is probably the strongest argument for the rise of center-bra. For who lack the commitment necessary for a chest tattoo, a filigreed bra will do.


View the original article here

Into the heart of CERN: an underground tour of the Large Hadron Collider (video)

Into the heart of CERN: an underground tour of the Large Hadron Collider (video) data = {blogUrl: "www.engadget.com",v: 322};when = {jquery: lab.scriptBs("jquery"),plugins: lab.scriptBs("plugins"),eng: lab.scriptBs("eng")}; var s265prop9 = ('20623703' !== '') ? 'bsd:20623703' : ''; var postID = '20623703'; var modalMNo = '93319229', modalVideoMNo = '93320648', modalGalleryMNo = '93304207'; when.eng("eng.omni.init", {pfxID:"weg",pageName:document.title,server:"acp-ld39.websys.aol.com",channel:"us.engadget", s_account: "aolwbengadget,aolsvc", short_url: "",pageType:"",linkInternalFilters:"javascript:,",prop1:"article",prop2:"science",prop9:s265prop9,prop12:document.location,prop17:"",prop18:"",prop19:"",prop20:"", prop22:"joseph-volpe", prop54:"blogsmith",mmxgo: true }); adSendTerms('1')adSetMOAT('1');adSetAdURL('/_uac/adpagem.html');lab._script("http://o.aolcdn.com/os/ads/adhesion/js/adhads-min.js").wait(function(){var floatingAd = new AdhesiveAd("348-14-15-14d",{hideOnSwipe:true});}); onBreak({980: function () { adSetType("F");htmlAdWH("93319229", "LB", "LB"); adSetType("");}}); EngadgetMenu NewsReviews Features Galleries VideosEventsPodcasts Engadget ShowTopics Buyers Guides Sagas Store Hands On More Betterer HD Mobile Alt Announcements Cameras Cellphones Desktops Displays Gaming GPS Handhelds Home Entertainment Household Internet Laptops Meta Misc Networking Peripherals Podcasts Robots Portable Audio/Video Science Software Storage Tablets Transportation Wearables Wireless Acer Amazon AMD Apple ASUS AT&T Blackberry Canon Dell Facebook Google HP HTC Intel Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Nokia NVIDIA Samsung Sony Sprint T-Mobile Verizon About UsSubscribeLike Engadget@engadgettip uswhen.eng("eng.nav.init")when.eng("eng.tips.init") onBreak({980: function () {htmlAdWH("93308280", "215", "35",'AJAX','ajaxsponsor');}});Into the heart of CERN: an underground tour of the Large Hadron Collider (video)BypostedJul 2nd, 2013 at 4:30 PM 0

DNP

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
? Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I've been to see ALICE -- though there was no looking glass to jump through, just a retina scanner and one very long elevator ride down into the earth. I've toured a CMS that has nothing to do with online publishing. I've even gently laid my body on the most powerful particle accelerator in the world and raised the ire of surrounding engineers in the interest of a good shot. I did all of this at CERN, the international particle physics laboratory located near Geneva, Switzerland. But you probably know it best as the birthplace of the world wide web and home of the Large Hadron Collider. And, yes, it was all exactly like a walking fever dream. CERN See all photos 37 Photos

when.eng("eng.galleries.init") CERN Large Hadron Collider See all photos 66 Photos

when.eng("eng.galleries.init") CERN CMS See all photos 178 Photos

when.eng("eng.galleries.init") CERN ALICE See all photos 53 Photos

when.eng("eng.galleries.init")

It's apt that a Lewis Carroll quote would encapsulate my two-day visit to CERN in June, a trip that took place in the simmering Swiss heat (fun fact: A/C does not exist anywhere on the sprawling campus). And the facility, with a detector named after Carroll's ever-curious protagonist Alice, openly invites that connection. It's not hard to imagine most of CERN's resident physicists starting their days with a strong cup of (delicious, European) coffee, a bowl of müesli and a good pondering of the impossible. Maybe "ponder" is the wrong verb to apply here, considering one such scientist outright dismissed the notion of "impossibility" in discussion with a fellow journalist. He even appeared to harbor an active distaste for it. And he rightly should. After all, particle physicists and the whole of CERN trade in "wonder." It's very nearly a requirement for entry to the grounds.

Particle physicists and the whole of CERN trade in "wonder." It's very nearly a requirement for entry to the grounds.

The other essential ingredient for access to CERN's labs is a dormant LHC. I found myself wearing hard hats and gazing at the surrounding Jura and Alps mountain ranges while shuttling from one underground cavern to the next because of scheduled LHC maintenance. This period of inactivity has a dual purpose for CERN's engineers: it's partially a regular tune-up, but there's also major repair work underway.

DNP

A good portion of this two-year downtime's being dedicated to correcting damage from a 2008 explosion that wrecked many of the LHC's super-conducting magnets. Though CERN's engineers managed to get it back up and running in the time since that incident, the LHC's never quite been the same. It's actually been running at just half power -- still good enough for major scientific breakthroughs like the Higgs boson, but really a shell of what it's meant to do. Come 2015 when the LHC is once again operable, it'll be the first time the device collides its dual proton beams at an energy of 7 TeV (or teraelectron volts) each. To borrow CERN's own analogy, that's roughly equivalent to a car racing along at 994mph (or 1,600km/h).

Forget the LHC for a moment. The two detectors CERN made accessible -- CMS and ALICE -- are the real sleeping technological beauties.

An under repair accelerator is also a safe accelerator: there's no leaking helium to displace the air, no lingering radiation to make things poisonous and no near-absolute zero temperature of -456.3°F (necessary for operation of the magnets) to make frostbite seem inviting. That confluence of hospitable factors is primarily why CERN allowed us to walk a portion of the 7-mile (27km) long tunnel that forms a ring beneath the Franco-Swiss border, along which four collision detectors are placed. But forget the LHC for a moment, it's just a long and unexciting pipe.

DNP

The two detectors CERN made accessible on this trip -- CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) -- are the real sleeping technological beauties. It's those massive rings of densely packed super-conducting magnets, tracking devices and calorimeters that truly put the search for the Higgs boson into perspective. A particle so infinitesimally small, so elusive, so completely integral to our understanding of physics that it requires a 69 x 50 x 50 ft tall (21 x 15 x 15m), 12,500-ton detector with a solenoid magnet at its heart to generate an electromagnetic field roughly 100,000 times stronger than the Earth's own just to find it.

CERN is big-budget science and it looks just like the movies.

Of course, seeing is believing. Which is why we're extending that golden ticket to you in the form of a mini-doc and curated photo galleries. CERN, as you'll see, is big-budget science and it looks just like the movies: massive machines in subterranean chambers, a mess of cables and enough warning signs to let you know great things are happening. If you're looking for answers to the known mysteries of our universe or a deeper dive into the hows and whys of the LHC, you won't find them here. This is a virtual tour; it's the next, best thing to actually being there. For all that headier stuff, you can stay tuned for our upcoming Primed.

DNP

when.eng("eng.perm.init")

Meet Styx and Kerberos, Pluto's newly named moons

Meet Styx and Kerberos, Pluto's newly named moons data = {blogUrl: "www.engadget.com",v: 322};when = {jquery: lab.scriptBs("jquery"),plugins: lab.scriptBs("plugins"),eng: lab.scriptBs("eng")}; var s265prop9 = ('20645151' !== '') ? 'bsd:20645151' : ''; var postID = '20645151'; var modalMNo = '93319231', modalVideoMNo = '93320648', modalGalleryMNo = '93304207'; when.eng("eng.omni.init", {pfxID:"weg",pageName:document.title,server:"acp-ld39.websys.aol.com",channel:"us.engadget", s_account: "aolwbengadget,aolsvc", short_url: "",pageType:"",linkInternalFilters:"javascript:,",prop1:"article",prop2:"science",prop9:s265prop9,prop12:document.location,prop17:"",prop18:"",prop19:"",prop20:"", prop22:"michael-gorman", prop54:"blogsmith",mmxgo: true }); adSendTerms('1')adSetMOAT('1');adSetAdURL('/_uac/adpagem.html');lab._script("http://o.aolcdn.com/os/ads/adhesion/js/adhads-min.js").wait(function(){var floatingAd = new AdhesiveAd("348-14-15-13c",{hideOnSwipe:true});}); onBreak({980: function () { adSetType("F");htmlAdWH("93319231", "LB", "LB"); adSetType("");}}); EngadgetMenu NewsReviews Features Galleries VideosEventsPodcasts Engadget ShowTopics Buyers Guides Sagas Store Hands On More Betterer HD Mobile Alt Announcements Cameras Cellphones Desktops Displays Gaming GPS Handhelds Home Entertainment Household Internet Laptops Meta Misc Networking Peripherals Podcasts Robots Portable Audio/Video Science Software Storage Tablets Transportation Wearables Wireless Acer Amazon AMD Apple ASUS AT&T Blackberry Canon Dell Facebook Google HP HTC Intel Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Nokia NVIDIA Samsung Sony Sprint T-Mobile Verizon About UsSubscribeLike Engadget@engadgettip uswhen.eng("eng.nav.init")when.eng("eng.tips.init") onBreak({980: function () {htmlAdWH("93310027", "215", "35",'AJAX','ajaxsponsor');}});Meet Styx and Kerberos, Pluto's newly named moons AltBypostedJul 2nd, 2013 at 12:24 PM 0

Meet Styx and Kerberos, Pluto's newly named moons

SETI's best known for its search for sentient life in the cosmos, but when the Hubble space telescope found a pair of new moons orbiting Pluto (at SETI's behest), it decided to do some planetoid naming, too. Today, SETI announced those names: Styx and Kerberos. The institute didn't grant titles to the moons itself, however. Instead, it put the onus on the public to come up with the proper names -- with instructions from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that the nomenclature have something to do with the mythological underworld known as Hades. Voting lasted for two weeks, and SETI received over 450,000 regular votes and around 30,000 write-ins. Though many wished for the moons to be named for Stephen Colbert or the Romulan home world, the IAU found those choices to be unfit for the new moons. Instead, we have Styx (the river that separates earth from the underworld) and Kerberos (the three-headed dog that serves as the guardian to Hades) -- who said studying Classics was a waste of time?

when.eng("eng.perm.init")