Sorry, everybody who bought a Zune HD! You screwed up. It won't be a part of the XNA Game Studio 4.0 party—meaning it won't play those new mobile Xbox Live games for Windows Phone 7—unlike the Zune HD2.

It's through MIcrosoft's XNA Game Studio 4.0 that developers get access to the Xbox Live goodness, using Gamer Services APIs. And that's not in the cards for the plain old Zune HD, according to Microsoft's Klucher:

"Development for the Zune and Zune HD will continue to exist in XNA Game Studio 3.1, however, in XNA Game Studio 4.0, we're encouraging you to migrate your games over to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform."

That's where the Zune HD2 comes in, which Mary Jo Foley hears is in the pipe, and "will be similar to an iPod Touch," and could ship as early as this year. In other words, it'll presumably be a part of that "Windows Phone 7 Series platform" and run Windows Phone 7 apps.

Which is what Microsoft will need—as many devices as possible running WP7 apps to give the platform a running start, and a wide base of them that don't require carrier contracts isn't a bad idea. Like Steve Jobs once supposedly referred to the iPod touch as "training wheels for the iPhone," devices running around with Xbox Live games and Zune music, getting people hooked on the platform early, the people who aren't quite ready for a full phone (though maybe that's where the mysterious Project Pink comes in), is almost a necessity, really.

But, uh, everybody who already bought a Zune HD, especially in the past month. Um, yeah. Sorry, but we told you this could happen. [ZDNet]

Google dips its toe into TV programming searches, netbooks' market share is growing, Twitter and Facebook gear up for geolocation, and researchers make the case for fat as a sixth taste sense.

• The Rise of Netbooks
  Think netbooks are a dwindling fad? GigaOM's infographic designers look at the last three years and disagree. [GigaOM]
• Readability
  The very handy, text-focused reformatter we all know as a bookmarklet has arrived as a Firefox add-on, with a few unique features like auto-scrolling. [Firefox Add-Ons via gHacks]
• Google Testing TV Search Service On Android-Enhanced Set-Top Boxes
  Google employees with DirecTV are trying out a search app that scans TV programming and web video. It's powered in part by Android, and we're kind of hoping makes it to a wider market. [Business Insider]
• Just In Time For The Location Wars, Twitter Turns On Geolocation On Its Website
  Just in time for SXSW, Twitter opens up geolocation embedding from its main site. It had previously been available through its API. [TechCrunch]
• Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Location
  Upping the arms race, Facebook might launch its own geo-smart status updates at its f8 conference next month. [Bits Blog]
• Parallels Desktop update adds support for Chrome OS
  It's not clear whether the $80 Mac virtualization suite means Google's unreleased, official Chrome OS or the open-source Chromium OS builds floating around, but either way, Parallels is on it. [Yahoo! News]
• So Fat, You Can Taste It
  The presence of fat in food may be a kind of sense, or at least a distinct taste, and researchers suggest those with less fat on their bodies can taste more fat in foods. [Slashfood]

Sure, it seems like everyone has an iPhone today, but in bizarro 2010 literally everyone has a watch phone. They're miniature. They're wireless. They have geometric buttons. And they're eating bizarro AT&T's bandwidth alive. Oh, 1995, you are so naive.

This ad was dug up by Wired Reread, a site that does just what its name suggests. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad, sort of like looking at the promises people wrote in your middle school yearbook. [Wired Reread via BoingBoing]

It didn't take long for these NaviBots to win our hearts -- we only spent about five intimate minutes watching them vacuuming the floor at Samsung's UK product launch event, but frankly, we fell hard upon first sight. On the left we have the SR8845 basic model going for £399 ($599), and the SR8855 at the rear is priced higher at £449 ($674) with its touch-sensitive buttons (instead of physical ones), on-board scheduler (instead of a countdown timer) and a pair of Virtual Guards -- boxes that create an infrared virtual fence to create a priority cleaning zone or to block the NaviBots -- instead of one. That said, both bots have the same vacuum performance, have visionary mapping, run for 90 minutes on a two-hour charge, and have anti-fall / anti-collision technology to boot. Say whatever you want about the prices and feel free to doubt the bots' sucking abilities, but hopefully the video after the break will at least leave you with a smile. Both will be in British shops at the end of April.

Gallery: Samsung NaviBot SR8845 and SR8855 hands-on

Continue reading Samsung NaviBot SR8845 / SR8855 vacuum cleaner hands-on

Samsung NaviBot SR8845 / SR8855 vacuum cleaner hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Wires. Lame, right? Always getting tangled up, keeping you tethered to your desk. But! We've hit the age of wireless USB. Now Macbook and PC alike can connect cordlessly to any desktop setting through products like the Warpia Easy Dock.

We had some concerns over the InFocus wireless set-up that popped up last month, but Source R&D's Warpia Easy Dock seems to be a cleaner solution. Both products are built on Wisair's wireless USB technology, as will at least a few more similar offerings coming later this year.

Also appealing: the Easy Dock has plug-and-play functionality, and works across both PC and Macbook lines. Whether it's worth the $150 price tag depends on how much use you'll get out of it; I can certainly see the advantages in a professional setting, or for those with netbook regret who want a larger display to work with.

Source R&D Debuts Wireless Laptop Docking Station for Mac & PC Users

Easy Dock brings your laptop content to your desktop computing environment for convenient use of speakers, mouse, keyboard & external monitor

SAN JOSE, California, Mar. 9 – Source R&D announced today the availability of the Warpia Easy Dock, which will allow users to wirelessly connect their notebook/netbook/Macbook to any traditional desktop setting. With the Easy Dock's straightforward plug-and-play interface, consumers can have both the convenience and portability of a laptop, as well as the comfort of a desktop computer. Easier on the eyes, ears and hands, users will no longer have to squint at a miniature screen, deal with a below average sound quality, or fumble with a tiny keyboard.

Based on wireless technology from Wisair, a leading provider of single-chip based Wireless USB solutions, the Easy Dock consists of a USB dongle that connects to your laptop and a receiver that connects to your monitor, mouse, keyboard, and speakers. Your laptop will instantly recognize the dongle and begin submitting a wireless signal to the receiver, transmitting the image with a resolution of up to1400x1050 to your monitor's screen.

"Perfect for professionals working from home, students on-the-go, or families with both MacBook and PC laptops, the Easy Dock gives customers ultimate portability and comfort," says Marc Levaggi, VP of Marketing for Source R&D. "They can take their compact notebook to business meetings, while still having the option to do more intensive work at home with a full-size keyboard and monitor. It's also a great solution for those who want to play media on high quality speakers."

Compared to other laptop docks on the market, Easy Dock stands out for its wireless quality; adding capability without contributing to cable clutter. Priced affordably at $149.99, the Easy Dock and works with Windows 7, Vista, XP, Mac OS X Leopard, and Snow Leopard. For more information, please visit http://warpia.com/Product_Guide-Easy_Dock.pdf.

Eternal optimist Verizon calls iPad launch 'an opportunity' to sell some data plans originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In today's Remainders: tomorrow's news! Cisco's ushering in the next generation of internet with the CRS-3; Kempler & Strauss's futuristic PhoneWatch gets reviewed; geolocated Tweets; a WebKit-borrowing Firefox; an HTML 5 drawing app; Samsung's point and shoot prices, and more!

Hang Ups
Back in October we previewed the Kempler & Strauss PhoneWatch—the smallest of its kind and the model that promised to bring the James Bond dream to every geek's wrist. Or so we hoped. PC Mag just published their review of the watch and found it "basically unusable," complaining about the tiny screen and how texting (as you might assume) was pretty much impossible. As they point out, i's a one way street, this watch/phone business: your phone will always be able to tell the time, but your timepiece will not always be able to make phone calls. [PC Mag]

Tubular
Last night Cisco grabbed our attention with its promise that it was soon to make an announce that would "forever change the internet." This morning they unveiled their internet changer: the Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? Basically, the new server triples the capacity of Cisco's current ones, allowing for 322 Terabits per second transfer and ushering in, Cisco hopes, the "next generation" of the internet. Sure, that's great, but even with crazyfast back-end, there are still plenty of things limiting the speed of the intertubes. Cisco's claims for the CRS-3 are impressive, for sure:

The Cisco CRS-3 triples the capacity of its predecessor, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, with up to 322 Terabits per second, which enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

But if it's only three times as fast as the one that came before it, Cisco's current platform can stream every movie ever made in twelve minutes. It took me like two hours to download Lost last week, so I'm not ready to say that Cisco forever changed anything just yet. [Cisco]

Firey Fox
Firefox's JavaScript engine, TraceMonkey, is starting to fall behind some of the other browser monkeys, so Mozilla is building a new engine, JagerMonkey, to get back up to speed. Ars Technica reports that Mozilla will snatch code from Apple's WebKit to add to their TraceMonkey optimization techniques. David Mandelin, a developer on the project, explained:

The reason we're [building JägerMonkey] is that TraceMonkey is very fast for code that traces well, but for code that doesn't trace, we're stuck with the interpreter, which is not fast. The JägerMonkey method JIT will provide a much better performance baseline, and tracing will continue to speed us up on code where it applies.

From the sound of things, JagerMonkey is aiming to put the fire back in the fox. [Ars Technica]
Image credit Smoking Apples

Gates' Cells
Intellectual Ventures, the very cool, very smart invention factory we've covered before, has a new patent for the modification of red blood cells. Edward Jung, Intellectual Ventures' CTO, explains:

Red blood cells are odd cells in the body because they have no nucleus. Thus they are 'stripped down' cells that cannot reproduce and cannot renew themselves; therefore they die quickly and must be constantly manufactured by special cells in the bone marrow. All these attributes make red blood cells interesting vessels for sensing devices and medicines. There is no risk of their reproducing thereby creating a hazard, nor is there a lot of machinery to run awry.

We'll take your word for it, guys. [TechFlash]

Doodling
We've already explained why HTML 5 isn't going to save the internet. But it might save you from a few hours of office drudgery, in the form of Harmony, an awesome HTML 5 drawing app. Warning: Not Safe For Productivity. [Harmony]

Tweetin' All Over the World
These days, social media seems to be focused on location, location, location. Foursquare is more popular than ever. Buzz, despite its faults, is a big play by a big company the location game. And Facebook is set to roll out its location-based solution next month. Today, geolocated Tweeets went live on Twitter.com (only to be turned off a few hours later). Still, Twitter is expected to turn the service on for good any day now, adding yet another element to Twittermania, for better or for worse. [TechCrunch]

Pricetags
We were very excited when Samsung's new point and shoots, the TL500 and the TL300, first splashed on the scene last month. Now we have prices: the TL500 will go for $449 and the TL350 for $349. As for the "rugged" cams, the water-friendly AQ100 will have a price tag of $199 with the SL605 going for $129. [Engadget]

Browsin
Lab 126, the unit in Amazon responsible for the Kindle, posted a new job opening looking for someone to help build "an innovative embedded web browser." The Kindle's web browsing capabilities have been, well, lacking, so a more fully realized browser would be a welcome addition. And maybe a necessary one, if Kindle's going to keep up with the iPad and its finger friendly version of Safari. [All Things D]