Face? Meet palm. Microsoft's decided to pull out of its co-sponsoring of "Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show" after execs attending the taping came to the sudden conclusion that Family Guy-caliber jokes were to be told, tackling such topics as "deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest." We're not sure how 10 years and over 120 episodes of offensive precedence bypassed Redmond's radars, but man, that's gotta be some strong personal bubble. A Microsoft representative said of the taping, "it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand." The show will still air November 8th, pre-recorded Microsoft references in tow, but with a new as-of-yet unnamed sponsor. All we have of the now-doomed partnership is this brief video from the Windows "741" student site -- it's after the break.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Continue reading Microsoft ditches Family Guy special... for being Family Guy

Filed under: Software

Microsoft ditches Family Guy special... for being Family Guy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It could be argued that Sony Ericsson owes the world some love after it built up its last event only to introduce a single, solitary A2DP headset, but we might finally get what's coming to us in just a few days' time. It looks like November 3 is the date SE has chosen to unleash the first volley in its Android strategy on the world, likely the XPERIA X3 (or X10, or whatever the heck they decide to call it) with that wild Rachael UI that we've been tracking for a few months. How do we know? Well, it does line up with the latest and greatest rumors -- but more importantly, digging into the event page's HTML source reveals several mentions of Rachael by name, so... yeah, that's pretty much a lock. Should the unannounced Dragon and Sholes / Droid both be shaking in their boots already?

[Via se-blog.com]

Filed under: Cellphones

Sony Ericsson looking ready to come clean with Android-powered Rachael on November 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You can make a robotic car, and you can make a robotic car -- and it looks like Stanford is leading the charge on the no compromises approach with its new driverless Audi TTS. That, of course, is only the latest in a long line of robotic cars from the folks at Stanford, and it looks like it's also by far their most ambitious, as it's going above and beyond the usual DARPA challenges in the hope of breaking a few records and winning a few races. In fact, the car apparently already holds the "unofficial" speed record for an automous car at 130 miles per hour and, in the long term, Stanford hopes that it'll be able to complete the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which stretches some twenty kilometers and includes no less than 156 turns. To balance all that adreneline, the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory at Stanford has also developed a new VW Passat "valet system" that may not win any races, but can sure do some mean parallel parking. Videos of both after the break, more details a few hands-off impressions courtesy of BotJunkie at the links below.

Read - BotJunkie, "Stanford's New Robotic Audi TTS Knows How To Drift, Will Tackle Pikes Peak Next Year"
Read - BotJunkie, "VAIL Demonstrates Autonomous Valet Parking System"

Continue reading Stanford builds robotic Audi for racing, robotic Volkswagen for parking

Stanford builds robotic Audi for racing, robotic Volkswagen for parking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the world of Android, it's not yet clear who's going to come out victorious -- QWERTY sliders or their keyboardless brethren -- but does there really need to be a winner? We say there's room for just about everyone in this open-source party, and Sprint is starting to round out its Android offerings by introducing the keyboard-equipped Samsung Moment to saddle up alongside the HTC Hero that was released a few weeks ago. In the scheme of things, the platform is still extraordinarily young which means that virtually every new handset that's announced brings "firsts" to the table; in the Moment's case, it's both the first Android device with an 800MHz ARM11 core and the first Android QWERTY phone with an AMOLED display (you'd have to go back to another Sammy, the Galaxy, to find the first AMOLED Android phone regardless of input method).

Being able to stuff Android, AMOLED, QWERTY, and 800MHz all into one sentence certainly sounds like a winning combination, but does the Moment deliver? Let's find out.

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung Moment review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Sense UI update for HTC Magic makes the scene in Taiwan originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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