We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Ryan, who reckons it’s about time he stopped playing with Lego blocks and began playing with a real man’s robot platform. Just kidding about the Lego bit. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

“I am an aspiring roboticist who has been using Lego Mindstorms NXT for a few years and I am looking for the next step up. I have a budget of about $400. I am looking for something that has more motors, more sensors, and a way to have it live feed video back to a computer. I would also like a platform that has a large amount of building that can be done on top of it, such as adding an arm or another array of sensors, or a different drive base. I’m new to the world of robotics outside of the NXT, so any tips would be appreciated as well. Thanks!”

Come on over, robot lovers. Toss those gloves and goggles aside for a moment and throw this guy some advice. What platform keeps you up in the garage at night?

Ask Engadget: best robot platform for under $400? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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John Pozadzides of the Web analytics company Woopra wrote a guest post for ReadWriteWeb looking at the web’s top sources of referral traffic. He breaks it down in to the following categories: social network, social bookmark, search, and media.

Six versions of Google top the list for search before Bing makes an appearance. Facebook takes the cake in social networks, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn. In the social bookmark category, StumbleUpon leads, and in media, it’s YouTube.

Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell reports that a court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia has demanded a Russian ISP block access to YouTube because it hosted what it says is an extremist video. The Internet Archive and three online libraries were also reportedly blocked. As O’Dell points out, a number of other countries have also blocked access to YouTube at different times.

The New York Times reports that the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban.

Pocket-lint reports that Amazon claims ebook sales will overtake paperbacks next year. It’s a pretty astonishing notion, but not too hard to believe considering that Amazon recently announced that ebook sales have overtaken hardback sales.

Mobile Crunch has pointed out that RIM has purchased the domain BlackPad.com, speculating that a long-rumored BlackBerry tablet could be called the BlackPad.

News surfaced yesterday that a directory containing personal details of over 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on a file-sharing site. BBC News spoke to the man responsible who says he harvested the info for a security tool.

Back in early May, it was discovered that Google had invested in something called Recorded Future. Now Wired reports that the CIA is involved as well, in the company that monitors the web predicts the future.

Facebook launched the long-awaited Questions feature yesterday (in beta). Search Engine Land has a detailed walkthrough of the feature.

According to Ben Patterson at Yahoo News, citing information from Courant.com, U.S. libraries are loaning more DVDs on a daily basis than Netflix and Redbox are renting them. This make sense given that many libraries offer free DVD loans, and cheap prices on new releases.

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You might’ve heard about a new Kindle model or two this evening, and good news if they tickled your fancy — they’re now on Amazon and available for pre-order. Both the WiFi-only and WiFi / 3G models are shipping August 27th, the former in graphite and the latter in graphite and white options. Search your pocketbook, if you know it to be coveted.

P.S. – UK customers, try here.

New Kindles now available for pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As you probably know by now, Google considers page speed as one of its many signals for search engine rankings. With that in mind, you may also be interested in knowing that in Chrome 6, developers can access web timing metrics for measuring web page load time across browsers.

"Measuring web page load time is a notoriously tricky but important endeavor," says Google software engineer Tony Gentilcore. "One of the most common challenges is simply getting a true start time. Historically, the earliest a web page could reliably begin measurement is when the browser begins to parse an HTML document (by marking a start time in a <script> block at the top of the document)."

"Unfortunately, that is too late to include a significant portion of the time web surfers spend waiting for the page: much of the time is spent fetching the page from the web server," says Gentilcore. "To address this shortcoming, some clever web developers work around the problem by storing the navigation start time in a cookie during the previous page’s onbeforeunload handler. However, this doesn’t work for the critical first page load which likely has a cold cache."

Genticore has more details (as well as an explanation of the above image) in this post.

Web Timing metrics can be found under window.webkitPerformance in Chrome 6. Google is kind enough to point out where they can be found in other browsers as well: window.msPerformance in the third platform preview of IE 9 and soon window.mozPerformance in Firefox.

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Astro Clash 2.0 for iPhone/iPad review
The lightweight nature of the iPhone, and the accessible coding environment makes it idea for revisiting arcade classics. Astro Clash , by Jaylord Systems , is one such game, recreating Asteroids on the iPhone and iPad.

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Brand new Blackberry Bold II 9700
Category: Gadgets & Tech User : stillme Date : Wednesday, 28/07/10 – 15:07PM Description : Forsale : Brand new mobile phones with complete accessories and 2 year warranty which also includes a 1 year return poilicy Brand new Nokia N97 16gb Brand new Nokia N96 16gb Brand new Nokia N95 8gb Brand new Nokia E90 Brand new Sony Ericsson XPERIA Brand new Nokia N900 Smartphone 32 GB Brand new Nokia X6 …

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New iPad app creates net magazine
Apple’s iPad has created a new breed of magazines, allowing users to flip through digital pages.

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We’ve already gathered that Verizon, Moto, and HTC all seem to be pretty well committed to bumping most of their Droid models to Froyo (as well they should), but things are starting to get real — really real. First off, we’ve been fed a shot of a tipster’s Droid X that has apparently already been blessed with 2.2 over the air; the baseband version is a tick older than the one in a shot leaked over on My Droid Life, but it’s anyone’s guess how Motorola is staging this and what the final gold binary really contains. We’ve also seen a 2.2 ROM for the Droid Incredible leak recently (and the Droid before that), so uncorroborated rumors we’re seeing that three of the four retail Droids will be getting 2.2 by the 15th of next month aren’t necessarily crazy. Remember: think positive thoughts.

[Thanks, Shane]

Android 2.2 upgrade for Droid X may already be trickling out, other Droids shortly? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve already gathered that Verizon, Moto, and HTC all seem to be pretty well committed to bumping most of their Droid models to Froyo (as well they should), but things are starting to get real — really real. First off, we’ve been fed a shot of a tipster’s Droid X that has apparently already been blessed with 2.2 over the air; the baseband version is a tick older than the one in a shot leaked over on My Droid Life, but it’s anyone’s guess how Motorola is staging this and what the final gold binary really contains. We’ve also seen a 2.2 ROM for the Droid Incredible leak recently (and the Droid before that), so uncorroborated rumors we’re seeing that three of the four retail Droids will be getting 2.2 by the 15th of next month aren’t necessarily crazy. Remember: think positive thoughts.

[Thanks, Shane]

Android 2.2 upgrade for Droid X may already be trickling out, other Droids shortly? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Droid Life  |  xda-developers, My Droid World, AndroidSPIN  | Email this | Comments

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Affordable Android-powered iPad-like Tablet Computers Galore
While browsing through dealextreme.com, a popular online shop for electronic products here in Asia, I was really surprised to see several iPad-like tablet computers that are sold for as low as $99 (US). Another surprising thing is that they are all powered by Android.

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