The Weekend Watch: de Grisogono Meccanico dG Watch Hands-On

In the watch world the Meccanico dG watch is a bit of a legend. Originally debuted back in 2008, it helped bridge the gap between modern tech toys and high-end mechanical watches. The all-mechanical design features dual time displays. One, a standard analog dial. Second, a digital display that uses countless small parts to indicate a second time zone like the piece's electronic cousins. Incredibly complicated, the Meccanico dG brought new people into the world of high-horology that previously would not pay attention to what they might have considered stuffy mechanical toys for traditionalists.

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Mobile Miscellany: week of May 7th, 2012

Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This past week, Sprint reassured us with optimism for Windows Phone 8, and T-Mobile's CEO found a new partner to continue the fight against Verizon's AWS acquisition. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of May 7th, 2012.

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Mobile Miscellany: week of May 7th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 May 2012 20:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Planetary wrecking balls: how Jupiter might have destroyed Earth

'Hot Jupiters' are Jupiter-mass planets orbiting close to stars. A study suggests that they might have been kicked inward from their original orbit, destroying or ejecting other planets.?

It's lonely, being a hot Jupiter.

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But that seems to be the lot for Jupiter-scale extrasolar planets orbiting within a whisker of sun-like stars, according to a new study. It shows that such planets are likely to be the only surviving children of their host star.

The work not only sheds light on how such systems form, it also gives humans one more reason to appreciate their own Jupiter. Had the solar system's largest planet followed the same developmental process that hot Jupiters apparently have, Earth would have been either pulverized or sent hurtling into interstellar space.

?That would be bad for us,? observes Jason Steffen, a researcher at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Center for Particle Astrophysics in Batavia, Ill.

While finding an Earth-mass planet in a star's so-called habitable zone remains the holy grail of efforts to detect extrasolar planets, studying oddballs such as hot Jupiters provides insights into the processes that create the wide range of solar-system configurations researchers have so far uncovered.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, aimed to answer a question astronomers and astrophysicists have been asking since the first hot Jupiter was discovered in 1995: How do such systems wind up with that configuration?

Gas giants orbiting other stars at distances that would fall well inside of Mercury's orbit were the first extrasolar planets discovered. Because of their mass and their close-in orbit, hot Jupiters' effects on their parent stars are more pronounced than in other systems. Once researchers had identified these planets as gas giants, the chin-scratching began.

In our solar system, Jupiter and the other outer gas planets formed beyond what researchers have dubbed the solar system's frost line: a region in the early sun's disk of dust and gas where water, ammonia, methane, and other hydrogen-bearing compounds freeze into ice grains. Inside the frost line, the rocky planets formed.

Two competing scenarios emerged to explain how Jupiter-like gas giants migrated inward. The new report has led one team member to come to a definitive conclusion in the debate. ?

The earliest explanation suggested that a hot Jupiter forms beyond the frost line, but gravity from a passing star, or perhaps another massive companion planet, kicks the Jupiter into a highly elliptical orbit around its star. Each time the planet passes close to the star, its orbit is gradually reshaped until the orbit is far less elliptical orbit and so close that its ?year? can be as fast as 19 hours.

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Cynical ... (talking-points-memo)

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Gillmor Gang: Tomorrow Never Knows

The Gillmor Gang ? John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor ? turned off their minds, relaxed, and floated downstream on the push notification inbox of tomorrow. Borrowing a page from the Tibetan Book of Windows, the Gang debated the impossibility of multitasking, the existence of a new uber operating system, and the overall impact of surrendering to the void. Revolver marked the exact center of the Beatles arc; everything before was prologue, everything after continues to expand as the media is transformed. A quarter of a million may seem like a lot of dollars for playing one song once on a TV show, just as we await the size of the Facebook IPO. Recorded first and sequenced last, Tomorrow Never Knows is the end of the beginning.

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Romney Does "Cavuto" (TIME)

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International Samsung Galaxy Note gets Ice Cream Sandwich

If you've got an the international HSPA+ version of the Samsung Galaxy Note (GT-N7000), then your months of waiting for Android 4.0 are finally over. The "Premium Suite" for the device, which includes ICS along with a range of other  enhancements, is now pushing out to unlocked German Notes. The update to version XXLPY weighs in at over 300MB, and is currently available through Kies, as well as over-the-air via an automatic update.

As we discovered during our brief hands-on session with the North American ICS update, the Note remains fully TouchWiz'd, even on the latest version of Android. So if you're familiar with the look and feel of the Note's Gingerbread-based firmware, then you'll probably notice only a few minor visual changes. Of course, ICS brings improved performance all-round, which should help Note owners get more out of the device's beefy hardware. And the addition of the Roboto font gives the Note an added touch of class.

As for actual software enhancements, the "Premium Suite" bundles a new S Memo app with support for even richer content, including voice recordings. There's also an enhanced handwriting-to-text feature, and improved sharing capabilities for S Memo content.

If you're rocking an unlocked Note, head to Settings > About phone > Software updates to grab the latest OTA, or plug your phone into Kies to see if it's waiting for you. Remember that only German models are getting the ICS update for the time being, though if you know your way around ODIN, you can directly flash the German ROM regardless. (If you don't know what that means, it's probably best to just wait for your country/carrier's OTA.)

If you're already updated, be sure to drop by the comments and let us know what you think.

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