Archive for July 26th, 2009

Viewsonic wasn’t playing around with its latest outlay of wares, and while the intriguing Atom-powered VNB100 is dangerously similar in name to the VNB101, there’s actually a good bit of difference between the two. Across the way, the good guys and gals over at NetbookNews have managed to score some hands-on time with the former, and while it’s labeled the outfit’s budget model, it still packs an ExpressCard slot, a built-in 3G modem and a red paint job that’s sure to catch a few eyeballs. Hop on past the break for a video showcase, but don’t expect to hear a North American price or release date.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

Continue reading Viewsonic’s entry-level VNB100 netbook shown on video

Filed under: Laptops

Viewsonic’s entry-level VNB100 netbook shown on video originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those little green reweet buttons you see across the web on sites like this one have helped TweetMeme rise in popularity. The buttons are now so ubiquitous that the service has seemingly become the de-facto retweeting mechanism for content on the web. But it looks like it’s about to get a challenger, with a killer name, Retweet.com.

Retweet.com currently only has a a landing page saying that it’s “coming soon,” so it’s hard to know exactly what it is from that. But there are plenty of clues around the web pointing to it being a TweetMeme competitor. The main hint comes from a design contest taking place at 99designs. The prize is over $1,000 to design the site, and all of the mockups look very similar to TweetMeme (which, to be fair, takes a lot of its look from sites like Digg).

Who knew statistical computing competitions could be so cut throat? Since we reported on the contest last night, two teams in the Netflix Prize have spent the last few hours jumping back and forth on the Netflix leaderboard as the three-year-long competition ticked into its final moments, with last minute sniping submissions coming from both sides. Finally, the results are in: The Ensemble has managed to come from behind to upset BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos with a top submission of 10.10% — an improvement of .01% — only 4 minutes before the contest closed.

It’s been a long road to get here. Over the last three years computer science teams around the world have been vying for the Netflix Prize — a competition that invited teams to try to improve on Netflix’s movie recommendation algorithm by 10%, with a reward of $1 million to the best submission. Since then teams have gotten progressively closer to the magical 10% mark, but it wasn’t until last month when a number of top teams joined forces to form BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos that the barrier was finally broken, with a score of 10.08%. However, their announcement kicked off a 30 day last call period where other teams were invited to make their final submissions.

Interesting — just a couple days after Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told a conference that “it’s too early to tell” if the Pre’s a hit while talking about Android, the latest Best Buy ad shows Palm’s baby on sale for just $99 on a two-year contract. That ought to spike some sales, but we’ll see if its just a one-week special or a permanent drop before we start trying to read any tea leaves here — anyone running out to grab one?

Update: Best Buy marketing manager John Bernier has chimed in via his Twitter account to say that the Pre is $199 and that the “error is being corrected.” It’ll be interesting to see if any lucky customers managed to nab the device for less than a Benjamin.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read – Hesse’s comments
Read – $99 Pre at Best Buy

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre drops to $99 at Best Buy (update: “error is being corrected,” says Best Buy) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Leave it to a gaggle of brilliant wood science researchers at Oregon State University to figure out that we’ve been doing this whole “tire” thing wrong for generations now. While studying some uses of microcrystalline cellulose, which can be made easily from practically any type of plant fiber, these Earth-loving gurus discovered that said material could actually improve the efficiency of vehicle tires when used in place of silica. Granted, only about 12 percent of the silica — which is used as a reinforcing filler in the manufacture of rubber tires — was swapped out, but the resulting tires gripped just as well in wet weather while decreasing the rolling resistance during those dry summer months. Furthermore, tires constructed with these fibers could be made with less energy, though long-term durability studies are still needed to prove that this whole plan is viable for more than a few thousand miles.

[Via Gizmag]

Filed under: Transportation, Science

OSU foresters swap tree fibers for rubber in fuel efficient tires originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last week saw an unusual burst of acquisition activity among Web companies. Yahoo bought email add-on Xoopit for about $20 million, Nokia bought social address book provider Cellity, and overshadowing them all was Amazon’s $928 million purchase of Zappos.

But the week started off with another acquisition which quickly got lost in all the subsequent news. Advertising network Adknowledge bought KITN Media for its flagship virtual currency product, Super Rewards. The acquisition price was undisclosed, but Eric Eldon at VentureBeat noted that the rumored price was $30 million (he also noted that AdKnowledge disputed that number as “patently inaccurate.”)

I heard the same number the night before the acquisition was announced. It was being floated by one of AdKnowledge’s competitors. When I asked Adknowledge and Super Rewards about it, they gave me the same line: that it “was incorrect and it would be a material misrepresentation of the transaction.” I dug around a little more and found out that the price was actually more than $30 million. A source with direct knowledge of the deal told me that it was closer to $50 million.

This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn’t want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back — so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We’ll be handing out a new gadget every day to lucky readers until we run out of stuff or companies stop sending things. Today we’ve got an array of iSkin Vibes BlackBerry cases on offer, perfect for keeping your Curve, Bold or Storm safe from the elements. Read the rules below (no skimming — we’re omniscient and can tell when you’ve skimmed) and get commenting! Hooray for free stuff!

Big thanks to iSkin for providing the gear!

The rules:

• Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share your proposal for “fixing” the world economy, that’d be sweet too.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. Twelve (12) winners will receive one (1) iSkin Vibes BlackBerry case — 4 for Curve; 4 for Bold; 4 for Storm. Approximate retail value is $32.99 each.
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
• Entries can be submitted until Sunday, July 26th, at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

Engadget’s recession antidote: win an iSkin Vibes BlackBerry case! originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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News aggregator site and Digg-competitor Mixx had a rough June. Traffic to the site took a 68 percent nosedive in the U.S. from May to June, according to comScore (see chart). Compete shows a similar trend.

Wondering if Mixx had maybe been paying for traffic and had now stopped, I asked CEO Chris McGill if this was the case. Absolutely not. He replied: “We have never paid for traffic… Not once. How could we? … We have operated for two years on almost no money.” Hard to argue with that. Mixx has only raised $3.5 million to Digg’s $40 million, and is “nine guys sitting in a boiler room.”

So what happened?

While ASUS is busy adding an optical drive to its Eee PC line, Dell is diving into the low-priced, optical-free, thin-and-light category with its new Studio 14z portable. The folks at Laptop Mag have taken the new laptop for a spin, and seem to like what they see. While its 4.4 pound weight isn’t quite best in class, the 14z outperforms most of its brethren thanks to GeForce 9400M graphics and a “real” Core 2 Duo processor — none of that weak sauce CULV stuff. The battery life isn’t bad either, and for $750 it’s easy on the wallet. You just have to ask yourself: can you live without instant access on-the-go to your limited edition set of Billy Joel hits on Compact Disc?

Filed under: Laptops

Dell Studio 14z hits the review bench, disc drive stays behind with few regrets originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, an optical drive isn’t going to explode the definition of netbooks as we know it — we’ll have to wait for Windows 7 to do that — but perhaps we can all learn to live lives of greater peace and harmony now that you can spin up a plastic circle of ones and zeros inside an Eee PC. The new 1004DN is now available in Taiwan for NT$19,988, about $609 US.

[Via Liliputing]

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS Eee PC 1004DN lands in Taiwan, gives the netbook a serious identity crisis originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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