Archive for November 9th, 2009

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXXXX: HTC Hero gets iPhone flair

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXXXX: HTC Hero gets iPhone flair originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NXT’s flat-panel speaker technology doesn’t get an awful lot of love these days in the high-end audio realm, but that’s not to say some outfits aren’t putting it to good use. Take SMK-Link Electronics, for instance, who just pushed out the most spectacular must-have product ever for the traveling salesperson in your life. The five-pound GoSpeak! Pro is little more than a fold-out speaker system, which is slim enough to slide easily into any briefcase yet potent enough to project PowerPoint audio to some 200 listeners (yes, 201 actually is impossible). As expected, you can also hook up a wireless microphone to let your voice project through it as well, but with a base price of $399, you might consider just yelling really, really loudly.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

GoSpeak! Pro fold-out speakers give on-the-go presenters plenty of joy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“A robot is a thing that does…” Verizon / Google / Motorola are taking their ad onslaught to new heights and in a new direction, with three new ads (which will hit “soon,” according to our tipster), two of which actually show off Android functionality. It’s a bold new vision for a hyperbole-filled, guytastic campaign which shows no sign of letting up, and seems more than anything to be the complete antithesis to Palm’s coma-inducing spots instead of an antidote for Apple’s everyhipster sensibilities. Check out the three new DROID ads after the break.

[Thanks, DroidDoesItAll]

Continue reading New DROID ads show off Android, will make a man out of you

Filed under: Cellphones

New DROID ads show off Android, will make a man out of you originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There aren’t any new devices in the mix, but RIM has unleashed a torrent of BlackBerry OS-related news today at its BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco that’s sure to make devs happy in the short term — and you know how that goes: when devs are happy, it doesn’t take long before end users reap the benefits. Here are the highlights:

• BlackBerry devices running OS 5.0 and higher will be able to benefit from OpenGL ES support, the 3D platform used by many of the world’s high-power smartphones for delivering killer games. There’s a beta of the SDK already, so let’s get cracking, everyone — we need some first-person shooters that totally negate BlackBerry’s ultra-productive image.
• A new plugin for the Eclipse development environment should make building BlackBerry app GUIs easier than ever, which should hopefully lead to prettier apps; it’ll be available in mid-2010.
• BlackBerry Theme Studio is now available, simplifying theme creation with support for changing the home screen layout, fonts, icons, colors, cursors, and more; it supports BlackBerry OS 4.2.2 and higher, which means that virtually every BlackBerry in a pocket (or holster) today should be able to take advantage. The timing’s perfect on this one, because RIM has also announced that themes can now be submitted to App World.
• BlackBerry Payment Service has been announced for mid-2010 availability, bringing in-app payments, subscription support, and a variety of billing options, which all sounds far more robust than the PayPal-only setup they’ve got going today.
• The Push Service made available to Alliance Program members earlier this year will be made available to all comers in “early 2010,” making it easy to push bite-sized chunks of “time-sensitive alerts” to phones quickly and easily.
• BlackBerry Advertising Service has been announced for 1H 2010 availability, bringing a unified ad platform for developers with a variety of existing ad networks on board. If this means more free apps in App World, we’re all for it.
• Expanding on the Flash partnership previously announced, RIM has teamed up with Adobe yet again to unveil tight integration with Creative Suite 5 with direct file exports for BlackBerry-optimized formats and the creation BlackBerry-specific web layouts. End users will also be able to pull files directly off their BlackBerrys into consumer offerings like Photoshop Elements. This particular news seems pretty fluffy since Adobe products are already capable of opening and saving media formats that the phones can use — but as with many of the other announcements here, we’re on board as long as it means better-looking apps.

Sure, we wouldn’t have complained if some crazy Storm2 with a QWERTY slide had unexpectedly shown up, but all things considered, BlackBerry software shops have to be salivating at the bounty here.

Filed under: Cellphones

RIM unveils tighter Adobe partnership, new app payment platform, OpenGL ES support, more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading New iMac and MacBook touchscreens debut, thanks to Troll Touch

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

New iMac and MacBook touchscreens debut, thanks to Troll Touch originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Say it with us now: “freaking finally!” The world at large seems perfectly fine with using Atom N270 and N280 CPUs for the rest of eternity (judging by the latest netbook sales figures, anyway), but techies like us are sick and tired of dabbling with the same underpowered chips and the same lackluster capabilities. At long last, we’re hearing that Intel will supposedly officially announce the Pine Trail platform in late December, with a raft of netbooks based around the new Pineview chips hitting the CES show floor in January. The 1.66GHz Atom N450, dual-core 1.66GHz Atom D510 and Atom D410 are expected to be all the rage at the show, with the existing N270 and N280 making an expedited trip to the grave. Good riddance, we say.

[Via Register Hardware]

Filed under: Laptops

Intel purportedly fast-tracking Pine Trail platform, forgetting all about N270 / N280 at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen mixtures of Roomba and Pac-Man before, but nothing like this. A team of developers have hacked five floor-cleaning bots to create a sort of OCD version of the game, with the Pac-Man bot sucking up little white rectangles whilst being chased by robot incarnations of Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. But, when the Pac-Man vacuum finds a power pellet those ghostly rovers turn blue and start fleeing. The tech is supposed to be a demonstration of the developers’ Unmanned Aerial System suite, designed for guidance of airborne vehicles, but we’re too busy geeking out to care about potential real-world applications of this tech. Video below.

Continue reading Autonomous Roombas do Pac-Man right (video)

Filed under: Robots

Autonomous Roombas do Pac-Man right (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We haven’t even seen the Zii EGG make its long-anticipated consumer debut yet, but Creative is already building up steam for its next Zii venture. ZiiLABS’ ZMS-08 is a third generation mobile media accelerator / system-on-a-chip that boasts its predecessor’s 1080p playback and 24fps encoding, and HD video conferencing via simultaneous 720p encoding and decoding, while adding all-new OpenGL ES 2.0 support, an integrated HDMI controller, X-Fi audio and Flash acceleration. Paired to a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8, and running a custom flavor of Android alongside Plaszma OS, the new Zii chip will look for homes in “web tablets, netbooks, connected TVs” and the like, but seemingly not smartphones. ZiiLABS has already signed up a number of clients, who’ll start receiving shipments in Q1 of 2010. Full PR and an architectural diagram after the break.

Continue reading ZiiLABS ZMS-08 offers Cortex A8-powered Full HD and Flash acceleration for netbooks

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

ZiiLABS ZMS-08 offers Cortex A8-powered Full HD and Flash acceleration for netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even though your company might be based in Croatia, Malaysia, or scattered throughout US airports we’re all linked together by a single common thread: Google image search and a penchant for the Engadget logo. The latest infringer of our beloved IP is E-pins Corporation, a self-described telecommunications contractor employing some 500 people in the Philippines. With staff like that you’d think they could hire their own graphic designer.

[Thanks, Jeffrey S.]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Engadget logo now a thrilla in Manila originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just received a set of screengrabs from an anonymous source giving us a glimpse at what appears to be Google’s (and thus, the world’s) future interface to its web applications, Gmail in particular. While we were originally tempted to ignore them, communications with the tipster would indicate genuine insider knowledge. Regardless, we can not independently confirm the authenticity of these images. Having said that, the pics demonstrate a more unified apps interface based on Google’s Wave and accessible from any browser (as they are now). Specifically, we’re told that “the goal is to provide a consistent experience throughout all Google Apps and blur the line between the browser and the website (e.g. drag and drop, right-click, etc.).” Something that certainly makes sense to us based on what we know about Google’s tender approach to its Chrome browser and its future “lightweight” Chrome OS. If true then this “work in progress” also hints at the importance of Wave to the future of Google. Then again, it could be just one of many possible interface concepts from Google’s burgeoning developer’s sandbox.

Filed under: Software

Google making Waves across all its Apps? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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