CrunchGear |  |
- Kinetic Space Framework Allows PCs To Read Dance Moves, Sign Language
- Oh Gosh: The HP TouchPad 16GB Is On Woot For $379
- Daily Crunch: Aluminum
- New Intel Ultrabook Reference Models Could Undercut MacBook Air Significantly
- Early 3DS Price Drop At Wal-Mart Could Enable Savings Plus “Ambassador” Perks
- Netflix Hits A Million Subscribers In Canada
- Texas Instruments Promises All-Day Battery Life With 2013 OMAPs
- DSLR Controller App Lets Your Android Device Call The Shots
- 1.6-Terabyte Smart Optimus SSD Reads A Gig Per Second
- Jupiter-bound Juno Probe Carries Lego Minifig Cargo
- With Aluminum Supplies Low, Will Lightweight Laptops Opt For Fiberglass?
- BlackBerry PlayBook Diehard Takes To Stores To Help The Retail Placement, User Experence
- LG Bundles 3D TV Set, 3D Blu-ray Player And 3D Glasses
- Slidelight iPad App Is A Flipboard-Instagram Hybrid
- Microsoft Releases .NET Gadget Toolkit
- Sony PS Vita To Launch Only In Japan This Year, US & Europe To Get The Portable in 2012
- The HP TouchPad Is Now $100 Cheaper
- Sewell InjectIR Reinvents The IR Extender, Sends Signals Over Existing HDMI Cables
| Kinetic Space Framework Allows PCs To Read Dance Moves, Sign Language Posted: 05 Aug 2011 02:56 AM PDT  The Kinetic Space project uses almost any type of 3D spatial scanner – including the Xbox Kinect – to register and read gestures. How does it work? Well, first you register your body and then record a set of gestures. The system can read those gestures and trigger events based on the speed and repetition of the gestures. The best part is the granularity: you can even scan hand motions for an interesting form of man-machine sign language. The project code is available here and it supports the “PrimeSense PS1080, the Kinect or the Xtion sensors” so it runs the gamut from high-end to low.
What is it good for? Well, it can read a gesture from one person and register it on another and you can train it to register tiny movements and, potentially, allow for full motion control of your PC. Minority Report it isn’t, but that future is getting closer and closer.
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| Oh Gosh: The HP TouchPad 16GB Is On Woot For $379 Posted: 05 Aug 2011 02:12 AM PDT  Remember when I said I thought HP was telegraphing its sales with the TouchPad pricing? And how I said the device is $100 off this weekend? Well either HP is not selling any TouchPads at all ever or they’re on some Quixotic race to the bottom in relation to every other tablet out there. You see, the TouchPad is $379 on Woot this morning. I love Woot. Best shopping site ever. But Woot (generally) is where gadgets go to die. It’s where you can get a $99 smartphone that the rest of the world didn’t want or a failed manufacturing experiment that no one wanted to buy. It’s not always that way (Wine.Woot, for example, is just the opposite of what I described: a finely curated, clever site for great wine), but it’s often that way. That said, clearly Woot has some pull and for HP to put their gear on there is a big deal. But I worry that this move will induce a slow and steady erosion of WebOS sales figures. Leave it to HP to lead us all into another netbook rathole, cheapening the mobile computing experience until it collapses under it’s failure to add value.
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| Posted: 05 Aug 2011 01:07 AM PDT |
| New Intel Ultrabook Reference Models Could Undercut MacBook Air Significantly Posted: 04 Aug 2011 07:58 PM PDT  When Intel launched its Ultrabook initiative, we were excited: a full-on PC notebook the size of a MacBook Air? Promises of Adamos and Series 9s danced before our eyes, sexy but overpriced. Could this new spec be the one that makes our Air-toting friends jealous? Unfortunately, few ultrabooks have surfaced, and those that have aren’t really competing pricewise. And just today we hear that Apple is hogging all the aluminum, so people are going to make their notebooks out of fiberglass. Fiberglass! Don’t fret: Intel is on the case, and everything will be all right. Intel understands that ODMs absolutely have to get prices under a thousand bucks if they want to compete. Digitimes reports that they’re calling a meeting next week in order to discuss a few new standard bills of material totalling a very reasonable $500-700, and if they’re smart, using components that manufacturers can actually get their hands on. There haven’t been any Intel is aiming at 18mm notebooks and 21mm-thick (for 11-13″ and 14-17″ screens respectively) designs with room to upgrade to their latest processors when the time comes. No optical drive, either, which is arguably more of a jump for Windows users than Mac Users. Both would, depending on options, fall at most at ~700, which with a 25% margin and room for assembly and shipping, puts you nicely at a thousand bucks. And that’s at the high end. When we’ll actually see these designs is a mystery; I’d guess the first ones to make it to Best Buy shelves will be Ivy Bridge models in early 2012. Hopefully we’ll hear more from the companies themselves by then.
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| Early 3DS Price Drop At Wal-Mart Could Enable Savings Plus “Ambassador” Perks Posted: 04 Aug 2011 07:27 PM PDT  Nintendo recently had an epiphany, owning up to the 3DS’s slow launch by slashing prices — and paychecks. To make up for shafting early adopters, Nintendo has also said that anyone who has bought a 3DS before the price drop hits (on August 12th) will be eligible to receive 20 free virtual console games. But what if I told you that you could get a 3DS for the new price and get 20 free games? You’d probably tell me it’s too good to be true. And it might be. But a “trusted source” has told Cheap Ass Gamer that Wal-Mart will be making the price drop effective a bit early — on the 9th. If you were to buy it there and then log into the 3DS eShop before the 12th — you’ve got the best of both worlds. There’s no way to be sure it’s for real until Wal-Mart makes an announcement or the 9th comes around, but if you’re thinking of picking up the console with the new price, consider dropping by a Wal-Mart or calling in on the 9th to check. We’ll be sure to follow up this coming Tuesday. Hopefully Nintendo doesn’t find out about this.
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| Netflix Hits A Million Subscribers In Canada Posted: 04 Aug 2011 07:08 PM PDT  Rejoice! It only took 10 months for Netflix to rack up a million users in Canada. They launched in September of 2010, and in July a lucky Canuck by the name of Amanda, in the province they call Manitoba, became their one-millionth subscriber. She wins a lifetime subscription to Netflix’s streaming service and a lifetime of people asking if they can somehow “get in on that.” That’s really all the news. Something to consider, though: Netflix still has a lot of growth coming its way in Canada. They have 25 million subscribers in the US and Canada combined, which, if my math is right, means there are 24 million in the US. That’s around 8% of the population! Whereas, in Canada, the number being served is less than 3%. With solid broadband penetration and rather long winters, streaming Netflix seems a perfect match for our friends in the north. Maybe they’re afraid they’ll go over their bandwidth caps?
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| Texas Instruments Promises All-Day Battery Life With 2013 OMAPs Posted: 04 Aug 2011 05:42 PM PDT  Since battery technology isn’t really enabling us to pack more than a few watt-hours into our portable devices, companies like Intel, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments are working hard at making their chips and processors more efficient. Apple is acknowledged to be the leader here — their vertically-integrated device creation process (and the mysterious A5) gives them the control they need to maximize battery and get that critical 10-hour claim. TI is hoping that an upcoming family of its OMAP chips will take some of the pressure off manufacturers and enable current batteries to last from dawn till dusk. Speaking with Fudzilla, TI’s Brian Carlson mentioned that the 2013 OMAPs will use a 20nm process and should enable “true all day computing.” What does that mean, exactly, when the most popular device is sporting a 10-hour battery? That’s all day in most people’s books, even with plenty of video usage. Carlson didn’t put a number on it, but it’s clear that TI wants to focus on efficiency and not power. Nvidia, on the other hand, is in an arms race with Intel (an ARM race if you will) to push the power of its mobile processors as high as possible. The question is: what will the tablet and mobile world look like in 2013? Probably not radically different, but an all-day battery might not be much of a draw by then. At any rate the improvement of memory and cache handling and other performance tweaks is always welcome. As Tom’s Hardware points out, there were indications of TI’s intent to sell off the OMAP brand after the release of OMAP 5 in 2012. A nice bidding war between Nvidia and Intel would bring in a hell of a payday. Discussing plans for a 2013 release, however, seems to moot speculation on that point; maybe TI felt they were better off playing the game than cashing out.
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| DSLR Controller App Lets Your Android Device Call The Shots Posted: 04 Aug 2011 03:20 PM PDT  Using your phone as a remote for your DSLR isn't exactly the newest idea out there — a ton exist for iOS — but Android historically hasn't seen that same kind of love. There have been attempts to make it work, some better than others, but a common theme among them is that you weren't able to run the device directly into your camera. Rather, your DSLR gets plugged into your computer or a physical adapter, and thanks to a bit of software your phone takes control from there. A bit cumbersome, no? A plucky developer on XDA named Chainfire changed that today. A beta version of his DSLR Controller app has just hit the Marketplace, and on top of supporting a direct connection to your camera, it also looks gorgeous. The only extras involved are a USB host cable (a.k.a an On-The-Go cable) and the willingness to fork over $8.51. The app provides a live-view display that runs at around 15 fps, which is a little on the low side, but respectable considering what we’re working with. It also give the use full control over white balance, aperture, exposure compensation, ISO speed, metering, and a bevy of other things you'll only really appreciate if you're a photo buff. Now, before you whip out your cameras and your credit cards, compatibility is a bit limited at this early stage. It only works with Android devices that have USB host capability (the dev recommends the Galaxy S II or a Honeycomb tablet) and Canon DSLRs. Again, it's still in beta, so those of you who have the right arsenal in the first place may experience a few hiccups, but after a bit of polish (and more camera compatibility down the line), we could be looking at the app to beat.
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| 1.6-Terabyte Smart Optimus SSD Reads A Gig Per Second Posted: 04 Aug 2011 12:39 PM PDT  Enterprise hardware company Smart Modular Technologies has announced a line of SSDs that appear to wipe the floor with pretty much everything out there. It comes in capacities from 200GB all the way to a current record capacity of 1.6TB. And not only is it the biggest single SSD available, it also is the fastest, using a Serial Attached SCSI interface to achieve (they claim) 1000MB/s read speeds and 500MB/s writes. The interface is actually specced at 6Gb/s (~750MB/s, theoretically), so there might be a small amount of shenanigans going on here, but those are still monster speeds. Even the best consumer-grade SSDs only do about half that right now. And it fits in a 2.5″ form factor, too. Smart is also touting their “Guardian Technology,” some on-drive tech that helps extend the life of the drive and, presumably, keep the data in order so it can be read off at those incredible speeds. No pricing was given for the Optimus line, though it is described as being “cost-effective.” I’m guessing it’s going to be expensive as hell, but we may see some trickle down of this speed over the next year or so. [via Geek.com]
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| Jupiter-bound Juno Probe Carries Lego Minifig Cargo Posted: 04 Aug 2011 12:15 PM PDT  The Juno space probe is set to launch atop an Atlas V rocket this Friday, but GeekDad reports that in addition to its full complement of scientific instruments it will also bring a bit of whimsy with it. The probe, which will ultimately careen through Jupiter's atmosphere on a scientific suicide run, has just been revealed to be carrying three Lego minifigs on its voyage. Considering the nature of the mission, not just any minifigs have been permitted to make the flight. Instead of the classic yellow plastic models, Lego has designed and produced three aluminum variants in the shape of the Roman god Jupiter, his sister (and the probe's namesake) Juno, and the astronomer Galileo. The project originated at NASA, who reportedly took the idea to the highly receptive toy company. Each of the three has been designed to look like their namesakes, with Jupiter wielding thunderbolts, Juno with a magnifying glass, and Galileo with his trusty telescope. They'll be in for a bit of a ride though: Juno's intended flight path will take them for a spin in the outer solar system before doubling back toward Jupiter. The total travel time? Something like five years, with a year on the books for Juno to record and map the planet's magnetic and gravitational fields. Interested in tracking the toys on their far-flung journey? Lego’s set up a site where all you space fans can keep track.
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| With Aluminum Supplies Low, Will Lightweight Laptops Opt For Fiberglass? Posted: 04 Aug 2011 11:59 AM PDT  The rush towards lightweight, thin laptops — the “ultrabook” spec being promoted by Intel — has resulted in a major uptick in demand for thin metal chassis. Unfortunately, much of the aluminum milling capacity is being taken up by Apple, which is relying more than ever on the material for its laptop lines. Big players like Acer and HP can’t make do with the remainder capacity of the mills, and plastic is too thick to use for these designs. What to do? Well, according to Digitimes, they’re going for fiberglass. Yes, that fiberglass. To be honest, my memories of fiberglass aren’t such that I would expect it on a high-end notebook. That said, the cheap corrugated panels that formed the roof of my uncle’s cabin probably aren’t quite the same material being considered for this application. The laptop makers plan to combine the latest fiberglass fabrication techniques with a plastic shell to produce something as tough and lightweight as magnesium-aluminum, but significantly cheaper. $20 could be taken right off the top, cost savings that could snowball into several times that number on the final price tag. The real question is how will it feel? We’ll find out later this year when these fiberglass ultrabooks hit the streets.
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| BlackBerry PlayBook Diehard Takes To Stores To Help The Retail Placement, User Experence Posted: 04 Aug 2011 11:39 AM PDT  The BlackBerry Playbook has some dedicated fans. Not many, of course, but they are certainly out there. One such fan took to the CrackBerry.com forums with a rather novel idea on how to support RIM and the PlayBook: retail evangelism, ninja-style. His plan, at least in part, is to help the PlayBook cause by sneaking a poster into stores that shows some tips, tricks, and basic functions. His thought is that this will help increase PlayBook sales by showing consumers the basic’s of the device. Because, you know, a quality product needs basic instructions. Jokes aside, this guy has a point. Retail demos are often assembled by underpaid and under-appreciated workers who just want to get the job done. Company reps are supposed to come inspect these displays, but as someone who spent a good deal of time in retail, I can tell you that rarely happens. Just a couple of weeks ago I went to Office Max for some paper. (btw, when did paper get so expensive?) Their Playbook wasn’t even powered so a little plastic card wouldn’t help at all. The point of this guy’s plan is to bring attention to the PlayBook, something RIM seemingly doesn’t care to do. The iPad, or even HP TouchPad, tend to have fancy end cap displays with flashy posters, where the PlayBook is often shoved in with random Android tablets. That’s RIM’s fault for not securing the proper retail space for the PlayBook and its fans feel that it’s their responsibility to fix the multi-billion dollar company’s oversight. Bad news bears. [Via TheLoop]
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| LG Bundles 3D TV Set, 3D Blu-ray Player And 3D Glasses Posted: 04 Aug 2011 11:20 AM PDT  Don't you love it when manufacturers bundle products? I mean, what's the burger without some fries and a soda? Anyways, here's the latest bundle out of LG — an entertainment package featuring an LG Cinema 3D HDTV, a 3D Blu-ray player and four sets of 3D glasses. That enough 3D for you? The entertainment package comes with a 47- or 55-inch TV set, and that LG Blu-ray player delivers Full HD 1080p picture. The 3D TV set is designed especially to allow for wide-viewing angles and comes equipped with LG's 3D Light Boost — a thin lining laid over the screen that helps counteract dimness sometimes associated with 3D content. LG's TV also touts a TruMotion refresh rate of 120Hz, and has the ability to transform 2D content to 3D. It's magic. Those 3D glasses are the same as the ones that come with the recently announced LW980S, and at $25 a pop from Best Buy, they're affordable enough to get extras and make your Super Bowl party a strictly tridimensional affair. Now about that price tag: the 47-inch package will go for an MSRP of $1,399.99, while the 55-incher will go for $1,899.99. However, (and this is a big however), Best Buy is selling both packages for $1,099.99 and $1,599.99 respectively.
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| Slidelight iPad App Is A Flipboard-Instagram Hybrid Posted: 04 Aug 2011 09:18 AM PDT  A new iPad app out of Warsaw, Poland may have what it takes to be the Flipboard of photography. Dubbed Slidelight and published by Macoscope, the app does most of the heavy lifting for you, pulling in Instagram pictures through various filters and formatting them in the most enjoyable way possible. In fact, according to the app description, Slidelight is "packed with such an amount of joy it’s like an endorphins overdose." While we're not quite sure if you'll actually keel over from all the fun, all in all this looks like a pretty beautiful app. Slidelight filters photos from Instagram into categories like bikes, commuting, puppies, cats, European capitals, shapes and sizes, music, macro photography, sports, fashion, and design, among others. But the overdose-inducing joy doesn't stop there. Slidelight also grabs photos taken in your area and creates a special little location-based filter (a bit like Color). Another filter — one I predict will be one of the most popular categories within Slidelight — is for celebrities' Instagram pics. Remember that one time Justin Bieber took an incredibly uninteresting picture of traffic and Instagram blew up? Well, that picture of cars on a freeway would fall into this category. Obviously, you can sign into Instagram and have a filter based on your and your friends' photos, too. The app is currently listed for $2.99 in the Apple App Store and requires iOS 4.2 or later.
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| Microsoft Releases .NET Gadget Toolkit Posted: 04 Aug 2011 07:05 AM PDT  Microsoft has announced the .NET Gadgeteer, a small, Arduiono-like toolkit that allows hackers to build unique hardware and software solutions using a set of pre-assembled parts. The kid includes a framework for hardware programming that works with Microsoft’s own Visual Studio. For example, you can add camera widgets, heat sensors, and screens to your software project, program it from a PC, and then use the resulting device in research and experimentation applications. The platform is ostensibly open and any hardware manufacturer can design hardware for the framework. For example, you can buy a starter kit from GHI Electronics for $249.95 at the end of September. It includes a camera module, a USB host, a little screen, and a few other devices including an SD Card reader. You can get started by download the software here. With Arduino controlling the mind-share in rapid electronics prototyping, it makes sense for Microsoft to get into this space. I’d say the main concern for most folks looking for a device framework is compatibility with existing systems and Windows and Visual Studio makes sense for most commercial entities.
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| Sony PS Vita To Launch Only In Japan This Year, US & Europe To Get The Portable in 2012 Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:49 AM PDT  I hope you didn’t have the PS Vita on your Christmas list this year. Sony’s next-gen portable is going to reach the States or Europe until next year per an AP interview with Sony Corp. Executive Deputy President Kazuo Hirai. The executive acknowledged that missing the holiday season is going to be costly, “That’s when you do half your year’s sales,” he said. “This is going to prove painful for Sony.” Sony finally took all the wraps of the PS Vita at E3 back in June after months of teasing. It’s truly an amazing portable and packed with tons of features. Mr. Hirai agrees and jabbed at the recent Nintendo 3DS price cut by stated “There is no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game business decided that they were going to lower their price.” Zing! The PS Vita will be available in two different models with the WiFi model running $249 and the 3G costing $299. The 3DS was previously priced at $249 but Nintendo just cut the price amid sorry Q2 earnings. Sony stated at E3 that the PS Vita was to hit the global market starting at the end of 2011. But Sony is seemingly comfortable delaying its gaming products. The PS3 was delayed countless times, which ultimately hurt sales by launching a full year after the revamped Xbox 360. Only retail sales will tell if the PS Vita’s post-holiday launch will hurt the platform as a whole.
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| The HP TouchPad Is Now $100 Cheaper Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:11 AM PDT  If at first you don’t succeed, keep reducing the price until something sticks. HP is reducing the price of the 16GB HP TouchPad to $399 – $100 off the original price. This comes after HP’s move to reduce the price $50 a few days ago. These swift price changes are pretty odd, to be sure, and if things go any lower I’d suspect HP was telegraphing slow sales. That said, it could be a nice way to play with a WebOS device for not much dosh. The deal will appear on HP’s website this weekend and run until August 7. Staples is also offering a weekend discount of $100 on both devices if you wanted to grab that instead.
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| Sewell InjectIR Reinvents The IR Extender, Sends Signals Over Existing HDMI Cables Posted: 04 Aug 2011 05:49 AM PDT  IR extenders have long allowed homeowners to neatly hide A/V equipment and cable boxes in linen closest and other rooms. The results are awesome as you get all the functionality of the boxes without looking at the ugly things. (and it keeps them away from the kiddos) But IR extenders are traditionally clunky devices, requiring their own special wiring and large receiver units. Enter Sewell InjectIR. It’s genius. The InjectIR system plugs into both ends of an HDMI cable. The end by the TV has an IR receiver and the end by the equipment, an IR emitter. Like a traditional extender, the IR receiver takes the IR signals transmitted by any remote and sends that signal to the emitter end where it’s broadcasted to the equipment’s IR sensor. Except with the InjectIR, the system works over an HDMI cable, which is probably already in place. The company claims the system takes 60 seconds to install and that seems about right. There are two pieces, each going on other ends of an HDMI cable. Once those are installed, you just need to place the IR receiver and emitter in the right location, which should take about 5 seconds each. Sewell claims that the InjectIR will work even if the HDMI signal is extended using a CAT-5 balun kit. At $44.95 it’s slightly more than a Radio Shack IR extender but features a lot smaller footprint and richer feature set. The Sewell InjectIR might be the best, low-cost way of cleaning up your TV stand and stuffing all those unsightly boxes in a closet.
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