CrunchGear |  |
- Asustek To Start Marketing Its WAVI Xtion Controller And Its Kinect-Like Features This October
- Report: Nintendo 3DS Gets “Slide Pad” Add-On (First Pic)
- Daily Crunch: Chart
- Mobile And Broadband Push In India To Cost “Tens Of Billions” – Let The Bidding Begin
- Video: Learning About Picture And Color Modes On Your DSLR
- Android TouchPad Project Finally Gets Working Touch Screens
- Video: Kinect-Controlled Gigapixel Image Exploration
- Beats Wireless Headphones Unveiled By The FCC
- Nanotech Electrical Motor Is Made From A Single Molecule
- It’s Official: WebOS Is Divorcing From Palm’s Hardware
- Australian Judge Asks For iPad Sales Stats In Galaxy Tab Case
- BlackBerry Torch 9850 Hitting VZW On Sept. 8th
- Review: Polaroid GL10 Instant Photo Printer
- Eink’s Screens Explained With A Snowglobe
- Angry Birds In Real Life
- GameStop Affirms Popularity Of Mobile Gaming; Plans To Sell iPhone, iPod, And iPad
- Apple Opening Hong Kong Store, Should Prevent Future Crossbow-Related Smuggling
- China Unicom To Soon Offer The iPad 3G For The First Time
- Atari’s New iPad Joystick Meant For Budget Gamers?
- Baidu And Dell Team Up To Take On Tablets, Phones In China
| Asustek To Start Marketing Its WAVI Xtion Controller And Its Kinect-Like Features This October Posted: 07 Sep 2011 05:15 AM PDT  Asus is hoping to capture some of the Kinect’s good will starting this October by kicking off a marketing campaign for its motion controller clone. The WAVI Xtion was created in partnership with PrimeSense, the same group partly responsible for the Microsoft Kinect — hence the familiar design and capabilities. Asus demoed the device last January at CES 2011, but Digitimes is now reporting that Asus is set to start marketing the kit this October as Asus, which comes after its self-imposed Q2 release target. This isn’t the first time Asus turned to the gaming world for “inspiration.” The Eee Stick launched several years after the Wii, but was targeted to buyers of its popular Eee netbook. The motion controller functioned and looked very similar to Nintendo’s Wii Remotes. Never heard of the Eee Stick? Yeah, that’s the problem. The WAVI Xtion is supposed to bring the fun and function of the Kinect to the livingroom PC. Asus thinks (and hopes) that the device will bring the same sort of motion interactivity to the PC desktop as the Kinect did to the Xbox 360. The same Digitimes report indicates that the target price will be around $250-$300, which is a tad more than the Kinect’s $150 price tag. Reportedly the device will first go on sale in China where the 360 is banned by the government. No word on the release date, though.
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| Report: Nintendo 3DS Gets “Slide Pad” Add-On (First Pic) Posted: 07 Sep 2011 04:29 AM PDT  This week’s issue of the Famitsu, Japan’s biggest video game magazine, is due out tomorrow, but gaming geek @south1996 appears to have made an early and pretty interesting snapshot: it’s the first picture showing the 3DS joystick add-on the gaming world has been speculating over for weeks. As you can see, the so-called “slide pad” is designed like a cradle that holds the lower part of the 3DS, making the device as a whole rather bulky (one Japanese game blog estimates that it makes the 3DS 1cm wider on the left, 2-3 cm on the right and 2cm to the bottom). The slide pad adds an analogue circle pad on the right and three shoulder buttons to the 3DS (L1, R1, and R2). The arrival date or price of the add-on are unknown at this point, but one line in the picture says that it will be usable with Monster Hunter 3 (tri-) G, an update of the popular RPG series for the 3DS Capcom is currently developing. Via Engadget
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| Posted: 07 Sep 2011 01:00 AM PDT  Here are some of yesterday’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets:
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| Mobile And Broadband Push In India To Cost “Tens Of Billions” – Let The Bidding Begin Posted: 06 Sep 2011 06:36 PM PDT  In markets like China and India, which are showing explosive growth in the connectivity and tech sectors, there’s a bit of a gap between supply and demand. Not that the two are ever at parity even under the best of conditions — but the very thing that makes these markets volatile is what makes them harder to grow: the lack of infrastructure. When it comes to mobile and broadband, you can sell it as fast as you can make it, but nobody ever said making it would be easy — or cheap. The government of India has just gotten a vague estimate of “tens of billions” of dollars in order to take the next step in rolling out their broadband network. What happens next? A bloodbath, as corporations worldwide compete to get their foot in the door. It’s times like these when the foundation is laid for the whole next period of the sector. Like the AT&T-T-Mobile merger, the game being played is a long one, and while however expensive some billions may in 2011, these things have a way of snowballing down the line. The Telecom Regulatory Authority in India issued a report saying that only 12-13% of the demand for growth is being met by domestic production. That leaves plenty of room for foreign companies with deep pockets and 15-year plans to step in. Lots of the cost is simple things like labor, common parts, and licenses. But the technologies and methods adopted are far from universally agreed-upon, and should, say, Mitsubishi supply the flux capacitors instead of Qualcomm, the die is weighted in their favor for both future hardware and future licensing agreements, and it sets the stage for carrier and OEM decisions for years to come. They’ll be willing to shell out billions, or borrow it from whatever government is feeling lucky and pay it back when the investment matures. But that’s all business 101: India’s broadband push is just another chance to buy low. The familiar faces here in the US no doubt have their fingers in the pie somehow, but the connections are too tortuous to follow. But when there are a billion phone numbers at stake, it’s a safe bet that they’re watching closely. Update: in my haste I used an outdated map as the basis for the graphic at the top. I’ve redone it. Update 2: Apparently the second map also was wrong. God damn!
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| Video: Learning About Picture And Color Modes On Your DSLR Posted: 06 Sep 2011 04:57 PM PDT  DSLRs are a powerful and popular tool for creating video, but it’s likely that very few users of this fairly new product category have gone deep into its settings. For taking pictures and the occasional video, the defaults are fine, but if you’re interested in putting a little more love into your production, it pays to know a few tweaks you can make. Stillmotion has put together an informative and well-made little video describing the fundamentals of white balance and a few obscure or hidden features that you can use to personalize your video before it even hits the SD card. It’s Canon-specific, but still worth checking out if you’re new to, say, a Nikon or Pentax system. Check it out: Sure, some of the changes aren’t really visible unless you’re looking for them, but even the little things matter. They can also affect the way you think, as he notes a few minutes in: you start noticing the temperature of the light, thinking about how your apartment would look with more sunlight and less tungsten. Color is a powerful tool for expression, even when you don’t know what you’re doing. A while back I accidentally had my camera set to a cooling white balance while shooting outside in a warm afternoon light, and all my pictures had an icy, bright cast that at first bothered me but soon delighted me. I hadn’t thought of the urchins and buoys and things I’d shot as looking any way other than the way I saw them. Yet with a slight change in environment, they would look completely different. I didn’t “correct” the white balance after the fact because it ended up being a unique and interesting take — that I can’t exactly take credit for. They’re going to have a second tutorial later in the month for post-processing color effects. If you haven’t played with Lightroom or Aperture (to say nothing of Photoshop and the like), you owe it to yourself to give one a try. The versatility of DSLRs made me fall in love with photography all over again, and as nerdy as it sounds, knowing my way around menus and applications was a big part of that. [via Fstoppers]
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| Android TouchPad Project Finally Gets Working Touch Screens Posted: 06 Sep 2011 03:32 PM PDT  Regardless of your thoughts on what OS should be used on HP’s TouchPad, work on getting a fully-featured version of Android up and running continues unabated. There’s been a lot of progress in the past few weeks, but a group of devs revealed today that one crucial piece of the puzzle has just been popped into place: the touch screen finally works! In addition to getting a TouchPad going on Android 2.3.5, a video released by Team TouchDroid earlier today shows that their new multitouch drivers seem to work without a hitch. The TouchPad can detect up to ten input points simultaneously, which is utter overkill for most applications, but it’s heartening to see nonetheless. With this, HP’s FrankenPad is one step closer to being a reality. It’s not clear whether or not Team TouchDroid’s experimental TouchPad has anything else going for it, like working WiFi or audio, but it’s certainly within the realm of possibility. These are, after all, the guys who managed to get a TouchPad to successfully dual boot into both Android and WebOS. Considering the collective amount of time poured into this project, it’s starting to look like a feature-complete Android TouchPad is going to materialize sooner rather than later. It could happen just in the nick of time, too: with HP possibly churning out a farewell production run, a user-friendly port process (which is required to claim Hacknmod’s bounty) could give clamoring consumers yet another reason to mob their local retailers.
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| Video: Kinect-Controlled Gigapixel Image Exploration Posted: 06 Sep 2011 02:09 PM PDT  Obligatory Minority Report reference. There, it’s out of the way, and we can enjoy this interesting video without worrying about when the allusion is going to drop. The University of Lincoln in the UK recently hosted an interactive exhibition in which users can navigate a number of gigapixel photos by using over-sized gestures tracked by a Kinect. Meanwhile, your experience is enhanced by ambient noise recorded at the location of the photo. Of course, the people and cattle in the pictures don’t move, which kind of breaks the illusion, but it’s a nice touch. Check out the video: I’m surprised Microsoft hasn’t shown off something like this already. Their Seadragon demo for the Surface was one of the more impressive uses of the large, touch-friendly interface. Perhaps they have something in the works, but I doubt it’s as immersive as this super-sized exhibit. This kind of thing is fun to think about in relation to teaching and presentations. Whether it’s actually more practical than a slide deck and a laser pointer is questionable, but it’s a hell of a lot cooler. Unfortunately the exhibition was just this last weekend, so you’ll have to wait for the next one. Keep an eye on the GigaLinc page for news, and check out the images they had on show. As usual, it’s stunning to be able to zoom in from a panoramic view to the point where you can read the ads on the back of a guy’s newspaper a hundred feet away.
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| Beats Wireless Headphones Unveiled By The FCC Posted: 06 Sep 2011 01:49 PM PDT  Monster Beats by Dr. Dre has a new set of cans on the horizon. Per a FCC filing the headphones are appropriately named Beats Wireless and feature the brand’s trademark unibody construction. Bluetooth is tapped for wireless connectivity but the rest of the headset is pretty much a standard affair. The right can features playback controls along with a mic, making these perfect for your Beats-equipped HTC headset. These upcoming headphones will be the first model after HTC recently spent $300m for a 51% stake in the company. Thanks to Bluetooth the headset will of course work with nearly any cell phone or media player, not just HTC’s kits. But it remains to be heard of the wireless link will provide the same sort of deep, rich sound normally associated with Beats headphones. Pricing and release info isn’t available just yet since the info here came from the FCC database. Chances are though, they’re going to be stupid expensive and launch sometime before the holiday spending madness starts.
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| Nanotech Electrical Motor Is Made From A Single Molecule Posted: 06 Sep 2011 01:08 PM PDT  Researchers at Tufts University have put together a “molecular motor” that is only about a nanometer across. It’s not the first single-molecule motor ever made, but this one, unlike others, can be activated singly by the minute tip of a scanning electron microscope. They’re working with Guinness to get certified as the smallest motor in the world. This incredibly small machine — and although it really is just a molecule (and not a big one at that), it is a machine — was created by simply stacking a butyl methyl sulphide molecule onto a substrate of copper. The conformation of the molecule ends up sticking the sulphur “downwards”, where it acts as a sort of pivot, with the carbon atoms sticking out on either end. Add a little bit of charge and it starts to spin. Both directions, as things at that scale aren’t always as consistent as they are here in the Newtonian world, but it tends to go more in one direction than the other, which makes it predictable. What can they do with this? Not much right now. It’s just really cool. But the researchers note that this is the first such molecular motor that works electrically, and furthermore can be activated singly while another sits idle mere nanometers away. They accomplish this by passing the charge through a scanning electron microscope, which normally uses a stream of electrons as photon analogues to create an image. Now the electrons are simply a current, and one applicable with such precision that it can be pointed at a single atom at a time. The advantages of this make it exciting for nanotech developers and engineers, who can almost certainly use a part like this. To anyone who has studied microbiology, this might seem rather underwhelming. Our bodies are homes to molecular machines that are almost unbelievable in their sophistication and elegance. But even so, they were not engineered by Man and are difficult to repurpose. Plus, many of them run on ATP or some other chemical fuel, which is nearly impossible to apply with the same level of precision as the current from a scanning electron microscope. The research was published in the most recent issue of Nature Nanotechnology. You can read the abstract here.
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| It’s Official: WebOS Is Divorcing From Palm’s Hardware Posted: 06 Sep 2011 12:55 PM PDT  You’re excused if you didn’t notice a pair of memos leaked to PreCentral this weekend. It was a holiday and, more important, neither of them particularly matter. They involved HP’s WebOS initiative and they state, in short, that the hardware part of the team is hitting the bricks while the software group will remain ensconced close to HP’s putrescent heart. Why? Because HP wanted some leverage against the coming juggernaut that is Windows 8 and, more important, HP needs a small and light platform for future enterprise devices that doesn’t cost them a few dollars per seat in royalties. I doubt seriously that that’s what Mark Hurd wanted before he screwed up but that’s what we got: a neutered platform that may or may not exist after the next shareholder’s meeting. Here are some pertinent paragraphs:
First, note the “strategic focus:” cloud, connectivity, services and software, and printing. This is one of the first times we’ve been able to see where we’re really headed here. HP seems to want to be something like Sun used to be – a full-service provider of infrastructure and business systems for a select clientele with, and this is important, their own intellectual property and OS. Will this OS ever show up in a consumer product ever again? Probably not in any way we’re thinking. WebOS is more than just a bunch of cards on a screen but, given the Linux underpinnings, it seems like a heck of a price to pay for what amounts to an open source kernel. The Office of Strategy and Technology is HP’s “skunkworks” and bizdev team and, presumably, this gives them some other biz to dev. They can point to it and say “Sure, we can do a cheap point of sale system and sure we can build some field devices for your insurance adjusters.” WebOS an arrow in their quiver whereas it used to be the bow itself. For my money, I’d avoid buying HP hardware right now. A blogger buddy of mine turned down a review of one of their latest laptops because it’s unclear whether anything, from the simplest PC to that $99 Touchpad will ever be supported again. It’s hard to take HP seriously as a consumer play anymore and it’s clear they won’t keep WebOS hardware and software together just for the sake of us, the consumers. [Image:Gladskikh Tatiana/Shutterstock]
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| Australian Judge Asks For iPad Sales Stats In Galaxy Tab Case Posted: 06 Sep 2011 12:55 PM PDT  In its unending quest for tablet market supremacy (as if it hadn’t yet achieved such a feat), Apple has been asked by the Australian court to provide iPad sales data from the U.S. and the U.K. Samsung originally sent Apple three modified Galaxy Tabs with the hopes that the fresh “redesign” would coax Apple into dropping the case. As we expected, that didn’t happen. A Galaxy Tab is still a Galaxy Tab, and Apple clearly wants to destroy it. No number of modifications seems to be changing that. Getting the preliminary injunction in Australia seemed to be pretty effortless for Apple, but a permanent one requires more scrutiny from the court. Australian judge Annabelle Bennett has asked for sales data from the UK and the U.S. to ensure that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has in fact hurt Apple’s iPad sales, reports Bloomberg. The disclosure of those numbers isn’t mandatory, but since Samsung has vehemently denied claims that its tablet hurt iPad sales, Judge Bennett sees those figures as pretty necessary if Apple wants to walk away with a win. Everyone already knows that the iPad is the dominant tablet in the market. Sales are up 183 percent in Q3 2011 from the same time last year, though Apple argues that those numbers would be higher if it wasn’t for the Galaxy Tab and its similar “functionality and appearance.” It may be difficult to argue that the GalTab hurt sales while simultaneously seeing such amazing growth out of the iPad. Especially since Samsung has been persistently arguing the opposite. "People want an Android product, so they will buy an Android product," said Samsung counsel Neil Murray. "This is not impacting the sales of Apple." Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure. No one in Australia will be playing with a Galaxy Tab 10.1 until Apple’s happy. Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer,...
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| BlackBerry Torch 9850 Hitting VZW On Sept. 8th Posted: 06 Sep 2011 11:43 AM PDT  RIM’s latest touchscreen BlackBerry is launching on Verizon later this week. The Touch 9850 will hit VZW’s online marketplace on the 8th with retail stores getting the handset on the 15th. The phone taps a 1.2GHz CPU to run BlackBerry 7 on its 3.7-inch touchscreen. A quad-band mobile radio makes the 9850 a global traveler while the rest of the standard suite of WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS completes the connectivity options. Verizon’s 9850 offering hits at $50 more than Sprint’s Touch model, but $50 less than Verzion’s own 9930 Bold BlackBerry. Not that the price matters as this phone is clearly for the BlackBerry loyalist as Android and the iPhone have clearly taken over as the everyman’s smartphone. PRESS RELEASE BASKING RIDGE, NJ — Verizon Wireless today announced the new BlackBerry® Torch™ 9850 smartphone will be available online at www.verizonwireless.comon Sept. 8, and in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on Sept. 15. Watch videos, play games and stay productive on the largest display and highest resolution on a BlackBerry smartphone to date. Powered by the new BlackBerry® 7 operating system, customers can enjoy the next generation BlackBerry browser with optimized zooming, panning and HTML 5 performance. BlackBerry® Balance is now integrated, allowing secure access to business information while preventing it from being copied into, sent from or used by personal applications. Customers can stay connected to their personal and business lives while in or out of the office. Key features: 3G coverage on the nation's most reliable network Liquid Graphics™ technology combines a dedicated high-performance graphics processor with a blazingly fast CPU and stunning high-resolution display to deliver a responsive touch interface with incredibly fast and smooth graphics. BlackBerry Torch 9850 smartphone will be available for $199.99 with a new two-year customer agreement.
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| Review: Polaroid GL10 Instant Photo Printer Posted: 06 Sep 2011 11:42 AM PDT  Short version: A nice-looking device, and it works more or less as advertised, but the quality of the printing simply isn’t good enough. If you want instant photos, analog is still the way to go. Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Full review: The Grey Label line of Polaroid products, first announced at CES early this year, seemed promising. Apart from those sunglasses, anyway. The GL10 printer is the first real fruit of that design effort, and with the sunglasses and camera no-shows as yet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t set a very promising precedent, at least as far as print quality is concerned. The products of the printer are really the most important thing, so I may as well just come out and say that they’re pretty bad. Unless you want to take a few tries correcting each image for the shortcomings of the colors and contrast in these prints, the results are likely to be unsatisfying. Take a look at this photo of my parents’ deck and the dog. Here is the original (half sized but you get the idea). As you can see, allowing for the usual weaknesses of phonecam shots, it’s actually quite sharp and vibrant. Here is it next to the Zink version: Lacks something, doesn’t it? The same result occurred in a number of shots I tried, with different people, various lighting situations, and so on. There’s not much I can say in their favor. They’re desaturated and there isn’t much detail retained, even from a large and sharp photo. It’s not the charming kind of low fidelity, the kind that’s a major part of the Polaroid legacy. The free Grey Label app is pretty weak too, considering the popularity and functionality of apps like Instagram. You can add text and effects, but you can’t rotate the text or make it very large, and you’re limited to one effect. No black and white and Polaroid border for you! You can take pictures in-app, as well, but they don’t appear to… use the camera properly. The image is stretched vertically and the autofocus wouldn’t go. Not the best companion app I’ve ever used. The device itself, however, is perfectly functional and easy to use. I charged it, turned it on, and paired it with my phone without any trouble at all. After that, I simply sent pictures using the existing “Send using Bluetooth” option, and after a bit of a wait (Bluetooth isn’t the quickest at file transfers, and my images were ~4-5MB) the print started to emerge. About 20 seconds later, it was done (and dropping on the floor). If you want to print more, just hit the button on the side and it’ll spit out another. I never had any trouble printing, but there isn’t much to mess up. I can imagine a paper jam but I don’t think it’s very likely, and the Zink paper is sturdy enough to pull out from one end or another if that happens. The design is tasteful and I wouldn’t mind it sitting out on a desk or shelf. It’s fairly light and wouldn’t fall apart if you brought it on a trip with you — but it’s not compact enough for a night out. Conclusion Ultimately the product is about printing photographs, and it simply doesn’t do that very well. I’m a little apprehensive now regarding the upcoming camera. If the quality is the same, then it’s not going to be worth buying no matter how cool it looks. If you want a fun, cool way to make instant pictures, there are a few cameras like the Lomo Diana F+ I reviewed last year that use Fujifilm Instax film, which ends up costing a little more but is much more fun to use. Hopefully Polaroid can up the color and sharpness on these devices, but until then they’re just not good enough. Product page: Polaroid GL10 instant photo printer
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| Eink’s Screens Explained With A Snowglobe Posted: 06 Sep 2011 11:08 AM PDT  Your Kindle doesn’t have to be mystery. Electronic paper technology is a rather simple concept as shown by the video after the jump. Voltage toggles so-called microparticles between white and black pigments. Different levels allow for the shades of gray. That’s it, friend. The video comes IFA where Sriram Peruvemba, Eink’s Chief Marketing Officer, offers the simplified explanation along with showing off some future Eink products and proof of concepts. Eink’s products are here to stay so you might as well understand how they work.
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| Posted: 06 Sep 2011 08:18 AM PDT  Sorry, Rovio. A Chinese theme park located in Changsha, Huna China clearly skipped Trademark Infringement 101 and built a very real, very authentic-looking Angry Birds game. Players pull back a gigantic slingshot loaded with plush Angry Birds and let them fly at balloon pigs sheltered in toy bricks. Chances are you need to make your own bird-flinging scream, though. Angry Birds is a huge hit in China. The game was even part of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival although just in mooncake form. The explosive growth thanks in large part by Rovio’s acceptance of nearly every hardware platform has turned Angry Birds into a culture phenomenon abroad. Nothing says success like an unauthorized theme park game. Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Rovio, a developer based in Finland. Since its release for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices, over 6.5 million copies... Rovio is one of Europe’s leading independent developers of wireless games with an ever-growing portfolio of award-winning titles spanning many genres from casual to core next-gen console IP. Their...
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| GameStop Affirms Popularity Of Mobile Gaming; Plans To Sell iPhone, iPod, And iPad Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:36 AM PDT  Still think mobile gaming isn’t a big deal? GameStop disagrees. Though they may not be as in-depth or graphically stimulating as console or PC-based games, but mobile games are accessible to everyone. My grandma can’t play L.A. Noire, but she’s beat every level of Angry Birds. So it only makes sense that GameStop has decided to put a couple new devices on its shelves: the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. GameStop has made a push into the tablet and mobile gaming space as of late. It started an iOS device trade-in program (for select stores) that is expected to roll-out nationally sometime during this year, reports 9to5mac. The company also said in April it had plans to get into the tablet space, whether that be with a device already on the market or by building a GameStop-branded gaming slate. Turns out, nabbing the iOS trifecta was the best plan. With the carriers set on a duopoly, there’s no better time to start opening up other retail locations for Apple products. We vote with our wallets, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the iPhone or the iPad. GameStop recently received some bad press over taking promotional materials out of games and then selling them as if nothing had happened. Understandably, people weren’t too happy about this. But the Internet has a short memory and it seems that GameStop needs to cover all the bases in its physical stores to remain competitive. Gamestop is an American video game retailer with over 6,000 locations worldwide. The company spun off from Barnes & Noble in 2004 and operates as GameStop and EB Games. Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer,...
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| Apple Opening Hong Kong Store, Should Prevent Future Crossbow-Related Smuggling Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:30 AM PDT  Apple will be opening a new store in International Finance Center Mall in Hong Kong this quarter. Ming Pao Daily, a local paper, noted that the store should open on September 24. The store is the first in Hong Kong and should ameliorate some of the crossbow-related smuggling associated with the region. Businessweek writes that this is the fifth store in China and the other shops have so far generated $8.8 billion in revenue, no small feat. The company has long depended on resellers in the area to support and sell Apple hardware and this store will create a more central location for Macheads to get their fix. The store should be about 20,000 square feet when finished.
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| China Unicom To Soon Offer The iPad 3G For The First Time Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:12 AM PDT  China, your savior is on his way. Per a WSJ report China’s certification agency recently gave a nod of approval to the iPad 2 3G. The iPad 2 has been a hit in the China market since its May debut, but outside of Hong Kong, only the WiFi model has been available. This approval paves the way for a China Unicom 3G model and enough coin for Apple to make Scrooge McDuck jealous. Apple is slowly warming to the massive China market. The iPhone launched in the country a few years after its US release and a recent report indicated China Mobile and Apple are in talks to bring the iPhone 4 to its massive 600 million subscriber base. A China Mobile iPhone, or even iPad, would require a different mobile radio as the government-owned telecom operates on a homegrown wireless standard rather than the GSM/CDMA type used elsewhere. No word on when China Unicom subs will be able to pick up a 3G iPad 2. The word comes just this morning from the WSJ and alongside the news that search giant Baidu and Dell have teamed up for a series of phones and tablets. China, it seems, is the next great oil field, just sitting there, slightly undercover, for gadget makers to tap for untold riches.
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| Atari’s New iPad Joystick Meant For Budget Gamers? Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:02 AM PDT  ThinkGeek’s iCade certainly has a sense of visual flair going for it, but discerning iPad gamers who could do without the retro throwback may soon have another choice. The existence of the Atari Arcade Duo-Powered Joystick was recently confirmed in the Atari Greatest Hits app’s changelog, hopefully meaning it will make its official debut soon. Details are still pretty scarce, but Technabob reports that the Atari Arcade joystick sports a largely plastic body with an open design that allows for easy removal of the iPad. At this point it seems likely that, like the iCade, the joystick will (for better or worse) connect to the iPad via Bluetooth to transmit control input. The joystick, in essence, acts as a Bluetooth keyboard with certain keys bound to different on-screen actions — maybe not an ideal solution as far as control is concerned, but much easier than going through Apple’s MFi accessory certification program. It’s far too early for judgment calls, but considering the design and button layout, the Atari Arcade joystick may soon see life as a budget peripheral. Discovery Bay Games has yet to reveal the joystick’s price point or ship date, but don’t expect it to break the bank whenever it does start making the retail rounds.
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| Baidu And Dell Team Up To Take On Tablets, Phones In China Posted: 06 Sep 2011 06:35 AM PDT  Hot on the heels of Baidu's new mobile OS launch, reports are circulating that the Chinese search giant is partnering with Dell to build tablets and mobile phones. China is a goldmine in terms of potential consumers. With over 900 million mobile subscribers, China is becoming one of the fastest growing tablet markets, as well. As the Google of the Eastern world, Baidu should have no problem marketing hardware under its brand name. And Dell’s business in China seems to have picked up as well, though the name carries far less weight with consumers than Baidu’s. According to an analyst who spoke with Reuters, Dell may be "grasping at straws" in an attempt to breathe life into its tablet business. The Dell Streak 5 tablet has been discontinued in the States, but a Dell spokesperson said that the company "has a partnership with Baidu [and] the Streak 5 tablet, so the partnership will be in that space." It's not clear whether that means we should expect a Chinese version of the Dell Streak 5 or just another similar minitab. Either way, Dell and Baidu will face some strong competition in China. Lenovo has seen great success in the Chinese market over the past few years, and Apple has an almost terrifyingly strong presence there. We've heard of girls giving up their virginity for an iPhone 4 and a Chinese teenager selling his kidney for an iPad 2. With brand dedication like that it may be more difficult than expected to rip people away from their beloved Apple. And the companies won’t have much time to do so, either. Though neither company gave a solid timeline, a spokesperson said we may see the partnership’s first offering in as early as November. Baidu is the largest Chinese language search engines. Baidu's mission is to provide the best way for people to find information online, including Chinese language web pages, news, images... Dell develops, manufactures, and sells personal computers and other computer-related products including servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals and televisions.
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