CrunchGear |  |
- BizPad: Panasonic Announces Android Tablets Targeted At Businesses
- Daily Crunch: Mechanism
- Somfy’s TaHomA Lets You Control The House From Your iPad
- AMD’s Bulldozer Fails To Meet Expectations
- Hublot Rebuilds The Famed Antikythera Mechanism
- Virgin Atlantic To Recycle Steel Mill Pollution Into Jet Fuel With New Tech
- RIM: Global BlackBerry Outages Due To European Backup Failure
- DNA 11 Labs Diversifies Its DNA-Based Art Offerings, Adds Crowdsourcing For New Ideas
- Bose Out To Beat Dr. Dre With Cheaper On-Ear Headphones
- Lenovo Updates Its HTPC Remote, Adds Backlit Keys And Optical Trackpad
- The iOS Newsstand Is Open For Business
- The Wopad V7+ Tablet Is All About Angry Birds
- Sprint To Sell The iPhone 4S With Unlocked MicroSIM Slot
- HP Flails Further Into Irrationality By Offering Printer Spam
| BizPad: Panasonic Announces Android Tablets Targeted At Businesses Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:07 AM PDT  Panasonic Japan has announced [JP] two Android tablets for the domestic market yesterday, the so-called BizPad JT-580VT (with a 7-inch LCD screen) and the JT-581VT (with a 10.1-inch LCD). Both devices run on Android 3.2 and are specifically targeted at businesses (hence the name). What the tablets also have in common is that they are shock-, dust-, and water-proof. For example, Panasonic says the big model can absorb drops from a height of 80cm, while the smaller one can even handle 120cm. Both devices also have an NFC reader, a replaceable battery, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a USB port, GPS, a microSD slot, a ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core CPU, 1GB memory, 16GB flash, and infrared. The 7-inch model (pictured above) features a 1,024×600 resolution screen, 3G as an option, a 5MP camera, and IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi. It weighs 400g and will go on sale in December. The 10-inch BizPad (pictured above) comes with a 1,280×800 resolution screen, a 1.3MP camera, and IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. This model weighs 700g and will go on sale in Japan in January 2012. Panasonic has yet to announce prices and possible plans to sell the BizPads outside Japan.
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| Posted: 13 Oct 2011 01:00 AM PDT  Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: RIM: Global BlackBerry Outages Due To European Backup Failure DNA 11 Labs Diversifies Its DNA-Based Art Offerings, Adds Crowdsourcing For New Ideas HP Flails Further Into Irrationality By Offering Printer Spam Virgin Atlantic To Recycle Steel Mill Pollution Into Jet Fuel With New Tech
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| Somfy’s TaHomA Lets You Control The House From Your iPad Posted: 12 Oct 2011 09:28 PM PDT  I’m not a homeowner myself, but something tells me that when I do buy a house, I’m going to want something like the TaHomA home automation system to ensure that I can be as lazy as possible. Developed by a company called Somfy, the TaHomA allows you to remotely control multiple supported products throughout the house, from motorized awnings and blinds to lights and thermostats. Oh, and did I mention you can do it all from your iPad? In fairness, the TaHomA has a pretty robust web interface too, and can run on just about anything that supports Flash. Obviously, since iPads and iPhones can’t handle Flash, they had to make do with a native app that does all the heavy lifting. Aside from the iOS-friendly dashboard, the TaHomA system itself consists of a host of components. The most important bit is the TaHomA controller, a thin glossy black box that runs into your home wireless router, and coordinates a series of small wireless receivers through a ZWave mesh network. From there, those receivers communicate with all the Somfy-supported goodies in your house, like your motorized shutters (you do have those, right?). Once all the pieces are in place, you’re ready to fire up the dashboard. Here, homeowners can fiddle with things independently, or create special presets called “scenes.” If you’re like me and just can’t get up in the morning, why not create a scene that cranks up your lights and turns down your thermostat? Users can create as many scenes and control as many rooms as they like, so fiddling is definitely encouraged. Note that installing the TaHomA definitely isn’t going to be a fun DIY project. Somfy actually trains and certifies installers to make sure that new and existing homeowners wind up with a solid installation experience, so don’t go expecting to buy the components and throw them together over the weekend. Creating a product like the TaHomA is a pretty bold for a company like Somfy, who have spent the last 40 years making motors. The end result is surprisingly polished for a first-time effort: the web interface is smartly laid out and easy to understand, and the experience scales down nicely to both iPads and iPhones. The TaHomA is set to debut on November 1, but the pricing entirely depends on how far you want to trick out your house. The ability to control 11 devices within your home will set you back a cool $2500 before installation, but it could be a small price to pay to control your house while on the run.
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| AMD’s Bulldozer Fails To Meet Expectations Posted: 12 Oct 2011 03:08 PM PDT  The Intel-AMD war has been going on a long time, and I hope it will be going on longer. The last few years have been hard on the underdog, however, with huge growth by Intel in both the low-power and high-performance sectors. The Core 2 Duos excelled, as did the Core i* series, and its most recent consumer series, the Sandy Bridge update to the i*s, is a monster. AMD has consistently lagged behind, though from the other side of the table you might say they’ve been nipping at Intel’s heels quite effectively for years. Bulldozer was supposed to be the platform that finally brought them up to speed, but it’s been delayed for a long time, and now it’s launching to less than stellar reviews. I’ve skimmed through Anand’s thorough-as-usual review, and the conclusion is that it’s just not competitive. HardOCP, PC Perspective, Tom’s Hardware, and Neoseeker agree. Whether it’s synthetic or real-world testing, AMD’s best FX processors don’t stand up to the middle of Intel’s line, or even to their own processors from last year. Is it a disaster? Not exactly: I’m guessing at some point along the line, someone at AMD said “look, we have to release something sometime. Our customers aren’t going to wait forever.” And despite the fact that they have many improvements waiting in the wings (according to a roadmap AMD shared, presumably as a sort of covert apology), they went to market with the processors they had. Unfortunately, despite the new architecture and insane transistor count (the 8-core 8150 has around 2 billion), performance and efficiency per core just plain isn’t that good. There are a few tests on which Bulldozer takes on Sandy Bridge well, such as those truly optimized for high core counts, but on single-core tasks it gets destroyed. There’s hope: this is just the first iteration of the new architecture, and it’s likely we’ll see both a new line and a serious performance boost when Windows 8 hits. In the meantime, while the Bulldozer processors provide decent performance for a good price, no one seems to have found a good reason to buy one other than that they’re not Intel. If you do decide to buy, get the 8120. It’s the same silicon as the 8150, apparently, but the better-testing samples are getting 8150 branding and a higher stock clock speed. If you don’t mind a doing the overclocking yourself, you can save $50 by going with the 8120 and giving it a little boost.
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| Hublot Rebuilds The Famed Antikythera Mechanism Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:42 PM PDT  Discovered in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism has long been called one of the earliest computers. For years scientists had no idea what it did, ascribing it with almost mystical functionality. Through the use of advanced imaging techniques, we now know that this lump of crusty, corroded brass was actually an astronomical computer that allowed ancient Greeks to predict the passage of the planets. Watchmaker Hublot has recreated the mechanism using modern techniques and shrunk it down to nearly postage-stamp size. The new watch – a one of a kind – features the full mechanism as historians and scientists understand it along with a standard three-hand tourbillon as well as a date register. Then it gets a little wild:
The watch uses the mainspring to power these Antikythera registers, adding life and vibrancy to what would have once been a hand-cranked navigational system. It all fits into a tiny package that can be worn on the wrist. Because this is a one-off piece, expect it to cost somewhere in the millions if it is ever sold.
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| Virgin Atlantic To Recycle Steel Mill Pollution Into Jet Fuel With New Tech Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:37 PM PDT  Not one to shy away from difficult problems, Virgin has just announced that their aviation arm will be partnering with carbon-handling company LanzaTech to spread a new process for cleaner creation of jet fuel. Airplanes are certainly an efficient means of transporting people (more efficient than single-person vehicles, at any rate), but the sheer volume of fuel burned means that any slight improvement could bring about huge savings in costs and emissions. The new process being promoted by Virgin isn’t actually any cleaner to burn, but the way it’s created is far more eco-friendly. Essentially what they’re doing is repurposing waste material from other manufacturing plants, steel mills in this case. These mills produce waste gases and other junk that would normally be emitted into the atmosphere. Virgin and LanzaTech will collect these gases at the source and bring it to their facilities, where it is processed and turned into hydrocarbon jet fuel and miscellaneous alcohols (and some waste, no doubt): They’ll be bringing the necessary retrofitting to steel mills in the UK, New Zealand (where LanzaTech is based), India, and China, and hope to have a “demo flight” in a year or so. They claim the new process reduces lifetime emissions (that is, from production to emission) by 50%. I wonder whether this really can produce anything like the volume necessary to run a commercial fleet. Not that supplementing dirty-sourced fuel with clean-sourced fuel is a bad thing, but will it be more than a drop in the bucket? Steel, at least, isn’t going anywhere any time soon, so even if it’s a trickle, it’ll add up over time while larger-scale solutions are being pondered.
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| RIM: Global BlackBerry Outages Due To European Backup Failure Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:27 PM PDT  RIM held a quick press conference call today to address the ongoing outages which started in Europe but have spread to the rest of the world, including the US. The message was straightforward: a “core switch failure” in their European unit (though they did not give the exact location) that failed to turn over to one of the backup systems. The total failure resulted in a backlog of messages that they are chewing through at this moment. The problems here in the US are a direct result of that backup, and messages to certain European subscribers or that must pass through Europe are being delayed. RIM’s David Yach assured us that no messages or emails were being dropped, only delayed, and traffic was not being throttled. Lastly, they wanted to make clear that this was strictly a technical problem and not the result of a hack or breach. And naturally, their top priority is the reestablishment of service, though they did not give any kind of time estimate or guarantee regarding that.
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| DNA 11 Labs Diversifies Its DNA-Based Art Offerings, Adds Crowdsourcing For New Ideas Posted: 12 Oct 2011 10:44 AM PDT  We posted about DNA 11′s DNA-based art way back in 2008 — basically, you send in a DNA sample, they perform an electrophoretic analysis, and then print a picture of the resulting gel on a nice little bit of canvas or in a glass frame. But between the big prints and the little prints, there hasn’t been much selection when it comes to ways your DNA can be… expressed, if you will. They’re revamping their website today with a new section, DNA 11 Labs, that has a few new types of art you can choose from and they’re adding a design submission piece as well. The fingerprint bowl is actually pretty cool, though the print could do with a little less contrast. The other part of the announcement has to do with a crowdsourcing aspect: new designs can be submitted (e.g. a coffee mug with the gel image wrapped around it) and voted on by users. The ones that receive the most votes will be made available in limited quantity. I’m not sure they’re going to have quite the level of competition that would make this kind of system necessary — and the submission page is just text fields. Why not provide some dummy images (gel, retina, thumbprint) and let people submit images as well? At any rate, the DNA thing is still about as compelling as it was, which is to say, kind of compelling. Not a bad idea for a gift or conversation piece — but I’m not really feeling the $10,000 DNA Water wall. Have a gene lab tech in your life? Show them you care. Although seeing this when they wake up every morning might remind them of their daily drudgery as much as the uniqueness and value of every human life. It’s a gamble!
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| Bose Out To Beat Dr. Dre With Cheaper On-Ear Headphones Posted: 12 Oct 2011 09:55 AM PDT  With the rise in popularity of Dr. Dre’s Beats, audio company Bose saw a niche they weren’t capitalizing on – the cohort of kids who aren’t afraid of paying $229 for a pair of wildly overpriced headphones. Their reaction? To create and sell a pair of lightweight, over-ear headphones for the cool crowd for $149. Called the OE2s, these headphones feature comfortable memory foam earcups and support hands-free calling with an optional mic/phone control system. These are half the cost of a pair of Bose QuietComforts, making them sort of a gateway drug to Bose products for a younger generation. I’m a big fan of Bose QuietComforts for flying – there’s something calming about being able to cut out the engine and plane noise – so I’ll allow you guys to argue the value of Bose vs. everything else in the comments below. I’ll just add that these things are designed as a lighter alternative to full-sized Bose cans and, if history is our guide, the distinct lack of specs on the product page suggests that the price point and styling are what’s really being sold here.
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| Lenovo Updates Its HTPC Remote, Adds Backlit Keys And Optical Trackpad Posted: 12 Oct 2011 08:26 AM PDT  The Lenovo Multimedia Remote was an almost instant classic. Finally, HTPC buffs thought, a remote for us. And for the most part, the remote/controller did the job and filled a huge void when it was released in 2009. The company is back with another incarnation. Don’t fret, though. Lenovo didn’t start anew. There are several notable changes that seem all for the better. Lenovo slightly reworked the keyboard, opting for a backlit version and better looking media playback buttons. The right and left buttons are better defined and for better or worse, an optical trackpad now sits in place of the trackball. Like the previous model, wireless connectivity is handled by a USB receiver operating on a 2.4GHz signal. Two AA batteries power the remote and should provide up to 3 months of battery life. The whole thing is packaged in the same housing as the previous model. However, gone is the glossy finish that loved fingerprints and is replaced by a pleasant matte finish with a chrome band around the keypad. The new remote should be available later this month for the same $60 price as the old version. Lenovo Group Limited, an investment holding company, engages manufacture and distribution of IT products and services. It offers laptops, desktops, workstations, servers, batteries and power, docks and port replicators, carrying cases, software, monitors, touch-screen devices, and printers. The company also provides accessories and upgrades, such as audio and video, cables and adapters, carrying cases, keyboards and mice, memory, projectors, security, storage, and wireless and networking products. In addition, it involves in the property holding and property management, procurement agency,...
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| The iOS Newsstand Is Open For Business Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:26 AM PDT  Folks who have upgraded to iOS 5 will note that the iOS Newsstand is now running and available as a standalone app. If you’ve already downloaded any of Apple’s official magazines – most Conde Nast titles are using Apple’s own service, for example – the magazines will now appear within the newsstand and the standalone apps will disappear from the desktop. Non-newsstand magazines like the Economist remain as standalone apps although you Apple announced this functionality last February with the launch of iOS 5. The move force content providers who wanted to sell content through their apps to give 30% of their revenue to Apple, leading to changes in almost every ebook and magazine app. Apps that use the subscribe feature must pay their cut while apps like Kindle and Nook have circumvented it by creating web-based purchasing systems and, in Amazon’s case, a web-based ereader. As an emagazine convert, I love me some newsstand and I love being able to perform in-app purchases. However, I’d be more than willing to eschew them in order to get cheaper books and magazines. That said, the newsstand is clearly no walled garden as content producers can go either way and, more important, the experience is seamless to the end user. That said, if you woke up today missing your fix of Wired’s rarely timely but always interesting tech news, now you know where your ecopy of the emagazine ewent. 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, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with...
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| The Wopad V7+ Tablet Is All About Angry Birds Posted: 12 Oct 2011 06:38 AM PDT  If you at all thought that the Angry Birds phenomenon was fizzling out… well, you were wrong. Rovio itself is doing plenty to make the brand “as iconic as Nintendo’s Mario or Mickey Mouse,” with cookbooks and new games and plush toys galore. But even outside of the company, Angry Birds is still a hit. Over in China, the Shenzhen Technology Co. built a tablet specifically for Angry Birds fiends: the Wopad V7+. The limited edition Angry Birds-themed Wopads actually come in three versions: V7, V8, and V10, each representing screen size. Past that, the innards are all the same, according to McBub. Try as you might, you won’t find one nook or cranny on this device without some Angry Birds content baked in. It comes with just about every addition of Angry Birds, including Angry Birds Rio, and offers up Angry Birds-themed wallpapers and ringtones, along with other AB-related apps. The Wopad V7+ touts a 1GHz processor, a five-point 800×480 capacitive touchscreen, Android 2.3, 512MB of RAM with 4GB of internal storage, support for HDMI out, and 1080p video playback. All in all, it seems like the perfect toy for anyone bold enough to call themselves a Mighty Eagle. This is definitely not an official Rovio product, but we’re still waiting to see whether or not Rovio signed off on the branding. We’ll update you as soon as we know.
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| Sprint To Sell The iPhone 4S With Unlocked MicroSIM Slot Posted: 12 Oct 2011 06:13 AM PDT  It’s beginning to look like CDMA iPhone 4S customers may have the edge when it comes to international roaming. Macworld reports that Sprint will be selling their version of the iPhone 4S with an unlocked MicroSIM card slot right out of the gate. That’s right: no arguing with CSRs and no warranty-voiding unlock procedures. It would seem that since Sprint knows you’re bound to them for two years anyway, they’re more than happy to keep sending you bills while you’re living in up in Mallorca. The news is sure to please seasoned international travelers, as now all it takes is a foreign MicroSIM card (or a full-sized one and a bit of ingenuity) to dodge those hefty roaming charges. Sure, tracking down a fresh SIM card whenever you touch down in a foreign airport takes a little extra work, but I like to think the savings outweigh the hassle. The only thing that’s still up in the air is whether or not a Sprint iPhone will play nice with a domestic AT&T or T-Mobile SIM card. Macworld’s Jason Snell believes it’s solely for international roaming, and I’d be inclined to agree, but we’ll have our answer when someone inevitably tries it this Friday. Meanwhile, Verizon has also confirmed the availability of unlocked iPhone 4Ss, albeit with a catch. Avid travelers can wait 60 days after purchasing their shiny new iPhone, after which Verizon will unlock the phone’s GSM capabilities. It’s not a huge surprise from Verizon — it’s long been part of their policy for the few CDMA/GSM phones they had — but it’s a certainly a welcome one.
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| HP Flails Further Into Irrationality By Offering Printer Spam Posted: 12 Oct 2011 05:58 AM PDT  Now that HP has sufficiently disgraced the vision of Mssrs. Hewlett and Packard, they continued to gyrate wildly into odd business that no one wants. To wit: in a joint press release with Condé Nast, the company is offering two odd consumer-facing propositions. First, they’re going to charge you $5.99-$10 a month to subscribe to a replacement ink service, called Instant Ink. When your printer runs low, it will send a message to Meg Whitman who will personally ship you a new cartridge. Considering ink cartridges already contain less than $5.99 of ink and parts, it’s a bum deal all around but, also considering HP jacks the prices up on ink enormously, I suppose if you’re mad about printing this may work out. Oddly, I don’t see anyone spending $60-$120 on ink cartridges per printer per year (unless HP jacks up prices even more). But wait! There’s more! Condé Nast, everyone’s favorite magazine producer that is fading into irrelevancy, is teaming up with HP to push magazine content to your printer whenever the publisher darn well feels like it. When you subscribe to Allure, Details, Epicurious, Glamour, Golf Digest, Self, or Wired, the C Nasty will send you pages of content that in thinks you should see. It’s like the Internet, but on paper! Oddly this idea isn’t new. They tried it in 2008 and 2010 and also gave it a go with their Presto print service for the aged. However, this time they’ll get it right.
This is kind of like the gas station down the street offering you cheaper gas and then hopping in your car at night to drive it around the beltway a few times to keep your tank low. Condé Nast already spams the heck out of the world and wastes resources on their glossy lifestyle rags so why do we need more of their content printed on matte paper spooling out of our HP printers? And why is HP crowing this announcement in the same press release it notes that its ink is already wildly expensive? Perhaps we’ll never know.
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