CrunchGear |  |
- Japan Display, Inc.: Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi Finalize Deal To Merge Display Units
- Daily Crunch: Echolocation
- Components Spied For 15-Inch Air-Style MacBook Pro
- “Xoom” To Give Way To “XYBoard”?
- Siri Cracked Open, Theoretically Opening It Up To Other Devices (Or Even Android!)
- Bag Week Review: The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack
- Watch An iPad Survive A 1300 Foot Drop
- Battery Breakthrough Could Improve Capacity And Reduce Charge Time By A Factor Of Ten Each
- The Death Of The Spec
- AT&T To Launch The 4G Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 (And Six New LTE Markets) On Nov. 20th
- Students Hack The Kinect To Allow Blind To Navigate
- Best Buy Preps $249 Asus Transformer For Black Friday
- Prototype Blade Laptops Stolen From Razer Offices
- Stumbling Towards The Future: The PC-ification of Android Tablets
- This DIY Nixie Clock Uses No More Components Than Necessary
- Bag Week Review: The Chrome Yalta Backpack
- Welcome To Bag Week 2011
- Forget The Negative Reviews, Amazon Is Shipping The Kindle Fire A Day Early
- The Bridge Aims To Be The First True Universal Remote But Needs Some Kickstarting First
| Japan Display, Inc.: Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi Finalize Deal To Merge Display Units Posted: 15 Nov 2011 01:13 AM PST  The deal has been in the making for months, but today Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi made the mega merger official. The three companies signed definitive agreements with the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) to integrate their small- and medium-sized display businesses. Under the deal, semi-public INCJ will hold 70% of Japan Display, Inc., a new company that will run the operations. Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi will control 10% each when Japan Display starts its business in spring 2012. Japan Display will issue US$2.6 billion in new shares to INCJ through a third-party allocation. The new company will be led by Shuichi Otsuka, the COO of Elpida, a major Japanese maker of DRAM products. In a separate announcement, Japan Display said it plans to acquire a plant that manufactures small- and medium-sized LCDs from Panasonic for an undisclosed sum. That plant, which is located in Mobara (near Tokyo), currently turns out 600,000 LCD TVs a month. Japan Display is expected to take it over in April next year.
|
| Posted: 15 Nov 2011 01:00 AM PST  Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Students Hack The Kinect To Allow Blind To Navigate Stumbling Towards The Future: The PC-ification of Android Tablets Battery Breakthrough Could Improve Capacity And Reduce Charge Time By A Factor Of Ten Each
|
| Components Spied For 15-Inch Air-Style MacBook Pro Posted: 14 Nov 2011 07:55 PM PST  Habitual component-stream eavesdropper Digitimes says that “a small volume of components” that fit the spec for a 15-inch ultra-thin notebook have shipped, and March of 2012 is their estimate for full-scale device shipping. We’ve talked about Macbook Air DNA being injected into the Pro line, and this is just more evidence of that. The latest update to the notebook line was minor and the design is getting a little long in the tooth. The new notebooks would likely eliminate the optical drive and may have some kind of hybrid storage solution that combines a super-thin 2.5″ HDD with an SSD or flash storage. This is an untenable feature proposition for the Air, which is subject to both space and price restrictions, but the Pro line would be more spacious and less cash-conscious. Shipping in March would fall in line with existing Apple scheduling, putting the notebooks just about a year after the last significant MacBook Pro update. It’s impossible to say, however, how long Apple has been developing and testing the new notebooks, so to call the dates optimistic or otherwise would be fruitless. This first break of the supply line seal, however, might start a trickle of new information about the new gear, so we’ll keep our ears to the ground.
|
| “Xoom” To Give Way To “XYBoard”? Posted: 14 Nov 2011 04:37 PM PST  The Xoom hasn’t been the big hit everyone was hoping for. After an inauspicious debut marked by bugs, a lack of Honeycomb apps, and a non-functioning SD card slot, the big debut tablet from Motorola was quickly superseded by other devices, in some cases cheaper or better Honeycomb tablets, and in others more use-specific devices like the Nook Color. It’s no surprise, then, that the Xoom brand might be getting a revamp. But what happens when the cure is worse than the disease? XYBoard happens. Yes, it seems that Verizon may be rebranding their Droid-related line of tablets with this recently-trademarked moniker, a mishmash of “cyborg” and “board,” with the already questionable X/Z switcheroo of the Xoom. It’s a case of being too clever by half, and I don’t think customers are going to like it. The tablets themselves look stylish and powerful, not that those things guarantee sales, and were announced a couple weeks ago as the Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition, but it wouldn’t be the first time a device was completely rebranded for certain markets. It’s actually a fairly common practice for some reason. This is all speculation, of course, but hopefully it’s not true. The Xoom may not have been a blockbuster device, but people at least know the name and associate it with tablets and Android. XYBoard is a groaner — let’s hope this report is mistaken.
|
| Siri Cracked Open, Theoretically Opening It Up To Other Devices (Or Even Android!) Posted: 14 Nov 2011 03:11 PM PST  Serving as a stark reminder that there are people on the Internet who are way, way too damned clever, the guys over at the iPhone design/development house Applidium claim to have cracked open Siri to take an unsanctioned look at its (her? his?) inner workings. In a rare (but quite welcome. I mean, by us. Probably not by Apple) move, they’ve gone on to do a rather detailed debriefing of how they got through. So, what does this mean to you? Theoretically, it means that support for Apple’s voice-powered portable assistant could be hacked not only onto devices like the iPhone 4, but to anything from laptops to Android phones as well. As the italics on “theoretically” imply, though, there’s a bit of a catch. The catch: in the end, anything attempting to communicate with Siri’s backend needs to have a valid iPhone 4S identification string, unique to each 4S. In one-off experiments like this one, spoofing that string with one pulled from an actual 4S is somewhat simple — Apple wouldn’t (/couldn’t) ever really notice. If someone were to hack together an Android app and distribute it, though, the massive influx of requests all originating from the same unique ID would almost certainly trigger a blacklisting. Unless the app had a massive pool of authentic unique IDs to rotate through, the fishy activity would be pretty easy to discern. I’d highly recommend reading Applidium’s full rundown of the process, but here’s the tl;dr breakdown:
With that process done, Applidium attempted to talk to Siri without any iPhone 4S in the equation. Their first challenge? Speech-to-text from a laptop running a custom script. Sure enough: it worked. Siri chewed through the sound file (a recording of them saying “autonomous demo of Siri”), didn’t bat an eye (as their tool was using their iPhone 4S’ actual unique ID), and returned a mountain of data detailing what Siri heard and how sure it was about each word. Incredible. The Applidium guys have provided a few tools for others to recreate their steps — but, as it currently stands, there’s not much that can be done to take this beyond a rather cool proof-of-concept.
|
| Bag Week Review: The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack Posted: 14 Nov 2011 03:01 PM PST  What is it? Aside from the silver metallic finish (that you can’t help but notice), the backpack itself is pretty plain with no extra bells or whistles. Size-wise it was everything I could ask for. Compact enough to be comfortable and look like it actually fits my body, but big enough to fit most everything I’d need for a day on the job or at play. It fits up to a 15″ MacBook Pro, and still leaves plenty of extra space for an iPad, camera, change of clothes, or whatever else it is you tote around day to day. Made of nylon, the Compact Backpack (it doesn’t have a cool name like the Yalta) is super light, which made it that much easier to pack it full of gadgets. Thanks to breathable mesh padding along the shoulder straps, back, and top-loading handle, this Alloy series pack was super comfortable for all-day use. The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack Type: Backpack Accessibility, on the other hand, wasn’t such a breeze. To start, the Compact Backpack has more than enough pockets, one of which is severely misplaced. Incase included a dedicated iPhone/iPod pocket square in the middle of the top of the backpack. The problem is that an iPod or iPhone is something you get out and use frequently in your travels, but you literally have to take the backpack off and hold it in front of you to effectively get anything out of that pocket. Another case of the bright idea gone awry. A bevy of other pockets await you with the Alloy Compact Backpack, including a faux fur-lined laptop sleeve, a secondary iPad/journal sleeve, that dedicated (poorly placed) iPod pocket, a wallet-sized pocket on the lower portion of the left strap, a small pocket on the front, and an internal pouch for pens and such. In fact, only one pocket is missing, though it may not be missed by everyone. I tend to walk or take the train everywhere (which means no cup holders), which means I really appreciate a water bottle pocket. Granted, adding one would probably invalidate the whole “Compact” bit, but it was still dearly missed. Who is it for? Do I want it?
|
| Watch An iPad Survive A 1300 Foot Drop Posted: 14 Nov 2011 02:49 PM PST  Here’s your daily dose of viral marketing courteous of G-Form. These guys make device cases that can seemingly survive anything — including in a drop from 500 feet and taking a bowling ball to the face. The company took two iPads skydiving, started playing back a movie and then when at 1300 feet, let them go, protected only by their Extreme Edge and Extreme Portfolio cases. Both survived as if they landed into a pool of silicon implants. Awesome.
|
| Battery Breakthrough Could Improve Capacity And Reduce Charge Time By A Factor Of Ten Each Posted: 14 Nov 2011 02:00 PM PST  It’s no secret that batteries are holding back mobile technology. It’s nothing against the battery companies, which are surely dedicating quite a lot of R&D to improving their technology, hoping to be the first out of the gate with a vastly improved AA or rechargeable device battery. But battery density has been improving very slowly over the last few years, and advances have had to be in processor and display efficiency, in order to better use that limited store of power. Researchers at Northwestern University claim to have created an improved lithium ion battery that not only would hold ten times as much energy, but would charge ten times as quickly. It’s probably safe to call it a breakthrough. Inside Li-ion batteries, there are innumerable layers of graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms. Lithium ions fill the spaces between these layers, and when the battery is being charged, these atoms must creep their way physically to the edge of the sheet in order to get down to the next layer and make room for more ions. The rate of recharge is limited by how fast these ions can go from layer to layer. One solution tried before was replacing the carbon sheets with silicon, which for some chemical reason can hold many times the lithium ions — but the silicon would expand and contract with the charge cycles, quickly breaking. Professor Harold Kung, researcher at NU and lead author of the paper (published this month in the journal Advanced Energy Materials), has discovered not just one, but two techniques for improving this charge process. His lab decided to combine the strengths of both materials, carbon and silicon, by populating the area between the graphene sheets with silicon nanoclusters. These little clusters greatly increase the amount of ions that can be kept in the battery, and because they are small and the graphene is flexible, their size changes are manageable. Thus, the charge capacity of the battery was improved by, Kung says, a factor of ten. But that’s not all. Kung’s lab also thought of perforating the graphene sheets, allowing ions to take a “shortcut” to the next layer. They call these 10-20nm holes “in-plane defects,” and they essentially rust them out. The result? Charging is ten times faster. A possible downside is a faster degradation process; after 150 charges and discharges, the batteries showed only a 5x improvement to capacity and charge speed. Of course, those 150 charges would be the energy equivalent of 1500 charges of today’s batteries. Naturally this huge leap in battery power and efficiency won’t be in your phones next week; they estimate they could be on the market in three to five years — cold comfort to iPhone 4S owners who are only getting seven or eight hours of on time. But the process is changed enough that existing manufacturing techniques are likely insufficient. The full paper, In-Plane Vacancy-Enabled High-Power Si-Graphene Composite Electrode for Lithium-Ion Batteries, is available to subscribers here.
|
| Posted: 14 Nov 2011 01:14 PM PST  Earlier today, my colleague Matt Burns wrote a post noting that most tablet makers may be largely failing because they’ve sold their soul to Android and are now just in the middle of a spec war, which no one can win. I’m gonna go one step further in that line of thinking: the spec is dead. There have been a few key stories from the past couple of weeks that highlight this new reality. Barnes & Noble unveiled the new Nook Tablet. Consumer Reports looked at the iPhone 4S. And the first reviews came in about the Kindle Fire. On paper, the Nook Tablet is the Android-based reading tablet to buy. It has twice the RAM of the Kindle Fire, twice the built-in storage space, a better battery, and it’s lighter to boot. Yes, it’s $50 more expensive, but come on, the RAM difference alone is worth well more than that. Clearly, this is the better value for your money. And yet, the Nook Tablet will not outsell the Kindle Fire. That’s the thing: “on paper” doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that the Kindle Fire comes with Amazon’s content ecosystem attached to it. Perhaps more importantly, it will be peddled like no other on the all-important Amazon.com homepage. The specs are secondary in this race at best. The reality is that they will be an afterthought. Or again, the Nook would win. Next up, Consumer Reports’ take on the iPhone 4S. Hey, this time, they actually like it! And thank god, because as everyone saw the last time around, their damning report really hurt iPhone 4 sales — to the tune of all-time record sales of the device, leading Apple to their most profitable year ever. More on that in a second. First, it’s important to note that while Consumer Reports liked the device, they didn’t like it as much as a few other Android devices. Why? Specs. Marco Arment ripped this apart last week already, but the thing reads like a bad joke. For example, they love the LG Thrill’s ability to capture stills and videos in 3D. This is one step short of knocking the iPhone 4S because it doesn’t have frickin’ laser beams mounted on the top of the device. And such comparisons show just how clueless Consumer Reports has become. Last year, they milked “Antennagate” for the pageviews, not realizing that it could actually undermine their own credibility if the device still sold well. “Sold well” ended up being a major understatement. So in effect, they themselves highlighted that no one cares about Consumer Reports anymore. And why not? Because they Consumer Reports largely cares about specs. And consumers do not anymore. The NPD Group just released their latest numbers. The number one selling smartphone last quarter was the iPhone 4. The over-a-year-old phone which Consumer Reports refused to endorse over a year ago, remember. Meanwhile, the number two phone for the quarter? The two-year-old iPhone 3GS. Does anyone really think that the LG Thrill is going to outsell the iPhone 4S this quarter? What about the Motorola Droid Bionic? Maybe the Samsung Galaxy S II? Consumer Reports now matters just as much as specs do. Which is to say, not at all. Finally, we have the Kindle Fire. This is likely to be the final nail in the coffin for the spec. By pretty much all accounts, this is a cheaply-built device. Spec-wise, it’s pretty ho-hum. But it’s a cheaply-built device that comes at a cheap price. That matters more — especially when paired with Amazon.com, as I previously mentioned. The Kindle Fire outselling the Nook Tablet, even though the latter wins the spec argument, will be one thing. But if sales compete with the gold standard of tablets, the iPad, that will really be something. So far, no other tablet device has come close to remotely competing with the iPad. The Kindle Fire should. They’re clearly different devices — the iPad is a much larger form factor and a price that is more than double the Kindle Fire — but I have no doubt that for many people, the Kindle Fire will be a good enough tablet that they’ll at least wait on an iPad 3 (or iPad 2 HD, or whatever it will be called). That’s a key thought: “good enough”. None of the initial reviews say that the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad — because it isn’t. It can’t match Apple’s product in either specs or polish. But it is $199 versus $499. That matters far more than any spec. You’re paying for something that’s perhaps half as good as the iPad, but it’s less than half of the cost. There’s at least perceived value there. And “good enough” also speaks to where we’re at in the broader computing world. I used to get excited for Sunday inserts in the local paper so I could see what new machines were available at Best Buy, Circuit City, or CompUSA. The only thing I cared about were the specs. Which Intel chip did it have? What was the clock speed? How much RAM? How big was the hard drive? How fast was the CD burner? How much cache? Those things mattered. Then three things happened. First, computers kept going more mainstream — the above listed specs look like gibberish to most people. Second, the web took over and most computers quickly became more than fast enough for the majority of users. Specs became a thing that PC gamers cared about. This contributed to the rebirth of the Mac, because it was never much of a gaming machine throughout the years — especially in the PowerPC years when it was getting smoked by Intel chips (which Apple, of course, eventually adopted). And third, buoyed by the first two things, new platforms arose. During the PC years, specs also mattered because there was one common dominant force in computing: Microsoft. Because Windows was everywhere, you could fairly reliably gauge the performance of one machine against another. But with the rise of the Mac and more importantly, smartphones and tablets, you can’t as easily stack machines up against one another performance-wise. My MacBook Air doesn’t have the specs of a brand new HP PC laptop — but it still feels faster. Maybe it’s OS X, or maybe it’s the solid state drive. Point is, consumers don’t and shouldn’t care. They care about which machine will boot faster and which will be easier to navigate. Time to web matters. And now connected ecosystems matter more than specs. This again helps Apple and Amazon. Does the machine seamlessly integrate with the iTunes ecosystem? Does it have access to the App Store? Can it access the Kindle Bookstore or Amazon’s streaming video service? We’re starting to see backlash against reviews of products that just do spec-by-spec rundown. Because really, who cares how the device sounds on paper? It’s how it feels that matters. Is the Kindle Fire smooth? Is the Nook Tablet fast? Is the iPad a joy to use? Drew Breunig spoke to these things last week in a post entitled “Device Specs have Become Meaningless“. Dustin Curtis put this more succinctly in two tweets last night: Follow @dcurtis@dcurtis dustin curtis Electronics should always be reviewed from the user experience point of view, not the technology point of view… yet no one does that. Follow @dcurtis@dcurtis dustin curtis The section headings for a Kindle Fire review should not be "battery, internals, screen;" they should be "reading, surfing the web," etc. I agree. Why base reviews around specs when specs don’t matter? You could certainly argue that Apple is the company which has ushered in this post-spec era. They’ve flourished in recent years despite (and maybe because of) being cagey with most spec information on their newer devices. Does the iPhone 4S have 512 MB or RAM or 1 GB? Apple refuses to say. But who cares? It’s the fastest iPhone yet. (It’s 512 MB, for the record.) Apple is more traditional with the Mac when it comes to specs (undoubtedly due to legacy), but they still mostly bury that information. Whereas PC sites often trumpet the processor and other specs on the main landing page for their products (HP laptops, for example), Apple instead focuses on natural language descriptions: “The new, faster Macbook Air”. But the post-spec era works both ways. If the iPad specs don’t matter when going up against the Motorola Xoom, they also don’t matter when going up against the Kindle Fire. What matters is how the device performs, the ecosystem, and the price. In other words, the way you compete in computing now is to do so by focusing on things that human beings understand. On things that matter.
|
| AT&T To Launch The 4G Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 (And Six New LTE Markets) On Nov. 20th Posted: 14 Nov 2011 12:21 PM PST  I don’t know many people who are chompin’ at the bits for the launch date info on yet another Galaxy Tab, but I know you’re out there somewhere. For you, kind soul: AT&T has just announced that the LTE/4G-compatible version of the 8.9″ Samsung Galaxy Tab will be launching on November 20th. What’s that, you say? AT&T hardly has any LTE coverage for such a device to ride on? Correct! With that said, they’ll be launching it in six new markets (bringing the total up to 15) on the same day: Charlotte, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s still a drop in the bucket — but hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere. The Specs on the Gal Tab 8.9: · 4G LTE backed by 4G HSPA+ The Galaxy Tab 8.9 will set you back $479.99 on a two-year soul sign.
|
| Students Hack The Kinect To Allow Blind To Navigate Posted: 14 Nov 2011 12:17 PM PST The Kinecthesia is a Kinect wired to a set of motors that allows the blind to navigate a room or open space, relying on feedback through the motors to assess objects in their path. The project, created by University of Pennsylvania students Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, is worn like a belt and can sense objects in 3D space. Obviously this is a bit clunky – the Kinect isn’t quite wearable just yet. They’re working on 2.0 of the project, using a slimmed-down Kinect removed from its case and a new processor, the Beagleboard (rather than the Beagleboard XM). The project is so unique and clever that I’m surprised no one has made something similar before although I’m sure there are proprietary solutions that cost thousands. The guys did a great job at Google Zeitgeist Americas this year, including getting interviewed by Chelsea Clinton – a high point for any sane start-up founder.
|
| Best Buy Preps $249 Asus Transformer For Black Friday Posted: 14 Nov 2011 12:01 PM PST  The ratio of awful tablets to good ones in this year’s Black Friday ads doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence, but there are some good deals to be found even at this early stage. Case in point: Best Buy’s leaked Black Friday circular has the first generation 16GB Asus Transformer for $250, a respectable $150 drop from its current price. Much like with Staples and their bargain-basement BlackBerry PlayBooks, this doorbuster deal is only for people with the guts to wait in line for it. The big question though, is whether or not it’s worth risking life and limb to acquire. Let’s not forget, after all, that the Transformer Prime is barreling down the pipeline with a better processor and camera in tow as we speak. Still, the Transformer’s solid Tegra 2 chipset and 10.1-inch display make it one of the better tablet options available during the post-Thanksgiving mayhem. Better one of these than a Coby Kyros or a “Polaroid Internet Tablet,” after all. I’m sure the temptation of a low price already has some bargain hunters working out their Black Friday logistics, but here’s a thought — why not stay at home as see what Cyber Monday has to offer instead? Call me lazy, but in this case, I’d rather my credit card and clicking finger get a workout instead of schlepping around in the cold with 1,000 other people.
|
| Prototype Blade Laptops Stolen From Razer Offices Posted: 14 Nov 2011 11:36 AM PST  We’ve been eagerly awaiting more news of Razer’s Blade, a 17-inch beast that they claim is “the world’s first true gaming laptop.” Alas, we didn’t think the news would be of the troubling variety: Razer says that two of their prototypes were stolen from their Bay Area R&D lab. Razer is working closely with the authorities, as you do when something this valuable is stolen, and they urge their fans not to buy any suspiciously Blade-like laptops in back alleys or out of the backs of pickups. The state of the prototypes isn’t mentioned, but I have to guess that they’ve probably been working on nailing down driver support and custom software for the customizable keys and touchscreen. And without proper support from developers (like, say, the ability to show your ammo count, lives left, that sort of thing), the Blade is really just an ordinary expensive laptop. Sure, they can sell them for a substantial bit of cash, but there are easier ways to steal laptops. Maybe the thieves are just big Razer fans. At any rate, if you have any clues or see one of the laptops on the market, contact cult@razerzone.com.
|
| Stumbling Towards The Future: The PC-ification of Android Tablets Posted: 14 Nov 2011 11:05 AM PST  Did you hear that Lenovo is releasing a 10.1-inch tablet powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU? Exciting news, I know: quad-core on a tablet is huge. But is it really? Do we really have to be doing this? Is this what the struggling tablet market needs: a spec war? But what’s a tablet maker to do? Much like Microsoft fifteen years ago Google has more control over tablets than the actual tablet-maker. The OEMs are just working within Android’s confines, try desperately to wring more performance and marketing credibility out of the platform by throwing hardware at the problem. Right now it’s the iPad versus the world. Consumers can either opt for the $500 iPad or pick from countless identical Android tablets. It’s a microcosm of the PC notebook market, really: You can either pick from two Apple models or hundreds of Windows notebooks, all the same. Either the buyer trusts Apple and opts for a notebook that’s nearly void of available options, or, as most consumers do, they choose a Windows notebook that better fits their use case and/or budget. The iPad is a large iPod touch and to say it’s anything else is disingenuous. It’s a multimedia device with some content creation capabilities. But much like its smaller brother, Apple has managed to sell millions of the iPads without talking that much about specs. Apple can market its products solely on their functions since the company controls the hardware and software development. Apple doesn’t have to compete against itself. Lenovo, however, has to compete against Motorola, LG, Samsung, and all the rest of the Android players. This infighting is slowing Android adoption. Tablets as a whole offer a new paradigm in computing. Mobile radios, thin form factors and finger-friendly touchscreens finally bring Stanley Kubrick’s vision demonstrated in 2001 to life. Tablets are teetering on the edge of finally offering fully-fledged computing on the go. But we’re not there yet. Right now, tablet OSes are not designed to fully replace the desktop experience (although Windows 8 seems like it might pull it off). So far Samsung has seemingly used the most effective marketing tactics. Even adverts for its first generation Galaxy Tab centering around use-cases rather than powerful hardware. That tablet didn’t kill off the iPad but Samsung gave it the ol’ college try by supplementing the Android 2.x operating system with a rich set of Samsung apps and a smaller form factor. Even today Samsung’s tablet strategy seems to be focused on choice rather than just cloning the iPad. The company offers more tablets than any other, with a line featuring a 5-inch, 7-inch, 8.9-inch and a 10.1-inch model. But even Samsung, maker of some of the best Android tabs, further fragments the Android market with this large lineup. They’re in a sense just casting as many lines as possible with the hope of catching something. Asus and Lenovo follow a keep-it-simple mantra and rely on a smaller lineup. Asus has just the constantly-delayed Slider and the Transformer tablet with the successor hitting later this year. For some reason Lenovo feels the need to have a consumer and prosumer lineup with the $349 IdeaPad K1 and the $499 ThinkPad Tablet — both are very similar although the ThinkPad is targeted to business users with a beefier security suite and digitizer pen. All the Android tablet makers are rushing to stake their claim. The iPad came out of nowhere and surprised them all. But as each maker outs a new model, the whole Android market gets a little more crowded, forcing consumers to look at specs to find the best product. I find this rather entertaining: Go into any Best Buy and hang around the tablets for a minute. You’ll hear the most depressing conversations between consumers and the hourly workers. Consumers often want to know the difference between all of the tablets. More times than not, I heard responses that while true, such as the Xoom has a faster processor, are a bit misleading. Processor speed doesn’t matter. Nor does the amount of RAM or the particular brand. Besides screen size, Android tablets are all the same to the average consumer right now. Even when comparing specs, a task that seems to be a pastime of my mother-in-law, the only real difference is storage capacity. And that doesn’t really matter either. Besides touting slightly different hardware specs, Android tablet makers have turned to the shady world of bloatware. Often listed as a feature, some of the bundled apps are unwanted resource hogs – just like their Windows counterparts. Some of the apps are legitimate deals, though. Lenovo loads their Android tabs with some of the best games and productivity apps but most others use deceptive trialwares and alternative services. It’s a sad fact that Android tablet makers are at the mercy of Google. There is nothing they can do but advertise the minor differences between their wares. In a perfect world, my mother should not be shopping for tablets based on the number of processing cores. But since Google controls the most important feature of a tablet, the operating system, makers have nothing else to brag than hardware specs and price point. Right now, in the last months of 2011, the iPad is leading Android tabs by a large margin. The gap doesn’t seem to be closing either. Consumers didn’t flock to Honeycomb and so developers didn’t either. The next Android tablet release is said to launch later this year and will, if the fanboys are to be believed, among other things, kill off the iPad and solve world hunger. But that’s what they always say. As more Android tablets hit the market at an increasingly desperate rate, the iPad trudges on. Maybe a few years from now, when there are more tablet computing platforms, hardware makers will be able to use sales tactics learned from years of personal computers. But until then, minor differences between tablets should be downplayed rather than featured and let the tab’s functions take top bill. It’s better to focus on how the tablet will change the person’s life rather than the clock speed of the CPU.
|
| This DIY Nixie Clock Uses No More Components Than Necessary Posted: 14 Nov 2011 10:15 AM PST  If you want to recreate what it was like for hobbyists before the advent of the integrated circuit, this clock is for you. This thing uses “215 discrete transistors, 518 diodes, 472 resistors and 101 capacitors on a massive 10″ x 14″ printed circuit board” to recreate something that 1960s-era James Bond would shut down at exactly the 007 mark to prevent the world from blowing up. You can pick this kit up for $239 with the Nixie tubes and $199 with standard LEDs. You can also purchase a handsome plaque, suitable for wall placement in your electronics den. Warning: Don’t buy this if you’re a fly-by-night solderer. As the creator notes:
|
| Bag Week Review: The Chrome Yalta Backpack Posted: 14 Nov 2011 09:15 AM PST  What is it? This is not to say that the Yalta is only for those who browse army surplus shops. This “duffel” style backpack has a large top opening and a rear pocket designed to allow for a laptop (no bigger than the Macbook Air) and/or a tablet. There is also a front pocket. To close it, you simply roll up the lip at the top and connect the chromed metal hook into one of the loops sewn to the back of the backpack. The hook, it should be noted, can double as a bottle opener. The Chrome Yalta Type: Backpack Style-wise the Yalta is stark and utilitarian. I was able to fit quite a bit of kit into this thing, however, and it’s roomy enough for an weekend trip, along with all the electronics necessary for said trip. The laptop pocket is set low against the back should be protected in various situations it was quite secure even when I threw the bag around on the plane. The only complaint is how deep the thing is. Once you fill it up, getting to the bottom takes a while and you can feasibly lose things in its deepest recesses. Who is this for? Do I want it?
|
| Posted: 14 Nov 2011 09:15 AM PST  We pay a lot of lip service to high-tech gadgetry and gizmos on TechCrunch, focusing on only the latest and greatest for your edification. But what abou the stuff that barely gets any notice? What about the straps, bags, and sacs that carry our devices hither and yon with nary a scratch. That’s why we’re holding our annual Bag Week this week and that’s why we’re going to be reviewing a cavalcade of bags, from photo bags to laptop bags to backpacks. Why, you ask? Because it’s Bag Week, people. Bag Week will be the big run up to our annual Holiday Gift Guide series and, since Thanksgiving is a little over a week away, it’s high time we start thinking about gifts for the loved ones and not so loved ones. Until then, we’ll be running through two or three bags a day this week, so you can follow the entire thread here and watch for great giveaways as well. If you’ve come for bags this week, you’ve come to the right place. I guess you can say… we’ve got it in the bag.
|
| Forget The Negative Reviews, Amazon Is Shipping The Kindle Fire A Day Early Posted: 14 Nov 2011 06:58 AM PST  The reviews are in: The Kindle Fire is a dog. Mostly. But don’t tell those that jumped on the bandwagon early because Amazon is shipping the Fire a day earlier than expected. The device was supposed to ship tomorrow, but the retailer just announced that it’s hitting shipping channels today. The Kindle Touch is also shipping earlier than previously announced. The new touchscreen Kindles will leave Amazon fullfillment centers tomorrow, six days early. Amazon announced the Fire in late September and instantly won the Android tablet race. Even with the poor initial reviews, the Fire will still be a winner thanks to a smart content ecosystem that puts substance before specs. Even prior to its release, the Fire managed to become Amazon’s top selling item. But that title might not last long. The first round of reviews hit today, stating that the Fire’s custom Android build isn’t polished, unoriginal and sluggish in operation. "We're thrilled to be able to ship Kindle Fire to our customers earlier than we expected. Kindle Fire quickly became the bestselling item across all of Amazon.com, and based on customer response we're building millions more than we'd planned," said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle in a released statement today. "Customers are excited about Kindle Fire because it is a premium product at the non-premium price of only $199." Some analysts pegged the Fire to even outsell the iPad this holiday season. It still might even with negative reviews from such heavyweights as David Pogue as Amazon knows marketing and product distribution. Besides Amazon, the Fire is available from Best Buy, Staples, Office Max, Target, and Radio Shack; that’s more retailers than sold the original iPad. Combine the available retailers with the Kindle brand and Amazon will likely sell more than few Fires.
|
| The Bridge Aims To Be The First True Universal Remote But Needs Some Kickstarting First Posted: 14 Nov 2011 05:35 AM PST  Universal remotes are by and large misnomers. They’re not truly universal. Even that remote from that dumb Adam Sandler movie couldn’t control a HTPC. Universal remotes are often just for traditional AV devices. But not the Bridge from New York-based start-up, Convergence Technologies. This remote concept is a true universal remote with the ability to control everything a HDTV from a cable box to a game system to a digital streamer. But they need your help. Convergence Technologies is looking for $50k in funding through Kickstarter. The funds will allow the company to develop the necessary software along with building and distributing the remote. As with most Kickstarter project, there’s a bit of risk involved. The device sounds and looks great on paper — if the company can actually build the thing. What is the Bridge? from Harsh Mody on Vimeo. The start-up would need to collect (or license) the necessary IR codes for every AV device. The company claims that the Bridge would also be able to control RF devices like the Boxee Box so those codes would need to be found as well. What’s more, the creators state on that they’ll be able to bring this savior of mankind to the market for well less than $100. Still, the dream is big and certainly within reach — as long as they get the necessary funds. That’s where you come in. Convergence Technologies turned to Kickstarter for help. The site’s crowd funding model allows anyone to throw a few dollars towards the project in return for a bit of swag and a warm fuzzy feeling. The creators are looking for $50,000 and as of this post’s writing, has 47 days to reach that goal. Pledge $10 and it will get you a pin. $20 earns you a t-shirt while $65 gets you one of the first units.
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch » Gadgets To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
