CrunchGear |  |
- Daily Crunch: Hex Enduction Hour
- OLPC XO-3 Tablet To Be Shown At CES
- Review: AAXA P4 Pico Projector
- Not Bad, LG Marketing, Not Bad
- AIAIAI’s New Headphones Continue Trend Of Understated Design
- A Very TechCrunch CES: How To Follow Our CES Coverage
- Report: Kaz Hirai To Become Sony President In April
- What Witchery Is This? A Cardboard Camping Pot?
- Support For Quad-Core iDevices Found In iOS 5.1 Beta Code
- Nobody Wins At CES
- After 58 Years: Panasonic To Cut The Cord With JVC Kenwood
- Nokia Acquires Norwegian Mobile OS Company Smarterphone
- Sony Announces World’s First XQD Memory Cards
- The Samsung Note Is Definitively Not Coming To AT&T As Far As You Know
- No Cable Killer After All: KIT digital Buys Assets Of Sezmi For $27 Million
| Daily Crunch: Hex Enduction Hour Posted: 07 Jan 2012 01:00 AM PST |
| OLPC XO-3 Tablet To Be Shown At CES Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:30 PM PST  After years in the making, the One Laptop Per Child program’s XO-3 tablet will be shown in more or less final form next week at CES, according to the project’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte. The latest image of the tablet is shown here, though it is from some time back and may no longer be representative. The price of the tablet will in fact be under $100, he said, though various options will put it over that. It has an 8-inch screen — traditional LCD, though it may be upgraded to a Pixel Qi display for power savings and e-paper-like capability. If they stuck to their original specifications, it will also be waterproof, durable, and about a quarter of an inch thick. The version they’re showing will run Android, though what version was not specified. Solar panels, hand cranks, a bigger battery, and other accessories will be available, though no pricing has been given. It’s also unclear whether the device will be offered a la carte via retail, or will be limited to bulk purchases. The tablet comes on the heels of the news that India’s own mass-market tablet, the Aakash, has garnered serious interest, selling thousands and producing interest potentially in the millions of units. The OLPC device will be more expensive, but I feel justified in saying it will likely be of a higher quality as well, though the future of the Aakash and tablets like it is in flux and both are totally incomparable to commercial tablets like the iPad. Negroponte also said that they would be conducting a long-term experiment using the devices, collecting reading data from youths age 3-8 in India, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. Apparently the tablets come with a reading platform that records audio and video and adapts its lessons to the needs of the children. Negroponte described it as possibly “the most important thing I have ever done… if it works.” Whether this is related to his plan to airdrop the devices onto remote regions was not made clear. Needless to say, our team at CES will be seeking out the device and Negroponte himself if he is present. Watch our CES 2012 page for more information next week.
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| Review: AAXA P4 Pico Projector Posted: 06 Jan 2012 05:09 PM PST  Short version:A powerful little device, significantly brighter than others of its size, with decent battery life and a good picture. Too bad it’s so damn loud, and not the most user-friendly thing of all time either. Features:
5 Pros:
Cons:
Full review:The line between “pico” projector and simply small projectors is increasingly blurry as we see large-ish but still not large products like 3M’s MP160 and the upcoming Shine. They won’t fit in your front pocket, but they’re sure more portable than traditional projectors. AAXA’s P4 is of a type with these: portable, but not micro. It’s a boxy, gadgety-looking little device, with the controls on the top, inputs and outputs on the side, and USB stuff on the back. It comes with a controller of dubious quality — instead of arrows, the buttons are labeled “up,” “right,” and “Sour” (source), that kind of thing. Don’t expect a very short throw on the image – but at the same time, it’s not as long as others I’ve used. At 6 feet away, I got about a 35″ image. They claim 80″ is possible in low light, and I don’t doubt it – but you’d need quite a bit of space. For small environments like offices and apartments, you’re probably going to be getting 35-50″. Battery life is somewhat more than an hour, but less than an hour and a half. This is par for pico projectors, though notably the P4 is brighter than its brethren. Upon starting the device up, you can choose between playing on-device videos, pictures, and music (music, really?), going to a connected source, or entering a full-on Windows CE desktop. The only one I didn’t have trouble with was the plain pass-through source; my SNES and laptop signals were clear, sharp, and bright, with solid color, no visible artifacts or optical effects, and no lag. Getting to media you have on the device or an attached microSD card or USB drive is easy if you don’t have much on there – but if you tend to keep lots of photos or shows on a drive, be ready for a long wait as the P4 indexes the media. I managed to fully crash it several times as it attempted to index all the images on a drive I’d plugged in: That said, a card with a couple dozen pictures and movies on it loaded very quickly. Unfortunately, media playback wasn’t the best. Anything larger than VGA tended to choke and stutter, whether I had download it or made it myself (AAXA tells me this is not a problem via the mini USB port, and may be fixed by firmware). So don’t expect to be watching HD movies on this thing, despite its relatively high-res image. And when it didn’t stutter, sometimes it would not respond to controls or fail to hide the on-screen display, resulting in much of the image being obscured by buttons and a filename right in the middle of the video. Note that this does not apply to videos played through another device, like an iPod or laptop. Photos looked all right, but large ones (~4MB, 3000x2000px) took around five seconds to load. It supports JPG, GIF, and BMP, but not PNG. PDF files are not opened natively; you have to go open them in WinCE mode via Foxit Reader. And throughout all of this, there is a white Windows cursor in the middle of the screen. Why?! Probably because it’s all running on top of Windows CE, which you can switch into by going to “Desktop” mode. It’s actually pretty cool, although without wireless capability it’s quite limited; if you want to add programs you have to transfer them over USB or figure out a way to share your net from your PC. It’s kind of great that there’s a whole little Windows computer in there, but unless you really want to spend some time configuring it, there’s not much it can add to the bargain. Especially since it’s very difficult to navigate with the clicker. AAXA was nice enough to pack a tiny keyboard/touchpad combo thing, which works perfectly with the projector and is cute as hell. I like this little thing. If the Windows portion of this projector were more practical, this would be very handy indeed. Lastly, the thing makes a racket. These larger pico projectors aren’t generally too quiet to begin with, but this thing starts whirring from the moment you turn it on, and there is a high pitched noise that’s added when an image is being produced. It also doesn’t have much in the way of volume so you’ll have to pack speakers if you want to hear what’s being said in videos over the din of the fans. ConclusionWhile the P4 is well-built, compact, and produces a really bright and solid picture, its other features are just not very usable. To be fair, the others in the space are often just as poor performers: I haven’t met a pico projector yet that provides a satisfactory movie-viewing experience or is actually easy or fun to navigate. If you want a multimedia device, the P4 isn’t for you. If you don’t mind the noise and plan on doing mostly pass-through stuff from other sources, it could be just fine. They do have a smaller, slightly less bright version coming out (the P3) which might be a little more practical, but that doesn’t come out for a few months. Product page: AAXA P4 Pico Projector
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| Not Bad, LG Marketing, Not Bad Posted: 06 Jan 2012 01:20 PM PST 
I just have to say bravo to the team that put this together. Simple, funny, and gets the point across. Sure, the slimmer TVs get, the less I care about how slim they are (who really needs that extra half a millimeter?), but I can still get faced in an ad like this and own it. The fact that there is no overt LG branding other than the sign on the store suggests it is either a viral attempt or just a spec ad created by an agency and rejected (lots of promo stuff gets posted this way). It was filmed (at least the outdoor portion) in a town in the Netherlands called Hilversum, according to a Redditor who recognized the locale. That doesn’t have much to do with anything, but it’s pretty great that someone popped up within a couple hours with the exact location. You can tell it’s fake though (aside from the fact that it’s obviously fake) because security cameras don’t generally record in 720p. It’s the little things, viral marketers!
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| AIAIAI’s New Headphones Continue Trend Of Understated Design Posted: 06 Jan 2012 12:26 PM PST  We don’t design and hardware quite as much as we used to, but I’m making an exception for these. A good while back, I wrote about a pair of headphones I thought was the most understated and attractive I’d ever seen. They were the TMA-1s from Danish design house AIAIAI, and while I never got to get my hands on them, I’m going to make it my business to try their new pair out. Capital is the name of the new headset, and they’re a larger, over-ear, more heavily-designed piece of work. But I still love them — especially the black version. To be fair, they have lost some of the understatement that made the TMA-1s so interesting to me. The Capital has more pieces, more design elements, more flair. But they’re still simply and beautifully made, from fiberglass-reinforced nylon, with 40mm drivers and a folding design for travel. They’re being shown at the Agenda trade show in LA today, so if you’re heading down there, be sure to drop by AIAIAI and congratulate them for me. We’re on our way to CES, where design is not a primary concern, and I’m pretty sure we won’t see anything quite as excellent and utilitarian as this.
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| A Very TechCrunch CES: How To Follow Our CES Coverage Posted: 06 Jan 2012 12:21 PM PST  As you well know, next week is CES 2012 and TechCrunch will be there – with bells on. We’re focusing on start-ups, small companies, and interesting people and we’ll be doing a lot of live streaming, video interviews, and live giveaways. You’re going to want to watch. But, you’re saying, how can I interact with the CES team while they’re on the floor? With Twitter, of course! First, follow @techcrunch for up to the minute news. We will be posting giveaways to this feed when they happen live and we’ll be asking for feedback as we go along. We’ll be using the hashtag #CEScrunch for all the CES stuff, but expect a little bit more noise. Finally, follow @johnbiggs (angry rants), @grg (CES achievements), @mjburnsy (yard-long beers), @jordancrook (one woman’s opinion), and @chrisvelazco (impressions of a former Best Buy employee) to interact with us all directly. We need your questions and commands. We are your automatons. We are going to limit the CES stories that appear on the front page so if you want to just follow CES news, add this to your feed reader. See you in Vegas!
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| Report: Kaz Hirai To Become Sony President In April Posted: 06 Jan 2012 12:16 PM PST  Big news from Sony today: according to a report just published by Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai, currently the company’s Executive Deputy President, will become president as early as April this year. Hirai doubles as the Chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment. The move doesn’t really come as a big surprise: in March last year, current president Howard Stringer called Hirai the “leading candidate” in the race for the next CEO. If the Nikkei report is to be believed, Stringer will stay on board as Sony’s Chairman and CEO. In his role as the company’s Executive Deputy President, Hirai’s main responsibility is to control the Consumer Products & Services Group (TV, home video and audio, cameras, gaming, and mobile devices) and Sony’s “network business strategy”. The Nikkei is reporting that Hirai’s promotion will be finalized next month at a Sony board meeting.
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| What Witchery Is This? A Cardboard Camping Pot? Posted: 06 Jan 2012 10:32 AM PST This Kickstarter project aims to rend the very fabric of space and time. The product is a camping pot for boiling water and doing a little cooking in a pinch but get this: the pot is made of paper. The pot is completely biodegradable and folds flat in your backpack. It’s mostly designed for a single use although you can feasibly boil a few bottle-fulls of water in it over time. The foods you cook must contain water but they are not limited to highly liquid consumables: The main intended use is for cooking liquid food such as water, coffee, milk, hot chocolate, green tea, etc. It has been tested to also be used for cooking pasta, soup, chili, shabu shabu, ramen noodles, or udon, etc., as long as it contains liquid. Made by a company called Energia, these pots will cost a few dollars and pledge of $75 gets you 32 cooking pots. There’s no description of how this works so I suspect they’re just using Dragons Bane or some other fireproof elixir to keep these pots from burning up. They’ve raised $500 so far out of $25,000, so you’d be getting in on the ground floor.
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| Support For Quad-Core iDevices Found In iOS 5.1 Beta Code Posted: 06 Jan 2012 10:28 AM PST  It’s no secret that smartphone and tablet OEMs are looking toward quad-core processors to power their next-generation doodads, with Apple’s oft-rumored A6 chipset being one of the most anticipated. According to 9to5Mac, snippets of code in the beta version of the iOS 5.1 update tacity confirm that a quad-core A6 will soon grace Apple’s new iDevices. 9to5Mac’s sources point to two images — the count begins at 0 for the first processing core, which would mean a dual-core device would be referred to with the label “/cores/core.1.” The existence of a reference to “/cores/core.3.” means that Apple has indeed been slaving away on quad-core iPhones and iPads. Not that it should be a huge surprise — semiconductor manufacturer TSMC was working on a trial production run in August, but the company had issues that eventually led to Apple and Samsung working together again. Meanwhile, the market is quickly shifting toward quad-core being the next big thing in the mobile/portable space. Asus’s quad-core Transformer Prime tablet hit the streets not long ago, although the experience has been a little rocky for certain users. The Transformer Prime’s NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset was seen in early benchmarks to be a considerable step above the chipset it was meant to replace. Even so, it’s scores showed that it was only marginally more robust than the iPad 2′s dual-core A5. Now I wouldn’t take those scores as gospel — Matt notes that the benchmarking software may not have been able to fully take advantage of the four cores at the time — but Apple’s quad-core efforts could potentially be the ones to beat. With all the talk of multiple cores, one has to wonder how much of a performance boost we’ll see once these quad-core iDevices are released into the wild. The answer will be something of a mixed bag — Apple’s first party applications will most likely be tuned to play nice with the additional processing cores, but it’ll take time for the scores of iOS developers hit their stride. In the end though, benchmarks alone won’t entice most people buy a certain tablet. It’s safe to say that new iPads will sell like crazy even if they’re not the first or the fastest quad-core tablet out there.
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| Posted: 06 Jan 2012 07:39 AM PST  Rather than do a CES pre-round-up of exciting products I’d like to address this interesting slant on the whole “massive electronics trade show in the middle of the desert” concept that has kept the Gadgets crew here up for the past few weeks. MG said Apple won CES. He was being snide, but, in a way, honest because, in the end, nobody wins CES. The Consumer Electronics Show is, as its name implies, a show for consumer electronics. These include, but are not limited to, TVs, DVD players, Blu-Ray players (if they still make those), and accessories. TV stands! TV brackets! Speakers! Remotes! In fact, there’s an entire hall dedicated to the Asian purveyors of the components that make up those consumer electronics, a sort of Fishmongers Row to the CE industry where the smell is at least far more tolerable. You’ll notice that nowhere in there did I mention PCs, laptops, cellphones, tablets, and Microsoft Windows. That’s because those are typically termed “mobile devices” or PCs or operating systems. There are trade shows for those, as well, although they are far fewer these days than they ever were. Why? Because the Internet took away all the fun of schlepping a booth to the Javits Center in New York and paying for hotel rooms and food for a bunch of salesmen to stand around giving out tote bags. Why have a COMDEX when you can get Engadget, The Verge, and Gizmodo to cover your geegaw the moment it’s launched. Why pay $100,000 in booth fees at SXSW as a start-up when you can talk to TechCrunch to get approximately the same number of eyes? It doesn’t make sense. CES is really for buyers. Sure it’s a hoot to see what gadgets will launch at back-to-school in September and we, regrettably, will be there reporting on start-ups and cool gadgets we find. But it’s buyers – men and women who love to spend a week eating steak and playing backgammon at MGM grand – who really drive CES. Buyers may be considerably more plugged in these days than they were in the past, but the orders they place at CES are usually the last time they actively pursue the noephillic instinct until January of the next year. Again, with the rise of the Internet, this is swiftly changing but for now the mom-and-pop electronics shop in Scranton trying to fight off Amazon and Best Buy comes to CES to see which TVs to stock. Microsoft left CES because the news cycle it imparted on the industry didn’t suit it. You can talk backroom politics all you want, but in the end Microsoft could make its own news without CES. Every company is beholden to produce something new and great for CES and their R&D teams are geared to follow this schedule. Microsoft wanted off the treadmill, and they’re big enough to do it. Ultimately, nobody wins CES because there’s nothing to win. Most products announced don’t launch for months (if not years) and the major news articles end up being trend pieces rather than actual reviews. Sometimes companies can take the air out of the event by launching something “huge” – the Palm Pre is the last item in recent memory that really stole the show – but CES is about selling real goods to real people, not impressing some tech blogger with a 1 terabyte cellphone. It behooves us to remember that the Consumer in Consumer Electronics Show is less a term of endearment and more a target for a precision strike. We are the consumer. They want to sell to us. CES is geared to making that happen. If you’re a gearhead, I don’t want to cancel Christmas on you here. Yuck it up. We’ll be covering it in our own way over here. However, just remember that CES exists not to offer solace to the unmitigated fanboy. It exists to make money and when that money can be made elsewhere, CES will go away.
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| After 58 Years: Panasonic To Cut The Cord With JVC Kenwood Posted: 06 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST  Panasonic has been partnering with Victor Co. of Japan, which in 2008 merged with Kenwood to become JVC Kenwood, since 1954. But yesterday JVC Kenwood announced [JP, PDF] that Panasonic, its largest shareholder and business partner, will go alone in the future. Big P is apparently ready to sell 24,225,400 of its shares, a move that will make the company the seventh-largest shareholder in JVC Kenwood. As far as voting rights are concerned, Panasonic’s stake will drop from 19.28% (as of September 30, 2011) to 1.75%. Panasonic is planning to set a price for the shares between January 17 and 19. Actual sales are scheduled to start at the end of the month, with the company being set to eventually sell all of its remaining shares in JVC Kenwood at some point in the future. Panasonic cut its management ties with JVC Kenwood well before this ending of the capital relationship, namely during a shareholders meetings in April last year.
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| Nokia Acquires Norwegian Mobile OS Company Smarterphone Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:39 AM PST  Nokia has acquired Oslo, Norway-based Smarterphone, a company that builds a mobile operating system for so-called feature phones. The news of the purchase, which was actually completed last November, comes straight from investment firm Ferd Capital, which pumped 6.5 million euros into Smarterphone since 2007. Other backers of Smarterphone – which was formerly known as Kvaleberg AG, after founder Egil Kvaleberg – include Innovation Norway, Trolltech founder Haavard Nord and management consultant Lars Øberg. Smarterphone specializes in software that allows handset makers to equip basic models of phones (aka feature phones) with smartphone-like looks and certain capabilities. Whether Nokia will keep Smarterphone’s platform as a third option for its devices, aside from S40 and Windows Phone, or if this was more about buying talent and know-how, remains unclear. Financial terms of the deal were also not disclosed.
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| Sony Announces World’s First XQD Memory Cards Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:19 AM PST  Are you ready for yet another memory card format? Dubbed XQD, the medium was first announced by Sandisk, Sony and Nikon in November 2010. And after the the CompactFlash Association finalized the specifications last month, Sony took the wraps off the world’s first XQD cards today. Two versions of the card will be available, in addition to an XQD-compatible card reader (USB 3.0) and an ExpressCard Adapter. Here are some details from Sony America:
Sony says that the cards boast data transfer rates of up to 1Gbps/125MB/s write and read. From the press release:
Sony is planning to roll out the XQD memory cards, the reader, and the adapter next month.
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| The Samsung Note Is Definitively Not Coming To AT&T As Far As You Know Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:05 AM PST  Remember the mini-slate Samsung released a few months ago? The Samsung Galaxy Note? Pretty cool little device. As we enter CES week, the press releases are flying fast and furious and this one caught my eye. It’s for a small company that makes accessories for gadgets and I suppose (I can’t find the original) it outlined Anymode’s plans for Samsung Note accessories. The release also noted that the Samsung Note would hit AT&T this year. There were rumors of this, but Anymode essentially confirmed it. Until they didn’t. A few hours after the original announcement, I got an email retracting the earlier statement. It stated: RETRACTION OF EARLIER CES ANNOUNCEMENT JANUARY 6, 2012 –The January 5, 2012 CES Media Alert titled “Anymode Introduces First Accessories for Samsung Galaxy Note” contained inaccurate information pertaining to AT&T and the release of the Samsung Galaxy Note. The information was not provided by Anymode, AT&T or Samsung , nor did Anymode, AT&T or Samsung approve it. The issuing party apologizes for the publishing of the inaccurate information and any inconvenience it may have caused. I love the memory-hole-esque line “The information was not provided by Anymode, AT&T or Samsung , nor did Anymode, AT&T or Samsung approve it.” Yes, Anymode, you did “provide” it. You sent it out. Stand up for your convictions here. It’s a small slate. It’s not a cure for cancer. In the end, this whole dance is part of the modern CE scene. What you’re seeing here is a small partner messing up and two other partners – much bigger and with more lawyers – pressuring them to convince the world something never happened. I’d call it a cover-up if it didn’t insult the memory of Watergate. These curtsies, bows, and twirls are what passes for information dissemination in a world run by the rumor. This is why Microsoft left CES – the impetus to launch around a major trade show in a world that can accept breaking “news” in a few hours, not a few months. CES was good when magazines were working on back-to-school issues in January. Now they work on back-to-school blog posts the week before junior straps on his backpack. Expect more fun line this over the next few days. CES, as they say, is a wild ride.
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| No Cable Killer After All: KIT digital Buys Assets Of Sezmi For $27 Million Posted: 06 Jan 2012 05:48 AM PST  So much for Sezmi‘s ambitious plans to kill cable TV: the assets of the cloud-based TV delivery platform company were recently acquired by KIT digital for approximately $27 million in a mixture of stock and cash. Sezmi, founded in 2007 under the name Building B by the former CTO of Sony Music (and later CTO of Sony’s US subsidiary) Phil Wiser and serial entrepreneur Buno Pati, reportedly raised over $70 million. The Belmont, California-based company shut down its consumer-facing business back in September 2011, and tried to turn the ship around by focusing on selling hardware to service operators, such as telcos and ISPs. Clearly, that didn’t work out so well either. KIT digital, which provides video management software and related digital services worldwide, says it acquired ‘certain assets and liabilities’ of Sezmi on December 30, 2011. KIT digital paid approximately $16 million in cash upfront, and approximately $11 million in KIT digital common stock (or approximately 1.2 million shares), plus earn-outs. Notably, future earn-out payments may amount up to $20 million – $25 million over a period of three years, in total, payable either in stock or in cash at KIT digital’s discretion. As part of the deal, KIT digital has obtained 18 patents from Sezmi, related to “over-the-top (OTT) platform provision in the mobile, online and digital terrestrial television (DTT) environments”. According to the press release announcing the purchase, Sezmi has approximately 80 full-time employees and contractors in the United States, with another 55 in India. Other recent acquisitions by KIT digital include Ioko, Polymedia, KickApps, Kewego and Kyte. The company today also raised its financial guidance for 2012; KIT digital management says it now expects annual revenues of at least $320 million, as compared to $300 million previously. KIT digital plans to report preliminary Q4 2011 financial results in February.
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