CrunchGear |  |
- Seagate Streamlines Hard Drive Offerings With 1TB Per Disk Technology
- FinePix REAL 3D V3: Fujifilm’s Naked-Eye 3D Photoframe Supports 3D Playback From Other Devices
- Panasonic’s EVOLTA Mini Robot Finishes Hawaii Ironman Triathlon
- Daily Crunch: Amtrak Flag
- Kickstarter: TILT, The Cooling Pad That Matches Your MacBook Pro
- iPhone 4S Battery Life Bugs Got You Down? Try This
- Battlefield 3 Sells 5 Million Units In First Week, Becomes EA’s Fastest Selling Title
- HTC Rezound Appears On Video And Signage Ahead Of Launch
- Onkyo Updates Receivers And Remote App With Spotify Support
- Jawbone’s Fitness-Friendly Up Wristband Appears In Online Stores
- Kinect SDK Launches In Early 2012 (We Peer At Past Hacks)
- Google TV Update Rolls Out Today, Already Hitting Select Sony Internet TV Devices
- Amtrak Adds WiFi To 12 New East Coast Routes, California’s Up Next
| Seagate Streamlines Hard Drive Offerings With 1TB Per Disk Technology Posted: 01 Nov 2011 05:00 AM PDT  Just a couple months after selling its 1 millionth hybrid hard drive, Seagate has some fresh news to announce, including the death of its Barracuda green drive and the announcement of its new enhanced Seagate desktop drives. The Barracuda, Seagate’s flagship, has been revamped to offer performance of 7200 RPM for every capacity — from 250GB up to 3TB. Using 40mm fabrication technology, the dual-core Seagate Barracuda drive is now 45 percent faster. Thanks to AccuTrack technology, the drive boosts capacity, speed and performance by offering track density of 340,000 TPI. Meanwhile, the Barracuda XT hard drive will be migrating over to solid state hybrid technology, which basically offers the best of both worlds. You can enjoy hard drive capacity points at solid state speeds, all at a less expensive cost per GB. The Barracuda and Barracuda XT will now round out Seagate’s hard drive offerings, in an attempt to make the buying process that much easier for customers. According to the company, the electricity savings from reduced RPM in Barracuda Green were totaling around 20 cents per year. When measured against productivity during the extra hours a faster and more efficient hard drive yields, it seemed like an easy decision. However, Seagate maintains that it’s still environmentally friendly as far as manufacturing goes. The Barracuda drives will be available by the middle of November, with MSRPs starting at $71.99 for 1TB. Seagate is the world leader in hard disk drives and storage devices for enterprise, desktop, mobile computing, consumer electronics, and external/networking storage solutions markets. Seagate products span the storage application landscape, including data centers, mainframes, workstations, desktop and notebook PCs, netbooks, digital video recorders, gaming consoles, home entertainment devices, external backup and networked storage. The company markets storage devices and products under the following brands: Cheetah®, Savvio®, Constellation®, Barracuda®, DiamondMax®, Momentus®, MobileMax™, Pipeline HD™, FreeAgent™, BlackArmor®. Additionally, the company...
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| FinePix REAL 3D V3: Fujifilm’s Naked-Eye 3D Photoframe Supports 3D Playback From Other Devices Posted: 01 Nov 2011 04:39 AM PDT  Digital photo frames are a dime a dozen nowadays, and recently, 3D models have been popping up, too. Fujifilm today announced the FinePix REAL 3D V3, a so-called “digital viewer” that displays pictures in 3D and doesn’t require users to wear glasses. The company says its new device is the first in the world to support 3D movie and picture playback and compatibility to other 3D devices via the HDMI interface (camcorders, consoles, 3D Blu-ray players, etc.). Here are the key features of the FinePix REAL 3D V3:
In Japan, Fujifilm is planning to sell the device from November 12 for US$640 (no word in the English press release about international sales plans).
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| Panasonic’s EVOLTA Mini Robot Finishes Hawaii Ironman Triathlon Posted: 01 Nov 2011 03:06 AM PDT  He hoisted himself up a 500 meter-cliff at Grand Canyon, did his magic on the Le Mans 24 circuit in France, and traveled 500KM from Tokyo to Kyoto last year And now, he completed the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, too. We covered Panasonic’s plan to let its EVOLTA battery-powered mini robot start at the 230km race back in September, and now the company announced the little guy finished it on October 30. According to Panasonic, it took the robot (in three different configurations) a total of 166 hours and 56 minutes to swim 3.8km, bike 180.2km and then run 42.2km – powered by three rechargeable EVOLTA batteries.
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| Posted: 01 Nov 2011 01:00 AM PDT  Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets posts: Jawbone's Fitness-Friendly Up Wristband Appears In Online Stores Amtrak Adds WiFi To 12 New East Coast Routes, California's Up Next UPcload Uses Your Webcam To Help You Order Clothes That Actually Fit Google TV Update Rolls Out Today, Already Hitting Select Sony Internet TV Devices
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| Kickstarter: TILT, The Cooling Pad That Matches Your MacBook Pro Posted: 31 Oct 2011 03:43 PM PDT  Anyone who has ever used a MacBook Pro can tell you that they can get awfully toasty after a little while. Countless laptop cooling solutions have hit store shelves over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite as handsome as the TILT by madMINDS. Designed by Clinton and Spencer Yee, the TILT is a cooling pad designed specifically for use with the unibody Macbook Pros. To their credit, using a TILT with a Macbook Pro looks completely natural thanks to the cooling pad’s slim profile and the faux-aluminum look of the TILT’s polycarbonate body. Setup is both simple and secure — just latch your MBP into place with the TILT’s patent-pending locking mechanism, and plug a cable into your USB port. Easy peasy. There’s a lot to like about the TILT, but my favorite feature is probably the most easily overlooked. Flip the thing over and you’ll find a tiny screw hole that fits a standard tripod mount. The TILT’s locking latch is apparently robust enough to keep the whole package stable and usable even if you lash to the the top of a tripod. It’s a thoughtful if minor addition that’s sure to please videographers and fans of standing desks alike. The Kickstarter project currently has 77 backers, and those looking to get in on the ground floor need only pitch in $45 to score a TILT when they’re released. Be warned though: the brothers Yee have only seen fit to design the TILT for the 15-inch model, so 13 and 17-inch users will have to look elsewhere for their well-designed cooling fix.
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| iPhone 4S Battery Life Bugs Got You Down? Try This Posted: 31 Oct 2011 03:40 PM PDT  It hits you when you least expect it. It slips away under a mask of dormant inactivity. And it can ruin your entire day. It’s your iPhone 4S battery life, and it sucks. It’s been 17 days since the iPhone 4S was released — 19 since iOS 5 — and just like the madness that was Antennagate, complaints are churning out left and right. As Erick so clearly pointed out, the iPhone 4S is meant to offer 8 hours of talk time, or "up to 6 hours" of Internet use on 3G. For so many of us — including iPod touch and iPhone-not-4Ses running iOS 5 — that simply isn’t the case. But there may be hope. To start, there are a few possible bugs in iOS 5 that may be sucking an inordinate amount of life out of your battery: a calendar bug and a time zone bug (one of which can be summarily blamed on location services, as can most of the other battery life killers in iOS 5/iPhone 4S). The calendar bug is still somewhat unclear, but has been reported in Apple forums. Basically, when your calendar app is turned on in the Notifications Center, events are “re-ordering themselves near-constantly,” which sucks the life straight out of the phone. The only fix as of now, unfortunately, seems to be disabling the calendar app within the Notifications center. The Time Zone bug, however, seems to be solved (although again, by disabling things). Oliver Haslam over at iDownloadBlog noticed, like many of us, that iOS 5 was sucking his iPhone 4 battery dry. He realized that by going into Settings > Location Services > System Services (all the way at the bottom) > Setting Time Zone, and toggling off the location services, his battery life nearly doubled. According to Haslam, iOS 5 probably has a bug that constantly pings the servers to update location, and thus update time zone settings. When it comes down to it, iOS 5′s location services are most usually the culprit in cases of random battery life drainage for no apparent reason. It allows your apps and other services to ping for your location way more often than before, but in many cases it’s totally unnecessary (like TapTap Revenge, for example). Just head into Settings > Location Services and browse through the various apps using the phone’s location. The option to turn it off for some apps but not others is there for a reason; use it. Don’t forget to dip back into System Services (yep, all the way at the bottom), and disable anything you deem unworthy. Diagnostics & Usage should fall into that category, as it merely sends back information to Apple about the way you use your phone and where. And, any one of the services you turn off can always be turned back on. No harm done. Email, especially with certain settings, can really wear on your battery since the Mail app can be set to ping mail servers almost constantly. An easy way to help spare some green bar is to really take a look at your account(s) and what you need out of them. If most of your emails tend to be about daily deals or new book releases, do you really need them pushed immediately to your phone? Axe push if you can, and if your accounts don’t support it anyway, play with your update timings and try to find the right balance between being in the loop and being able to use your phone. Siri uses up a lot of processing power, but I wouldn’t kill her for it. Siri is one of the iPhone 4S’s best features, and other sacrifices can be made to save her. Then, of course, the basics: turn off Wifi and Bluetooth, turn down screen brightness, and keep the phone out of the sun and/or heat. Oh, and if you have such crappy service that you’re not really able to use your phone much anyway, you might as well just switch it to Airplane mode. It’ll stop the phone from working so hard to connect and maintain that connection, and should last you much longer once you’re in a place you can actually use it. The truth is there isn’t some quick fix or magical solution to this problem. It’s a question of priorities. Which apps, which notifications, which location services are worth a speedier death for your iPhone? In the end, it’s your decision. At least until Apple rolls out an update to iOS 5 and squashes a few of these issues. 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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| Battlefield 3 Sells 5 Million Units In First Week, Becomes EA’s Fastest Selling Title Posted: 31 Oct 2011 02:30 PM PDT  Battlefield 3 is here and in a major way. The latest shooter in the long-running franchise hit the interweb and retailers last week and EA just announced that they moved 5 million units within the first week. For anyone that cares, that makes Battlefield 3 the fastest selling title in EA’s 29 year history. And for good reason. EA and DICE conducted a flawless marketing campaign for Battlefield 3. The marketing first targeted those that really care — dedicated gamers — as the game was first revealed this year (read: the game came out in the same year it was announced) in GameInformer magazine. Then the videos hit. EA systematically released gameplay footage of the stunning first level Fault Line. These videos, originally just a couple quick minutes, pieced together the entire first level for the view and perfectly showcased not only the game, but the brand new Frostbite 2 game engine. By the time E3 hit in June, gamers and the press were very familiar with Battlefield 3 where it stole the show partly thanks to playable demos. The marketing ramped up over the summer in preparation for the much-anticipated open beta. Invites first went out to players who bought Medal of Honor: Tier 1 edition and those that pre-ordered Battlefield 3: Limited Edition. But soon, EA opened up two maps for anyone that wanted to try Battlefield 3. And try they did. More than 8 million players participated in the beta during its 12 days. That resulted in 47 billion shots fired and 1.5 billion kills. But despite the extensive testing, EA’s new servers couldn’t hand the opening rush and faltered the first few days. Still, Battlefield 3 is a hit but will its popularity diminish after Modern Warfare 3 launches in the coming days?
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| HTC Rezound Appears On Video And Signage Ahead Of Launch Posted: 31 Oct 2011 01:02 PM PDT  By now it’s no secret that HTC’s Verizon-bound Rezound will debut shortly, but the stars seem to have aligned recently, because we’re absolutely swimming in Rezound-related news. Most notably, a video demoing the Rezound in action has begun to make the rounds, and it gives us our best glimpse yet at Verizon’s next holiday heavyweight. The video doesn’t probe very far, but it does confirm that the Rezound packs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 4.3-inch display running at 720p. It comes with 16GB of internal storage out of the box, but since it’s a Sense 3.0 device, it can also take advantage of Dropbox’s 5GB of cloud storage. We’re also afforded a quick look under the battery cover, and I’m happy to report that HTC’s trend of making their device’s innards look as good as the outside continues. Verizon seems to be just as excited for the Rezound as HTC fans are, as the company has begun to push out signage that features the much-anticipated device front and center. It probably wasn’t supposed to go up yet, but that didn’t stop some over-eager employees by putting it up for all to see. The sign also trots out the Rezound’s Beats-friendly earbuds, not to mention some love for the middle Jonas brother. Sadly, there’s still no word on a release date — Droid-Life cites a tipster’s claim that the phone will launch on November 14, but there have been so many claims that it’s hard to keep track at this point. The Rezound is almost sure to take the stage this Thursday at HTC’s big New York event, but with any luck some juicy details will leak ahead of the show.
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| Onkyo Updates Receivers And Remote App With Spotify Support Posted: 31 Oct 2011 11:59 AM PDT  Attention all Onkyo-using music lovers: if you’ve felt like your life has been too quiet as of late, a new update for the Onkyo Remote Android app may be just what the doctor ordered. Onkyo has announced that they have added support for Spotify Premium to their free app, and that a handful of their network-enabled receivers and home theater systems will be updated to play nicely with it. Here’s a quick breakdown of the units that, after a quick software update, will be able to pump out all your favorite Spotify jams:
If you happen to use one (or more) of those components, then congratulations! The update is available to download now, so your sweet home theater system should be ready to blast all those carefully-crafted playlists in time for your Halloween party. Even if your receiver isn’t listed, you can rest easy: Onkyo will be extending Spotify support to a few more models when November comes. Sure, the boat will have sailed on that Halloween party, but maybe you can make it a particularly musical Thanksgiving instead.
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| Jawbone’s Fitness-Friendly Up Wristband Appears In Online Stores Posted: 31 Oct 2011 10:01 AM PDT  Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman turned a few heads when he unveiled the Jawbone Up at this past year’s TED conference, mostly because it seemed like such a radical departure from the usual Jawbone lineup. When speaking to our very own Sarah Lacy, Rahman promised that the Up would be available “soon,” but we may be getting very close to a release. The health-conscious Up wristband has popped up very briefly in Apple’s online stores and Jawbone’s own website today, which means the official launch can’t be too far off. Here’s a quick refresher for those unfamiliar with the Up: it’s essentially a (rather fetching) wristband with a built-in accelerometer. It’s meant to collect data about everything from how active its user is to how well the user has been sleeping, in hopes that quantifying this information will make users more likely to keep track of it. It’s not the newest concept in the world (the FitBit predates the Up by quite a bit), but it’s one that could stand to benefit from stylish execution. One of our faithful tipsters sent us this screengrab of Apple Italy’s online store (above), which very clearly shows us that the Jawbone Up will be available in three different sizes, and may retail for around €99. A little digging of my own yielded a cached version of Apple’s UK store, which claimed that the Jawbone Up was in stock and ready to ship, provided you were willing to fork over 79 quid. It also seems to confirm that the Up will ship in three different colors, so the chromatically picky shouldn’t trouble finding a hue they like. Most damning is that the Up also has its own product listing on Jawbone’s online store, though I wonder how long it will stay up. Someone on Jawbone’s side seems to have caught wise, as the product page first listed a $99 pricetag but displayed an outlandish placeholder amount when refreshed. So, it looks like it shouldn’t be long at all before fitness fiends will be able to pick up a Jawbone Up. Speaking as someone who got into running by tempting himself with gadgets (and hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in weeks), I personally can’t wait to get my hands on one. Many thanks to our tipster, Paolo!
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| Kinect SDK Launches In Early 2012 (We Peer At Past Hacks) Posted: 31 Oct 2011 09:13 AM PDT Fresh on the heels of its envisioned future video, Microsoft has posted an inspiring portrayal of the Kinect to YouTube. The video outlines the somewhat unexpected uses of Kinect in its one-year history, including educational and medical applications, which is likely meant to boost awareness ahead of the commercial launch of the Kinect SDK. Developers have been hacking Kinect and creating new uses and applications for the platform since just days after its initial launch, but this marks the first time that companies will be able to profit off of their Kinect creations. According to CNET, the Kinect SDK will be available in early 2012 to anyone ready and willing. In celebration of this momentous occasion, we thought it’d be worth a look back at what developers have managed to do with Kinect. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this view into the past as much as we did. Become The Star Wars KidMeet A Flying Kinect QuadricopterKinect-Controlled Humanoid RobotKinect-Style TetrisHome Automation A La KinectHead-Mounted Kinect = Artificial VisionMicrosoft’s Kinect-Powered ReclinerSign Language Translation Courtesy of KinectMicrosoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
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| Google TV Update Rolls Out Today, Already Hitting Select Sony Internet TV Devices Posted: 31 Oct 2011 07:47 AM PDT  The much-anticipated Google TV update is systematically rolling out today. Sony Internet TV devices are first in line followed by Logitech Revue units shortly thereafter. But wait patiently. As with most major updates, the OTA update will not hit all the boxes at once, but rather at a selective pace. You can initiate a manual check under the About section in the Settings menu, but a notification should pop-up when your box’s number has been called. It’s still not available on my Sony Internet TV but the update is already in the wild per a screenshot from AndroidCentral. Google announced the big update last week. It brings to Google TV the Android Market along with a totally new user interface. Plus, the system is now built on the newer Android 3.1 release, which should make for a much smoother experience. Google TV has always shown so much promise and this latest coat of paint improves its draw even more. But only the consumer marketplace will decide if the overhaul ultimately spurs a GTV revival.
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| Amtrak Adds WiFi To 12 New East Coast Routes, California’s Up Next Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:52 AM PDT  Attention workaholics: your business trip a la rail was just made more efficient, if you’re using Amtrak, of course. The nation’s intercity railway has just added Wi-Fi service to 12 new East Coast routes, bringing the interwebs to almost 60 percent of all Amtrak passengers. Among the freshly connected routes, major lines include the Northeast Regional (between Virginia and Boston), Keystone Service (New York, Philadelphia and Harrisburg), and Empire Service (New York, Albany and Buffalo). Other routes to receive the service are the Carolinian, Downeaster, Ethan Allen Express, the New Haven-Springfield Shuttle and the Vermonter. Four other routes will also have access to WiFi — Adirondack, Maple Leaf, Palmetto, and Pennsylvanian — however service on those routes will be limited to specific cars marked with WiFi hotspot stickers. The difficulty with train WiFi is limited bandwidth along most routes, but Amtrak is working with cellular companies to try and boost coverage. The next phase of WiFi expansion will occur in California. The Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner and San Joaquin trains will all receive WiFi service by the end of 2011, bringing the total of internet-connected Amtrak passengers to 75 percent.
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