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- Synaptics Demonstrates Windows 8 Trackpad Gestures On Video
- Short On Cash, Kodak Sells Its Sensor Business
- Panasonic Releases New Micro Four-Thirds And 3D Cameras, The GX1 And 3D1
- Interview: Battlefield 3 Developer DICE
- Rumor: The Quad-Core HTC Edge Breaks Cover
- B&N Sold “Millions” Of Nooks, Nook Color Is “A Top Selling” Low-Priced Tablet
- Barnes & Noble Officially Unveils The 7-Inch Nook Tablet
| Synaptics Demonstrates Windows 8 Trackpad Gestures On Video Posted: 07 Nov 2011 08:07 PM PST  We heard a while back that Windows 8 would support multi-touch via the trackpad. Sure, there’s some stuff you can do right now, but the promise made by Microsoft and Synaptics has been deferred for the most part. But they’ve put up a video that shows just how you can expect to interact with Windows 8 and Metro using a multi-touch trackpad. You can watch the video here, but I’ve embedded it here as well for your convenience: I have to say that some of these things look extremely handy. I use a PC desktop and a Mac laptop, and each one is jealous of the other for several reasons. One of the things I love on my MacBook is the multitasking multi-touch gestures. Switching between desktops or applications with a swipe of a couple fingers becomes second nature, and it looks like that’s being nicely integrated in Synaptics’ concept. Essentially what they’re doing is just mapping your input on the large touchscreen into the normal touch driver; the difficulty is probably the precision and filtering, determining exactly where that finger is so you can provide touchscreen-level accuracy. Naturally there are obstacles. I wrote a long time ago about the fundamental difference between direct and indirect manipulation of UI elements, and I can’t say that this video makes any difference to my opinion that we’ll likely always need both. After all, the feedback loop telling you where you’re putting your finger is a bit incomplete: it needs to let you know where your finger is hovering, since you can’t touch the items directly. As it is, I think you can touch and then press down to click, as we’ve been doing for a while, but that’s not cohesive enough. Yet the edge gestures look like a joy. Flipping between apps looks as natural and useful as it feels on the tablets, and I like the idea of bringing up the charm bar like that. There’s a danger of accidentally activating these, but that’s a matter of software optimization and Synaptics is no slouch. In fact, usually it’s ODMs and OS makers who fail to implement their solutions properly. They’ll be showing this off at the Microsoft Ecosystem Summit later this week. In the meantime more info can be found at the Synaptics press release.
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| Short On Cash, Kodak Sells Its Sensor Business Posted: 07 Nov 2011 04:00 PM PST  Kodak, which has been struggling to make enough money to keep the lights on next year, has sold its image sensor business. The buyer is holdings firm Platinum Equity, which is also picking up a large R&D and manufacturing facility in Rochester. Kodak will continue to have access to (and presumably operate) the facility and staff, but who will ultimately end up with this piece isn’t clear. The price was not disclosed, but I would guess it’s probably somewhere around $100-$200 million, based on the scale of the purchase and the company’s year end estimates and necessities. The details of the deal are also obscure, and will likely come out in a press release during the next week. The question one asks, naturally, is if it’s worth this much today, that must be a cost the buyer hopes to recoup with some time and investment — and so why doesn’t Kodak make the time and investment itself? It simply doesn’t have the money. To compete with the likes of Sony and Canon in the sensor area, they’d need to be investing as much per year as they just sold the whole thing for. I wrote a while back that it was time for Kodak to go invisible, focusing on IP and giving up the privilege of being a household name. Without their sensor business that’s probably not a viable option. On the other hand, as we don’t know the details of the purchase, it could be that they do have that in mind, but had to surrender ownership in order to fund the R&D necessary to take that position over the next few years. In that case Platinum would be more of a partner than a purchaser.
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| Panasonic Releases New Micro Four-Thirds And 3D Cameras, The GX1 And 3D1 Posted: 07 Nov 2011 01:14 PM PST  Panasonic was one of the first strong competitors in the micro four-thirds camera arena, and we’ve been waiting on the next iteration of the G-series cameras for months. They’ve finally announced the GX1, aimed much more at enthusiasts than the simplified GF2 and GF3. Panasonic also announced a 3D-oriented point and shoot, which to be honest doesn’t look so hot. The GX1 seems to improve on every aspect of its predecessors, and seems to me a strong response to Olympus’ assault on Panasonic’s territory. The new 16-megapixel sensor is apparently the same as in their G3, and the body has brought back some more “pro” features. Here are the basic specs:
The separation of this more powerful line into a separate “GX” series suggests we can expect more in the simpler GF series, while more expensive features like a built-in EVF and more powerful image processors will creep into this line. Does it really compare to the competition, though? If you’re not too concerned with sensor size and image quality, this thing with the new 14-42 pancake could be a really sweet walkaround camera. But the truth is it’s a bit short on features when you look at the other enthusiast EVILs. Sony’s NEX-5N, while overshadowed by its NEX-7 counterpart, seems like a decent alternative, with a larger sensor and articulating screen. I do think the GX1 is a better pick than Samsung’s NX200 spec-wise, though. There’s the option of a periscope-style EVF, but it’s not as good as the NEX’s. At $600 you just can’t expect an internal EVF, though. Personally I think it looks like sweet little camera, and DP Review says it has a nice hefty feel, which is always nice. though as usual the 1080i thing is ridiculous. If it’s 30p output (as they specify), then keep it 30p. No one wants interlacing. No one. As for that 3D camera, well, the less said the better. Without a 3D screen it’s kind of a waste, and the specs are nothing to write home about. If you’re interested in the camera, you can find its specs and such here at the Panny press release.
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| Interview: Battlefield 3 Developer DICE Posted: 07 Nov 2011 11:07 AM PST  I’ll be posting an epic Battlefield 3 review tomorrow, and giving away a few copies of the game, but before that I wanted to put up a little Q&A I got to have with DICE, the game’s developer. I tried to focus on issues that a are a little more relevant to the TechCrunch reader instead of just the FPS player. These questions were posed before the release of the game and before I wrote the review, so unfortunately they can’t address the issues I’ll detail tomorrow, but anyhow, without further ado: What made you want to up the social component with Battlelog and other updates? Do people really want to share their k/d ratio on Facebook? Battlelog is all about starting the right game with the right friends at the right time. You don't have to share everything with all your Facebook friends, but Battlelog makes sure that it's easier than ever to follow your friends' progress and join a game where you'll end up with the right people to maximize the fun factor. I remember in the old days, where I would boot up Battlefield 2142 and join a server, only to find that none of my friends were actually playing at the moment. Now, I hang around in Battlelog, check my stats, plan my next unlocks, and suddenly I see one of my friends go online and enter a server. Then I just click to join on the same server. It's social gaming at its best. The single player game is clearly very scripted, which some like more than others. But the multiplayer is much more sandbox, with open areas, lots of options for advancing, and so on. How do you manage to bridge this gap and still create a cohesive game? The goal for our different game modes (multiplayer, co-op and single player) is not to give the player the same experience but to give the player a variety of different Battlefield experiences. But with this in mind I think the single player and multiplayer portions of Battlefield 3 are more similar than you would think. The gunplay experience and core gameplay features such as vehicular combat are all present in the single player campaign, even if we tie a strong story to it. We find that a lot of people actually play the single player campaign to acquaint themselves with the controls and the concepts, so they can enter the multiplayer portion and be prepared for the kind of actions they need to perform to survive in Conquest or Team Deathmatch or whatever game mode they want to play. I always remember Peter Molyneux talking about new behaviors happening in Black and White, but with physics it can be just as unpredictable. Have there been any interesting “unintended consequences” you’ve seen as a result of the sophistication of the engine? Haha, they happen all the time! It's part of why we coined the phrase "Battlefield moments". It's those moments when weird and wonderful stuff happens online that you couldn't ever script even if you wanted to. Some of the unintended stuff stays in the game and become classics of their own, like the ability to "wing walk" in Battlefield 1942 (basically standing on the wing of a plane taking off ). We saw similar behaviors in the Battlefield 3 Open Beta, where players would wing walk the MAV recon vehicle, with some interesting results. The point is that with the dynamic rock/paper/scissors gameplay in Battlefield, sometimes you're just amazed by what happens, and I think that is part of what makes our multiplayer so popular. But yes, the two differ in that in singleplayer, we make sure that players experience exciting moments by scripting some of them, while in multiplayer they emerge based on the dynamic sandbox style gameplay. We’re seeing a lot of FPS games, including your biggest competitor based in the present or close to it. How do you differentiate things that are going to be in both games, like a common pistol or rifle? I think we are doing the right thing by focusing on how we firmly believe that a Battlefield game should look, behave, and feel. We are not really comparing weapons models and going "How can we differentiate?" Rather, we are concerned with how we can make our game feel as physical and immersive as possible. When it comes to weapons in Battlefield 3, we are putting an increased effort into making every class of weapon, and every weapon within that class, unique. This comes down to a lot of factors, like mobility, rate of fire, muzzle energy, and so on. But on top of that, we have this very deep customization system, where a player can tailor almost any main weapon in the game to fit any role from close quarter combat to medium/long range combat. Every main weapon has three accessory slots where you can attach any of the huge amounts of upgrades you have unlocked. This can be foregrips, different kinds of optics, heavy barrels, underslung grenade launchers, and so on. By giving this amount of customizability to players, we think that anyone, regarding of play style, will be able to have their personal favorite weapon available for any job. DICE has said that BF3 is first and foremost a PC game. Of course the consoles must have their version and it won’t be as good – but what obstacles are modern developers running into the most with the 360 and PS3, if you can say so without burning any bridges? What we have said is that Battlefield 3 is very much the true successor to Battlefield 2, which I think might be misinterpreted as us saying Battlefield 3 is first and foremost a PC game. We do want PC players to know and feel safe in the knowledge that we are 100 percent supporting PC, while at the same time developing fantastic versions of the game for consoles. We are calling Frostbite 2 a next generation engine for current generation platforms. What we mean by that is that we are pushing what's possible to do on today's consoles, so we are definitely pushing the abilities of both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. There hasn't been anything I would consider "obstacles" during development of Battlefield 3 for consoles. Of course, a brand new $2,000 PC has higher specs, but that doesn't mean getting Battlefield 3 onto consoles has been especially difficult. Regarding DLC, many gamers feel that developers are shipping half a game and then charging you again for the other half (maps, weapons, etc) – you guys ran into this with the pre-order thing. Can anyone just ship a game any more? And if not, what’s stopping them from doing the Valve thing and pushing out updates for free? This is interesting. I guess you are referring to the upcoming expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand? When we came up with the idea to give an entire expansion pack away at no extra charge to everyone who pre-orders the game, I was thrilled. It's probably our most generous pre-order offer ever. I think gamers misinterpreted it as us shipping half a game since we announced the first expansion pack before the main game was out. It was bound to have that effect. Rest assured, Back to Karkand is developed by a separate team here at DICE. This will not be available at launch on disc. But all you need to do to get this post-launch, full digital expansion pack is to pre-order the game. Having said that, I think that games nowadays – especially online games – are much more than hard-coded discs. For Battlefield 3, with the addition of everything that Battlelog brings, it's more of an ongoing service for years to come. Keep an eye out for our review tomorrow. It’s really long.
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| Rumor: The Quad-Core HTC Edge Breaks Cover Posted: 07 Nov 2011 10:57 AM PST  Dual-core processors? How passé. If the story surrounding this leaked render holds true, then HTC is already hard at work on their first quad-core powerhouse of a smartphone: the Edge. At first glance, it doesn’t look much different than any other device HTC has put out in recent memory. The Edge reportedly sports a 4.7-inch 720p display and 1GB of RAM, which is great but let’s face it — that’s not why you’re here. The big draw here is the 1.5GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset it’s got under the hood, making it one of the world’s first quad-core smartphones. Its release window is set for early next year, which makes the inclusion of Ice Cream Sandwich a tantalizing possibility since PocketNow’s sources don’t mention a particular Android build. Sadly, there isn’t much detail when it comes to connectivity. The Edge is said to have support for 21Mbps HSDPA but no LTE radio, though PocketNow admits it’s possible that certain carriers may get LTE-tweaked variants. Add a 10mm thick chassis, 32GB of internal storage, and HTC’s full suite of media apps (HTC Watch, HTC Play, etc.), and suddenly we’re looking at a device that seems too good to be true. While I always make it a point to have a grain of salt at the ready when these sorts of things pop up, the Edge is a compelling enough package that I find myself hoping against hope that it’s real.
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| B&N Sold “Millions” Of Nooks, Nook Color Is “A Top Selling” Low-Priced Tablet Posted: 07 Nov 2011 07:28 AM PST  Ebook creators are notoriously tight-fisted with their sales stats but today William Lynch, CEO of B&N, announced the company has sold “millions” of devices and said the Nook Color was one of the top selling low-priced tablets, placing the company high in the pantheon of slate device manufacturers. The Nook Color has always been seen as a stalking horse when it came to tablet sales. Although woefully underpowered for the average Ice Cream Sandwich lover, the device, even jailbroken, offers an introductory experience and is seen as sort of a gateway drug to more powerful Android and iOS devices. The Nook Color has dropped $200 at Best Buy and the Nook Tablet is, well, a tablet. It’s clearly aimed at the tablet market and, more important, it acts as B&N’s entree into a currently hot market. By avoiding “reader” branding entirely, the device seems to hit on a number consumer touch points. While we can’t expect B&N and Amazon to ever back down in the numbers arms war, the fact that they are announcing even nebulous numbers is a testament to the growing popularity of their devices.
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| Barnes & Noble Officially Unveils The 7-Inch Nook Tablet Posted: 07 Nov 2011 07:08 AM PST  In late September, Amazon unveiled a $199 tablet called the Kindle Fire. Obviously this left a massive divide in the market between the much pricier iPad 2 and the new Kindle Fire, which Barnes & Noble has this morning responded to. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I’m pleased to introduce you to the Nook Tablet. B&N CEO Willian Lynch made sure to note the Nook tablet’s superior (fully laminated) display isn’t the only feature that is “better” than the Amazon Kindle Fire. He also touted the fact that the Nook tablet offers almost twice the RAM, along with in-store support that just isn’t possible with Amazon. The 7-inch Nook Tablet looks much like a thinner (less than a pound) and lighter Color, but has innards that couldn’t be more different. Under the hood you’ll find a dual-core 1GHz processor courtesy of Texas Instruments, along with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (including a microSD slot supporting up to a 32GB card). When Nook cloud isn’t available, all that storage will certainly come in handy. But that’s not to say that Nook cloud won’t be involved — the new Nook tablet has the same Nook cloud support you’ve grown accustomed to. But the real differentiator between this and the Kindle Fire will be the amount of content available, which B&N contends should be no trouble. The book seller touts 2.5 million books, thousands of apps, and deals with Hulu Plus and Netflix for our video lovers. Oh, and speaking of video, the tablet also supports video playback in full 1080p HD, although the Netflix app will only play video in 720p. All those books and videos galore mean strong battery life is a must — luckily B&N promises at least 11 hours. Past that, there are plenty of other fun features to keep things interesting, including “Read & Record,” which lets parents record children’s stories so that kids can have their parents voice reading them to sleep at times when parent and child can’t necessarily be together. Angry Birds is also in tow. The Nook tablet will begin to arrive in stores at the beginning of next week for $249. Meanwhile the rest of the Nook line is getting some price drops: the Nook color has been dropped down to $199, and the more basic Nook Simple Touch has gone from $139 to $99. Click to view slideshow.
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