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Video: Bridgestone Showcases Airless Tire

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 02:32 AM PST

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It’s not the first of its kind (Michelin already showed a prototype), but it looks like the airless tire Bridgestone has developed is the most advanced we’ve seen so far. The Japanese company’s main goal here is to do away with the risk of flats.

The tire has a diameter of 25 centimeters, uses thermoplastic resin instead of air to support the weight of a car and has been successfully field-tested with electric vehicles, according to Bridgestone. It can support a load of up to 150kg.

The company says that the technology, dubbed Air-Free Concept, may be commercialized in passenger vehicles at some point in the future (it would then be the first time for any company to bring airless tires to market).

More information in this video from Diginfo TV:

Daily Crunch: Synthetic

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST

PSA: 3.1 Update Reportedly Rolling Out To Logitech Revue Google TV Boxes

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 06:07 PM PST

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The Logitech forums are alive with music, or rather screenshots, or rather, if I’m honest, one screenshot. Yes, one user has reported that the 3.1 software has appeared on his Revue box. Users of Sony Google TV products already received this update more than a month ago, so Logitech users are probably foaming with righteous anger and expectation. But the screenshot does suggest that the update is being seeded, and if it’s anything like other updates, will roll out over the next week or two.

Google TV 2.0, as we call it, is based on 3.1 and is a significant improvement over the original interface. But as we noted, there’s a lot of functionality still left out. The slickest interface in the world can’t help you if there’s nothing to watch.

Engadget was tipped off first, but the press release they cite is from last year, so the December 17th date isn’t actually applicable. And although the user on the forums promised more pictures, none have been forthcoming and no other users have reported the update going through. An isolated case? Possibly, but it wouldn’t be the first time an update went out to a few isolated units before going live.

There’s not much more to say. But if you’re the proud owner of a Revue, you might boot it up a few times tonight and tomorrow to see if it picks up the update.

Archos G9 Tablets To Taste Ice Cream Sandwich Early Next Year (Video)

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 04:57 PM PST

Archos ICS

I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that you had perhaps forgotten about the Archos G9 tablets. They haven’t seen much coverage of late, though we did get our hands on one back in October. In our review we found them to be fun but ugly, with various ports and a somewhat untrustworthy build quality, though solid enough for casual use.

But the 8- and 10-inch G9 slates may be due for a refresh, which is exactly what they’ll get come the new year. Archos has confirmed that Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich will be available on the G9 series in Q1 2012. To prove it, they sent us over a video of ICS running on an OMAP 4-powered G9.

I must admit Ice Cream Sandwich definitely paints the slate in a more delicious light, though Archos has reminded us there’s more work to be done. They still have to complete a few more tweaks including hardware acceleration for video support and Archos’ 3G dongle/port support.



Verizon Planning Netflix Competitor For 2012 Debut

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 04:39 PM PST

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Cable TV and internet giant Verizon is planning a streaming media service similar to Netflix, according to a Reuters report. The service is in the planning stages and people close to the matter, but apparently not that close, described it to Reuters variously as limited in scope, focused on movies, and focused on children’s programming. While it can’t be all three, it probably will feature on-demand movies and premium show streams, presumably delivered with that signature Verizon style.

Details are in fact few, except that Verizon is talking with content producers at the moment and is possibly going to jump on the Epix library of movies currently licensed to Netflix but soon to be available to others. And it would be offered in places that are not served by their FiOS service. Beyond that, it’s more or less all speculation.

The natural question is, of course, what exactly can Verizon offer that could possibly tempt users away from Netflix or other streaming options? I don’t want to condemn a service that hasn’t even been born yet, but Verizon isn’t exactly a popular consumer brand, at least for this kind of thing. Want signal in remote areas? Everyone will tell you “Verizon.” Want to stream a movie? Not many would make that connection.

There’s also the consideration that Reed Hastings calls to attention: the fact that both Netflix and their most feared competitor, HBO Go, spend over a billion every year on content. And as he points out, HBO is licensing more and Netflix is producing more. They’re becoming vertically integrated content delivery companies. Verizon is a series of pipes — efficient pipes, to be sure, but they’re in an awkward position from which to start. The last thing most consumers remember from them content-wise is the abysmal VCast.

If anything it will probably resemble Comcast’s on-demand Xfinity service, which works fine but isn’t winning any beauty contests (or content contests). It has some content that you can access through it, and you can access that content. Nothing wrong with that. But I doubt anyone would say it has Netflix in its sights. And to be honest, I don’t think Verizon has Netflix in its sights either, as Reuters characterizes the service: they just can’t afford to be left behind and honestly want to test the water.

The plan is currently to roll out in 2012, but that is as specific as the sources could get, apparently. By that time, it must be noted, there will likely be some serious changes in the streaming TV world, and Netflix might have even gotten its groove back. More options is always better, but let’s hope Verizon’s effort is more than half baked.

CMU Researchers One-Up Google Image Search And Photosynth With Visual Similarity Engine

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 12:52 PM PST

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To search these days is really an incredibly service-intensive process. Whereas before, to search something meant you had to through its drawers or folders by hand and inspect things by eye, now it means simply to produce a query and allow the vast computational engines of cloud services to exert themselves in parallel, sifting through petabytes of data and instantly presenting you with your results, ordered and arranged like snacks on a platter. We’re spoiled, to say the least.

It’s not enough, however, to have computers blindly compare 1s and 0s; when humans search, they search intelligently. We’ve seen incredible leaps in the ability to do this, and in the area of visual search, we’ve seen some interesting and practical technologies in (respectively) Photosynth and Google’s search by image function. And now some researchers at CMU have taken another step in the education of our tools. Their work, being presented at SIGGRAPH Asia, cleaves even closer to human visual cognition, though there’s still a long way to go on that front.

The challenge, when comparing images for similarity, is how to determine the parts of the image that make it unique. For us this is child’s play, literally: we learn the basics of visual distinction when we are toddlers, and have decades of practice. Computer vision, on the other hand, has no such biological library to draw on and must work algorithmically.

To this end, the researchers at Carnegie Mellon have determined an interesting way of comparing images. Instead of comparing a given image head to head with other images and trying to determine a degree of similarity, they turned the problem around. They compared the target image with a great number of random images and recorded the ways in which it differed the most from them. If another image differs in similar ways, chances are it’s similar to the first image. Ingenious, isn’t it?

The results speak for themselves: not only are they, like Google’s search tools, able to find images with similar shapes or, like Photosynth, able to find images of the same object or location with variations in color or angle, but they are able to reliably match very different versions of an image, like sketches, paintings, or images from totally different seasons or what have you.

Their video explains it pretty well:

Essentially, it’s an image comparison tool that acts more like a human: identifying not the ways in which a scene is like other scenes, but how it is different from everything else in the world. It recognizes the dome of St. Peter’s whether it’s Summer or Winter, ball point pen or photo.

Naturally there are limitations. The process is not very efficient and is extremely CPU-intensive; while Google may have reasonably similar images returned to you in half a second, the CMU approach would take much longer due to the way it must sift through countless images and do complicated zone-based comparisons. But the results are much more accurate and reliable, it seems, and calculation time will only decrease.

What will happen next? The research will almost certainly continue, and as this is a hot space right now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these guys snapped up by one of the majors (Google, Microsoft, Flickr) in a bid to outpace the others at visual search. Update: Google is in fact one of the funders of the project, though in what capacity and at what level is not disclosed.

The research team consists of Abhinav Shrivastava, Tomasz Malisiewicz, Abhinav Gupta, and Alexei A. Efros, who is leading the project. The full paper can be downloaded here (PDF) and there is some supplementary info and video at the project site if you’re interested.

Try, Try Again: The XYBOARD Tablets Make All The Same Mistakes

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 12:40 PM PST

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Listen, I’ve yet to play with the new Xoom 2 models — or, as the new devices are called at Verizon, the XYBoards. I’m sure both the 8.9 and 10.1 models are fine tablets. They probably power through the hundred or so Honeycomb apps like a championship thoroughbred. But it doesn’t matter. No one is going to buy the new-ish tablets. They will flop harder than the original Xoom.

Right now there are essentially two tablets that matter on the market: the $500 iPad and the $200 Kindle Fire. Because of this, there are just two price points. The iPad set the bar at $500 for full-featured tablets while the Fire is doing the same for budget models. Any tablet that attempts to jam itself into this pricing scheme is currently destined to fail. The low-end wants the Amazon pedigree while the high end knows that they want an iPad. The mid-range Android models are strong, I will admit, but they aren’t what compels the average shopper.

Take the Motorola Droid XYBoard LTE tablet. Never mind that it’s essentially the same hardware as the original Xoom with the silly addition of an IR blaster. Never mind the dumb name. Heck, forget that it’s lacking the SD card slot found on the original. It’s priced completely out of its market. Only ignorant fanboys will buy it.

The 10.1 model costs $529 out the door but requires a two-year agreement with plans starting at $30 a month. That means, two years from now, when the Tegra 2 tablet is countless generations behind current models, the customer would have spent at least $1250. Even worse, because the data package is tied to a contract, the XYBoard owner is liable for a costly early termination fee if they decide to cancel the data package early.

As shocking as it might be, this absurd pricing scheme isn’t exclusive to the XYBoard. The HTC Jetstream hit AT&T in September and initially carried two-year contract price of $699 (it was later dropped to $599). The iPad is available from Verizon and AT&T for slightly more than both the HTC and Motorola model, but does not require the same two-year contract. Subscribers can turn the 3G wireless on or off at any time without paying a penalty.

I’m a big fan of Android but the past nine months were painful. Nearly every month a hot tablet would leak, which would cause the Android community to itch uncontrollably. But then the official details would be announced and the MSRP would most often kill the buzz. With the notable exception of Asus pricing the Transformer at $399, Android manufacturers ignorantly priced their first generation devices directly against the iPad. They didn’t stand a chance. Slowly but surely the iPad chopped each one down until the Fire hit the scene. Now, as an Android supporter, my de facto champion is a $200 budget tablet that strips away all the beautiful user elements found in Honeycomb in favor of an enhanced Amazon storefront.

The XYBoard will likely be quickly replaced with another model. It’s built on an old NVIDA platform, and with Ice Cream Sandwich nearly here, Google and Motorola Mobility likely have a flagship device ready at launch. But that’s the Android game now: Flood the market with tablets built on re-purposed parts. It might be good for the maker and wireless carrier’s bottom lines, but the practice of tying top-tier models down with 2-year contracts will ultimately slow the adoption rate. Recent studies show that Android tablets have a very limited market appeal and these buyers aren’t likely willing to pay early termination fees just to get a slightly upgraded device.

2012 should by all accounts be a big year for Android tablets. Ice Cream Sandwich is said to unify the development of Android tablets and phones, which will hopefully lead to an influx of tablet apps. Plus, while Android does have a limited consumer interest, it’s doubled since the first part of 2011. However, if Android tablet makers continue following the same pricing schemes as they did in 2011, the platform will start to tread water, creating an easy meal for the great white shark that will be Windows 8.

Inside Nivarox, The Most Important Company You’ve Never Heard Of

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 10:09 AM PST

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In the strange, small world of watchmaking, there’s lots of money to be made on items that we would call, at best, totemic. To make those items, you still need small mechanical parts. That’s where Nivarox comes in.

Nivarox makes balance springs. The name stands for “ni variable, ni oxydable,” which translates to “neither variable nor oxidable.” These tiny springs swing the balance wheel in almost every mechanical watch and the goal of invariability coupled quality metals made Nivarox one of the most important companies in the world during the 20th century. Now they’re owned by the Swatch Group, a company that has a virtual monopoly on the high-end watch market. And, interestingly, most competitors are just fine with that.

Ariel Adams at ABlogToRead went to visit the factory where he saw how the smallest widget can make or break a mechanical watch.

It wasn’t always thus. In the 1980s, Nivarox almost dissappeared. Ariel writes:

Listening to watch industry insiders who lived through this era in the 1980s is interesting. The tale they share is akin to retelling the story of apocalypse. For them a foreign terror and technology came in to wipe out an industry they held so dear, that held so many people together in the watch manufacturing hubs of Switzerland. Nivarox was about to be the heart of a dying creature. In 1983 the various arms of Nivarox consolidated and later in 1985 it became part of the Swatch Group that was at first a merger of the ASUAG and the SSIH. Many people of course know that the Swatch Group was started by Nicolas Hayek (who recently passed away). Many people credit him for saving the Swiss watch industry.

If you’ve noticed I keep referring to the fact that the Swiss watch industry is kept together by a series of suppliers who produce the necessary parts that go into watch movement. There are zero totally vertically integrated watch makers in Switzerland even today. The whole system of manufacturing could be halted if just one supplier stopped supplying materials or parts. This is why Mr. Hayek instructed Nivarox to produce its own metal for the balance springs. Originally sourced from a metal producer in Germany, there was just too much fear that if the supplier didn’t want Nivarox as a client anymore (which of course could happen on a whim), the entire industry would supper as watches could not be produced. Hayek’s ongoing mantra to Nivarox was “product, product, product, product.”

Read the full article if you want to learn about one of the most important mechanical manufacturers in the world and how so much of the watch industry depends on one invariable hairspring.

The TouchFire Chronicles: The Year Of Bad Prototypes

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 09:30 AM PST

TouchFireTyping

Editor’s Note: This week we’re running a three part series by Steven Isaac, a programmer with an amazing resume including stints at Sun, Microsoft, and even a hardware start-up that brought the first (non-portable) tablets. For years he’s dreamed of an easy-to-use device with a full keyboard that slides out when needed and, together with a designer, he built the Touchfire, a fully funded Kickstarter project that has only 10 days to go before production begins.

We asked him to create a series of short posts about his experience with the Kickstarter process and offer you, the hardware hackers out there, some advice and best practices. Read part one here. The entire series will appear here.

I knew what I wanted – a soft, rollable keyboard for tablets – but I didn’t have an inkling how to get my keyboard idea made. That’s when I met Brad.

Brad is both a mechanical engineer and an industrial designer, a rare but extremely useful combination. He started his career at HP, and then went to the legendary design firm IDEO. In a strange twist of fate, Brad had done the mechanical design of the EO tablet while at IDEO. But our paths never crossed.

He went on to design everything from toothbrushes to Cray supercomputers, plus a wide assortment of mobile and digital camera accessories. He was now running his own design consultancy, and seemed perfect for the job.

Brad was confident that he could wrap up my project in short order; he had designed keyboards before. He proposed using silicone as the material, and designed the first version of TouchFire in a few weeks, using a traditional key design for a rubber keyboard.

Keyboard B1, as we called it, was a failure. No matter how hard you pushed on a key it wouldn't actuate. My hacked together prototype worked better. It became clear that designing an all-silicone keyboard overlay that allowed users to rest their fingers on home row that was also easy to type on, was not going to be a snap. It would require fundamentally re-inventing how the tactile aspects of the keyboard worked. And we hadn't even begun to figure out how to make it magically disappear at the user's command.

But that was OK. Every significant project I'd ever worked on reached a point of hopeless despair somewhere along the line. It was time to make failure our friend.

I challenged Brad to design a keyboard overlay that worked better than my prototype. 19 attempts later, keyboard B20 finally achieved that goal. It still didn't allow users to rest their fingers on the home row, but the typing experience had significantly improved. We brainstormed a dozen ways to quickly get the keyboard overlay out of the way, and settled on a mechanism that retracted the overlay when the user pulled a lever. We would build this into an iPad case.

Now we were cooking! I decided to spin up a separate company for TouchFire, and offered Brad an equity co-founder role. This meant that he would no longer be paid as a consultant. It was a big decision that he struggled with, and then agreed. We were off and running; what could possibly go wrong?

We found out a few months later. We were up to revision B38 by this time, and we still hadn't cracked the puzzle of the home row rest keys. The way we were going was looking more and more like a dead-end. Meanwhile, the magic retraction mechanism was getting more and more complex, starting to resemble the rigging of a 16th century sailing ship.

We had to make a bold move. Brad proposed building a keyboard prototype where each individual key was a completely new design. We would try every crazy idea we could think of, and if none of them worked, TouchFire was toast.

DROID XYBOARD Tablets Get Official, Hitting Verizon Stores This Month

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 08:18 AM PST

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Verizon’s been teasing us with them for weeks now, but today the company has finally made things official: Motorola’s LTE-capable DROID XYBOARD tablets will be hitting Verizon stores this month.

For those of you who have managed to miss all the news about Motorola’s latest tablet venture, here are a few of the salient details.

Better known as the XOOM 2 in Europe, the XYBOARD comes in two flavors: one with an 8.2-inch IPS display and another with larger 10.1-inch IPS display. Don’t worry about missing out on performance if you go for one version over the other, as both XYBOARDs share the same 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM under the hood. Both tabs also sport 5-megapixel rear cameras, along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facer, and an IR transmitter for controlling your home theater.

On the application side, the XYBOARDs come Motorola’s MOTOCAST media streaming software, QuickOffice HD, Citrix GoToMeeting, and the usual suite of Google appa. Handwriting input buffs may also want to take note of the 10.1-inch XYBOARD, as it ships with a stylus meant to make doodling cats on the screen even easier than before.

But how much will all that cost you? The 10.1-inch XYBOARD comes in three memory variants: you can score a 16GB model for $529.99, a 32GB model for $629.99 and the king-sized 64 GB for $729.99. If you prefer the smaller 8.2-inch model, prices are a little more reasonable. There are only two models to choose from: 16GB for $429.99 and 32GB for $529.99. All of these prices are with a two-year contract, so think long and hard about whether or not the XYBOARDs are right for you.

You’ll need to pony up an extra monthly charge if you want to take advantage of the XYBOARD’s speedy LTE connection, too: prices for Verizon’s data plans start at $30 for 2GB of bandwidth.

Verizon also snuck in an announcement confirming the existence of a white Droid RAZR. I’m sure that news won’t be as exciting to some of you as it is to me, but fans of chromatically pure devices have one more to add to the list. Motorola has also pledged that all three of the newly-announced devices will get access to Android 4.0 (a.k.a Ice Cream Sandwich), so here’s hoping they get access to the code sooner rather than later.

Overstock.com Teams With Barnes & Noble For eBook Storefront

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 08:16 AM PST

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Overstock.com is looking to expand its brand into the realm of ebooks. But the online retailer is doing it a tad differently. Instead of signing partnerships with publishers, building a vertical retail platform and establishing a presence in the marketplace, the company briefly known as O.co simply inked a deal with ebook giant Barnes & Noble. Easy peasy ebook squeezy.

The partnership is only skin deep, though. Overstock.com/ebooks, the site’s new ebook subsite, is simply a portal to B&N. Clicking on a book directs buyers to the book’s B&N product page where the purchase can be completed. Even the genre pages redirects to the appropriate page at BN.com.

To go alone with the new ebook offering, Overstock.com is hawking a refurbished Nook Color for $149.00. "As the number one seller of refurbished NOOK® devices we are pleased to partner with Barnes & Noble to expand our product offering so that our customers have fast, easy access to the breadth of digital content that Barnes & Noble offers," said Overstock.com President Jonathan Johnson said in a released statement today.

Terms of the partnership were not released.

Amazon’s LOVEFiLM Hits The Xbox 360 Tomorrow Complete With Magical Kinect Controls

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 06:31 AM PST

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Amazon took full control of Europe’s largest movie and TV subscription service earlier this year and now, starting tomorrow, LOVEFiLM will hit LIVE-enabled Xbox 360 systems. This brings thousands of streaming movies to Xbox LIVE subscribers including, wait for it, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Take that, Netflix! But alas, members of Team whatshisface need to be located within LOVEFiLM’s European service area to access any content including its exclusive titles that also includes The Dark Knight and The Hangover.

The service should be available starting tomorrow for Xbox LIVE subs. Those that also own a Kinect will be able to interface with the streaming app through voice commands and gestures. "It's very exciting to see the launch of Amazon's LOVEFiLM on Xbox LIVE,” said Stephen McGill, Director of Xbox & Entertainment for Microsoft UK. “Xbox owners will be eager to get started, using their Kinect-enabled consoles to interact with LOVEFiLM's extensive catalogue of movies in ways that will only be available on Xbox 360."

The Xbox Live integration is just the latest platform embraced by LOVEFiLM. The service is already available on iOS devices, set-top boxes, smart TVs and the Playstation 3. Plus, like Netflix in the states, LOVEFiLM also has a mail-order DVD service that pre-dates the streaming service.

This latest addition to the Xbox’s streaming portfolio further advances Microsoft’s ultimate goal of converting the gaming system into an entertainment powerhouse.

ZINK Raises $35 Million, Aims To Popularize Ink-Free Printing

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 05:43 AM PST

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ZINK (short for ‘zero ink’) this morning announced that it has scored $35 million in Series B funding in a round led by Genii Capital. The company also announced the hiring of former board members Mary Jeffries (as chairman and co-CEO) and Ira Parker (as president and co-CEO).

Jeffries was once the CEO of Polaroid, where Parker also served as VP and General Counsel before moving on to a similar role at AOL.

ZINK is behind the ‘Zero Ink Printing Technology’ and its sibling, ZINK Paper, with which the company aims to ruffle some established feathers in the global printing industry.

The company has invented technology and a full-color printing system that essentially eradicates the need for ink cartridges or ribbons when used with its proprietary ZINK Paper. I’m not sure how they pull this off, exactly, but the company pitches its technology thusly:

Based on advances in chemistry, engineering, physics, image science, and manufacturing, the development of ZINK has generated an IP portfolio that includes over 180 patents and patents pending.

At the heart of the technology is ZINK Paper which looks like regular white photo paper before printing. Heat from a ZINK-enabled device activates the color-forming chemistry within the ZINK Paper, forming all the colors of the rainbow.

ZINK’s technology already powers a limited range of home photo printers, digital cameras with built-in ZINK printers, as well as logging printers, with more coming. Partners include Dell and Polaroid.

Founded in 2005, ZINK’s R&D labs and headquarters are based in Bedford, Massachusetts, with a manufacturing plant located in Whitsett, North Carolina.