CrunchGear |  |
- Daily Crunch: Arena
- It Begins: Coby Preparing Five Ice Cream Sandwich Tablets For CES
- Tablet Zero
- Indonesian Government Threatens BlackBerry Services Over “Security Reasons”
- HP’s Whitman: We’ll Make WebOS-Powered Tablets In 2013
- In An Internal HP Email, Meg Whitman Assures webOS’ Best Days Are Still Ahead
- HP To Keep webOS Alive By Making It Open Source
- Hands-On With The Meizu MX
- TechCrunch Gift Guide 2011: Best Toys
- Meet ePawn Arena: The Screen That Wants To Make Gaming Personal Again
- Apple Loses Big Against Motorola In Germany (Update)
- Barnes & Noble Has Shipped One Million Nook Tablets, Industry Report States
- Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Streaming Glee, Sons Of Anarchy
- KOBOT: Japanese Company Shows Transformable, Smartphone-Controlled E-Cars (Video)
- Daily Crunch: Skimmer
| Posted: 10 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST |
| It Begins: Coby Preparing Five Ice Cream Sandwich Tablets For CES Posted: 09 Dec 2011 03:26 PM PST  Ice Cream Sandwich tablets are already coming out of the woodwork, and it looks like at least a few of them will be ready for CES 2012. The folks over at Coby Electronics have just revealed five, count ‘em five Android 4.0 tablets that will soon be making their Las Vegas debut. As you can probably imagine, Galaxy Tabs these things ain’t. What Coby has done here is take the same set of internals (a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, 1GB of RAM, HDMI out, and a microSD card reader) and attached them to five different displays. To their credit, Coby’s selection really runs the gamut: we’re looking 7-inch, 8-inch, 9-inch, 9.7-inch, and 10-inch variants. And hey, if you’re looking to mix things up a bit, the 8 and 9.7-inch models sport 4:3 aspect ratio screens. Are these going to be the best Ice Cream Sandwich tablets at CES? Probably not — the Las Vegas Convention Center is pretty huge, after all — but they may be the ones to turn to when your wallet’s feeling a little light. Coby promises some “incredible prices” for these things, and the company aims to push them out the door before Q1 2012 is over.
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| Posted: 09 Dec 2011 02:47 PM PST  The global slapfight between Apple and Samsung shows no sign of abating – a victory here, an injunction there, a ruling here, a reversal there – like Aesop’s goats, neither will give way and chances are they’re both going to end up the worse for it, though not likely at the bottom of a ravine. It doesn’t mean that the conflict doesn’t furnish some interesting topics for discussion, however. Just recently, Apple submitted written testimony by an expert who shares their perspective on Samsung’s design decisions, and very kindly helped to compile a list of things Samsung might have done to differentiate its product. For example, Samsung could have opted not to make their tablet rectangular, or done away with the front bezel, or given it a “cluttered appearance.” Excellent suggestions! Not surprisingly, there has been some discussion of Apple’s rather ridiculous list of design elements it claims as its own. It’s a good time to examine the creative decisions around the iPad from a different direction. It seems to me that Apple laid a trap for the entire consumer electronics industry, and they fell for it hard. And it’s really a triumph of positioning and branding. They essentially branded the tablet’s Platonic form. What set me thinking about this was this article about creating a tablet “from scratch.” It’s good, but unfortunately doesn’t achieve the end its author intended, which is to rebut Apple’s accusations. The article certainly shows that, working from first principles like the limits of vision and grip and so on, and make only the absolutely necessary additions given the limitations of technology at the moment, you end up with something that’s a lot like an iPad. The author suggests that this exonerates Samsung. But alas, it does the opposite: it merely glorifies Apple. No, it’s not fair. But it is true. Why? It’s interesting to think about objects that can actually be reduced to ideal forms. It’s difficult for a chair, for instance. Does the ideal chair have armrests or not? Does it have a square back or a rounded one? Flat, sculpted, or cushioned seat? You simply can’t settle it. Yet if this Platonic chair existed, and someone made it, they would be able to point at every other chair in the world and say “look how they’ve ripped me off.” Yet that’s what Apple has done with the iPad. I certainly don’t mean that the iPad is the be-all and end-all of tablets — there’s a difference between ideal in concept and ideal in practice. The first means it conforms to a fundamental concept of the object, the second means it’s the best it can possibly be. The iPad is ideal in the first sense: it’s no more advanced in its design than a ball or a cube. It’s a type, not a design. Which is not to say that is isn’t well-done or that they didn’t put a huge amount of work into it. A true ideal tablet would be nothing but a magic window into content. Apple made a device as close as possible to this magic window and paired it, somewhat hurriedly and crudely, with a powerful and popular platform they already controlled. Its initial success owes itself largely to the momentum of the iPhone. But once they put it out there and sold more than a dozen of them, their triumph was complete. See, by making the design completely generic, and don’t kid yourself, that’s what they intended and got, they ensured that no one could look at another tablet without thinking of theirs. You can look at a Asus Transformer without thinking of a Xoom, or a Nook without thinking of a Galaxy Tab, but you can’t look at any of those without thinking of the iPad. But not just because they’ve sold more units. Because you can’t make a Xoom without making an iPad first, just like you can’t make a die without making a cube first. This was Apple’s stroke of evil genius. I say evil because while it’s admirable, among the highest art in fact, to create objects as close to their type as possible, it’s another thing to claim parentage over everything further out from the source. Consider the Bic. Now, I don’t mean to say that this pen is exactly analogous the iPad or Apple’s position. But consider it for a second anyway. This little device is the pen defined – essentially it’s the bare minimum for a pen, designed well and simply for human hands to grip and write with. It has no extraneous elements yet is still functional and easily recognizable as an individual branded object. It’s durable, cheap, and reliable – qualities which emerge from its archetypical design. And while it does fit so closely with our ideas of what a pen should be (roughly cylindrical, of a certain length and width, with a writing tip and perhaps a cap that fits on and doubles as a clip), no would say it’s the best or only pen in the world, or that other pens, which share 90% of the Bic’s most important characteristics, are copies or descendants. This Bic pen enjoys widespread popularity and huge sales, has for ages. It sells because it’s a type. The iPad sells for more complicated reasons, but its form is about as original as the Bic’s. Functional, yes; beautiful, yes; but original? How can something so clearly designed to be the opposite of original be considered so? The iPad was made a dozen times before it was made, just like the Bic. It will enjoy long-lasting popularity and be an iconic product for a long time, like the Bic. And like the Bic, it has no claim to its shape. Its shape, like the pen, the chair, the cup, was determined by necessity, and Apple made sure that apart from a few very small features, its shape was determined solely by necessity. That’s not an easy thing to do, and the result (like all good design) speaks for itself. Apple is reaping the rewards, but they must acknowledge that they don’t own the shape which larger forces than themselves imprinted on their work. Apple’s allegations regarding UI poaching are more realistic. For a touch-based interface, we don’t yet have a type, a Platonic form, as evidenced by all the experimentation and evolution we see every month in apps, OSes, concepts, and so on. Imitation is obvious when the slate (so to speak) is so substantially blank. And I am not oblivious that there are certain little design flourishes that set the iPad apart from a totally undesigned device. These were intentionally kept subtle and few in number. It’s these that other companies should feel ashamed of being caught copying. What can companies like Samsung and HTC do when every tablet they build has the same foundation as Apple’s? They can make real design decisions. If they inherit the design (with minor alterations) from a competitor, and someone else makes the OS, what exactly are they contributing? The placement of the power button? That’s not to say they can’t make a perfectly nice tablet, but if they want to be held apart as a truly different device, they need to take a risk. Apple was first on the field and very pointedly took no risks in design — the risk they took was in offering the device at all. Why not take Apple up on its suggestions? No bezel, not thin, non-rectangular shape? Accept the challenge and make Apple eat their words. It’s what they would probably do if the situations were reversed. It’s all impossible until someone does it. It’s a period of imitation whether you’re ally or enemy to Apple, because they built the mother of all tablets, or as close as they could manage, and everyone else’s devices look like its children whether they are or not. It will take time for the family tree to grow and differentiate. Apple is in the enviable position of being able to claim they invented the wheel (and patented it), and will take everyone to task for their circles until someone makes something truly new.
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| Indonesian Government Threatens BlackBerry Services Over “Security Reasons” Posted: 09 Dec 2011 01:16 PM PST  Indonesia’s telecoms regulatory agency, the BTRI, has told the Jakarta Post that they may have to shut down RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger and Internet services after the company declined to establish BBM servers within the country. RIM opted to put its servers in neighboring Singapore, for reasons not described in the article. BTRI says it must do this because “the data exchanged is not safe.” Anyone can see through this transparent excuse for bullying RIM — they’re not the first to try it. Saudi Arabia and India recently made similar threats, though they were more forthcoming about their reasons. They wanted the power to monitor the transmissions, and chances are Indonesia does too. The trouble is simply that the BBM data is all handled in Canada in RIM’s datacenters, and without a local node on Indonesian, Saudi Arabian, Indian, or other soil, those governments have almost no authority over the information. Naturally it’s in a government’s interest to be able to monitor its citizens, though of course the citizens (including private companies with international dealings) would prefer privacy, and RIM’s duty is to its customers. That isn’t to say it hasn’t caved before. It has provided some private information to governments when they have requested it, though they maintain they have no way of monitoring or prying into private messages. Indeed, a server in Indonesia would only place encrypted data in the government’s possession, and they would still have to obtain the key from the account’s owner by normal means. It’s one more problem for RIM to add to the list, and an increasingly popular one globally. Whether Indonesia will actually sabotage its own populace, among which (as it points out itself in its complaint to RIM) there are far more BlackBerry users than in Singapore and other nearby countries, is not clear. This kind of petty brinksmanship tends to drag on publicly and yield to compromises. But situations like this are becoming common as global communication becomes more and more relevant to national security and economic well-being. Sooner or later there will have to be some kind of international accord, or every country in the world is going to make similar demands.
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| HP’s Whitman: We’ll Make WebOS-Powered Tablets In 2013 Posted: 09 Dec 2011 12:01 PM PST  Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman finally announced the fate of operating system WebOS this morning, after the company previously announced that it was ceasing the development of all smartphones and tablets running Palm's webOS platform. The actual software’s fate was yet to be determined. HP said today that it will be making the webOS code open source. We sat down with Whitman and HP board member Marc Andreessen to speak about this news and what it means for the company. “We are so excited about webOS and realized that the very best thing to do is to open source the technology, contribute to it and invest in it,” she explains to TechCrunch. “We will harness the power of the community to make this a better alternative to to other operating systems.” HP said today that developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions of WebOS into the marketplace. HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for WebOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space. You can see Whitman’s full memo to HP employees here. So what about tablets and WebOS? Andreessen says that because of the open source model, we’ll have a future with webOS-powered tablets and says HP will be one of those companies that will develop webOS tablets. Whitman says this may not happen in 2012, but will probably take place in 2013. She alluded to this a few weeks ago but it is certainly interesting that HP is going to be developing future hardware products on the WebOS operating system. UPDATE: HP wanted to clarify that Whitman said HP could make WebOS-powered tablets in 2013. While we know that HP is ceasing development of WebOS in phones, it’s interesting that the company is continuing to bet on the OS in tablets. In 2012, Whitman is planning for a Windows 8 tablet. “We’ll continue to invest in the existing tablet ecosystem” and in the near term “will bet heavily with Windows.” As my colleague Matt Burns wrote recently, HP is looking better under Whitman’s leadership after having a rough patch. After taking the helm, Whitman decided to keep the Personal Systems Group within HP. The company then beat Wall Street's estimates in the fourth quarter. With respect to whether HP can be a consumer and an enterprise company, Whitman believes that the company can continue to do both and says that the company’s current strength is that it is able to be successful in both product areas. “If you ask any guy on the street about what HP is known for, it would be computers,” she says.
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| In An Internal HP Email, Meg Whitman Assures webOS’ Best Days Are Still Ahead Posted: 09 Dec 2011 11:43 AM PST  HP just took to the wire and announced to the tech world that webOS will live on as an open source project. Shortly thereafter, Meg Whitman informed HP employees about the decision. The internal email I obtained, which is included in its entirely after the jump, gives a bit more insight than HP’s public press release including Meg’s feeling that webOS will continue to grow and this is a postive move for HP and webOS alike. Whitman’s email indicates that the HP leadership team saw webOS could be “a platform that is both open and has a single integrated stack.” By making webOS open source, HP’s short-lived OS neatly fulfills this desire. However, like the company already stated, talk of new hardware is nearly absent from the email besides stating “hardware manufacturers” (read: HP is done) will be able to continue to “contribute” webOS. The TouchPad was likely the last of the HP-branded hardware — unless of course the open source community turns webOS into a magnificent creation worthy of new hardware.
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| HP To Keep webOS Alive By Making It Open Source Posted: 09 Dec 2011 10:39 AM PST  Well, there we have it. After weeks of deliberation, HP CEO Meg Whitman has just announced to all of the company’s employees that HP will make webOS’s underlying code available under an open-source license. Before I go any further, I’d like to take this chance to applaud HP on making the right decision: they managed to make some lemonade after all. According to a company-wide email from Whitman, making webOS open source “is the best way to ensure the benefits of webOS are accessible to the largest possible ecosystem.” A new release from the company goes into slightly more detail: HP will help “accelerate the open development of the webOS platform,” and “will be an active participant and investor in the project.” The rest is up to webOS developers, who are now able to pick up where the personal computing giant left off. While the news will certainly be welcomed by webOS enthusiasts (myself included), let’s not forget that HP sunk over $3 billion dollars into the webOS experiment before ultimately giving it away for free. Still, I’m sure HP has picked up some much-needed brownie points from webOS users whose devices have suddenly been given a new lease on life. Of course, with that shift toward open source, drastic changes will almost definitely be made to the company’s existing webOS team. AllThingsD reports that no official word has yet been handed down about staff rearrangements, but webOS’s smaller role in the company’s future means less manpower will be devoted to it. Meanwhile, HP has remained quiet on the hardware front. After former CEO Leo Apotheker give standalone webOS hardware the axe, it was widely rumored that HP would find a home for the wayward operating system on their scores of printers. It’ll be interesting to see if the landscape shifts now that third-party hardware vendors have access to yet another open source OS, but for now we can rest assured that webOS will indeed live on in one form or another. And hey, now you should feel a bit more comfortable about picking up some of the $99 TouchPads HP is throwing on eBay this Sunday — they should have a bright future after all.
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| Posted: 09 Dec 2011 10:10 AM PST  The Meizu MX is an odd duck. A Chinese-only smartphone that may (or may not) be reaching our shores, it’s hard not treating it like an oddity washed up on the beach rather than a shipping device. It is a 1.4GHz phone with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage and has an 8-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi support, and GSM/GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/HSPA+ built-in. It also has a micro SIM slot (which is putting a damper on my testing right now) and micro USB port. It will cost about $450 in Asia when it’s launched January 1st. That it arrived at my home in a DHL box straight outta Hong Kong, however, suggests that there will be some US availability. This should be pleasing to folks who want a powerhouse Android phone that looks strikingly unlike any of these huge-screened, battery-hogging RAZRs, Galaxies, and LTE devices that are currently littering the phone landscape. The obvious comparisons are, well, obvious, so I won’t go into them here. In short, this phone looks strikingly similar to another well-known cellphone until you turn it on. The screen is pixel-dense – 960 x 640 of them, to be exact – and beautiful and Meizu has a patented indicator system that changes the two “buttons” below the screen based on phone state. For example, when the left button is supposed to send you back, it turns into an arrow while at the home screen it is a sigle, simple dot. The phone will get an Ice Cream Sandwich update in the next few weeks (at least according to Meizu) and the current os, a modified Android 2.3.5 called Flyme, is a strange departure from the standard experience. For example, there is no clear “apps” screen and instead apps appear on the “desktop,” much like another phone we all know and love. In the Darwinian world of Android phones, the Meizu MX is a highly-evolved device that should make Android fans’ mouths water. I’ll take a closer look over the next few days and report back and here’s hoping it hits our shores this year. Click to view slideshow.
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| TechCrunch Gift Guide 2011: Best Toys Posted: 09 Dec 2011 09:14 AM PST  If you’re an Aunt, Uncle, Grandfather, Grandmother, Godmother, Godfather, Foster Parent, or just plain old mommy or daddy, you might have some kids on your holiday shopping list. These are some interesting toys that I’ve come across this year and all have a certain high-tech edge that adults and kids alike can enjoy.
Nerf Vortex – From $23 – The Nerf vortex guns are on improvement over the previous dart-based guns that were so popular with cubicle dwellers and college kids everywhere. These guns shoot small soft disks are quite accurate at a distance. You can hold multiple disks per clip and shoot them like Rambo at targets and – this is not recommended – your sister. They range in size and price so be sure you know how the intended recipients parents feel about heavy artillery before you pick this up. Mindflex Duel – $74.99 – I played with Mindflex Duel a few times already and came away slightly nonplussed but impressed at the technology that goes into this complex and cool game. Both players wear wireless headsets that “sense” your thoughts allow you to move a floating ball forward and back along a set track. The challenge comes in getting the ball through various hoops and holes and keep it aloft with your thoughts alone. It’s one of those games that are cool with you first open it and then may seem a bit less interesting over time, which should give potential purchasers pause, especially considering the price. Check it out online and decide for yourself if you want to control a soft foam ball with your brain. Lite Sprites – From $15 – There aren’t many high tech toys for girls so I was especially pleased when I found the Lite Sprites. These twee plastic fairies light up in multiple colors that are controlled by a magic wand that can actually sample colors from various services. For example, you can place the bottom of the wand on a piece of colored paper and the LEDs in the top will attempt to re-create that color by mixing shades. Does it always work? No, but it’s pretty cool when it does. With the larger playsets you can actually send the sample colors to internal LEDs, lighting up the entire playset to match the wand.
Perplexus Epic – $30 – This toy is amazingly simple and amazingly addictive. It’s essentially a 3-D maze inside a ball. To solve it, you run a small metal BB through the various holes, tracks, and moving cups, without letting it fall off. It’s a fun thinking toy for kids who like to concentrate on puzzles rather than run around the dining room table screaming the lyrics to Disney songs. For some extra inspiration on all things gifty, check out the rest of our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide here.
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| Meet ePawn Arena: The Screen That Wants To Make Gaming Personal Again Posted: 09 Dec 2011 09:10 AM PST  At the risk of sounding a little old-fashioned, ePawn CEO Christophe Duteil thinks that there’s something missing with the way people play games these days. Modern gaming lacks “conviviality” — the sensation of revelling with good company. His vision of gaming aims to bring people into the same physical space once again, an experience that has become less relevant thanks to fat data pipes and networked consoles. To that end, Duteil and his team at ePawn are slaving away on the ePawn Arena: a Microsoft Surface-esque screen that aims to bring gamers back into the same room by adding a modern twist to an classic idea. In essence, the ePawn Arena is a big screen that is capable of interacting with the physical pieces that sit on top of it. Up for a rousing game of air hockey? Break out the ePawn-compatible paddles and have at it. Or how about a little fantasy-RPG action? There are parts for those too. Curiously, the screen itself doesn’t have computing components in it — rather, it relies on the horsepower from the smartphone (or computer) you connect it to. According to CTO Valentin Lefevre, the Arena employs a sub-LCD tracking layer that is capable of detecting the ePawn tags attached to their game pieces. ePawn is planning on reaching out to big-name game development studios like Ubisoft, but doesn’t want to leave the little guys out too: iOS and Android SDKs are in the works, so developers of all stripes will soon to able to make ePawn-friendly apps. If the concept sounds a little familiar, that’s because they’re not the first to explore the nexus between physical parts and software. Microsoft’s Surface is a prominent example, but Disney Mobile has recently released AppMates, a multimedia play experience that allows players to explore some of Disney’s worlds by manipulating a physical piece on top of the screen. I referred to it as an “interactive playmat,” but with the screen measuring only 10 inches diagonal, calling it a “mat” may have been a bit of a stretch. Duteil certainly agrees with me here — according to him, that sort of setup isn’t ideal for the avid gamer. It’s too small, too constraining for multiple people to enjoy. That’s why ePawn has decided to go big with the display — the way they see it, bigger displays mean room for more people. The current prototype kicking around ePawn’s Paris headquarters comes in at 23 inches across (which made a splash at this year’s E3), but Duteil tells me that the production model is even bigger at 26 inches. What’s even more impressive is the price point they’re aiming to launch at: $400. The company hopes to pick up more steam at CES 2012, and aims to launch soon afterward. While chatting with Duteil and Lefevre, they kept repeating the same phrase over and over: the ePawn system is “designed by gamers, for gamers.” While it easily has potential as a nascent marketing mantra, these guys really seemed to mean it. For them, ePawn is a labor of love — it may well stay just that too, because the jury is still out on whether or not a market for something like this exists. While much cheaper than a device like Microsoft and Samsung’s new Surface display table, $400 is a non-trivial amount for most gamers, and I’d imagine that most of them would rather spend it on something a little less flash-in-the-pan. ePawn’s own website describes the the Arena as an “investment,” and Duteil tells me that while the Arena could certainly find use in the business sector (think “digital whiteboards” for collaborative training), it’s primarily targetted at tech-savvy families. So, in TechCrunch parlance, will it fly or die? As a hardcore board game nerd, there’s something strangely appealing about the marriage of old and new as seen in the Arena. There’s definitely potential for the Arena to go far, but it’s very early in the game for ePawn: they’ll need developers to make compatible games, and enough buyers to make the whole endeavor worthwhile. Still, if Duteil and his team play things right, it could be a big win for both them and fans of playing games in person.
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| Apple Loses Big Against Motorola In Germany (Update) Posted: 09 Dec 2011 07:20 AM PST  Apple has lost a preliminary injunction filed by Motorola Mobility over a wireless-related patent. That’s not something we’re hearing a lot of these days, but it seems to be the case over in Germany, where a judge in the Mannheim Regional Court has ruled that the iPhone and iPad (3G versions) infringe European Patent 1010336, covering a “method for performing countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system.” By now all this patent litigation has likely become tiresome to you, as it has most of us, but this is actually a pretty substantial win for Motorola, and an equally substantial loss for Apple. The loss means that an injunction on all the old iPhones, (probably the 4S, as well) and 3G-capable iPads is preliminarily enforceable against Apple Sales International, which is Apple’s Ireland-based subsidiary. Motorola has already secured a similar ruling before, but it neglected to give Apple the chance to present its case. This ruling, however, came after both Apple and Motorola presented their full arguments. That said, Apple has very few options to stop the ban. They will likely try to get a stay to appeal the ruling, but it’s unclear whether or not that suspension will be granted. The ruling also allows for Apple to remove the allegedly infringing technology from its products, but that seems impossible. The patent in question covers technology that seems to be crucial to the functionality of the phone. Even if it wasn’t, it’s probably not commercially viable for Apple to remove it. But it gets trickier than that. For one thing, enforcing this injunction is a bit of a risk for Motorola. The judge has allowed for Apple to receive a €100 million bond, which would go toward damages sustained during the injunction, should Cupertino find a way to overturn this ruling down the road. Then there’s the matter of FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing, which comes into play here since the patent in suit falls under the GPRS data standard. But Germany deals with FRAND issues a little differently. Basically, if a company is found to be using FRAND-style patented technology in its products, the court can only allow that company a FRAND defense if it’s made “an irrevocable, binding offer” to license the patents on FRAND terms and also post a bond for ongoing royalties, reports FOSS Patents. Apple did make an offer, to license all of Motorola’s FRAND-pledged patents, but threw in a clause that drifts away from the idea of “irrevocable” and “binding.” The issue is that Apple wants to argue the validity of the patent in question, which would mean those royalty payments would fly out the window. The court in Germany agreed with Motorola when it argued that the offer Apple made to license the patents was shy of what is needed to cover damages. That said, Motorola can license these patents to Apple moving forward, but Apple will have to cough up the dough for past infringement. Update: Apple has responded, saying it will indeed appeal the court’s decision. Here’s the official word:
Here’s a full copy of today’s ruling (but brush up on your German first):
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| Barnes & Noble Has Shipped One Million Nook Tablets, Industry Report States Posted: 09 Dec 2011 06:59 AM PST  With all the hype around the Kindle Fire it’s easy to forget about the Nook Tablet. The other budget Android tablet is zipping along nicely according to industry watchdog Digitimes. The outlet, citing upstream component suppliers, is reporting that B&N has shipped (note: not sold) one million units since the Nook Tablet’s mid-November launch. Plus, due to strong initial sales, ol’ B&N is increasing its order countering earlier estimates that predicted demand for a B&N tablet would decrease. The Amazon Fire might be the wunderkind of the Android world, but the Nook Tablet isn’t a slouch either. Both the Fire and Nook Tablet are built using the formula of the original Nook Color. By skinning Android with a much more consumer-friendly interface, Amazon and B&N successfully are successfully chipping away at the iPad’s mountain. A much lower price helps as well. The Nook Tablet will never likely eclipse the Kindle Fire in retail sales volume. The Fire already has a massive lead. But the sub-iPad tablet market is largely untapped and the impressive initial sales numbers show consumers want a $200-ish tablet. For example, if this report is correct (it seems very likely), B&N shipped a million tablets in roughly a month while CE giant Asus is predicting to ship just 1.8 million tablets for all of 2011. The iPad has effectively already won the first several rounds of the tablet war. But much like the PC battlefield, there is plenty of room for more than just one vendor. Barnes & Noble is officially a top player.
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| Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Streaming Glee, Sons Of Anarchy Posted: 09 Dec 2011 06:32 AM PST  Amazon Prime Video just got a shot of show tunes in the arm as the retailer just announced an extended licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. Exact terms of the deal including the length of the agreement were not released. But that doesn’t really matter. Glee! Amazon now has Glee! Starting today, Prime members have access to season one and two of FOX’s Glee as a well as the first two seasons of FX’s Sons of Anarchy (season three will be available on Christmas day). Future seasons of both shows will hit the service once they’re available. Amazon is on a roll propping up its Netflix competitor. The addition of these very popular shows adds to Prime Instant Video’s growing collection of videos available to watch instantly on a number of devices including the Kindle Fire and several set-top boxes. Plus, with WhisperSync, viewers can pause the content on one device and resume watching it on another — a big selling point for the Kindle Fire. The Prime Instant Video plan is priced slightly differently than Netflix. Users must sign up for the $79 per year Amazon Prime plan, which includes access to the library of more than 13,000 movies and TV shows, but also nets the buyer free two-day shipping on most Amazon items and a discounted rate for overnight shipping. The company also just announced that Kindle owners who are also Prime members can borrow a book a month through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. As a Prime subscriber myself, I can profess that it’s an amazing service and for better or worse, will make you addicted to Amazon’s service. Plus now there’s Glee! Lots and lots of Glee! (Full disclosure: I haven’t watched Glee in over a year and my life is better because of it.)
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| KOBOT: Japanese Company Shows Transformable, Smartphone-Controlled E-Cars (Video) Posted: 09 Dec 2011 06:30 AM PST  Japan-based Kowa Tmsuk may just be ten months old and just have five employees (it’s a joint venture between two larger companies), but it seems the company is set to build cool things. Their electric vehicle concept, dubbed KOBOT, looks very promising – especially for a first product. The KOBOT is essentially a mix between a robot and an electric mini car that can make itself smaller than it already is with the push of a button (a feature that obviously comes in handy when it’s time to park the vehicle, for example). What’s cool is that the cars can be connected to smartphones: they actually start folding after owners push the button on their handsets. Kowa Tmsuk has built three prototypes (see below) to showcase at the Tokyo Motor Show 2011 (which currently takes place).
This video from Diginfo TV provides more insight (try to focus on the cars):
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| Posted: 09 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST  Here are some recent stories from TechCrunch Gadgets: A New Tokyoflash Pocket Watch For The Tubercular Steampunk Dandy In Your Life Up Close With A 3D-Printed Card Skimmer New Apple Patent Describes Kinect-Style Control System 2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Nook Tablet And Kindle Fire Accessories That Are Must-Have
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