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Electric Car Smashes Record »
When I first heard about this, my response was simple and quick…. WOW! Now, we all know electric cars are pretty cool, and have many benefits for users like saving cash on petrol and doing the right thing for the environment. But, the one criticism people had of the cars was that they weren’t really [...]
Fuel Generating Shock Absorbers »
Forget about the steering wheel, shock absorbers are the most important part of any car. Without them, you would be the stiffest person walking around and your car would fall to pieces within days. The fact that every car needs shock absorbers, and that every shock absorber moves up and down and causes friction means [...]
jWIN licenses Polaroid name, prepares to market »
So you’ve got a company without an all-that-recognizable name, and you really want to ramp it up. What do you do? Well, if you’re jWIN you buy some street cred by striking up a deal with Polaroid, making your products have a connection with a legacy of creativity and innovation that you had nothing to do with. jWIN, producer of inexpensive electronics, just announced that they have entered into a licensing agreement with Polaroid, the film and camera titan that’s fallen onto tough times lately . Obviously, this all comes down to what’s in a name, and jWIN is hoping to leverage the Polaroid brand into the new digital world that Polaroid couldn’t find their own way in. From the press release: PORT WASHINGTON, NY – (December 29, 2009) – jWIN Electronics Corporation, a leading consumer electronics company that brings uniquely styled brand name quality products to consumers worldwide, announced the signing of an exclusive long-term licensing agreement with PLR IP Holdings, LLC, (PLR) owners of the Polaroid brand. jWIN acquired the exclusive rights to produce and market in numerous countries throughout the world an extensive assortment of peripherals for PC’s, console games, mobile phones, audio/video as well as telephones, certain laptop carrying cases and cleaning care accessories starting January 2010. “Polaroid is excited to partner with jWIN, a solid company with proven product development and distribution capabilities in the US and around the world” said Scott W. Hardy, president of PLR.” “We are proud to partner with PLR in this major licensing agreement that will enable jWIN to offer quality Polaroid-branded products by leveraging our core competence of creating award winning innovative products at competitive prices with the global awareness and built-in equity of the Polaroid brand,” says Sean Cho, director of marketing and strategic planning at jWIN. “We thrive in the consumer electronics, peripherals and accessories markets by offering consumers high quality products with innovative designs at smart prices. We look forward to bringing that same value proposition into the new line of Polaroid branded products.” For more information on jWIN products please visit www.jwin.com and www.i-luv.com
The Borderland’s Mad Moxxi Underdome Riot trailer »
Sit back and enjoy a trailer that shows a bit of gameplay of Borderland’s next DLC expansion, Mad Moxxi Underdome Riot . [via Joystiq ]
Yet another new e-book reader – this one looks vaguely familiar »
Looks like 2010 is turning out to be the year of the e-book reader. I’m not sure at what point these are going to stop being news, but here we go again. Insdream is launching the SX601 which seems to borrow some significant design ideas from another rather popular e-book reader . The Insdream does use a different type of screen from the source material (can you say Kindle), but looks pretty much the same otherwise. Insdream states that 6-inch DSTN panel is better then the E Ink display that Amazon uses, however refresh rate is really not all that important when you are talking about e-book readers. Insdream’s reader is also missing a wireless connection and support from the Amazon.com website, however it does have a text to speech in Mandarin Chinese, something that the Kindle does lack. The Insdream supports TXT, HTML, PDF, EPUB, PDB, and several other popular e-book formats. Battery life is expected to be around two weeks of regular reading. I wouldn’t expect to ever see this anywhere other then China, considering the potential for lawsuits, and we have no idea what it’d cost anyway. [via SlashGear ]
Video: OnLive demonstrated at Columbia University »
You remember OnLive , right? The service, which lets you play any game remotely on a distant server, has produced much skepticism and much interest, and is now in public beta . We got a good look at it back in March when we were at GDC, and it appears that things are much the same. However, the combination of crowd noise and my bad playing made for a less-than-optimal viewing experience. This video is much clearer and much longer (it’s essentially a guest lecture at Columbia), so if you’re still interested in the OnLive thing, it may be for you. This video deals with some of the technical issues that have been brought up. I haven’t watched the whole thing (skipped around to get the interesting bits) but he does address some of the compression and packet loss issues they have to deal with. I remember being told it’s about 4-5Mb/s for 720p/60FPS, which actually seems a bit low for streaming video, but with a specialized codec and stream they seem to have made it work, even with tricky bits like crisscrossing lines and slow gradients. They have a routing technique that they claim reduces latency as well, but can they really guarantee
Video: Project Natal playing Half-Life 2 »
It’s not clear what level of approval this leaked video has from Microsoft, but my guess would be that there is plenty of testing like this going to to determine the feasibility of FPS games on Natal. If anything, it looks more awkward than playing with dual analog sticks, but given the right game design, it could work well. Something where precise movement is less important than intuitive interaction (the Penumbra series comes to mind) might just make this fly.
TenYears: Biggest Losers in Tech »
It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “Of the Decade” lists. Winner Loser: Brick and mortar stores Once consumer trepidation regarding e-tailers wore off, it was really only a matter of time before physical stores with limited stock and pushy salespeople bit the dust. Among the fallen we have Circuit City, CompUSA, and Gateway stores among others. Sure, for sundries, your Wal-Mart and Big K are doing just fine, but they also sell sweaters and apples. Best Buy is doing all right, but they’re really the Alamo of tech retailers. Poor bastards know what’s coming to ‘em, too. The combination of low prices, reseller markets, the long tail effect, and the rise of internet literacy among the buying class has resulted in a ridiculous among of growth among the biggest e-tailers. And while I doubt we’re going to see a return of the glorious Kozmo.com, things like Amazon Fresh and Trojan horses like the Nook and Kindle suggest that even further dominance is to come. Runners Up Motorola Around the time of the iPhone being announced, the RAZR was the hottest handset on the market. It was thin as hell, looked futuristic, and did absolutely nothing different from any other phone. In fact, Motorola hadn’t made a phone that did anything different in years. And as things like Blackberrys and semi-smart phones began gaining traction on the mid-range-handset market, Moto continued to put out “improved” versions of the RAZR, or body modifications like the KRZR or whatever. Never mind that the phone was garbage fundamentally, let’s just keep pushing it! No long term plans necessary! They’ve salvaged themselves somewhat with the Droid, but that can’t last long; the Android market is too mercurial. Moto threw away an enormous lead and brand name, and barring a miracle, I don’t see any way they can get it back. RIAA/MPAA What can I say here? These stodgy and litigious institutions continue to dig their grave to this day. A renaissance in media distribution was unfolding before their eyes, and instead of taking the bull by the horns, they sued the audience. Can you think of a worse way to handle the last decade of technological and cultural changes? I can’t. At every turn these Associations (and their counterparts throughout the world) have made the exact wrong choices. Suing children, fabricating numbers, instituting ridiculous DRM schemes — it’s been a decade-long disaster, and when the major labels all fall over dead, I’ll dance on their graves. AOL Let me just say: I appreciate what AOL did. It put a lot of people online. It put them into a weird pseudo-internet, sure, but it broke the ice for millions and familiarized them with the web, e-mail, and A/S/L. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a lot of room for AOL in the new order of things — AOL or the other big services like it. AOL’s role in the world today is much different than what it was, but instead of becoming a powerful brand in itself (like Yahoo!), it has receded into the background. And the fact is that’s because it represents all that was going to go wrong with the internet: it represents the corporate-controlled, content-locked, closely-monitored internet that the big guys would just love to foist on us. Our take Doug : Internet Explorer, both the mobile and desktop versions. At the height of its reign in the middle of the decade, it had over 95% market share. Now that number’s hovering around 65% thanks to Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome and, to a certain extent, Opera (especially on mobile devices). I haven’t personally used Internet Explorer for any significant amount of time in the past three years despite using it for everything in the early part of the decade. It’s mind boggling that Microsoft sat on its hands and watched other browsers eat its lunch for so long. Matt: As much as Toshiba lost in its investment into HD DVD, the consumer lost even more because of the silly format war. All we ever wanted was an easy way to watch high definition content on our HDTVs. Instead we got the HD DVD vs Blu-ray format war that did nothing but confuse the general public and infuriate early adopters. Although the format war definitely caused more people to look take a serious look at digital downloads, which is somewhat of a win for everyone. Nicholas : I’d nominate myself as biggest tech loser of the past decade, but that would sorta violate the spirit of this here category. That aside, I might go so far as to say Sirius XM just based on what the two companies (back when they were two companies) were supposed to be: revolutionary radio~! It very much has lost its appeal, as has radio in general thanks to things like the iTunes Store, Spotify, Pandora, and the less-than-legal sources of acquiring music. Talk radio—Hannity, Limbaugh, Opie and Anthony, Ron and Fez, Howard Stern (I guess, not really a fan) and the like—is obviously a different story;XM channel 202 is the only reason I still bother to subscribe. If O&A and R&F were ever to leave so would I. So yeah, the whole idea of commercial, music radio, specifically Sirius XM and how it/they tried to be different but really aren’t, would be a pretty big loser. Dave : Print media has really taken it in the shorts in the last 10 years. Once considered the first, best, and only way to get your information, people have come to realize that traditional print media is a lumbering dinosaur, trying to keep pace with a fast changing world that they are always 12 hours behind. I do feel sympathy for the old guard, but unless they can learn to evolve quickly, print media will be going out with the baby boomers – because they are the only ones who actually buy newspapers any more. John : Dead tree books. I just bought a Stephen King book – Under the Dome – for the Kindle. My buddy showed me the actual book. It was a 1000 pages long and so horribly thick that it looked overly daunting. When guys like me, guys who like to read, just don’t want to carry around a ream of paper onto the plane, the publishing industry needs to worry. Maybe they’ll get a boost from Mr. Sparky Pants but as Seth Godin writes : Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It’s the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It’s over. I agree and I think books – in electronic form – still have a long and lucrative life ahead of them.
Once again, good design eludes iPhone gaming controller creators »
What’s so hard about this, guys? I mean, obviously you can’t make a controller that works with all the games out there, but if you make a good, cheap, basic one, plenty of developers will add a control option that accommodates it. Instead, we get garbage like the Game Grip and this plastic Batarang-looking thing.
Cydle media player coming to America »
Cydle is launching their new in-car multimedia system at CES this January. Previously only available in South Korea, the Cydle P29 is a portable multimedia player with HD radio and subscription-free Mobile DTV. Cydle is known for their media devices in South Korea, but are relatively unknown here in the U.S. The P29 will sport a 2.9-inch touchscreen interface, and runs on an ARM9 CPU. Reportedly available in 4GB or 8GB, expect to start seeing them this coming spring with an MSRP of $199. [via Electronista ]