Toyota looks set to launch two new Prius models in Detroit, one's a mystery
It's a sure-fire bet that
Toyota will unveil its upright Prius MPV at the North American International Auto Show in a couple of weeks, a rather more roomy and practical version of the hybrid that really started it all. And, of course, the plug-in model we
tested in October will be surely rocking the floor. Now we're hearing that
another as of yet unreleased Prius will be on display, simply referred to as a "Prius concept vehicle." Concept cars of course range from the mundane to the insane, and knowing Toyota we're guessing this one will fall squarely into the former category. Just the same we're hoping for a tire-shredding, slalam-eating, RWD hybrid Prius Supra model. We'll be there in Detroit when the unveil happens and we'll be sure to bring some tissues to wipe away our tears of disappointment.
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FCC proposes rules for NBC-Comcast deal
As you can imagine, the thought of a marriage between a broadband / cable TV service provider and a content provider for television and movies has more than a few folks concerned, which is why it's taken a while for the FCC and its erstwhile chairman Julius "Caesar" Genachowski to draft the conditions under which it would let Comcast
snatch up 51 percent of NBC Universal. According to the
Wall Street Journal, the FCC wants to require that Comcast make any content owned by itself and NBCU available to competitors (including streaming video providers) "at reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms." Additionally, Comcast will be barred from prioritizing its own video streams above others or interfering with rival Internet traffic. Of course, without the actual announcement, it's hard to know what impact this will have on everyone involved (especially
Hulu), although with any luck the actual proposal will see the light of day soon enough. Even then, it will need to be approved, which could happen early next year.
Permalink Ars Technica |
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Thrustmaster T500RS steering wheel unveiled: $599 of Gran Turismo perfection
First the
tease, now the payoff.
Thrustmaster has officially announced the full specs and price for its T500RS steering wheel and pedal set, otherwise known as the official driving simulator for
Gran Turismo 5. The T500RS purportedly lets "users truly feel the emotions experienced by drivers on real racing circuits," though whether this includes feelings of unquenchable anger from being put into the wall at Daytona is unclear. A contactless magnetic sensor system known as HallEffect AccuRate Technology gives gamers sixteen-bit precision input that represents a significant upgrade over the twelve-bit version in the
Ferrari Wireless GT Cockpit 430 Scuderia Edition. Additionally, 1080 degree wheel rotation gives drivers a half-turn more than
Logitech's Driving Force GT, and the system comes with fully adjustable pedals configurable for floor mounted (F1-style) and suspended (GT-style) positions. Slated for a late December or mid January release, depending on your location, the T500RS has a hefty list price of $599.99 MSRP, but how else will you find out what a Bugatti Veyron
really handles like on the 'ring?
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Google's 2010 holiday doodle: its 'most ambitious one yet'
Taken a look at Google's homepage recently? If not, we'd recommend you do so, STAT. The image you see here will only be an active doodle -- a name given to Google's
"special" logos used to commemorate certain events and holidays -- for a few more hours. According to a lengthy report over at the
Wall Street Journal, the Holiday 2010 Doodle is El Goog's "most ambitious one yet," taking five artists some 250 hours to create. Google estimates that it has crafted some 900 doodles since 1998, with a whopping 270 of 'em running in 2010. This particular one relies on 17 interactive portraits of holiday scenes from around the globe, and it took the team a number of months to finally whip up a finished product that everyone was stoked on. We'd encourage you to click around on it to discover what the tiles actually mean, and if you're hungry to learn about the shockingly interesting backstory that surrounds it, the source link has a URL with your name on it.
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Reva's text-to-recharge electric car rolls to a standstill the US
Remember the electric car with the
ingenious hook of a reserve battery that can only be accessed in the case of an emergency by texting or calling the car's manufacturer? Well, it appears that the project is having a bit of trouble getting off the ground in the US, though it shockingly doesn't have anything to do with that flagship feature. As the story goes, upstart Bannon Automotive signed a deal with the car's manufacturer, India-based Reva Electric Car Company, that gave it the exclusive license to manufacture and sell the car in the US, but Bannon is now alleging that Reva broke its agreements and says it's been left with no choice but to take legal action. Ill-conceived feature aside, the stakes in the lawsuit are fairly high, as Bannon Automotive was actually formed with the sole intention of bringing the Reva electric car to the US, and it had hoped to bring as many as 250 jobs to Onondaga County, New York.
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How would you change Nokia's N8?
There's no need to tell you that a lot was (and still is, in a way) riding on Nokia's
N8. It was said to be the outfit's first dead-serious smartphone to rival the giants of today, and it was also Nokia's first chance to truly reveal Symbian^3 to the world. We've already
churned out our two pennies on the matter, but for those of you who bought in, now's the time to get really real. Are you satisfied with where Nokia's going with the N8? Do you seriously see a long and lively future when looking at Symbian^3? If someone (read: UPS) accidentally delivered the keys to the Finnish kingdom to you, how would you go about tweaking and / or reshaping the N8? Would you have selected a different operating system? Added a few more hardware buttons? Thrown in a different processor? Made it available on your carrier of choice? Let us know down in comments below, and keep it sensible -- it's Christmas Eve and all.
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ASUS O!Play Mini player ditches the USB 3.0 but keeps the 1080p
The
O!Play HD2 may be the first media device to support
USB 3.0, but we're guessing that hasn't exactly inspired too many of you to run out and buy the things -- assuming you can actually find one for sale. Maybe a slimmer, shaplier form factor would do the trick. That's the new O!Play Mini, a much more petite entry into the series that makes do with a single USB 2.0 connector along with an SD/MMC/MS/XD card reader up front. Around back are optical audio and an HDMI 1.3 connector, through which it will pump 1080p video and up to 7.1 audio in Dolby Digital AC3, DTS 2.0+, even TrueHD and DTS-HD, plus a variety of other formats. There are also RCA outputs if you prefer your digital steam in audio. File format support looks pretty legendary, including all the usuals plus less commonly supported extensions like MKV, MTS, OGG, and FLAC, even RighTxT subtitles. No word on price or availability yet, but with the HD2 clocking in at $129.99 we wouldn't be surprised to see this slotting in somewhere under $100.
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T-Mobile 4G Mobile Hotspot shows up in FCC courtesy of ZTE
Remember those
rumors earlier this week that T-Mobile was finally getting ready to launch a mobile hotspot or two? Seeing how Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint have all done it, it certainly makes sense -- especially with this newfangled 21Mbps HSPA+ network T-Mobile's got going on -- and sure enough, we've now got concrete evidence of a unit in the FCC's database. The MF61 from Chinese manufacturer
ZTE is pretty clearly labeled "T-Mobile 4G Mobile Hotspot" inside... so yeah, there's your smoking gun. Confidentiality prevents us from seeing the user's manual or a photo of the thing, but from what little we can see, looks like we'll end up with a rounded unit not unlike the variant of the
Novatel MiFi on AT&T and a number of European carriers. Really, though, doesn't matter what it looks like -- as long as it fits in a pocket and blasts high-speed data to a handful of WiFi connected devices of our choosing, that's all we need.
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HTC 7 Pro shows up on O2 Germany's site, promises January launch
HTC had pegged
"early next year" for the
7 Pro's launch in Europe, and when you think about it, January is just about as "early" as you can get. O2's boys and girls in Germany have thrown up a teaser page for the QWERTY-equipped Windows Phone 7 handset, saying it's expected to be available next month -- a promising sign, indeed. Granted, launch dates can always slip, but considering how desperately the world needs some more landscape QWERTY options for WP7, we'd bet it's one of HTC's top priorities to get this thing pushed.
[Thanks, Jens]
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Skype well on the road to recovery, group video calls restored
We almost got to see what Christmas was like before Skype, and it wasn't pleasant. Of course, VOIP and videoconferencing will never replace Grandma Pat's pizzelles, but the technology sure does make pre-holiday planning a lot easier. For its part, Skype hasn't gone into too much detail regarding the nature of
its most recent outage (something about "mega-supernodes"), although as of this writing group video calling appears to be back and CEO Tony Bates has announced that customers will be compensated for the interruption of service with free and pay-as-you-go customers receiving credit for a free 30-minute SkypeOut call to landlines, while paid subscribers will get a free week of service. Keep an eye out on the Skype Blog for further updates, and we'll keep our fingers crossed that this year we won't have to learn what New Year's Eve is like without Chatroulette. As for Skype itself, with the way they've been courting enterprise customers they'll just be happy if this doesn't do too much damage to their impending IPO.
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Nokia E7 hits Amazon: pay $679 and they'll ship it when they've got it
You'll probably be
waiting a few weeks at the very least -- but if you want to put in your order early, Amazon's US site is more than happy to take your name for Nokia's latest QWERTY monster. The
E7 is running a stout $679 -- and that's not through a third party, that's Amazon's direct price for an official American version of the phone with a full manufacturer warranty. Feels pricey to us, but Amazon's pricing tends to fluctuate fairly regularly, so we wouldn't be at all surprised to see this fall a bit by the time the phone actually ships -- and if Espoo announces the rumored
MeeGo-powered
N9 by the time the E7's available, they might need to discount it a
whole lot.
[Thanks, adgg]
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The Engadget Podcast, live at 3PM EST!
It's Christmas Eve, a.k.a. "the holidays," and we're here to kick back with our best cup of hot chocolate (marshmallow-crowned, naturally) and talk about what's really important in life: technology. Check out the stream and the live chat after the break.
P.S. And don't forget that Ustream has
Android and iPhone clients as well, if you're out and about and you can't join in on the Flash-based fun below.
Update: It's over, but we'll have the regular podcast post ready for you tomorrow, wrapped up nicely in a Christmas bow.
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Dutch scientists develop half million euro, 'affordable' super laser
The folks at
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have lovingly referred to their latest contribution to the world of science as the "poor man's X-FEL." An X-FEL, or X-ray Free-electron Laser, is like a super strong video microscope that converts electrons to X-rays to observe high-speed molecular movement. TU/e's super laser alternative depends solely on a very specific bunching of electrons to do the same thing, allowing for a much smaller (it fits on a tabletop), much cheaper setup. With an estimated cost of half a million euro, the laser is hardly cheap, but it's far more affordable than the competition:
Stanford's X-FEL runs hundreds of millions of dollars, and measures a whole kilometer. TU/e researchers admit that their laser can't do everything that an X-FEL can, but, hey, you get what you pay for. Up next for TU/e?
In vitro pork products. Yummy.
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EOps Noisezero i+ Eco earbuds get cornstarch construction, finger-friendly design (video)
Hard to say when (or if) these beauts will ever hit the market, but we've all ideas they'd move quite briskly if positioned in a nondescript kind of store that tends to sell fruit, peripherals and things heavily prefixed with "i." Designed Michael Young has teamed up with
EOps to create the Noisezero i+ Eco Edition earbuds, which are constructed with cornstarch (you know, in honor of Ma Earth), equipped with an iPod / iPhone-friendly inline remote and outfitted with a unique design that purportedly makes it easier for these to be inserted into one's ear canal. We're told that they'll eventually be available in charcoal, rustic brown, midnight blue and sage green, and yes, a carrying case would be included. Too bad there's nary a hint as to where you can actually buy 'em, but the video just below the break will give you a better idea of what to hunt for.
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