Sony outs Lightning-friendly speaker dock in Japan, alarm clock and radio features in tow
Sony may have unveiled a slew of new audio products back at CES 2013, but the company has been relatively quiet when it comes to launching ones that are compatible with Apple's novel Lightning connector. That being said, it looks as if folks in the Land of the Rising Sun will soon be able to pair their current-gen iOS device with a dock from the PlayStation maker, thanks to the recently announced SRS-GC11IP. Pictured above, this little 0.8W speaker isn't loaded with fancy features like Bluetooth 4.0 or WiFi, but it does offer convenient functions such as an alarm clock and AM / FM radio -- these, of course, go along with the ability to also play tunes straight from a Lighting-ready iDevice or, with the proper RDP-NWC11 model, a new-era Walkman and many different smartphones. Whether we'll ever see the as-yet-unpriced tubular peripheral hit other markets, well, that still remains to be seen, with Sony only going so far as to listing it as "coming soon" on its Japanese website.
How does a US carrier get around AT&T's exclusivity of the Lumia 920? Why, it releases an exclusive of its own, of course. News of the Lumia 928 is probably familiar to many of you, which has been rumored (and spotted in inventory systems) as an upscale Windows Phone for Verizon. Now, things just got real, as @evleaks has just released the first glimpse of the Lumia 928, and adorned in black, we're quite sure that Batman would approve. Naturally, Big Red's branding adorns both the front and back of the device, but at least there's a modicum of restraint. This being Nokia's second Windows Phone outing on Verizon, we're crossing our fingers that the phone was spared a beating with the ugly stick. We'll reserve judgment until we can get our grubby mitts on one.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Nokia, VerizonCommentsSource:@evleaks (Twitter)
Read More ...Rumors suggest Austin, Texas is next up for a Google Fiber rollout
The major problem most of us have with Google Fiber is that we can't get it, but that could change soon for residents of Austin, Texas. According to reports by VentureBeat and KVUE News in Austin, invites are going out for an event on Tuesday at 11 AM put on by Google and the city. Anonymous sources indicate that's where the two will announce plans to bring the TV and high speed internet hookup's plans for expansion Until we hear differently however, Google Fiber's rollout is still only confirmed for the Kansas City area, so plan your living arrangements accordingly.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, GoogleCommentsSource:Venture Beat, KVUE
Read More ...Visualized: Sergey Brin rides pink Teslamobile Model S, complete with Chromed out rims
Some of the discussion about Facebook Home since its debut yesterday has related to concerns that it gives the social network too much access to user's information, and now Facebook has responded. Its blog post specifies that Home is subject to the same controls as everything else in a user's Facebook account. It states that Facebook will not track user's location any differently than the existing app, and while it could see what apps are launched, it can't observe what actions are taken within them beyond the already existing Facebook API hooks. As far as information that is collected, it will have a list of apps that are in the Home launcher, and tracks data including which apps are responsible for notification, which is kept identifiable for up to 90 days.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google, FacebookCommentsSource:Facebook Blog
Read More ...Reuters: Media exec Peter Chernin bid $500 million for Hulu
Since the sun came up today it must mean that Hulu is up for sale, again. The latest extension to the sale rumors for the video streaming site is one from Reuters citing anonymous sources that indicates Peter Chernin, a former News Corp exec and Hulu board member has submitted a $500 million bid. There's no word on how big a stake he'd be interested in taking, but that's significantly lower than the reported $1.9 - $4 billion bids received from Dish and Google when the site was up for sale back in 2011. Of cours,e any sale price may vary on whether or not the acquisition come content included, but either way, we'd expect a few more possibilites to pop up before something (or nothing, like last time) happens. Of course, Peter Chernin was one of the folks pushing for a shorter theater to home release window and more TV on the Xbox, both of which have come to fruition in one form or another -- maybe he can make a deal happen.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HDCommentsSource:Reuters
Read More ...Engadget Podcast 338 - 04.05.13
Once again, HTC has a new phone. This time, however, with a difference -- it's got Facebook all up in your... launcher. Bundle in a new gaming console, a possible tablet revision from Google, Dell news and some carrier tidbits, and we'd say you've got a pretty well stocked news spread. Enjoy.
Hosts: Tim Stevens, Peter Rojas, Ben Gilbert
Producers:James Trew, Joe PollicinoHear the podcast:
Filed under: PodcastsComments
Read More ...The Daily Roundup for 04.05.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.Comments
Read More ...OUYA promises improved responsiveness, simplified game installs for June retail launch
The OUYA's off to a rough start, with reviewers -- us included -- encountering button sticking and faceplate issues with the controller, and a variety of complaints about the $99 game console's OS software. A variety of backers also received their console in the mail with the controller's removable faceplates already removed, having slipped off during shipment. OUYA's addressing at least some of these concerns by the console's June 4th launch, company CEO Julie Uhrman promises in a letter to backers on OUYA's official site.
"Our software is constantly evolving," Uhrman says. As such, OUYA has "a host of features" that it's working on adding to the console ahead of its impending retail launch: "external storage for games, simpler game install process, more metrics for developers, controller support for video players, and more payment options." But first, Uhrman says her team is "focused on optimizing the performance of our software (this mean responsiveness)," directly addressing criticisms of the console's seeming lag between input and on-screen response. As for the controller, OUYA is "considering adding additional magnets" to help with the faceplate issue -- the controller's faceplates are attached via six magnets apiece, currently. It's unclear if the controller will change in any other significant ways ahead of the console's retail availability, but we're hopeful that the button sticking issue is also addressed.
Filed under: Gaming, Software, HDCommentsSource:OUYA
Read More ...Editorial: The imperialism of Facebook Home
Business battles are often ecosystem battles, in which brands develop a matrix of conveniently connected products and services, in an attempt to lock customers into a dependency. Offline companies follow this tack (think razors and blades). But the internet, with its many connection nodes, crossovers to tangential realms and parallel on-ramps is where ecosystem wars are most elaborately waged.
Only rarely do market conditions cultivate a broader ambition in which a company has a chance to step beyond mere ecosystem competition to a higher level of sovereignty. Facebook's imminent release of Home represents a stab at that rare imperialism.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, HTC, FacebookComments
Read More ...The After Math: Facebook finds a new Home, robot hands get cheaper and the Bluths are backWelcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages
It's finally Friday, and while the week kicked off with one too many April 1st efforts, the big news for TAM this week is a release date for the Netflix-exclusive fourth season of Arrested Development. Nothing else should matter, but if you think it does, Facebook finally showed off their new game plan for mobile and HTC appeared from the sidelines with a new phone to house it. According to some, Windows Phone has also started to claim a less embarrassing share of the smartphone market too. We crunch and spit out the numbers after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Robots, Internet, Alt, Microsoft, HTC, FacebookComments
Read More ...Boeing 787 completes battery testing, ready for re-evaluation by FAA
Boeing's Dreamliner finally appears ready for the FAA to give it another shot. After being grounded in January the 787 has undergone numerous tweaks and refinements to improve the safety and reliability of the aircraft. The finaltest before submitting to the federal regulatory body for commercial approval was this morning's flight, which included a new battery system built by GS Yuasa Corp. After a roughly two-hour journey that began at 10:39am in Washington, the company reported that the upgraded batteries performed "as intended during normal and non-normal flight conditions." The next step will be submitting the proposed changes to the FAA, which will then decide if the proposed fixes are enough to return the jet to active duty. A two day hearing is set for April 23rd, at which point the fate of this current incarnation of the 787 will be decided.
Filed under: TransportationCommentsSource:Bloomberg
Read More ...Google's Blink engine (gently) hints at a more streamlined future for Chrome
Word that Google had decided to fork WebKit and build its own rendering engine is still echoing through the spidery halls of the internet. The true ramifications aren't entirely clear yet, but Opera has pledged to embrace Blink and WebKit is already talking about removing Chrome-specific code from its repositories. This doesn't necessarily indicate a seismic shift in the industry, but it certainly suggests that we won't be looking at a world so thoroughly dominated by the direct descendant of KHTML. At least at first, the new entrant won't actually deviate much from WebKit. Primarily the focus will be on stripping away unnecessary code and files to streamline the rendering engine specifically for Chrome. Obviously, this won't prevent other developers from using Blink, since the project is open source. But Google has been pretty up front about the rationale behind the fork -- the multi-process architecture favored by Chromium-based projects is quite different than that used in other WebKit browsers. This has, to put it in the plainest terms possible, kinda gummed up the works.
Blink is about 10 weeks away from landing in the stable version of Chrome (it's expected to be turned on by default in version 28), but it's already available as part of the Canary build. We downloaded the experimental browser and spent some time with it in an effort to identify what, if anything, was different. Keep reading after the break to find out just what Google has bought by shedding some of WebKit's baggage.
Filed under: Internet, Software, GoogleComments
Read More ...Editor's Letter: The social smartphoneIn each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.
There's a good chance 2011's HTC Status, with its portrait QWERTY layout and dedicated Facebook button, never found its way into your social network. That last attempt at the mythical Facebook phone failed to garner much praise, but if social networks gave up so easily, well, we'd all still be using MySpace. HTC and Facebook are at it again, this week launching the $99 First, exclusively on AT&T in the US.
Yes, it's a name every commenter could love (or hate).
Yes, it's a name every commenter could love (or hate), a title cheekily reminiscent of the HTC One. This, though, is a rather different device, aiming more toward the mid-range and relying on some serious social integration to make it stand out. It's the first phone running the Facebook Home interface, which will be available on many devices starting on April 12th. It delivers a far more comprehensive Facebook experience than the previous apps have managed, and intriguingly Zuckerberg himself said that Home is "the next version of Facebook." The end of the web? Stay tuned.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Transportation, Internet, HTC, FacebookComments
Read More ...Alienware X51 gaming PC now available with Ubuntu, starts at $600
While the Alienware X51 has been slated by Valve as a currently available Steambox, consumers still have to get rid of that pesky Windows to install the Linux-driven platform. As we've seen with the Razer Edge, a Windows 8-powered gaming system just doesn't work well for living rooms because it still needs an interface that's not a game controller. Fortunately, that barrier is slowly evaporating as the Dell-owned commodity is now providing Ubuntu as an OS option for the X51, paving the way for easier Steambox modification in the future.
It'll come with Linux-friendly drivers from NVIDIA right out of the box, and you can of course install Steam for Linux on it from the get-go. As a reminder, the X51 is available in Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 models, and can be upgraded to 8GB of RAM with 1TB of storage, with either a NVIDIA GeForce GT545 or a GTX 555 card. Features include HDMI 1.4, eight USB ports (six are 2.0 while two are 3.0), digital 7.1 surround sound, on-board WiFi and gigabit Ethernet. Pricing for the base Ubuntu model is $599, which is about $100 less than its Windows counterpart.
Filed under: Desktops, GamingCommentsSource:Alienware, Dell Community Blog
Read More ...Fisker announces steep layoffs, cuts company down to 25 percent of its workforce
Fisker Automotive has been seeing its troubles go from bad to worse, and its now announced its most drastic steps yet to keep the company afloat. In a statement released this afternoon, the company confirmed that it is making a "significant reduction" in its workforce, which it says will ultimately leave it with approximately 25 percent of its employees -- Bloomberg pegs the number of layoffs at about 160 based on its sources, down from the 200 it employed as of last week. Fisker's statement also notes that the company is continuing its efforts to secure a strategic alliance or partnership, but says it had reached the point where layoffs became unavoidable. As Bloomberg mentions in its report, Fisker has to date only sold 2,500 of its electric vehicles, which have been beset by delays and recalls in recent years.
Filed under: TransportationCommentsSource:Bloomberg, Autoblog
Read More ...T-Mobile carrier update for unlocked iPhones now available, bringing Visual Voicemail and LTE support
We had a pretty clear indication that a carrier update would soon be available to help bring unlocked GSM iPhones onto T-Mobile's network, and those leaks were indeed spot on. The carrier announced today that just such an update is now available, enabling Visual Voicemail and other features (included a promised battery life improvement) on all unlocked GSM iPhones running iOS 6.1, while unlocked GSM iPhone 5s will also get HD Voice and T-Mobile LTE support. Complete details on the update -- which can be installed manually or over-the-air -- can be found at the source link below.
Update: It looks like quite a few folks still aren't seeing the update just yet. Let us know in the comments if you are able to snag it.
Filed under: Cellphones, MobileCommentsVia:PhonedogSource:T-Mobile
Read More ...Oxford University researchers create new 3D printed 'soft material' that could replace human tissue
Water and fat -- those are the two primary building blocks Oxford University researchers have used to 3D print the droplet you see above. Sounds unremarkable until you consider its intended application as a human tissue replacement. By stringing together thousands of these so-called droplets (which measure about 50 microns across) using a custom-built 3D printer, the Oxford team believes it has engineered a "new type of material" that could eventually be used to ferry drugs throughout our internal systems to a specific target site, fill-in for damaged tissues or even mimic neural pathways via specially printed protein pores. The potential applications for medical science are impressive enough, but consider this additional benefit: since the droplets contain no genetic material, scientists can completely sidestep all the ethical red tape surrounding the alternative stem cell approach to artificial tissue. At present, the team's been able to string about 35,000 of the droplets together, but there's no real cap as to how large or even what type of networks can be made. If the money and equipment are willing, this Oxford team can make scifi dreams come true.
Filed under: Science, AltCommentsVia:National GeographicSource:Oxford University
Read More ...Watch this smart foam chair 'grow' and unpack itself
Sometimes we dream. We dream of a world with no more flat-pack furniture, no more obtuse construction manuals and no more missing screws. Smart foam tech might get us closer to those admittedly small-time dreams. Using cross links within the foam's particle arrangement, regardless of how much the structure is compressed, it'll spring back to the predesigned shape. Designer Carl de Smet adds that the product would expand at a set temperature getting a little doughy in the middle, then more solid at room temperature.
He also demonstrates another smart foam structure which changes when a current is fed through it. Electricity provides the heat that transforms the rolled-up structure into a flat one, with the current experimental version taking around five minutes to completely settle. Commercial products which are apparently only about a year to 18 months away and as de Smet details in the video, could land on store shelves in a compacted rolled-up form for "unpacking" back home. These early examples can even be adjusted, if for some reason you suddenly decide you wanted a coffee table, not a chair. Sit back and see how it literally unfolds after the break.
Filed under: Household, Science, AltCommentsSource:BBC News
Read More ...V-Moda's Val Kolton on the Atari 2600, upgrade woes and deep sea expeditions
Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire.
In the latest installment of our weekly bout of answers, the owner and CVO of V-Moda Val Kolton reminisces about rotary dials, programming on the TI-99 and tethering for free burritos. All of the responses await your perusal on the reverse side of the jump.
Filed under: MiscComments
Read More ...NVIDIA Tegra 3 open source code gets early 3D support
It's a given that NVIDIA's Tegra 3 can handle 3D -- unless you've been crafting a fully open source project around the chip, at which point you've been stuck in a flat world. Fresh contributions from Avionic Design's Thierry Reding have brought that extra dimension back, albeit in limited form. His early patches for the Linux kernel enable support for 3D when using the Tegra Direct Rendering Manager driver. There's also a matching Gallium3D driver for us regular users, although it's still young: it can run reference 3D code as of a recent check, but can't produce visible imagery. While it may take some months before everything falls into place, the officially-backed work should make the (slightly aging) chip that much more useful beyond the realms of Android and Windows RT.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, NVIDIACommentsVia:PhoronixSource:Freedesktop.org, Github
Read More ...Boston Dynamics' Petman robot successfully wears clothes (video)
Boston Dynamics has been releasing video after video of its Petman humanoid robot performing a variety of tests, but something has always been missing: clothes. No longer. The company has today released a new video that demonstrates the robot can not only wear clothes, but make you never look at a hazmat suit the same way again. As the company notes, the testing isn't just for Petman -- thanks to some DoD funding, it's using the robot to test suits like this in hazardous conditions, with an array of sensors on the robot itself able to detect chemicals leaking through the suit. Sit down, and head on past the break to see the video for yourself.
Filed under: RobotsCommentsSource:Boston Dynamics (YouTube)
Read More ...Arduino-enhanced guitar promises less typing, more shredding
It's far from the first Arduino-based mod we've seen for a guitar, but this one from David Neevel of the Wieden + Kennedy ad agency may well be the most unique. Apparently tired of having to drop his guitar and pick up a keyboard every time he wanted to send an email, he decided to make the guitar the keyboard, and replace the dull drone of keystrokes with an extended solo. As you might expect, the project comes with a fairly high degree of difficulty, but those interested in trying their hand can find the basics to get started at the source link below, and get a look at what's possible in the video after the break. You're on your own with the moustache.
Filed under: MiscCommentsSource:W + K Blog
Read More ...The Engadget Interview: Tesla's Elon Musk promises more Superchargers, better service, cheaper EVs that don't suck
"It doesn't help to have a car that's cheap, but that sucks." This isn't the sort of direct language that you typically hear from a CEO these days, but this is exactly the kind of material you can expect from Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk. Over the course of our conversation, Musk (who earlier co-founded PayPal and who also heads up SpaceX) went on the record calling journalists who didn't understand the benefits of leases "dumbasses" and pledged that use of the company's Supercharger stations will always, forever and ever, be free. Candid responses such as these are not new for Mr. Musk, having certainly caused some turmoil in the past, and they do make for quite an interesting interview. Join us as we explore why the cheapest Model S was scrapped and we ask just when we can expect the fabled, and truly affordable, third-generation Tesla.
Filed under: TransportationComments
Read More ...Phones4U taking BlackBerry Q10 pre-orders, giving away PlayBooks to first 300 customers (update)
Know what's better than a shiny new BlackBerry Q10? A BlackBerry Q10 with a 64GB PlayBook thrown in for free, and Phones4U is the place to get it. To be clear, the UK retailer has begun taking pre-orders for the BB10 handset with a hardware keyboard today, and the first 300 folks to pledge their money will get one of BlackBerry's 7-inch slates for free along with it. As for the Q10's cost, it's £36 a month on contract or £549.95 SIM-free, with the black model expected to arrive by the end of April and the alabaster version coming in the weeks after.
Update: Should you miss out on the Phones4U deal (or just don't want a PlayBook), you can head on over to the Carphone Warehouse to place your pre-order and get a free Bluetooth speaker to pair with your Q10 instead.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, BlackberryCommentsSource:Phones4U, Carphone Warehouse
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Sony outs Lightning-friendly speaker dock in Japan, alarm clock and radio features in tow
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