Posts Tagged ‘column’
Entelligence: Will Surface ever surface?
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on March 19th, 2010
The Surface concept was great. It was a Windows PC inside a table with a 30" touchscreen on top, and cameras that could sense what's happening on screen. The result is you could use a Surface device just by touching the screen with your finger -- but unlike other large touch screens at the time, Surface was multitouch, so you could use all your fingers at the same time. More importantly, multiple users could engage with each other. It was a PC but didn't look or run like a PC, which was genius -- you'd never know it was running Windows, but there was no development learning curve. It was totally optimized for that big honking touch surface area, and applications that worked with it -- I'm sure it could run Office, but that's not something it's was ever likely to do. Surface was PC evolution happening in real time. It's really something you needed to see up close and in thirty seconds before the light bulb went on. Sadly, most people have never seen or worked with a Surface unit. Beyond a small retail rollout at AT&T stores in NY that seems to have ended, the last time I saw one was the Edelman PR offices, where it sat like a large coffee table and did pretty much nothing.
Continue reading Entelligence: Will Surface ever surface?
Entelligence: Will Surface ever surface? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSwitched On: The 2009 Switchies
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on January 2nd, 2010
The "Sharing is Caring" and the Product of the Year Award goes to the Seagate DockStar, which uses PogoPlug technology from Cold engines. Like the original and recently upgraded PogoPlug device, the DockStar attacks what has been the thorny NAS market with an inexpensive device that allows easy sharing of photos and other files, eliminating tedious uploading. Honorable Mention goes to the Axentra HipServ-powered Netgear Stora, which offers many of the features of Windows Home Server at a fraction of the price of many products using that operating system.
The "Phone So Good It's Smart" Award for Best New Smartphone goes to the Palm Pre, which debuted the well-conceived and elegant webOS. The hardware still needs to match the software with larger screens and a faster processor, but in many ways webOS feels like what the iPhone OS wants to be when it grows up. Honorable Mention goes to the Motorola Droid, which saw a revamped Android paired with a disappointing keyboard, but showed that Motorola is climbing back into the game.
Continue reading Switched On: The 2009 Switchies
Switched On: The 2009 Switchies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsEntelligence: Gartenberg’s best of 2009 in personal tech
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 31st, 2009
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
As the year comes to a close, it seems appropriate to cast my vote for the best (and some of the worst) gadgets I’ve seen. These are my personal choices for products that I felt were best of breed and really managed to differentiate themselves (or didn’t at all). In no particular order, here are my picks and pans.
Best Phones: This was a tricky category, and I’m not breaking it down into different segments. This is just the best on the market in my opinion — no matter how smart it was considered to be, or how well it did in school.
- iPhone 3GS. It was a simple choice. Take the coolest phones on the market, bump up the memory and make it twice as fast. Add in some new features like a digital compass and toss in an ecosystem of 100,000+ apps. Sure, it’s still locked to AT&T but the iPhone is still the phone that many others aspire to be.
- Palm Pre. At this point last year many had written Palm off entirely. Instead of fading away, Palm came back on strong with webOS, a new way of integrating diverse content called Synergy and two devices launched across the globe. Along the way, the Pre garnered much mindshare from consumers, and Palm showed that you don’t need to clone the iPhone to drive the state of the art forward.
- HTC HD2. When Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6.5, there was a chorus of groans about more of the same. HTC took up the challenge and proved that there was more to Windows Mobile than slow devices and resistive screens. The HD2 takes Windows Mobile to places never seen before with a capacitive touch screen, a Snapdragon processor and HTC-created extensions that make multi-touch work the HD2’s gorgeous 4.3-inch display. Wrap it all up in HTC’s Sense UI and you’ve got the best Windows Mobile device on the market today.
Continue reading Entelligence: Gartenberg’s best of 2009 in personal tech
Entelligence: Gartenberg’s best of 2009 in personal tech originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish?
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 28th, 2009
The rumors of Apple doing a phone back then were at about the same fever pitch of the recent Apple tablet rumors. Like the iPhone, the tablet rumors aren't at all new -- in this case we can go back to 2003 for some of the earliest stories about this mythical device. Will Apple introduce a tablet in 2010, as some predict? Will there be in an introduction in January? What features might it have, and how could it be sold and positioned? I'm not going to speculate on those things for two reasons: first, if I don't know, my guess is as good as yours -- and second, if I do know, I probably couldn't tell you anything, could I? Having said that, I find it remarkable that the latest tablet buzz so closely echoes the run-up to the iPhone. Call it déjà vu all over again.
Continue reading Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish?
Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsEntelligence: iSlate or just uWish?
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 28th, 2009
The rumors of Apple doing a phone back then were at about the same fever pitch of the recent Apple tablet rumors. Like the iPhone, the tablet rumors aren't at all new -- in this case we can go back to 2003 for some of the earliest stories about this mythical device. Will Apple introduce a tablet in 2010, as some predict? Will there be in an introduction in January? What features might it have, and how could it be sold and positioned? I'm not going to speculate on those things for two reasons: first, if I don't know, my guess is as good as yours -- and second, if I do know, I probably couldn't tell you anything, could I? Having said that, I find it remarkable that the latest tablet buzz so closely echoes the run-up to the iPhone. Call it déjà vu all over again.
Continue reading Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish?
Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSwitched On: Multi-room music’s rocket ride
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 23rd, 2009
Those approaches, though, now face competition from a new ingredient brand called Rocketboost. While it may sound like a powdered nutritional supplement that Jamba Juice adds to smoothies, Rocketboost uses the second generation of a wireless audio technology dubbed AudioMagic 2G, which developer Avnera claims is the first multipoint to multipoint HD wireless audio platform. Indeed, AudioMagic 2G can support up to five sources and nine receivers -- significantly shy of Sonos's 32 zones, but enough to cover many homes. Each Rocketboost receiver has, at minimum, a button to cycle through active sources, and the standard also supports displays that would enable more flexibility in source selection, particularly AudioMagic 2G has a data channel for sending information about a source and the content it is playing.
Continue reading Switched On: Multi-room music's rocket ride
Switched On: Multi-room music's rocket ride originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSwitched On: Multi-room music’s rocket ride
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 22nd, 2009
Multi-room music has a long history as the province of the wealthy, the corporate, and those with the forethought to build or buy new construction with the structured wiring to support it. But over the past few years a number of companies have tried various wireless technologies to bring multi-room music closer to the masses. Some companies have used proprietary wireless systems while others have used WiFi, and yet others have tried both approaches in different products at different times.
Those approaches, though, now face competition from a new ingredient brand called Rocketboost. While it may sound like a powdered nutritional supplement that Jamba Juice adds to smoothies, Rocketboost uses the second generation of a wireless audio technology dubbed AudioMagic 2G, which developer Avnera claims is the first multipoint to multipoint HD wireless audio platform. Indeed, AudioMagic 2G can support up to five sources and nine receivers — significantly shy of Sonos’s 32 zones, but enough to cover many homes. Each Rocketboost receiver has, at minimum, a button to cycle through active sources, and the standard also supports displays that would enable more flexibility in source selection, particularly AudioMagic 2G has a data channel for sending information about a source and the content it is playing.
Continue reading Switched On: Multi-room music’s rocket ride
Switched On: Multi-room music’s rocket ride originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Switched On: The camcorder strikes back
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 18th, 2009
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
As it often does at its product introductions, Apple took a subtle swipe at the Flip camcorder when it introduced the video camera-equipped iPod nano this fall. The sales volumes of the iPod nano even caused some to proclaim Apple’s revision of the most popular iPod to be a Flip-killer. The inexpensive Flip camcorder has long proven tenacious, however, fending off competition from major brands such as Sony and Kodak, as well as value players like Aiptek and DXG — not to mention nearly every digital camera and cellphone that can shoot video. Besides, the iPod nano has outsold the Flip camcorder many times over; why would Apple care about such incremental competition?
One answer is that the developers of the Flip camcorder (now the Pure Digital division of Cisco) aren’t just hawking a cheap digital geegaw. Even before Pure Digital sold its first “disposable” camcorder, the company understood ecosystems. Back then, that involved installing processing equipment at retailers such as CVS, as the company’s business model relied on getting consumers to develop prints and create DVDs in stores. Since those days, the utilitarian application it originally shipped for transferring videos to PCs has given way to FlipShare , which is clearly designed to be the equivalent of iTunes for video. And more recently, it introduced Flipshare.com to provide its own spin on organizing and sharing videos online, including to devices beyond the PC.
Continue reading Switched On: The camcorder strikes back
Switched On: The camcorder strikes back originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Entelligence: A Google Phone could be the death of Android
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 15th, 2009
It would be a strange turnabout if Mountain View made this move, directly going in the face of previous assurances that Google had no plans to compete directly with Android hardware manufacturers. What's more, there are a lot of unanswered questions here.
Continue reading Entelligence: A Google Phone could be the death of Android
Entelligence: A Google Phone could be the death of Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSwitched On: Apple’s song remains the same
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 8th, 2009
Lala's shifting strategies through the years may have led many to think that its recent acquisition by Apple would represent radical changes to Apple's music approach. Lala lives on a Web page, streams from the cloud, and gives users, including Google search users, one full free play of any song in its library. But Lala's business model was always, at its core, more like iTunes' than any number of streaming music companies -- from the custom radio of Pandora to the subscription downloads of Rhapsody. Those services, however, have long been better at Apple at fostering music exploration when compared with iTunes' 30-second samples.
Continue reading Switched On: Apple's song remains the same
Switched On: Apple's song remains the same originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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