Up Close: Solowheel, the 'E-Unicycle?' the 'Pocket Segway?' [video]
Transportation is not something we generally cover here on BetaNews, but sometimes a product will slip through our defenses and end up on the front page because it is interesting, novel, broadly applicable, or simply charming.
Now, Inventec deals in some hokey re-inventions of user-propelled transportation devices: scooters, skates, hydrofoils, and such. Solowheel is a re-invention of the Segway, which is itself a very hokey vehicle, but built on compelling gyroscopic balancing technology and eco-friendly energy consumption.
Hands-on: Android-powered Smart Camera from Polaroid [video]
Like Kodak, film company Polaroid was wrecked by the gradual takeover of digital cameras and demolished by the smartphone taking over the role of the casual/disposable point and shoot.
So Polaroid has embraced Android, and released what is effectively a super high megapixel smartphone without all that pesky communications gear.
Guitar Apprentice: a legit iPad guitar [video]
I've been saying it for almost three years now...the iOS app ecosystem has truly changed the music industry. Nearly everything you needed to do in order to be a working musician you could do in some way with your iPhone/iPod/iPad.
And that was before the core MIDI spec was rolled out.
Hands-on: Intel's Android smartphone reference design [video]
Leading PC chipmaker Intel shook the Consumer Electronics show on Monday with the announcement that its Atom processors will be shipping in Android-based smartphones by Motorola and Lenovo in the second half of the year.
“The best of Intel computing is coming to smartphones,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini in a statement on Monday. “Our efforts with Lenovo and Motorola Mobility will help to establish Intel processors in smartphones and provide a solid foundation from which to build in 2012 and into the future.”
Hands-On: Android 4.0 devices hook up to any HDTV with MHL [video]
Last week, when Roku debuted the Smart Stick, essentially a set-top-box in a USB stick form factor, I made a point to seek out products at the Consumer Electronics Show that utilize the Mobile High-definition Link (MHL) standard that the Roku Smart Stick uses. Fortunately, I found representatives from the MHL Consortium who were more than happy to show how easy it is to connect an Android device to an MHL-compatibile television, and witness the uncompressed MHL experience first hand.
As of right now, there are about 50 devices (smartphones, televisions, tablets, etc) that support MHL; with the majority of them coming from South Korean CE leader Samsung.
Qualcomm's Mirasol color e-readers are real, in production, and awesome
Leading Chinese E-reader maker Hanvon is the company to watch if you're interested in energy efficient color e-reader display technology. Last year, the company debuted the world's first color e-reader using E Ink's color E Paper display, and today, Qualcomm announced that Hanvon has created the thinnest e-reader yet to use Qualcomm's MEMS-based Mirasol display technology.
We've been eagerly awaiting Mirasol's commercial arrival for two years, and little appeared to change between the 2010 and 2011 Consumer Electronics shows. Both times, Qualcomm turned up with a dummy unit that had no real software to interact with, that simply ran a demo video. This year, it's all changed. There are now three major companies pushing Mirasol e-readers in Asia, and we finally get to see how well they work.
Hands-on with the One Laptop Per Child XO-3 tablet [video]
At CES 2012, semiconductor company Marvell has shown up at the center of two major projects that shifted from x86-based systems to ARM-based systems. In both cases, it has also been a project that Intel had withdrawn from: Google TV, and One Laptop Per Child.
Marvell's Google TV platform announcements came quickly and with little forewarning; but its OLPC participation has been long-running and easy to track. At CES 2011, we saw the OLPC XO 1.75 running on Marvell's Armada 610 chipset. The company announced this week that those devices ship worldwide in March 2012.
Android apps come to Windows 8 before Windows 8 comes to you
Our friends at BlueStacks have done it again. Tuesday, the Android virtualization software company announced that they have ported the BlueStacks App Player to Windows 8 for use on ultrabooks and tablets powered by x86 processors.
BlueStacks App Player has only been available for the last three months in an early alpha/pre-beta format for Windows 7, Vista, and most recently XP.
Sony shows off 4G Xperia Ion, bound for AT&T this year
It could definitely be argued that Sony is one of the few consumer electronics companies perfectly suited for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. They have lots of different branches working on diverse technologies, but all with the consumer in mind; from stereo equipment to cameras to computers to TVs to video games.
As such, they don't necessarily time all of their different product lines to have a major announcement for CES, so it's easy to pick out the new stuff and hold it in one hand.
Nokia unveils Lumia 900 LTE Windows Phone for AT&T
Nokia's big announcement for CES was all about the United States. Specifically, the Finnish mobile phone company announced the first Nokia Windows Phone designed for the United States: the Nokia Lumia 900.
The Lumia 900 is nearly a clone of the Lumia 800, but with a couple of the features that Americans had complained were missing, a forward-facing camera, and 4G LTE connectivity.It has the same one-piece carbon polymer case (optionally in bright cyan), the same Carl Zeiss optics, and the same Windows Phone 7.5 operating system.It's powered by a 1.4 GHz applications processor, and has an 1800 mAh battery.
Monster debuts Android, iOS, Windows Phone app for home power control
CES Press Day is also known as the day of back to back press conferences, when journalists are served a giant hype sundae topped with sprinkles of actual news.
It's an important day for companies to tell the consumer electronics press (and by extension, consumers) what to expect from them for the year, so at every CES, I spend the day darting in and out of rooms and trying to keep up with the deluge of announcements.
Ultrabooks creep out in advance of CES 2012
We're just a few days away from another installment of the annual International Consumer Electronics Show, where thousands of companies from all over the world come to show off their wares for the new year.
One of the device types everyone is expecting to see a lot of this year is the Ultrabook, or the ultra thin and light notebook class that Intel classified just about nine months ago.
Box rolls out big feature upgrade to Android app
Cloud storage and collaboration service Box has rolled out the 1.5 update to its Android application on Thursday, adding three big new features to the mobile app which take advantage of Android's unique capabilities.
First, the application now includes a homescreen widget that shows whenever a file is updated by a collaborator, and it launches files direcly without having to take the additional step of launching the Box app.
Barnes and Noble: Nook is doing so well that it can be spun off
National bookstore chain Barnes and Noble announced on Thursday that is considering a spin-off of its digital content business surrounding the Nook e-book software platform and its related hardware. The company says the Nook digital business is expanding so strongly that it could be separated from Barnes and Noble's other business units and operate on its own.
"We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our NOOK business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value,” William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble said in a statement on Thursday. “In Nook, we’ve established one of the world’s best retail platforms for the sale of digital copyright content. We have a large and growing installed base of millions of satisfied customers buying digital content from us, and we have a NOOK business that’s growing rapidly year-over-year and should be approximately $1.5 billion in comparable sales this fiscal year. Between continued projected growth in the U.S., and the opportunity for NOOK internationally in the next 12 months, we expect the business to continue to scale rapidly for the foreseeable future.”
Google will debut new Google TV at CES 2012
Semiconductor company Marvell announced on Thursday that the next generation of Google TV will be powered by the Marvell Foresight Platform and its Armada 1500 HD Media system-on-a-chip, and that we'll be getting a first look at it next week at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Marvell has teamed up with Google and effectively picked up where Intel left off when it quit its short run with Google TV, and moving its Digital Home Group engineers over to Ultrabooks, tablets, and smartphones.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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