Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook.
(Credit: Dell)
Here’s how you know how enamored Dell is with the Netbook concept: it’s volunteered to fight over the trademark on behalf of all other Netbook makers.
On Wednesday the PC maker filed a petition with the U.S. Patent …
In an upsetting — though somehow not surprising — turn of events, it appears that Scholastic and partner company Klutz have ripped off the work of two Makers, Windell and Lenore Oskay. The duo (also known as Evil Mad Scientists) created a charming little droid called a BristleBot which can be easily constructed using the head of a toothbrush, a pager motor, and a tiny amount of elbow grease. Apparently, Scholastic liked the idea so much that they turned it into a kit and book for kids (with the help of Klutz), but failed to involve or even credit the gadget’s original creators. Knowing how open and excited the Make crew (and friends / cohorts) are about sharing their ideas, this comes as a particularly disheartening piece of news. Check out the read link for the whole story, and we’re including Scholastic’s media relations page below if you want to get in touch. Video of the original project after the break.
Read – Sad day for makers – unauthorized book from Klutz and Scholastic “BristleBots”
Read – Scholastic media contact
Filed under: Robots
Evil Mad Scientist’s “BristleBot” project boosted by Scholastic / Klutz for book, no credit in sight originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Face recognition technology isn’t perfect yet.
That’s certainly clear when using the “Faces” feature that is built into the recently released iPhoto ’09.
Memo to iPhoto: Former colleague Joris Evers may be a great guy, but he's not the Great One.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)
Sure, the product does reasonably well at finding your friends and family in your photo collection. Tag a few photos by name and iPhoto comes up with other suggestions, often recognizing photos that are taken years apart and with vastly different looks. Heck, iPhoto even spotted me when I was a different gender.
The science behind face recognition is complex and still evolving. In general, face recognition software looks for predictable patterns–characteristics and proportions that stay constant from one photograph to another, things like the distance between the eyes or from the eyes to the mouth.
Even with things where the science is today, having help–any help–with the tedious task of tagging photos is welcome. And iPhoto can certainly find plenty of matches in your library, even if it won’t spot them all.
But the real genius part is how Apple has made the process fun, even when the results aren’t perfect.
Early speech recognition was also hit or miss, but it was painful to have to scream at a computer while it constantly misunderstood what you were trying to say. With face recognition, at least as built into iPhoto, the goofs are what make it fun.
The software frequently suggested that my contemporary friends and family were actually my 80-something cousin, my 90-something great aunt, or both. iPhoto also confused Bill Gates with our friend’s 3-year-old. And among the suggestions for former CNET colleague Joris Evers was a shot of Wayne Gretzky that I had taken at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
…
Originally posted at Beyond Binary
T-Mobile USA announced it is now offering a $50 unlimited voice plan to existing customers in San Francisco, in a sign that the carriers could be gearing up for a price war, according to Reuters. The carrier is only offering the promotion to customers who have been with the carrier for at least 22 months, and is also offering a $135 credit to anyone who switches from a rival service.
The move comes almost one month after Boost Mobile, which is owned by Sprint, also offered a $50 unlimited voice and data plan, which went into effect on January 22nd. UBS analyst John Hodulik said in the report that the plan effectively lowers T-Mobile’s price for unlimited voice, Web surfing and text messaging to $85 a month from $100 for customers who use data services. The carrier is said to be considering a version of this plan for national use, which would almost definitely spark a new price war among the major carriers.
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is doing better this month after a Martian wind blew away some of the dust that has accumulated on its solar panels, increasing their electrical output, according to NASA. Spirit’s daily energy supply has risen by about 30 watt-hours—defined as the amount of energy used to power a 30 watt light bulb for one hour—from 210 watt-hours to 240. The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications, the report said, so the increase doubles the power available for driving and using instruments to perform science.
“We will be able to use this energy to do significantly more driving,” said Colette Lohr, a rover mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. “Our drives have been averaging about 50 minutes, and energy has usually been the limiting factor. We may be able to increase that to drives of an hour and a half.” Both rovers are still operating on the planet after five years. Spirit was the same rover that experienced a temporary glitch a few weeks ago. (Via Slashdot)
Palm may have gotten the design, operating system and marketing right with its much-anticipated new phone, the Palm Pre. But its decision to launch the Pre on Sprint’s network could prove to be the weak link in the chain.
Sprint said Thursday it lost 1.3 million subscribers in the fourth quarter and posted a loss of $1.62 billion. As the company bleeds money and users, the question is whether people will be willing to switch over from another carrier to go with Sprint, even if the carrier has one of the year’s most-hyped phones.
"They (Sprint) are the third place carrier, not doing well and losing customers left and right," says Jack Gold, president and principal analyst at consulting firm J. Gold Associates. "I don’t see a rush of people ditching Verizon and AT&T to go to them." Users’ unwillingness to pay hefty cancellation fees to go to Sprint could also take a toll on Pre sales, he says.
For handset makers, the telecom service provider can be a powerful partner — or a heavy burden. Take Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Storm touchscreen phone. The device launched in November on Verizon Wireless’ network and met with some very harsh reviews. But two months later, Verizon announced it sold more than one million units of the phone. Verizon’s position as the largest cellphone service provider in the United States,
its strong promotion of the phone and the loyal BlackBerry fan base, contributed to the Storm’s success despite the many negative reviews of the device, said analysts.
Palm could do with that kind of muscle for the Pre. But it may not have had much of a choice but to partner with Sprint. Over the years, Palm and Sprint have built a symbiotic relationship; the $100 Palm Centro has had a successful run on Sprint. And now Sprint needs the Pre to lure customers.
It won’t be easy. The weak economy could rain on Palm and Sprint’s plans. "It’s the biggest problem in the short term for them," says Gold. "Are people going to pay the cancellation fee to go to Sprint?"
Sprint’s best hope for a switch is likely to be from current Palm users, such as Jim Egly. Egly, who works as a sales executives with a computer support firm, is a Centro user on Verizon. But he says he will consider a switch to Sprint just to get his hands on the Pre.
"Pre looks like such a sweet piece of technology," says Egly. "And I have a loyalty to Palm."
Also see:
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
New WebOS Is Palm’s Secret Sauce
Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
We may have tripped out over Mattel’s MindFlex at CES, but that didn’t stop us from a little extra oohing and ahhing at the Toy Fair in NYC. To refresh your memory, MindFlex is a mind-controlled gaming system that uses biofeedback sensors on its headband to let you control a small foam ball on the MindFlex’s obstacle course. Look for it in the fall for $79.99.
Mattel, of course, had plenty more to show off. Check it out after the jump.
So is Vodafone’s HTC Magic the same as T-Mobile’s G2? Could very well be, considering Google’s little slip-up during a demo of its offline Gmail support on mobile devices. What we have up there clearly ain’t a Voda logo, and if our knowledge of T-Mobile logos around the world is accurate, this isn’t a European T-Mobile logo, either — it’s straight-up Yankee. Would certainly make a ton of sense for this thing to shake out as the G2, and there’s no shortage of folks holding out for a keyboardless Android device ’round there… so your move, T-Mob.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
Google’s offline Gmail demo reveals seemingly US-bound HTC Magic — is this the T-Mobile G2? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As with any trade show, flashy, high-end products have a tendency to steal the lion’s share of the spotlight at MWC — but the fact is, featurephones still outsell traditional smartphones by an order of magnitude. Companies like INQ are betting the farm on the belief that today’s ultra-connected generation of Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook users are ultimately going to pick fashionable, cheap, easy-to-use handsets over the complexity of an iPhone, G1, or Omnia. There’s something to be said for that — most people don’t know the model of their own phone, after all, and have no interest in learning how to download and install an app, let alone learn an entire mobile operating system. Plus, for the youngest members of this profitable group, there’s a lot of price sensitivity — smartphones are typically out of reach.
If startup Sonar has its way, that’s where its new platform comes in. The idea was to fundamentally rethink the way average consumers — you know, the ones who are plugged into three, four, or fourteen social networks and don’t know a G1 from a P1i — use a phone to communicate, and they’re ready to show off their efforts for the first time here at MWC. We had an opportunity to sit down with Sonar’s founders this week for a tour of the system, and we’re pretty stoked about what we saw. Read on.
Continue reading Sonar hopes to power social featurephones, we get a demo
Filed under: Cellphones
Sonar hopes to power social featurephones, we get a demo originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The iPhone is great, until, one frosty day, you realize its capacitive touchscreen doesn’t work through gloves. So we tested three pairs of iPhone-friendly gloves to decide which were best.
Freehands Stretch ($21)
Gimmick: Finger tip flaps allow your real fingers to do the typing.
Finger tip hinges allow actual finger to touch iPhone screen, 100% responsiveness
Finger tip hinges are made of non-breathing wetsuit material
The tips, predictably, leak air in
Build quality is generally low
The North Face E-Tip ($40)
Gimmick: Shimmery gold finger tips activate the iPhone’s capacitive touch screen.
Palm design is grippy, makes me feel like Iron Man
Touch responsiveness is at about 85%, though typing is futile
Thin enough to work as lining under additional glove for skiing, etc
We just got word that E-Tips are sold out nationwide with no plans for additional production. UPDATE: They’ll come back in the Fall 2009 line.
tavo Gloves ($30)
Gimmick: Like the North Face E-Tips, the shimmery gold finger tips activate the iPhone’s capacitive touch screen.
Minimal black design looks like a normal glove
Finger responsiveness at about 70%, usable, but worse than E-Tip
So our conclusion is a sad one. The North Face gloves were our favorite if you can stand the overly-techie design (which my wife hated but I loved). However, the tavos do come in a close second, offering a passable way to check your email in the cold.
Brian Lam: Snowmodo is our snow sport winter meet up at Lake Tahoe, with prizes, discounts, tons of fun snow activities, a party and GADGETS. If you can make it (and people are coming from TEXAS) please RSVP.
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