(Credit: James Martin/CNET)You probably don’t have your own Air Force One, or the $328,835 to spend on a fancy New York photo shoot like the United States government, but with a few basic Photoshop skills and an Air Force One press photo, we’re betting you …
Looks like the rumor of a new larger Kindle is true. Amazon just sent us an invitation to a press conference scheduled for Wednesday, May 6 at 10:30am ET. You know what Amazon does at press events? It launches new Kindles!
As noted by Peter Kafka over at All Things Digital, the location of the Amazon event — Pace University — is the historic, 19th century HQ to the New York Times which is said to be partnering with Amazon on the larger Kindle. That makes for a perfect symbolic bridge from old to new media. We’ll have to wait and see if newspaper subscribers can be lured across.
Update: We have a reliable tip that Barbara Snyder, president of Case Western Reserve University, and Arthur Sulzberger, top man at the New York Times will join Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on stage Wednesday. So it looks like a new Kindle focused on textbooks and newspapers is a lock.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Amazon press event Wednesday: See you and the bigger Kindle then originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 May 2009 06:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This is the “Cyclone”, a chainless penny-farthing-alike which proves that odd bike designs are far from a modern phenomenon.
Or rather, it’s a serving tray with an old Cyclone ad on it, which itself proves that there is no corner of Catalonia I can enter without finding a Gadget Lab-worthy object. This one was found in a village in the depths of Penedés (and yes, we know that this poster is in French).
The Cyclone solves one of the main problems with the penny farthing design — a very high “gear” ratio — with an extra cog. Imagine a single turn of your pedals equalling a single turn of the wheels and you’ll immediately see the problem, a problem which gets bigger with such huge wheels. The intervening cog, which should step down the geas somewhat, doesn’t appear to be large enough to be very useful, but it’s better than nothing.
This picture also, we think, has something to do with the origin of the term ”moustache handlebars”. Take a look at the similarity between facial hair and steering device.
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The retro gaming insurgence seems as strong as vinyl these days, but you don’t see as many people looking for a CRT monitor to complete the set. More likely, they’re playing a HD remake or the original title on a digital screen in more detail than the developers ever anticipated or intended. A group of Georgia Tech students are looking to change all that by modifying open-source Atari 2600 VCS emulator Stella to give players that good ole fashion analog vibe. As highlighted by associate professor Ian Bogost, key attributes such as color bleed, “burned” afterimage, RF-engendered signal noise, and texture created by the phosphor glow have been imitated here in recreating the effect. Hit up the gallery below for pictorial examples while we wait anxiously for video and / or the mod itself to rear its blurry head.
Students create CRT emulator, hope to recapture that analog gaming vibe of yesteryear originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 May 2009 06:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The NYT’s report about a new, big-screened Kindle has just been given a huge cred injection: Amazon has sent around invites for an event on this coming Wednesday.
The invite is short and nonspecific, but everyone already knows what’s coming:
We’d like to invite you to an Amazon.com press conference scheduled for Wednesday, May 6 at 10:30 am ET. The press conference is scheduled to take place at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, located at 3 Spruce Street, New York City. Doors will open for registration at 9:30 am ET.
Peter Kafka notes that the last time Amazon held an event in NYC was for the Kindle 2, so this is pretty close to a sure thing. [AllThingsD]
It's Monopoly, but with your photos.
(Credit: Photojojo)
What’s one possible gift for a photographer who likes to play Monopoly? Photojojo has an interesting twist on the original real estate game–instead of the names of places, you replace them with your favorite snaps.
Bundled in the $30 …
If flash animations and S60 5th edition are your idea of a good time then you’ll want to head on over to Nokia’s new interactive N97 landing page. From there you can get as close as you’ll ever get to Nokia’s flagship slider with 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel resistive touch-screen display prior to its expected June launch. So go ahead, take ‘er for a spin and then hit the newly live pre-order button after you’re convinced that this is the smartphone for you. Sure, there’s lots of potential June competition out there but take heart: the Android-powered Samsung i7500 lacks a QWERTY, there’s no guarantee that a next-gen iPhone will launch in June, and the Palm Pre might be a big fat dud. There, feel better about your choice?
Update: Tipster Chris just let us know that the N97 shows a $699 phone-only price on the “find products” tab over at Nokia USA. That’s $6 cheaper than the N96, strangely enough. See screen-grab after the break.
Update 2: Pre-order is go for the US.
[Via mivadika, thanks Nikos K.]
Continue reading Nokia’s flagship N97 gets its own website, pre-order link ($699)
Filed under: Cellphones
Nokia’s flagship N97 gets its own website, pre-order link ($699) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 May 2009 05:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Amazon is on the cusp of busting out a new, large format Kindle. The new e-ink device could be here this week and be big enough to read magazine and newspaper layouts without too much dickering with their designs.
This is the claim made in yesterday’s New York Times, citing “people briefed on the online retailer’s plans.”
Unfortunately, the story then goes off into a kind of newspaper fantasy land, full of unicorns, marshmallows and time-reversals. The big hope for the Big Kindle is that it will somehow reverse the fortunes of the the spluttering print news industry, allowing publishers to charge subscription fees and load their pages with advertising, even though everyone with an internet connection can get the same content free.
The move by newspapers and magazines to make their material freely available on the Web is now viewed by many as a critical blunder that encouraged readers to stop paying for the print versions.
And:
Publishers could possibly use these new mobile reading devices to hit the reset button and return in some form to their original business model: selling subscriptions, and supporting their articles with ads.
This is, apparently, serious. The trouble with this business “model” is that it forgets that there is an internet, while at the same time using that same internet as a convenient distribution system an order of magnitude cheaper than pulping trees, running them through a building-sized press and then moving them around the country in trucks. As others have written, news won’t go away if newspapers go away. The format of a print newspaper is dictated not by the content (the news) but by the technological limits of its production and distribution.
The NYT piece mentions, in passing, the real market for a large-format e-book: Text books. Not only would a big Kindle be easier to carry than a back-breaking rucksack full of college books, it would probably be cheaper. Cheaper, that is, if only the publishers would relent and stop overcharging for downloaded material.
For they, too, profit from scarcity, just like the newspapers, and scarcity no longer exists in a digital world. Charging $100 for a ones-and-zeros version of a $100 book is obviously nonsense, as the record labels found out when they lost their own industry to piracy. And the market here is college students, apparently the most voracious pirates of all. Catch them quick, textbook makers. Subsidize this new Kindle, make the books way cheaper than they are in print and allow students to re-sell them when they’re done, like they can now. Otherwise those students won’t be paying for your books at all.
Finally, while a large-screen Kindle would be very welcome, Amazon should perhaps start selling the regular Kindle outside the US. Just saying, is all.
Update: It looks like the story is true. Amazon has started sending out invites for a press event this Wednesday. Wired.com will be covering it, so stay tuned to Gadget Lab for the lowdown.
Update 3:30pm Pacific: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, six universities will be offering their students e-textbooks on the large-screen Kindle.
Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press [NYT]
The product name of the week award goes to Nobis for its adjustable hat tech, called Caps_Lock. The widget, which looks a lot like the brain-holes into which long sensors are shoved in the Matrix, is a simple twisting knob which adjusts the length of an internal strap.
The Caps_Lock means that one-size-fits-all is actually a true statement rather than a tricksy marketing lie, and Nobis is proud of the money-saving fact that it only has to make one size of each cap. Further, you can crank the hat tighter on windy days, or when speeding along the beach-side boardwalk on your bike, and loosen it for those sweat-inducing poker games.
The strap is internal, so the cap appears to change in size, an improvement over the usual strap at the back which merely cinches the circumference. Available now, with equally great product names such as Al Koholic and Angus Beef. Prices vary wildly like all clothing, but expect to pay over $40.
Product page [Nobis. Thanks, Jessica!]
Plastic Logic has be showing off a larger form factor e-reader–but Amazon may get to market first.
(Credit: Plastic Logic)
Rumors have been circulating for a while that Amazon has a larger form factor Kindle in the works–and we may get a first look at it as soon as this …
Originally posted at Fully Equipped
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
