The design of Hillcrest Labs’ Loop Pointer may be unique, but can it excel in function as well as aesthetics? This $100 in-air mouse designed for multimedia PCs requires a dramatically different approach to interacting with your computer.
Want to know how it stacked up to the competition? Check out our full review, here.
Now here’s a reason to visit the San Diego Comic Con that doesn’t involve some old 3D movie: the Bossy Bear Mimobot is debuting there, and creator David Horvath will be on hand for a signing.
Bossy Bear, a demanding little ruler given to saying things like “Mine!” and “Now!,” was created by the same mind that gave us the Uglydolls. The Bossy Bear Mimobot comes in 1GB to 8GB sizes, and is bundled with Bossy Bear-themed wallpapers, icons, avatars, and screensavers, and Mimoco’s mimoByte sound software.
But there’s more, true believers: Horvath will be at the Con on Saturday, July 25, at 5:30 for a signing. Look for him at Mimoco’s booth, # 4938, in the Toy Growers/Cult Yard section. He’ll be the guy at the head of the shockingly long line. Brian, could you get me a signed one? Thanks a bunch.
Chinese newspapers have been piecing together Foxconn worker Sun Danyong’s final hours, and claim to have recovered his final text message to his girlfriend, sent two hours before he died. It’s clear something horrible was happening to him:
“My dear, I’m sorry, go back home tomorrow, something has happened to me, please don’t tell my family, don’t contact me, this is the first time that I have ever begged you, please agree to that! I am so sorry!”
And in what is reportedly his final online chat—supposedly verified as authentic—Sun tells a friend he never stole the phone, and thinks it was swiped. He also again implies that he was tortured, or at least forcefully detained and interrogated with physical force, clearly contradicting what Foxconn’s security chief told a Chinese paper:
“Even at a police station, the law says force must never be used, much less in a corporate office. I was just a suspect, my dear head of security, so what reason and right do you have to confine me and use force?
If Foxconn is directly involved in his death, it and all of its executives could go bankrupt a million times over and that would still not even come to close to justice for Sun Danyong. [The New Yorker]
This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn’t want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back — so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We’ll be handing out a new gadget every day to lucky readers until we run out of stuff or companies stop sending things. Today we’ve got a swank GigaPan Epic Imager on offer, ideal for capturing those landscapes in ways you’ve only dreamed about. Read the rules below (no skimming — we’re omniscient and can tell when you’ve skimmed) and get commenting! Hooray for free stuff!
Big thanks to GigaPan for providing the gear!
The rules:
Continue reading Engadget’s recession antidote: win a GigaPan Epic Imager!
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets
Engadget’s recession antidote: win a GigaPan Epic Imager! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
That’s right kids. Netflix movie parties, avatar accessories, Games on Demand (though no proper Xbox 360 titles yet — this is just the preview after all). We just got the update and are exploring right now, so stay tuned. If you’re one of the select few, let us know in comments!
Some notable bits thus far:
Filed under: Gaming
The new Xbox Live dashboard update preview is… live! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This week, Apple announced that iPods are in a nosedive. Meanwhile, we are seeing evidence that the Nano is about to get a camera. My response is “Why?” The old clickwheel iPod isn’t dead yet, but it’s definitely dying.
I have a 160GB Classic, as I thought I needed it. But with a 32GB iPhone, I end up leaving my iPod at home, even when traveling. I once had a fantasy that I’d sync a ton of video to it, to serve up. That fantasy was never realized, though, because these days it easy to just plug your laptop into a TV. I like having an iPod Touch in the house, however, because when my kid wants to watch videos, I’d rather give her that than my own phone. Besides, some apps like Sonos’ controller and Apple’s Remote are better suited to a device that lives in the living room. An iPod Touch with a camera makes sense, getting a step closer to the iPhone; it’s an equally intuitive device for people who want to keep clear of AT&T.
Put a camera in the Nano, and the opposite occurs: It becomes a mystery object, something unlike all other products in the universe, and not in a good way. It would be something to learn, with even more buried mystery functions than it has right now.
Let’s be honest, the Nano is built to play music. Video playback on that tiny screen is a joke, accelerometer or not, and I have never met a soul who actually stores calendars and contacts, or uses any other mini-app or game. Putting still more tech into the Nano is a mistake that companies other than Apple would make—sure, it will be “neat,” but it’s impractical and a waste of development.
The Classic is a different story, one of diminishing demand. Hard drive players are almost nowhere to be found, and there’s discussion of late that the 1.8″ hard drive is headed for extinction, because flash memory is finally cheap. I think Apple will still sell a Classic, at least until they can pop out 64GB flash iPod Touches for under $400, but I don’t think they’ll do anything to modify the current Classic in any meaningful way, and they certainly aren’t going to go all the way to 240GB, even though it’s possible.
If the Classic is justifiable for music library owners like me, but mostly a non-starter, the Nano’s raison d’etre is being a “value” option. It’s cheaper than the iPod Touch, which hovers at the $230 only to distance itself from the 16GB Nano, at $200. If Apple dipped that iTouch to $199, they’d sell fewer Nanos than they are selling now.
Screw the camera—what Apple should do is lower the Nano price even more. Samsung and SanDisk sell 8GB players for less than $100 now, and you can even find a few 16GB players in the $130 range. That’s $50 to $70 lower than what Apple charges, and nowadays, most of those devices will play anything you buy from iTunes—little or no manipulation required. Meanwhile, almost all PMP development from other companies is geared to building a cheap iTouch replacement, not a Nano clone.
As Apple itself declared during their earnings call, “We expect traditional MP3 players to decline over time as we cannibalize ourselves” with iPhone and iPod Touch. They readily admit that iPod Touches sell like hotcakes while demand for clickwheel iPods has slackened. It’s just a puzzle that when these devices should be on life-support, Apple seems to be want to push them further. [iPod/iTunes]
We can only hope that the travesty that is slotMusic isn’t coming over to the film side, but just days after Disney announced its intentions to offer up major motion pictures on microSD cards, Sonic Solutions has stepped in to bring CinemaNow flicks to USB flash drives. Unlike you’d probably think this would work, Sonic has actually developed these to function in more than one place. Each stick contains a movie along with an integrated media player and the necessary video codecs, but aside from enabling users to play back content locally, there’s also the option of catching it remotely. Once connected to the ‘net, owners can add the title to their Roxio CinemaNow Digital Locker to access it on network-connected Blu-ray players and HDTVs. If all goes well, the first drives will start showing up in Q4 of this year, just in time to puzzle your young ones when they unwrap their favorite film on something other than a round disc.
[Via HotHardware]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video
Sonic brings CinemaNow films to flash drives, connected devices originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The iPhone continues to dominate AT&T’s quarterly results, as the carrier added 1.4 million wireless subscribers, two thirds of whom bought one of Apple’s handsets, according to MediaPost. Even as such, profit fell 15 percent as another 3.3 million folks dropped AT&T’s landline service.
In total, AT&T activated 2.4 million new iPhones, some of which were the new iPhone 3GS released in June. The company said that its best retail store sales day ever was June 19th, the day the iPhone 3GS hit stores, according to the report.
In addition, revenue from data plans now makes up 28.7 percent of AT&T’s total wireless revenue, up from 22.9 percent from the year-ago period. That’s a clear illustration of how much profit things like the iPhone, mobile Web browsing, and texting bring in for the company now.
There’s no doubt that Samsung’s Omnia II is one of the most coveted Windows Mobile smartphones out at the moment — we mean, who can really resist a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 7.2Mbps HSPA, a 5 megapixel camera and 720 x 480 movie recording? For Americans, however, there seemed to be little hope that GSM fans would ever see a version catering specifically to their needs (read: dual-band 850 / 1,900MHz 3G “needs”)… until now. On this fine Friday, the cool cats over at the FCC have shown that there actually is a GT-i8000 headed to America with support for AT&T 3G bands, though obviously little else is known about when it’ll make its expected splash. Better hurry, Samsung — the competition’s heating up over here.
[Via Slashgear]
Filed under: Cellphones
Samsung’s WinMo-powered Omnia II (GT-i8000) clears FCC, eyes AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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There’s always been a little chunk of softness in our cold, stone hearts for candybar QWERTY handsets. Stylus interaction? Not so much. That’s why it’s a little disappointing to see HP’s upcoming iPAQ K3 Obsidian handset for AT&T show up with a stylus on board, despite the initial leaked documents we saw that clearly stated otherwise. Still, it’s nice to see how Windows Mobile 6.5 can operate under such conditions, and the 2.43-inch screen is OLED, even if it’s restricted to a mere QVGA resolution. It appears that a scroll wheel does the duty of shuffling through that honeycomb menu. As far as we know, we’re still looking at a November release.
[Via SlashGear]
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
HP iPAQ K3 Obsidian lives it up in the wild, sneaks in a stylus for the nostalgic types originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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