Hasta La Gadget!

Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad has never had a particularly firm basis in reality, and although we’d been promised that the inexpensive browser-based tablet would be launching soon, the sky’s come crashing down: Mike says Fusion Garage, the company he hired to build the CrunchPad, has reneged on their deal, and that he’s about to file “multiple lawsuits.” What happened? Well, it’s not exactly clear: according to Mike, the CrunchPad was ready to be launched on November 20, but on November 17 Fusion Garage decided to cut TechCrunch out of the deal and sell it directly. Oh, it’s a sad tale, especially since Arrington claims a wide variety of industry heavyweights were lined up to support his tablet — including development assistance from Intel complete with sweetheart pricing on Atom CPUs, a “major multi-billion dollar retailer” who offered to sell it at “zero margin,” and even venture capital firms “waiting to invest in the company.” Making matters worse, Mike’s no longer buds with Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan, who he thought he’d be friends with “for the rest of our lives.” Tear. Now, we’re not sure we’ve heard the last of the CrunchPad — if anything, Michael Arrington is irrepressible — but we can’t say we’re surprised the first chapter has ended in such fantastic fashion. We’re assuming several major Hollywood studios are already lining up to buy the rights, and we’ve heard unconfirmed reports that George Clooney has signed on to star for free because he believes in the project so deeply.

The CrunchPad disappears in a puff of vapor originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI’s latest (and arguably greatest) 12.1-inch netbook just popped official earlier this month, and already it’s making the rounds at various shows. The crew over at NetbookNews managed to get their hands around one for just under three minutes, and during that brief window of time they were able to confirm that an AMD Athlon Neo X2 chip was within. Also on tap was a 500GB hard drive and a previously unannounced SIM card slot, though the €440 ($661) price tag seems a bit steep for “a netbook.” Check the walk-around just after the break.

Continue reading MSI Wind U230 gets handled on video, SIM slot found hiding underneath

MSI Wind U230 gets handled on video, SIM slot found hiding underneath originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Belkin killed its FlyWire, it also put a serious hurtin’ on the hopes of wireless HDTV ever truly taking off in the near term. Granted, the device was horrifically overpriced, but it was easily the most well-known product in the fledgling sector. Now, however, it seems that a few other players are sneaking into the limelight, with Philips recently introducing its sub-$1,000 Wireless HDTV Link and Sony pricing its DMX-WL1 for the everyman. Today, Best Buy’s own Rocketfish has introduced its WirelessHD Adapter, a two-piece set that enables a single HDMI device to be connected to an HDMI-enabled HDTV sans cabling. You simply plug your source into one box and your HDTV into another; so long as the two are within 33 feet of one another, 1080p content can be slung without wires. It’s up for order right now at $599.99, which — amazingly enough — is actually more expensive than that 30-foot Monster HDMI cable you were secretly eying.

Rocketfish WirelessHD Adapter snips an HDMI cord for $600 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m not sure what’s up with these expensive car kits for iPhone GPS apps, but it looks like Magellan wants in on the action. The Magellan Premium GPS Car Kit works with the iPhone and any GPS app–including, of course, Magellan’s brand new RoadMate app.

The car kit mounts to the windshield, charges the iPhone while mounted, and includes a noise-canceling, hands-free speakerphone with a powerful amplifier. It rotates for use in both portrait and landscape modes. And interestingly, it features a built-in GPS receiver that enhances performance or adds it to an iPod Touch.

None of this comes cheap, though. The kit costs a whopping $130–more than some solid Garmin and TomTom standalone devices, I might add–and doesn’t come with the app either (same as with the TomTom kit). In other words, either one could put your iPhone GPS solution over the $200 mark in total. Despite the cost, Magellan’s kit looks good, and the iPod touch compatibility is a unique twist.

SignOnSanDiego.com: A small La Jolla company thinks it has a technology that could represent the future of scientific publishing.

The company, MolSoft, recently launched a platform it calls ActiveICM that enables authors to include three-dimensional, interactive graphics with the text of their articles. That means readers can click at the appropriate point in an article, call up an exhibit and view it from any angle.

The interface is straightforward, with an article’s text on one side of the screen and whatever exhibit the reader has chosen to look at on the other. Authors can include Internet-like links in the text as frequently as they want to direct readers to the exhibits.

“It’s not just animation,” Abagyan said. “It’s a fully interactive environment, which is extremely powerful, where you can look for things and in theory you can build it into any view (of the exhibit).”

Abagyan said a big advantage of the platform is that it works both online and off. So a reader can look at an article on the Web, where academic journals get much of their readership these days, or download it to read on a laptop whenever it’s convenient.

3-D software could give publishing a new angle [SignOnSanDiego.com]