Well, here’s a bit of an interesting development. While we’ve been seeing Lenovo’s ThinkPad X100e out and about for a while now, it’s always been with an AMD Neo processor and an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 display. According to a spec list that recently turned up on Lenovo’s own site, however, it looks like the company may also have another version of the laptop in store that’s even more netbook-like. That one not only includes a lower-res, 10.1-inch screen, but an Atom N450 processor as well — something that had been rumored to be headed to Lenovo netbooks as far back as December. Unfortunately, there’s no indication of pricing or availability, although it does seem a bit late in the game for this to simply be a slip-up of some sort.
Take control of Alice in Wonderland, a soldier in World War II, an all-terrain rover on the moon, and, maybe best of all, your favorite “Phineas and Ferb” characters. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10457450-233.html” class=”origPostedBlog”iPhone Atlas/a/p
Steve Jobs introduced not one, but two new products last month: the iPad and Apple’s custom made A4 chip. Analysts have yet to autopsy the chip to uncover its secrets, but even more interesting is what it takes for a company like Apple to manufacture its own chip: about $1 billion, according to The New York Times.
“Even without the direct investment of a factory, it can cost these companies about $1 billion to create a smartphone chip from scratch,” reports NY Times‘ Ashlee Vance.
That makes Apple’s $278 million acquisition of semiconductor manufacturer PA Semi look like pocket change. And hopefully Apple’s investment will pay off not just for the company, but also for iPad owners: The 1-GHz A4 chip, Apple promises, will help preserve the iPad’s battery for up to 10 hours of active use and one month of standby.
And considering the enormous cost of developing this chip, iPhone owners can have faith that the A4 will most likely appear in future iPhones. Maybe we’ll see an A4-powered iPhone debut this summer, and all our complaints about battery life will disappear. After that, all we’d have left to complain about is AT&T.
The U.S. men’s hockey team still has a long way to go before they reach Olympic gold in Vancouver, but last night’s 5-3 victory over Canada takes them a step closer to their goal. In other words, Jeff has never been more proud to be an American hockey fan, and be sure to catch today’s Calls From The Public to hear me attempt to define a power play in less than 10,000 words. And in unrelated news, if you thought our studio was overrun with equipment before, wait until you see what Wilson did to it over the weekend!
Today’s episode of The 404 Podcast needs a youthful street team, since they can apparently be bought with string cheese and fizzy drinks. In the United Kingdom, large corporations including the makers of Fanta and Cheesestrings are hiring “brand ambassadors” to evangelize their products on popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Bebo. The job comes with a pretty decent wage, as well, with many pre-adolescents getting paid in money-off vouchers worth ~$40 per week in addition to free samples of said products.
East meets West
(Credit: Derrick Chen/The 404)
Next up we’ve got another story about kids, this one coming from a school in Philadelphia that spied on students using their own Web cams and remote software pre-installed on loaner laptops. The students became suspicious of this breach in privacy after an administrator confronted a kid about his “improper behavior in the home,” and even showed him a picture taken using his MacBook Web cam. Other students have also corroborated this story, telling reporters at Gizmodo that they would notice the camera light on their MacBooks turning on at home, which the school district claimed was “just a glitch.” Tune in to hear the full story in all its shady glory.
If you’ve ever struggled with acne,a new iPhone app called AcneApp promises to “zap wrinkles and acne” away while you chat on your smartphone. Dr. Greg Pearson from Houston, TX claims that the app uses 420 nanometer blue light and 550 nanometer red light to kill bacteria and promote collagen growth to eliminate wrinkles and unslightly pimples on the face. Understandably, some dermatologists are skeptic about AcneApp, citing third party studies that show the red and blue lights require several dozen treatments throughout the day before seeing actual results. In other words, it’ll be awhile before we start to see people other than Wilson rubbing up on their iPhones, so don’t go out and waste your $1.99 on this app just yet.
We were fortunate enough to get a quick moment with Samsung’s new assortment of e-readers back at CES, but the cool kids over at Notebook Italia were able to get the E6, E101 and E61 on video. There’s little doubt that these look awfully different than all of the other me-too options on the market, and the touch input seems to be extraordinarily responsive based on the demonstration. Speaking of which… hop on past the break to have a look yourself, cool?
Sony, which manufactures the PlayStation 3 game console and the PSPGo handheld, has patented an LCD-based “universal controller” that could emulate the look and function of third-party controllers.
Interestingly, Sony does not try to hide the fact that it could use the patent, at least theoretically, to emulate controllers from its competitors.
“This document describes an adaptable or universal game controller which can be used to emulate the controllers of popular game consoles, such as, without limitation, the PlayStation. made by Sony, a controller made by Nintendo, X-box game controllers made by Microsoft, Amiga CD-32 controllers, Atari Jaguar controllers, Gravis Gamepad controllers, Sega controllers, and Turbographics controllers,” the patent reads.
The controller is similar in design to LCD-based remote controls from Philips and Harmony (shown), in which configurable software “buttons” on a LCD display replace discrete keys. In that sense, I can see the technology come to market.
But the problem of emulating a third-party controller becomes much more problematic when third-party interfaces and control mechanisms enter to it. I think of it in the context of a microprocessor bus license: even if a company doesn’t want to clone an Intel microprocessor, the technology that governs how Intel’s chip connects to an associated chipset is also owned by Intel; Nvidia, for example, has found this hurdle difficult to overcome. I would suspect that Microsoft and Nintendo would fiercely defend their technology if Sony ever tried to market one of their controllers via software emulation.
Acer may make plenty of cellphones, but they’ve so far been a pretty rare sight on North American carriers. That’s now set to change this Spring, however, when Rogers will reportedly be the first carrier in North America to offer Acer’s new Liquid e phone — and, incidentally, the first carrier in Canada to offer an Android 2.1 phone (not counting the upgradable Milestone, that is). In case you missed its debut at MWC, the Liquid e packs a 3.5-inch touchscreen, along with a slightly underclocked 768MHz Snapdragon processor, a 5-megapixel camera, 7.2Mbps 3G and Wi-Fi and, of course, a basic implementation of Android 2.1. Still no indication of a price or exact release date, but Rogers is promising to say more as that approaches.
Rehabilitation researchers at Kobe Gakuin University are developing a chair that levitates. But it won’t let you leap buildings with the push of a button.
In the US, the concept of a prepaid Android phone is about as foreign as the concept of an effective high-speed mass transit system, but abroad, T-Mobile is following up its Pulse with a cuter, smaller sibling in the Pulse Mini. Like the original the Pulse is sourced from China’s Huawei and offers Euro HSDPA, but the similarities end there: the new model will run Android 2.1 out of the gate, step down from an HVGA to a QVGA display, and sport a Qualcomm MSM7225 core. Look for it to launch in the UK and Germany in April; pricing will vary by market, but Britons can look forward to shelling out £99.99 (about $155) contract-free.
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