Hasta La Gadget!

AT&T’s Zero Charger will save the world and help trees to grow. Just kidding, but that’s just what the promo shot of the new cellphone charger would have you believe. The charger is a significant announcement though, as it solves an environmental problem most people don’t know exists: Vampire draw.

Vampire draw is the trickle of power that a charger pulls when left in the wall, even if there is no device plugged in. While small, if you add up all the chargers in the world, the numbers quickly get big. AT&T’s new Zero Charger fixes this by switching itself off completely as soon as the phone is fully charged. This would be great for my dad who inexplicably leaves his cellphones plugged in all the time except when he leaves the house.

The Zero Charger is in fact a USB charger, so it’s good for iPods and other devices, too. It should really come with every one of AT&T’s cellphones, but it appears that you’ll have to buy one (big surprise. Thanks AT&T). Given that anyone savvy enough to buy the Zero Charger is also likely to already unplug their chargers, it seems more like a rather pointless PR exercise.

Save Your Planet AT&T ZERO Charger – Coming Soon! [AT&T via DVICE]

Amazon has at last released Kindle for Mac, which means you can now read your Kindle books on most any device. It joins the iPhone, PC Blackberry and, of course, the Kindle itself.

Like the PC version, Kindle for Mac is a bare-bones reader. You turn pages with either the scroll-wheel of your mouse or the arrow keys, and it stays in sync with any other device authorized for the same account. You can view notes and bookmarks made on other devices, but you can’t create new ones (a limitation shared with the PC version).

It’s pretty bad. If you want to zoom the text, for example, the standard Mac shortcuts are Cmd + and Cmd -. They don’t work. Instead you have to open a special panel, which can leave a blank “cut-out” in the text after it has been closed.

It is a beta, but you only know that if you open up the “about” box. We guess it’s nice to have a way to read on a computer, and even better to have a local archive of your books, but I can’t help feeling that a company the size of Amazon could do better than this. Especially as it bought the quite excellent Stanza almost a year ago, which has a great Mac app, along with the iPhone version.

Amazon might be happy selling books, and not care about the devices they are read on. But if you carry on like this, Amazon, people will be pushed to buy their readers, and books, elsewhere.

Kindle for Mac [Amazon]

Press release [Business Wire]

See Also:

• Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives
• Showdown: Kindle 2 vs. Sony Reader
• Kindle Goes International — With a Little Help From AT&T
• Amazon Brings Kindle to iPhone
• Kindle for PC Ships, Hints at Future Color Kindle

Heads-up displays are undoubtedly novel, and downright useful in the right circumstances. Trouble is, few of these prototypes ever make it beyond the lab, and we’re stuck using these same two eyeballs to experience the world around us. General Motors is evidently tired of the almosts, and it’s now working in concert with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Southern California in order to concoct one of the most advanced HUD systems that we’ve seen — particularly in the automotive world. Setting out to create “enhanced vision systems,” GM’s R&D team has created a windshield packed with visible and Infrared cameras along with internal optics that keep a close eye on the driver’s retinas. In the images and video below (hit the ‘Read More’ link for the real action), you’ll see a solution that utilizes lasers in order to highlight road edges, speed limit signs and all sorts of other vital bits of data during a fog-filled commute. Best of all? We’re told that some of these technologies “could end up in GM vehicles in the near-term future.” Granted, the Volt was supposed to set sail already, but we suppose we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt.

Continue reading GM shows off sensor-laden windshield, new heads-up display prototype

GM shows off sensor-laden windshield, new heads-up display prototype originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s a mighty aggressive schedule for a handset that hasn’t even been announced yet, but the latest scuttlebutt regarding the HTC Incredible suggests that the phone will make its debut on Verizon’s airwaves about two weeks from now. It was already known that the Incredible was destined for a rendezvous with Big Red, but this latest word solidifies and specifies that future nicely — and it’s claimed to come directly from internal sources at Verizon. There’s also further mention of 512MB of DRAM allied to a downclocked Snapdragon CPU (capable of 1GHz, running at 768MHz), an 8 megapixel camera, a 1,300 mAh battery, and body dimensions almost indistinguishable from those belonging to the Nexus One. Good thing too, since Verizon is still keeping us waiting on a mysterious Spring release of Google’s own-brand phone. We get the feeling Android 2.1 and the new Sense UI will fill that gap nicely, however, and if you really must have that 1GHz speed, there are ways to achieve such things too.

[Thanks, Carson R.]

Verizon’s Incredible new phone may be in stores within ‘two weeks’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X users now can read their Amazon e-books with the new reader application. Kindle now spans several phones, computers, and e-reader devices. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000686-264.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Deep Tech/a/p