Hasta La Gadget!

Um, oops? ATI’s latest Catalyst driver release has dished out some info that we imagine the company didn’t want to reveal quite yet. The names of some Southern Islands have been spotted — Cayman and Antilles appear to be the flagship chips — suggesting a refresh to the critically acclaimed Evergreen line of GPUs may not be far off. Rumors have been swirling for a while about ATI’s reputed shift to island-based nomenclature, and while hard specs are nowhere to be found, we can see that the Red Team is planning an overhaul with no less than 10 new additions to its roster. Hardly unpredictable, but good to know that ATI has something to counter NVIDIA’s heart-stealing GTX 460.

[Thanks, Jack]

ATI leaks out Southern Islands codenames for next-gen GPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Netgear made a battery of new product announcements related to home entertainment and Powerline networking. On the media side, the NeoTV 550 & 350 HD players look a lot like last year’s Digital Entertainer Elite, minus the 500GB of internal storage and access to VOD services like CinemaNow. Both are however capable of playing a robust list of codecs in full HD from a variety of attached sources like USB, eSATA (in the case of the 550) or SD storage, as well as streaming content from UPnP, DLNA or WMP11 networks. The 550 adds in support for external Blu-ray drives and BD-Live too, all for $219, which should appeal any of the poor souls with an unused standalone drive.

Three new Powerline kits — AV 200, AV 500, and AV+ 500 — were also announced to help consumers avoid the pain of stringing Ethernet in every direction. The entry level AV 200 appears to improve on the previous HDXB101 kit by offering the same theoretical 200mbps in addition to push button security enhancements and greener power consumption. The AV 500 kit provides the same and ramps the networking speeds to up to — you guessed it — 500mbps, while the “+” version throws in a pass-through filtered AC socket to avoid sacrificing precious outlets. Priced all below $200, every kit will available by mid November for all the fall home networking networking your heart could desire. Peep the galleries and PR below for further details.

Continue reading Netgear announces NeoTV 550 & 350 HD Media Players plus other networking goodies

Netgear announces NeoTV 550 & 350 HD Media Players plus other networking goodies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Garmin rolls out touchscreen-based Edge 800 cycling GPS

Garmin rolls out touchscreen-based Edge 800 cycling GPS originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now we’ve seen some pretty wild keyboard patent applications in the past, from folding keyboards, angled keyboards, keyboards you can reconfigure by hand, and even keyboards with displays in every key (hello Optimus Maximus). But now RIM seems to have a new take on the smartphone keyboard concept. The company has filed a patent application for a keyboard which not only can be turned 90 degrees from portrait to landscape orientation (that you hold in a portrait manner, kind of like a reverse of this hideous thing), but one which flips as well. In the diagram the phone-maker provides, a numeric pad could be spun around to become a QWERTY input surface, and the whole rig repositioned to make for more comfortable typing. Now, it’s not clear how exactly RIM plans to mechanically turn this into a reality, but given the company’s recent interest in non-standard form factors, it’s not totally inconceivable that this could be turned from patent fantasy to smartphone reality. Of course, we’re not sure RIM should be worrying about its keyboards so much as it should be concerned with the software and internals of the devices themselves. You’re actually doing the keyboards right… maybe some work elsewhere is in order?

RIM files patent for flipping, rotating smartphone keyboard originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, to friends) is responsible for a good many innovations that the denizens of the year 2030 take for granted, and the new i³Space certainly won’t tarnish the institute’s record. Built on the foundation of AIST’s own GyroCubeSensuous for tactile feedback, the i³Space tracks the motion of the operator’s two index fingers in 3D space, and sends back “illusionary tactile and kinesthetic sense” through the controllers. Details are still a little thin, but AIST plans to show the full rig off at CEDEC next week, with eyes on reducing the size of the system of courting gaming, design, and medical applications in the near future. Hopefully they throw in this Earth-prodding simulator for free, we always wanted to have a good go at Greenland.

AIST’s i3Space tactile 3D interface: destroyer of (virtual) worlds originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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