Hasta La Gadget!

The Trip is a crazy hybrid rolling-suitcase which manages to be both practical and weird in equal measure. It carries your luggage, of course, and offers a very useful “kangaroo” pocket on the front, a flap which zips open to allow fast access to a laptop, books, cellphone or anything else you squeeze in.

It also turns int a chair: The wheels hinge back on the end of stalks and the hard, padded top-section slides forward to make a bigger area for your butt. Think of R2D2 leaning back into his roll-along position and you’ve got the idea.

Then it gets odd. The more expensive of the two trips has a battery and speakers. This is so you can listen to music in your hotel room or take the suitcase along on a picnic. I’m serious. Check this out, from the email pitch:

Pick a sunny day, bring a good wine and some tasty food and put on your favorite tunes for a perfect afternoon! Even if your iPhone or BlackBerry runs out of power, you can charge it through the TRIP.

That charging part is useful, but why would you want to further shrink the space inside a rolling case with batteries and speakers? I have no love for wheelie-cases, preferring a lighter, more capacious backpack, so perhaps I am biased, but even for the lazy traveler it seems foolish to shrink you load-bay like this.

If you do fancy a case/seat/speaker, and don’t mind plugging your travel-bag into a USB port once in a while, then you can have the Trip Sound for €650 ($850), or opt for the quieter Trip for €595 ($780). Oh, and hit “mute” before you go to the site. It has, unforgivably, auto-playing music.

Trip product page [Travelteq. Thanks, Titia!]

You’re sick of audio docks, we know. So are we. But as much as we wanted to skip merrily along beyond Logitech’s S715i set, we couldn’t help but note that it’s something of a rarity. Whereas most other iDevice speakers tend to keep themselves safely tethered to the nearest wall plug, this unit claims it can get an ambitious eight hours of music playback from its battery, while boasting a whopping eight drivers (two rear-firing ones on the back) in total, including a pair of “laser-tuned” neodymium 3-inchers for midrange delivery. We could hardly gauge audio quality in our noisy environment, but we’ll say this much: Logitech isn’t fooling around with the volume the S715i can put out. Even our video after the break doesn’t do justice to the surprising roar you can generate from this otherwise compact package.

A standard 3.5mm audio input will let you stray outside of the Apple product family if you wish, and there’s a bundled remote too. Yet, in spite of all these goodies, we still can’t recommend this as a sage purchase at Logitech’s lofty $150 price. Don’t get us wrong, the S715i looks neat, just not that neat. We also managed to grab a few images of its family mate, the Z515 Bluetooth speaker, which similarly rolls on its own power (for up to 10 hours, it’s claimed) and captures tunes from your nearest Bluetooth-equipped device. It’s another well built and easily portable little thing, priced at $60 $100 by Logitech.

Continue reading Logitech S715i and Z515 portable speakers hands-on (video)

Logitech S715i and Z515 portable speakers hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is back with the mighty impressive HRP-4 humanoid. Created in partnership with Kawada Industries, this 151-centimeter (5-feet) tall, 39-kilo (86-pound) walking followup to the HRP-4C, HRP-3 and HRP-2 robots (pictured in the background) was developed to help take over manufacturing duties from a rapidly aging Japanese work force. The highly mobile HRP-4 features 34-degrees of movement with AIST proprietary control software running on a Linux core. Things get weird at the 5:30 mark of the video embedded after the break when a human enters the stage for a good ol’ fashioned stare down. Probably has something to do with his hot wife.

Continue reading Impressive HRP-4 robot will make you bow in deference (video)

Impressive HRP-4 robot will make you bow in deference (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CrunchGear, CNNGo  |  Robomaganet (YouTube), AIST  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on November 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Have you ever wondered how you can get more information on your laptop’s battery? That’s a question that many people wonder, especially when they start experiencing shortened battery life. There is a quick and free way for you to get all of this info and more!

Battery Status (or BattStat) is a small program that only takes a second to install. After the installation is done you’ll see a new icon in your System Tray, and double-clicking on that icon will open the door for mounds of information about your battery. You’ll even be able to find out the capacity of your battery compared to when it shipped out of the factory!

One of the most prominent features that Battery Status has is an adaptive battery life estimate. It will watch how you use your computer to more accurately estimate how much time you really have left on your computer. Check it all out…

–The Main Window–

The main Battery Status window provides a colorful chart with many of your system’s specs: runtime (battery life left), charge, power, CPU speed, CPU load, CPU temperature, and hard drive temperature:

Click to Enlarge

Aside from the pretty graphs, the main window provides a lot of critical functionality:

• In Vista you can switch power plans and XP/2000 you can change power schemes.
• You can set a keyboard shortcut (hotkey) that will turn off your monitor. This is really awesome, and can definitely save some power if you’re going to be away from your computer for a little while.
• A batch file can be created, and run each time the power status changes (a.k.a. switching from AC power to battery).

–Battery Toolbar–

Sometimes it is nice to have a condensed, yet more detailed view of how much battery power you have left on your computer. That’s why Battery Status provides a toolbar, which can be set to always be on top of other windows to serve as your floating information bank. Here’s what you’ll get with the toolbar:

–Battery Condition & Details–

One of the most informative areas of Battery Status is the detailed battery information it provides, which is shown by pressing the Batteries button on the main window. Towards the bottom of the screen it displays your battery’s capacity, which is the maximum amount that you’ll be able to charge it. Next to that value it also displays what the original maximum was, and it can therefore compute the “wear” on your battery. As seen below my battery has 8% wear, which means in the 6-months that I’ve owned my laptop, I’ve lost 8% of my battery’s capacity.

–Summary–

This is one of those programs that I believe everyone should tryout on their battery-powered computers. I found the battery estimates to be extremely accurate, and it was also nice being able to see my processor’s temperature as well as the wear on my battery. Remember, Battery Status is free and only takes a few seconds to install, so there really isn’t anything to lose.

Battery Status Homepage (currently in the Beta stage, but seems really stable)

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First announced in July, Brother’s updated AirScouter wearable display is finally getting its first live demonstration at Brother World in Japan. The prototype Retinal Imaging Display (RID) projects safe, fast-moving light directly onto your retina that appears to the viewer as a 16-inch display floating transparently at a distance of about 3 feet. The tech used by Brother was harvested from its own optical system technologies found in laser and inkjet printers. Brother plans to launch the AirScouter for industrial uses in Japan where the glasses could overlay operating manuals onto machinery, for example. Later, Brother plans to adopt its RID tech into consumer products worldwide making for a more immersive (and practical) augmented reality experience.

Continue reading Brother’s AirScouter floats a 16-inch display onto your eye biscuit (video)

Brother’s AirScouter floats a 16-inch display onto your eye biscuit (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CrunchGear  |  DigInfo (YouTube), Brother  | Email this | Comments