Amazon introduces a beta version of Kindle for the Web, which its says will allow customers to discover new books and authors by sampling Kindle books directly through web browsers and share them via Twitter and Facebook.
At first, SonAt first, Sony Ericsson’s tiny 1.3-inch Bluetooth external cellphone screen seems like a joke. And then you realize that it is designed to work with the giant, slab-like HTC Desire or Sony Ericsson’s own Xperia X10 and it all makes sense.
The LiveView is a small OLED screen the size of a watch-face. It has physical buttons on its corners, and the bezel is touch-sensitive. You can use it to control music, check Twitter, read RSS feeds or do pretty much anything an app wants to do. Applications need to be written to use this monitor, and the most impressive demo in the video below shows a sports app sending stats to the LiveView as you run.
The widget comes with a wrist-strap (of course – wrist-mounted gadgets are the new pocket-watches, or something) and can be clipped onto clothes, just like the iPods Nano and Shuffle. There are a handful of phones that support it already, but you can use it with any phone running Android 2.0 or better by downloading Sony Ericsson LiveWare Manager from the Android Market.
I love the idea. Wouldn’t it be great if Apple did something like this with the Nano and the iPhone? The LiveView will be in stores in the fourth quarter of this year, price as yet undecided.
LiveView product page [Sony Ericsson via Engadget]
What took them so long? Swann Security has finally announced its first line of audible home security alarms with the Home Series Alarm Range. Designed to be used as standalone alarms, the series is comprised of alarms that emit a loud siren once a security breach has been detected. With a line of window, door, and motion alarms, the series is meant to offer peace-of-mind without a high price tag.
The series includes the Window Alarm ($9.99), Magnetic Window Alarm ($9.99), PIR Motion Alarm ($24), Magnetic Keypad Door Alarm, ($19.99), Anti-Flood Alarm ($12.99), Ceiling Alarm ($29.99), and Wireless Doormat Chime ($29.99). Look for the whole line in stores this fall.
The MacArthur Foundation’s 2010 fellowship class honors 23 innovators, providing them with $500,000 grants, national recognition, and a few people throwing around the word “genius.” One of the fellows is Amir Abo-Shaeer, a teacher whose high school physics and technology curriculum centers on designing and constructing robots.
Abo-Shaeer teaches at Dos Pueblos High School in Galeta, CA. In 2001, he created the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy to challenge the idea that American high school students — and particularly high school girls — weren’t interested in science or engineering. Abo-Shaeer was a Dos Pueblos alumni, studied engineering at UC-Santa Barbara, and worked in aerospace and telecommunications R&D. He knew that this just wasn’t the case.
“My first class, there were 35 students, and there were two girls,” Abo-Shaeer says. He brought his female students to the junior high schools to directly recruit more girls into the program. The students attracted attention by aggressively competing in the FIRST Robotics international high school competition, while Abo-Shaeer secured grants to build up the school’s robotics lab.
Now, Abo-Shaeer says, “we’ve had a line out the door of people wanting to get into our program,” — which is now composed of more than 50% girls. This summer, the Academy began construction of a 12,000 square-foot campus that will let them triple their current enrollment. The Perfect Mile author Neal Bascomb is writing a forthcoming book about Abo-Shaeer and his program titled The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts.
Recently, Abo-Shaeer’s Academy augmented its physics and engineering program with entrepreneurial and business components. It lets students focus on not just learning the science and tech to construct robots that work, but thinking about practical use-cases, cost, and marketability.
In a recent article for the Atlantic, “School For Hackers,” Make Magazine’s editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder argues forcefully that these are precisely the skills students should be learning, that building robots and gadgets is the best way to learn them, and that the current push towards quantifiable assessment is squeezing them out of American education. “When a kid builds a model rocket, or a kite, or a birdhouse, she not only picks up math, physics, and chemistry along the way, she also develops her creativity, resourcefulness, planning abilities, curiosity, and engagement with the world around her. But since these things can’t be measured on a standardized test, schools no longer focus on them.” Let’s hope the MacArthur Foundation’s recognition of Dos Pueblos helps turn some of that momentum around.
2010 MacArthur Fellows [MacArthur Foundation]
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Gallery: Panasonic Toughbook S9 press shots
Panasonic Toughbook S9 claims to be the world’s lightest 12.1-inch laptop with a DVD drive, we believe it originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street accessories? DreamGear and Sesame Workshop have teamed up to bring Elmo and friends to game handhelds, headphones, and more.
It’s been forever and a day since Amazon first offered its users access to the opening few pages of a book on its web store, but now that feature is being codified under the Kindle umbrella as a new Kindle for the Web service. It’ll allow external sites to embed book samples right into their content stream, while users get a new Share button for spreading the good word about Chuck Palahniuk’s visionary writing across their social networks. Font sizes, line spacing, and even background color are adjustable too. Hit up the source link to try it out for yourself.
Kindle for the Web overhauls Amazon’s online book previews, adds sharing and embedding features originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Meet the Levytator, the world’s first escalator that can go around corners. Thanks to its curved, interlocking steps, the Levytator can snake across hillsides, departure lounges and shopping malls in any shape the architect likes.
It gets better. Normal escalators runs the steps back up or down by pulling them underneath the steps you’re standing on. The Levytator, as you can see in the video, has all of its steps exposed at all times, with the same chain looping around for a descent, giving one escalator instead of two. Furthermore, “The steps can follow any path upwards, flatten and straighten out, and descend once more, all with passengers on board.” This opens up the possibility of a moving theme-park tour, for example.
The patented design was invented by Professor Jack Levy of the City University, London. I wonder at which point the Professor realized that combining his name with the word escalator would be both inevitable and awesome?
There are a couple of problems. One, as pointed out in a rare, lucid YouTube comment, is getting the moving handrail to follow the bendy course of the steps. The other is a human trouble. If you have ever been on an escalator that flattens out momentarily mid-climb, then you’ll know it can be quite disorientating. Add swooping curves into the mix and you might get a lot of dizzy, tumbling passengers.
City University London unveils world’s first freeform curved escalator [City University London]
The Levytator [YouTube]
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We’ve all seen what a bumpy ride Nokia’s had over the last few months — disappointing profits, the departure of a couple of old friends, and the slight delay of the forthcoming N8. Despite all that, Espoo seems to have at least one stronghold that remained unshaken throughout the storm: its research center in Cambridge, UK. Yep, we’re talking about the magical place where Nokia and University of Cambridge co-develop the core technologies for the futuristic Morph concept. Actually, “futuristic” might be too strong a word here, as we were fortunate enough to see some of Nokia’s latest research at the heart of Morph — namely flexible circuitry and nanowire sensing — demonstrated live yesterday. Curious as to how well the demos went? Then read on — you know you want to.
Continue reading A grand tour of nanotechnology at Nokia Research Center, Cambridge
A grand tour of nanotechnology at Nokia Research Center, Cambridge originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Poo Log HD app for iPad–based on the book, “What’s your poo telling you?”–features a digital timer and journal for recording, studying, and tracking digestive health. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20017794-247.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Health Tech/a/p
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