Sep 27
If you can overlook the fact that it’s missing wireless connectivity, the Sony PRS-350 is a very nice little e-reader that’s anchored by an impressive and easy-to-use touch interface.
Sep 27
UK businessman Jimi Heselden, the man who believed in the Segway so much that he went ahead and bought the company, has died after reportedly driving a ruggedized version of the scooter off a cliff and into a river. He was found early on Sunday morning in the River Wharfe, having earlier been touring his estate in the personal transporter. The cause of the accident is not yet known. Mr. Heselden was 62 years old and, true to our geeky hearts, generated his fortune by coming up with an innovative design for wire cage walls that has since become standard equipment for NATO, American, and British forces. Our thoughts are with the good gent’s family, and please, behave yourselves in comments.
[Thanks, David]
Segway Inc. owner rides over cliff to his death originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sep 27
Every year, the Interbike show in Las Vegas brings new and updated products from the big bike-makers. It also has lots of weird niche bikes, which are probably a lot more interesting. And you can’t get much more niche than polo bike designed for travel.
This is the Joust, from Fleetvelo. It was designed by a fellow named Tucker Schwinn, who is both part of the famous bike-making Schwinn family and also a bike polo player. It is this last part that has lead to a bike that looks almost perfect for the sport.
First, the Joust is tough. It has fat steel tubes which have extra reinforcement where they join. I have snapped two frames this summer, both where the bottom bracket meets the seat-tube, so this is important. Second, the fork and frame are wide enough to take fat-tires (the front in this case is made for a 26-inch wheel). Fat tires are more comfortable but more importantly give better grip when braking hard into a turn, where a front-wheel skid can cause disaster.
The Joust is also made to take v-brakes front and back. The most popular polo bike so far is the Cutter, from BMX-maker Volume. It has no drilling for a front brake. The same 135mm axle-length is also used front and back, so you only need carry a spare rear-wheel and you can also use it up front.
But the last, most impressive piece of design is the S and S coupling. This is a super-light yet strong pair off joints that let you split the bike in two for travel. S and S makes travel-cases that are barely larger than the diameter of a wheel, and not very deep, either. Using these makes air-travel a breeze, and you can avoid the crazy charges some airlines levy on bikes.
All this design does’t come cheap, though. The frame alone is $650 ($620 unpainted). That’s a lot for a bike that you’re just going to thrash into the ground, but then again, it’s a lot cheaper than buying a new beater road-bike every couple months, which is what I’m doing now.
The Joust is built-to-order, and currently takes around three weeks to ship.
Fleetvelo Joust Polo Frame [Urban Velo]
Joust product page [Fleetvelo]
Photo: Urban Velo
See Also:
- The End is Nigh: Commercial Bike Polo Mallet Heads
- It Had to Happen: Bike-Polo Mallet Shafts Openly On Sale
- Two Brakes, One Hand: How To Stop a Polo Bike
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Sep 27
Just like the countless innovators, explorers and fine people killed in a Frankensteinian way by their own inventions, the current owner of Segway—not Dean Kamen—died yesterday after he rode off a cliff and into a river in England. More »
Sep 27
LG Optimus 7 pops up on Amazon.de with 5 megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touchscreen, €499 price
Posted in: amazon, availability, germany, gps, LG, pre-order, Pre-Release, price, pricing, Today's Chili, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7
Amazon’s German branch has been a tiny bit fast on the trigger. Windows Phone 7 isn’t due to launch at least until October 11, but here we are, dazing dreamily at the first listing of a device bearing the hot new OS: LG’s Optimus 7. Or is it the E900? You can tell Amazon’s offering is way early since the e-tailer has opted to list both names — it now seems like the E900 was the codename and the Optimus branding will be what you see in stores — just to make sure snoopers like us don’t miss out on it. So what’s there to see? Not much actually, official product images are predictably missing and all we’re told is that the handset will cost €499, include a GPS chip, and be capable of filling five million pixels with photonic data and then displaying the results on a 3.5-inch touchscreen. Such teases, these online retailers are.
LG Optimus 7 pops up on Amazon.de with 5 megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touchscreen, €499 price originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sep 27
Owleye Solar Bike Lights Also Charge via USB
Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Environment, Today's Chili, usb
Owleye makes solar-powered bike-lights, but don’t worry if you forgot to leave one on the window-ledge all day – you can quickly juice the built-in li-ion batteries via USB.
The lamp in question is the catchily-named 1996-906. Like all Owleye’s other lights, it has solar-panel on the side which will provide enough charge for 90 minutes if left to soak in the photons for two-hours. LEave it in the sun for four hours and switch the 200-lumen LED to flashing-mode and you can enjoy six-hours of night-biking.
The trick here is that you don’t need to turn the house-lights on if its a cloudy day, or to charge the lamp overnight. With the 1996-906, you can just plug in to a handy USB-port or charger and juice it that way.
The idea is a good one – I hate buying batteries or even swapping-out rechargeables. The lights are also small, so you can keep them handy in a backpack or pocket. They’re not cheap, however. Online, this model is going for $80 a set. If you don’t need the USB option, Owleye makes cheaper, bulkier lamps starting at $20.
Owleye product page [Owleye via Urban Velo]
See Also:
- Hands-On: Spaceship Bike Light Blinds Puny Humans
- Boomer: A Rechargeable USB Bike-Light from Knog
- LightLane's Lasers Make an Instant Bike Lane
- Video: Sanyo Eneloop Bike Pedals For You
- Pimp Your Ride: Cyglo Bike Tires with Embedded LEDs
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Sep 27
Samsung Galaxy Tab as Home Watcher remote control (video)
Posted in: GalaxyTab, remote control, RemoteControl, samsung, tab, tablet, Today's Chili, video
Seems like only yesterday that we were begging a big named consumer electronics company to get into home automation. Now Samsung, the world’s biggest consumer electronics company, complies with a demonstration of the connected home of the future using its own Galaxy Tab. The demo depicts live widget-based control over your home’s HVAC, TV (including remote viewing), stove, oven, dryer, vacuum robot, and refrigerator with integrated grocery manager that suggests recipes based upon the food you have. Unfortunately, instead of offering details on when (or how) Samsung’s vision might become reality, the demo’s main intent seems to be showing off Samsung’s latest product line from IFA earlier this month. It’s still worth a trip beyond the break for a peek though.
Samsung Galaxy Tab as Home Watcher remote control (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sep 27
Six-Pound Bike Just $45,000
Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games
What happens when a bike maker forgets about the UCI rules that govern the weights of competition road bikes? You end up with a machine which weighs just six pounds. That’s not a typo: 6-lbs.
Lance Armstrong and the other racers in the Tour de France must have bikes weighing 6.8-kilos, or 15-pounds. This machine, built by Fairwheel Bikes of Tuscon, weighs in at less than half that. And according to the anonymous owner, it is tough enough to ride, having clocked up around 20,000-miles.
To get the weight down, pretty much every part has been tweaked. Almost everything is made from carbon fiber, of course, but here are a few ridiculously small numbers for you. The brakes are AX Lightness (130-145 grams the set, depending on model). The crankset, iuncluding bearings, is 281-grams. The AeroLite Lite Pedals weren’t Lite enough, so they have been drilled to further reduce weight. And the wheels? According to Rico de Wert, the builder of the cranks, both wheels together weigh just 585-grams. That’s 1.29-pounds for the pair.
Velonews spoke to the folks from Fairwheel, who were showing off the machine at this year’s Interbike, and you can read the full list of specs over at the site. It really is a crazy-light bike, and it gets me thinking about just how pointless it is, too. While properly inflating your tires won’t add a significant amount to the weight, drinking just three liters of water before getting in the saddle would actually add more to your weight than the mass of this entire bike. And imagine how light this thing would be if they took off the gears and made it fixed.
The bike isn’t for sale, but if you were to make your own, it would cost you $45,000.
A $45,000, six pound carbon road bike assembled by Fairwheel Bikes [Velonews]
Photo: Velonews
See Also:
- Remote-Control Tron Legacy Light Cycle Defies Gravity
- Do Bikers Cheat?
- Hipsters Grieve: The $150 Walmart Fixie
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Sep 27
Microsoft hosting a press conference on October 11, we’ll be there live!
Posted in: breaking news, BreakingNews, launch, london, Microsoft, Today's Chili, uk, united kingdom, UnitedKingdom, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7, Wp7
If you had any doubts about the most important date in your Windows Phone 7 calendar, you can now dismiss them. Microsoft has just gotten in touch to ask us very kindly to “save the date” October 11 for a 2PM London press conference (9AM ET for Americans) that will last all the way until 5.30PM. Unless Steve Ballmer’s planning on reading the Iliad all that time, that sounds like there’ll be hands-on opportunities with WP7 devices to us. Of course, there’s nary a mention of any phones in the brief invite, but given the multiple sources nailing that exact date as Microsoft’s European launch, we’d be shocked to see anything else. Either way, we’re bringing our trusty liveblogging equipment and will keep you informed whatever happens.
Microsoft hosting a press conference on October 11, we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sep 27
AMD Radeon HD 6770 and 6750 spec sheets emerge, give NVIDIA cause for concern
Posted in: AMD, GraphicsCard, leak, leaked, radeon, rumor, speculation, Today's Chili
Alright AMD, we still haven’t forgiven you for burying the glorious name that was ATI, but if your next GPU refresh is as mighty as these numbers indicate, we might at least let you in from the doghouse. A slide detailing two flavors of the upcoming 40nm Barts chip has sprouted up from two independent sources online, and it shows some appreciable gains between generations. The new HD 67×0 cards appear manifestly speedier than their predecessors — with faster clocks, more texture units, and more ROPs — but the fun really gets going when you compare them to the HD 5870 and 5850, AMD’s previous high-end cards. Memory bandwidth and pixel fillrate are identical between the HD 6750 and 5850, while the HD 6770 even manages to beat the formerly imperious 5870 in a couple of areas. Of course, this is all still unconfirmed information, but considering that Barts is only an “upper midrange” chip that’s already stepping on the toes of last year’s finest, we feel safe in expecting some pretty big things from the flagship Cayman silicon when it lands — which will be soon if all these leaks and rumors are anything to go by.
[Thanks, Vygantas]
Gallery: AMD Radeon 6700 Series leaked specs
AMD Radeon HD 6770 and 6750 spec sheets emerge, give NVIDIA cause for concern originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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