We both know you didn’t need a Kindle with a 9.7-inch display, but you went and did the deed anyway. Now that you’re a proud owner of Amazon’s Kindle DX Graphite, you’re obligated to tell the world what exactly you’d change about it if given the ability to do so. We noted back in our review that the revised display was indeed a lovely extra, but is it enough to justify the lofty premium over the standard 6-inch model? Would you have changed up the keyboard? What about the enclosure? Thrown in a kickstand? Added a helmet mount? Go on and tell us how you’d make the Kindle DX Graphite an ideal device down in comments below. We’re all ears, you know.
What’s it like having the sexiest man in the world as your imaginary friend? Turns out, pretty friggin awesome. Some NSFW language and hair from Funny or Die and Jon Daly.
If we didn’t know any better, we’d easily mistake Maingear’s newest duo as the sexiest portable duo we’ve seen today. And maybe it is. The up-and-coming pre-fab PC builder has just unleashed a new pair of laptops, the Clutch-13 and Clutch-15. Predictably, the former is a 13.3-incher while the latter clocks in at a more usual 15.6-inches, and both feature Intel’s newest Core 2010 CPUs and looks that (almost) kill. The smaller guys is equipped with a WXGA (1366 x 768) resolution panel, 1.2GHz Core 330UM, integrated Intel graphics, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, a 750GB HDD (or 512GB SSD if you’re feeling whimsical), 802.11g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet, an HDMI output, eSATA, ExpressCard slot and compatibility with an optional docking station that adds an ODD among other useful niceties. The Clutch-15 sticks with the same WXGA resolution (disappointingly, might we add), but offers up a choice of Core i3/i5/i7 CPU, NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 330M GPU (1GB), WiDi support and a full-size keyboard with number pad. They’re available as we speak starting at $1,099 and $899 in order of mention, so feel free to gloss over the next hour of work while configuring your own.
Cupcake, donut, eclair, froyo. That’s not just a list of Android iterations, it’s also an inventory of all the giant decorations (along with a large green robot) that cover the GooglePlex lawn. And today marks the introduction of a large gingerbread man. Historically, such tasty statues have been in honor of its related milestone’s completion, so we’re wagering that Android 3.0 (or is it 2.3?) will be officially unveiled in the very short future. Run, run, as fast as you can to the video after the break.
Household robots could become a reality sooner than we think. But the first hurdle they would have to clear is to prove they can make great pancakes. After all, the breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
A demo posted by Willow Garage, a Palo Alto, California, robotic company, shows two robots working together to make pancakes from a mix. The robots — James and Rosie — even flipped the pancakes correctly.
As you can see in the video (the fun stuff begins at the 1:26 mark) the James robot opened and closed cupboards and drawers, removed the pancake mix from the refrigerator, and handed it to Rosie.
Rosie the robot cooks and flips the pancakes and gives them back to James. Watch for that moment of suspense when Rosie is about to flip the pancake (at the 8:35 mark) and the spontaneous applause from the onlookers when the robot gets it right.
“Behind this domestic tableau is a demonstration of the capabilities of service bots,” says Willow Garage on its blog. “This includes characteristics such as learning, probabilistic inference and action planning.”
For a robot, learning how to flip a pancake is quite a task. Earlier this year, two researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology taught a robot how to do it. The robot had to hold its hand stiffly to throw the pancake in the air and then flex the hand just enough so it could catch the pancake without having it bounce off the pan. It took that robot about 50 tries to get it right.
The latest experiment brought together two different robots: James, a $400,000 robot from Willow Garage and Rosie, a robot from the Technical University Munich. The two robots are among the most sophisticated and advanced humanoid robots today.
James has two stereo camera pairs in its head. The four 5-megapixel cameras are supplemented with a tilting laser range finder. Each of the robot’s forearms has an Ethernet wide-angle camera, while the grippers at the tip have three-axis accelerometers and pressure-sensor arrays on the fingertips. At the base of the robot is another laser range finder.
The PR2 is powered by two eight-core i7 Xeon system servers on-board, 48 GB of memory and a battery system equivalent to 16 laptop batteries or about two hours of battery life.
Rosie has two laser scanners for mapping and navigation, one laser scanner for 3-D laser scans and four cameras, including two 2-megapixel cameras, one stereo-on-chip camera and a Swiss-Ranger SR4000 time-of-flight camera.
The advanced capabilities of the robots came in handy for the task they were assigned. In the demo, one of the robots used the web to solve a cooking problem it faced. The robot looked up a picture on the web and went online to find the cooking instructions for the pancake mix that came from the fridge.
James and Rosie aren’t yet ready “for haute cuisine” say Willow Garage researchers. Nor are they likely to be in your kitchen anytime soon, unless you are ready to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars for a pancake that may not be half as good as the $5 IHOP stack.
But the experiment gives us a pretty good sense of the possibilities. And the robots are cute, besides.
Even though we’ve seen a torrent of Windows Phone 7 devices, we couldn’t leave you hanging on a review of the Samsung Focus. In the last few days, a flurry of new Microsoft-powered devices have hit the market, boasting slight differences, but all looking and acting largely the same. We’ve taken a deep dive on the operating system itself, the Omnia 7, Optimus 7, Mozart, HD7, and Surround (phew!) — now it’s time to focus on the, er… Focus. The device itself has a lot in common with its European brother, the Omnia 7, boasting the same 4-inch Super AMOLED display, 8GB of internal storage, 1GHz CPU, and 5 megapixel camera. The device will soon go on sale in America for $199.99 on AT&T’s network — in fact, it’s the only Windows Phone 7 device you’ll be able to buy on the network when they go public on November 8th. But is it really worth your hard earned cash when there are so many other options in the market? Read on for the full Engadget review to find out!
Update: Just a note, the HD7 will also be available (for T-Mobile) on November 8th and we’ve updated the above information to reflect that.
Update 2: We had the numbers wrong on the RAM / ROM. It’s 512MB and 1GB, respectively.
This review is primarily of the Samsung Focus hardware. Check out our full review of Windows Phone 7 for our thoughts on the OS.
This week’s Gadget Lab podcast is packed with brand-new, shiny goodies. Apple released new notebooks and Microsoft launched its first phones running Windows Phone 7.
Wednesday, Apple’s new MacBook Air debuts in two different flavors with 11- or 13-inch screens. We have an 11-inch Air here in the lab, and we wonder how to justify paying $1,000 for one of these when you can pay $300 for a netbook or $500 for an iPad.
As for Microsoft, Samsung was one of the first manufacturers to create a phone powered by Windows Phone 7. I reviewed the Samsung Focus, and I’m a big fan of the OS, despite some flaws and features it’s still missing.
Wrapping up the podcast on a sadder note, Wired.com’s Priya Ganapati discusses the future of the Symbian foundation, responsible for the OS behind most Nokia phones, whose president recently resigned.
Even if you don’t like its methods, you’ve got to appreciate iFixits’s tenacity. It rips apart every single hot new gadget the moment it hits the market. The site just got its hands on the brand new 11 inch MacBook Air and worked its magic on the ultraportable.
“Most components–RAM included–are soldered to the logic board, preventing them from being replaced,” writes iFixit–an unfortunate revelation for anyone planning to upgrade down the road. “We definitely recommend users to buy the 4GB RAM version of the Air, as the paltry 2GB already borders on obsolete by today’s standards,” the site adds.
iFixit also took a good long look at the laptop’s 64GB flash memory, which, incidentally, is the one thing that isn’t soldered to everything else. “This may enable some crafty tinkerers to rig a larger drive inside the Air, provided they can fit everything within the tight confines of the .68″ thick case.”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
