Hasta La Gadget!

You had to know that Steve wouldn’t get away with putting his five minute, competition-slamming manifesto out into the ether without some snap back from the competition. We’ve already heard responses from TweetDeck and Andy Rubin, and now RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie has issued a statement in response to Jobs. Here it is:

“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 – 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders. As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.”

Sort of a big one, but we figure RIM at least deserves some equal time. Interesting that RIM is fighting Apple’s assertion of surpassing their handset shipments, we’ll have to see how that one settles once we get some “official” numbers from an unbiased third party. Meanwhile, let the mudslinging continue!

RIM’s Jim Balsillie hits back at the Steve Jobs rant, Apple’s ‘distortion field’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Our inexplicable love affair with the PlayStation Move Shooting Attachment (apparently the official name for the thing) is well documented. So what’s new? Well, it’s out now. Sony is releasing it into the wilds of retail for $20, alongside The Shoot ($40), an on-rails shooter title that failed to excite when we previewed it earlier this year. Will it be more enjoyable with your Move controller firmly ensconced in this beautiful bit of red and white plastic? Of course it will.

PlayStation Move Shooting Attachment out now for $20, still blindingly beautiful originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PlayStation Blog  |  Sony  | Email this | Comments

In many parts of the developing world, mobile phones have leapfrogged literacy, reaching places books and newspapers are rarely seen. In rural China, researchers with the Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) Project are using those phones to teach children how to read.

Scholars from Carnegie Mellon, UC-Berkeley, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences worked with children in Xin’an, an underdeveloped region in Henan Province, China, using two mobile learning games, inspired by traditional Chinese children’s games. MILLEE later repeated these studies with young children at a privately run school in urban Beijing. Both runs suggest that phone-based games could be a useful tool in teaching literacy.

According to Carnegie Mellon’s Matthew Kam, despite their comparatively small screens and low computing power, mobile phones could become a major educational resource as wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers move aggressively to extend mobile phone penetration across the globe. And if the educational benefits of mobile phones can be demonstrated convincingly, he added, consumers will have an additional motivation for getting mobile phone service, which could further spur mobile phone adoption in developing countries.

First, MILLEE researchers had to create games that would be meaningful and useful for children with little to no experience with either writing or computers. They analyzed 25 traditional Chinese children’s games to identify elements, such as cooperation between players, songs and handmade game objects, for use in the games.

They eventually developed two games: Multimedia Word and Drumming Stroke. In MW, the app provides hints to the children for recognizing characters: This might be a hints at pronunciation, a sketch, a photo or another multimedia object. In Drumming Stroke, children pass the mobile phone to one another to the rhythm of a phone-generated drum sound. Each player writes one stroke of a given Chinese character by following the exact stroke order.

Nokia has sponsored a MILLEE project teaching English literacy to rural children in India using mobile phone-based games, begining with 800 children in 40 villages in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh. MILLEE is also working with the University of Nairobi to explore how the games could be adapted to English literacy learning for rural children in Kenya.

Culturally inspired mobile phone games help Chinese children learn language characters [Carnegie Mellon via EurekAlert]
The MILLEE Classroom [Millee.org] Image via MILLEE.

See Also:

• Text-Free Computers Find Work for India's Unlettered
• Why India's $35 Tablet May Be Just a Dream
• If Afghan Troops Can't Read Cat in the Hat, This War Is Screwed …
• Learning Literacy with Lego
• 5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World
• Wired 10.02: The Ever-Expanding, Profit-Maximizing, Cultural …

After much speculation regarding the fate of Palm in the wake of the company’s $1.2 billion purchase by HP, the handset manufacturer today unveiled the latest evolution in its smartphone platform–the Palm Pre 2 and webOS 2. Because everyone loves a sequel, right?

The Pre 2 isn’t really a huge departure from its predecessor. In fact, as our mobile analyst Sascha Segan put it, “the Pre 2 is a curiously low-key upgrade for a Palm line that needs to aggressively expand to stay in the game.”

The new handset is pretty much a souped up version of the original Pre. Some of the improved specs include: 5MP camera, 16GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, and a 320-by-480 display.

The phone is arriving in the next few months, courtesy of Verizon. An unlocked version that’s compatible with AT&T will be arriving right around then, as well.

The new webOS, meanwhile, will be available on the new device and will be rolling out to existing customers. The operating system features Adobe Flash 10.1, Skype integration, support for social networks like Facebook, and a general smoothing of the UI.

Continue reading Mophie Juice Packs for iPhone 4, iPad en route to Apple Store

Mophie Juice Packs for iPhone 4, iPad en route to Apple Store originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Mophie  | Email this | Comments