Hasta La Gadget!

Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dot com.

Whoulda thunk that the third time we’d see the BlackBerry PlayBook on video, it’d be in the hands of cube-headed dopplegangster Will.I.Shill? Not us, but we’re terribly excited to see the 7-inch tablet show off its augmented reality chops in the Black Eyed Peas’ latest music video. We’re not really sure what alternate reality hijinks turned the musicians into 8-bit portraits nor pixelated their world, but the BEP sure look adorable as Xbox LIVE-friendly avatars. Watch it after the break, or skip to 2:12, 3:16 and 3:54 if you just want to get your tablet on.

[Thanks, Jamesy]

Continue reading Screen Grabs: BlackBerry Eyed PlayBooks (video)

Screen Grabs: BlackBerry Eyed PlayBooks (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 21:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The holiday shopping season is stressful enough as it is. Why not make things a little easier (and cheaper) with some free comparison shopping apps for your smartphone?

Originally posted at The Download Blog

We’ve read disturbing reports that Japan’s love hotels are in danger and some commentators speculate that their numbers will even halve next year.

From January new rules mean that the love hotels that technically operate in the same category as ryokan (Japanese inn) will have to switch to being legally registered as love hotels. This will mean that these “fake love hotels” cannot be within two hundred meters of a school and will be forced to move. More seriously, the hotels will have just one month to submit the applications for the change, the supporting documents costing several million yen to prepare.

[Pic via jetsetta.com]

Love hotels are, of course, short-stay hotels favored by couples in need of the privacy which they can’t get at home. They are usually instantly recognizable by their garish and imaginative exteriors, as any visitor to Love Hotel Hill in Shibuya will attest. They are also examples of “third spaces“, locations that act as living/relaxation/work areas that are not usually possible in typical Japanese homes.

Diamond magazine claims that there may be as many as 35 thousand hotels currently legally registered as ryokan and that the fate of the whole nation’s love hotel industry lies in the balance.

Japan, not known for being a prudish country, has seen campaigns for this law change led by organizations like the “National Fake Love Hotel Removal Group” (全国偽装ラブホテルをなくす会).

So, should couples be worried? Probably not. The likely result is that business hotels in affected areas will simply start to offer daytime “rest” packages. Whenever there is demand there will be supply.

Looks like HTC and Samsung are taking some aggressive steps to protect themselves from Android patent litigation — in the past week both companies have entered into long-term patent licensing agreements with Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures. (Mhyrvold was once Microsoft’s chief technology officer, but he’s arguably more famous for Intellectual Ventures.) Both HTC and Samsung now have access to IV’s entire portfolio of “more than 30,000 IP assets” to wield against current or potential legal opponents — like, say, Apple or Oracle — and IV also plans to help them manage their existing patent portfolios. It sounds to us like HTC and Samsung decided that they needed more patent muscle in order to survive in the now crazy-litigious smartphone market, and indeed, the PR announcing the HTC deal flatly says the smartphone maker is “working with IV to mitigate its patent risk.”

Of course, this is also a bit of a deal with the devil — Intellectual Ventures might be the most infamous patent troll in history, and HTC and Samsung have essentially decided the risks and cost of doing business with IV are more favorable than the risks and cost of going to court. Either way, we’ll see how this all shakes out — and we’ve got a feeling that the Apple / HTC lawsuit is about to get seriously interesting.

HTC and Samsung license entire Intellectual Ventures patent portfolio, gear up for war originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Decked out with LED-lit lines and inspired by the famous “Tron” motorbike, the mouse also comes with sound effects activated by movement.