Dec 27

Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat blasts off for adventure and good uplink speeds (video)

Posted in: europe, launch, satellite, Today's Chili, video
Eutelsat's Ka-Sat blasts off from Kazakhstan, looking for adventure and good uplink speeds (video)

Oh, look at you Europe, with your white Christmas blizzards and your fancy satellites. All proud and bragging as your second internet-beaming vehicle in as many months rockets off into orbital oblivion. Following November’s Hylas 1 is Ka-Sat, using the same spotbeam technology to rain down limited, focused areas of connectivity that are a couple-hundred kilometers across, allowing better management of overall satellite bandwidth. Hylas 1 used its beams to cover areas across the UK and Eastern Europe, while Ka-Sat will cover more areas of Europe and also hit parts of the Middle East. Maximum speeds offered to subscribers will be 10Mbps down, 4Mbps up, but with only 900Mbps on tap total per beam we’re thinking that could get a little slower on Saturday nights. Obligatory countdown and blastoff video below.

Continue reading Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat blasts off for adventure and good uplink speeds (video)

Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat blasts off for adventure and good uplink speeds (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 09:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 27

Galaxy Player: Samsung’s iPod Touch Clone to Debut at CES 2011

Posted in: Android, ipod, Media Players, samsung, Today's Chili

At last, somebody, somewhere will sell a credible alternative to the iPod Touch.

Apple has had the phone-less pocket computer market to itself ever since September 2007. This is about to change, thanks to Samsung’s Galaxy Player, a non-cell version of its super-successful Galaxy S.

Samsung got a rather crappier Galaxy-branded media player into European stores last year, but this one is the real deal. It sports a pair of cameras (3.2 megapixels on back and a VGA webcam up front), Bluetooth, GPS, a microSD card slot, a 1-GHz processor and Android 2.2 Froyo.

The screen is 4 inches diagonally, bigger than the Touch, but with a lower resolution of 800 x 480 (the Touch boasts a 960 x 640 “Retina” display). The Player is also thicker than the Touch — 9.9 mm against 7.2 mm — but this is likely how Samsung manages to fit in a better camera and a removable battery.

Pricing has yet to be revealed, but we know what sizes the player will come in: 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB. More to come from CES, which is less than two weeks away.

Samsung confirms Galaxy Player, will showcase at CES 2011 [Samsung Hub]

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Dec 27

Synology DS1511+ does the 3TB-per-drive dance, backs up most of your neighborhood

Posted in: nas, storage, Today's Chili

Once one network attached storage manufacturer upgraded to 3TB hard drives, it was only a matter of time before the rest followed suit, and this time it’s Synology’s turn with the DiskStation DS1511+. In case you haven’t done the math already, this particular unit can store up to 15 terabytes of your juiciest secrets across five 3TB hot-swappable drives, and its 1.8GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of memory handles a RAID 5 array capable of speeding that data across a local area network at up to 197 MB / sec read speeds and 165 MB / sec writes. If that capacity isn’t enough to house your plan for world domination and monitor all the IP cameras in your underground volcano lair, the unit can scale up to 45TB with a couple of secondary expansion units, each with five more 3TB drives of their own. Yours for roughly $900 — sans storage — wherever NAS are sold. PR after the break.

Continue reading Synology DS1511+ does the 3TB-per-drive dance, backs up most of your neighborhood

Synology DS1511+ does the 3TB-per-drive dance, backs up most of your neighborhood originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 08:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 27

Boattail Racer, the $350 Wooden Toy Car

Posted in: Cars, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

There’s no doubt that the Boattail Racer is gorgeous, its “aerodynamic” lines recalling automobiles designed before the wind tunnel, built to look fast rather than be fast. What is also certain is that it takes a lot of promotional bullshit to get away with selling a wooden toy car for $350. Yes, $350.

Let’s decode the marketing speak:

The Boattail Racer is handmade from materials that time cannot easily erode.

What?

The wooden bodywork is sculpted from rugged 13 ply Baltic birch.

It’s plywood

The muscular stance comes courtesy of the 77.5 millimeter carnelian-core industrial grade wheels, which float effortlessly on precision bearings.

In-line skate wheels with hippy-stones inside.

Solid stainless steel axles and fasteners ensure faithful service for generations to come.

Ah, stainless steel, second only to gold and platinum in its preciousness.

Your Boattail Racer arrives protected by a custom archive box handcrafted from black-core 4 ply acid-free museum board.

Comes in a cardboard box.

And that, ladies and gents, is how you take a toy car made from plywood and inflate its price tenfold. It even comes with a certificate to remind you how authentically you were swindled.

Boattail Racer [Auditorium Toys Co via Uncrate]

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Dec 27

TDK Resurrects the Boombox

Posted in: Media Players, Retro, speakers, Today's Chili

Somebody call up Radio Raheem. We have some good news: The boombox is back.

TDK’s retro-styled portable speakers ditch the tape deck (although they do still have a radio), but otherwise you get an authentic 1980s experience. The “2 Speaker Boombox” puts out 20-Watts, and the “3 Speaker Boombox” goes up to 35-Watts. Both boxes have six-inch drivers, and the 3-speaker model adds a six–inch sub to the mix.

The Boomboxes have a variety of ways to get music into them, from a 3.5mm jack to a USB-port. Thus you can hook up your iPod as well as a guitar or mic to jam along, or just walk the streets with the thing on your shoulder, as God intended. If you have a USB-stick, hard-drive or iPod plugged in, you can use the Boombox’s controls to skip tracks.

The smaller box has a handle as well as a shoulder strap – the bigger unit has a handle only.

Despite all this modernity, there is one part of this that is a real throwback to the days of breakdancing: D-cell batteries. They don’t need 20 of the things, like Radio Raheem’s boombox, but they get close. Depending on which one you buy, you’ll need 10 or 12 D-cells to run the thing. Available April 2011, for $400 and $500.

2 Speaker Boombox [TDK via Core77]

3 Speaker Boombox [TDK]

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Dec 27

Gorillaz iPad album now available, as are the apps used to make it (video)

Posted in: Apple, ios, ipad, Software, Today's Chili, video
Gorillaz iPad album now available, as are the apps they used to make it (video)

Recording music on iOS? Been there, done that. A major artist recording its latest album on an iPad? That’s something new, and that’s what Gorillaz has done for its latest release: The Fall. Anyone can listen to the album for free, but members of the fan club can give it a download and archive it for future posterity. How’d the band make it? We can’t say, but surely there was some cell-shading involved, and here’s the list of apps that were said to be used:

Speak It! / SoundyThingie / Mugician / Solo Synth / Synth / Funk Box / Gliss / AmpliTube / Xenon / iElectribe / BS-16i / M3000 HD / Cleartune / iOrgel HD / Olsynth / StudioMiniXI / BassLine / Harmonizer / Dub Siren Pro / Moog Filatron

We’ve included one track below for you to listen to yourself and hear what the pinnacle of modern iPad harmony sounds like. We’re no music critics, but it seems safe to say it’s no Tomorrow Comes Today — which we also embedded, purely for comparison purposes.

Continue reading Gorillaz iPad album now available, as are the apps used to make it (video)

Gorillaz iPad album now available, as are the apps used to make it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 07:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 27

Unity Turns Coffee Table into Universal Remote

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, Phones, Today's Chili

Place the handsome Unity box on your coffee-table, download the companion application from the App Store, and you can control your TV, DVD player and pretty much anything else in your living room, direct from your iPhone.

The black, cylindrical Unity seems a lot like the soft, rubber Peel which we saw a few weeks ago. Both allow you to remote-control any IR gear you have, but while the Peel hooks into your home’s Wi-Fi network, the Unity uses Bluetooth. And while the Peel is a system that learns your tastes and breaks down the entire concept of channels, the Unity is a flat-out nerd-fest.

Once you have told the Unity app which devices you own, you can flip channels using on-screen keys. But then the fun begins. Central to the Unity are “actions”, step-by-step instructions that execute with a single touch. So one press can fire up your home-theater gear, switch the TV to the right channel and start the movie playing. The one thing it won’t do is make the popcorn.

Unity also has one other big advantage over the Peel: You can buy it. While the Peel is still little more than vapor (and a free app), the Unity can be had for $100.

Unity product page [Gear4 via Macworld]

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Dec 27

iPhone 4 gets stuck with NFC ‘sticker’ from Japan’s Softbank

Posted in: Apple, iPhone, Japan, japanese, nfc, peripheral, Today's Chili

One of the lesser known predictions of the Mayan calendar foretells that 2011 will be the year of NFC. The contactless communications stuff looks to be building all kinds of stream in the Western world, but don’t lose faith in your current smartphone if it doesn’t already have it. Japanese carrier Softbank has responded to complaints about the iPhone 4’s NFC deficit — the FeliCa payment system is pretty popular over in the land of sumo, sushi and sun-rising — by introducing a new “seal” for the back of Apple’s latest and greatest. It sticks on, covering almost the entire rear, but is apparently thin enough not to get in the way of using one of Apple’s own Bumpers alongside it. From our reading of the press release, the sticker doesn’t actually communicate with the iPhone, it’s just a dumb NFC card, but hey, other people don’t need to know that when you’re swiping payments with your phone, now do they? On sale in February at a price of ¥2,980 ($36).

iPhone 4 gets stuck with NFC ‘sticker’ from Japan’s Softbank originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 07:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 27

Thimble: A Bluetooth Braille Smart-Finger

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, Displays, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

Thimble is a Bluetooth finger-glove that hooks up to your smartphone and works as a Braille display. By pulsing Braille shapes onto the fingertip via an “electro-tactile grid array”, all kinds of messages can be conveyed to the user.

But that’s not all. The concept design, by Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet, also has a camera inside to scan words in the real world and transcribe them into Braille, along with a microphone for voice control. Thus the user can ask where they are, the phone will provide the location via GPS and the Thimble will read out the answer. Here’s a slow-moving video showing how it would work.

The phone, in this case, is an iPhone, as iOS already has great accessibility features for the sight-impaired, and already works just fine with existing Braille displays. Hedberg and Bennet are “working on a patent”, and as the product is actually fairly straightforward, we’re hoping to see real, working versions in the future.

Thimble – There’s a Thing for That [Vimeo via DVICE]

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Dec 27

Dell’s Looking Glass tablet passes through FCC, shows off SD and SIM card slots

Posted in: MID, slate, streak, tablet, Today's Chili

Dell’s still calling this a Mobile Internet Device, but you can call it by any of its codenames: Looking Glass, M02M, iPad eviscerator, they’re all in here. Yes, the FCC has spent a month of quality time with Dell’s still unofficial, but very much upcoming, tablet and has given the go-ahead for its integrated 3G (the listed UMTS bands II, IV and V indicate compatibility with both AT&T and T-Mobile), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and 802.11n WiFi radios. Labeling for the attached (and apparently not removable) door on the back of the device indicates an SD card slot, which will sit right alongside a SIM card port. The latter will presumably be used mostly to funnel data into the Dell tablet, but voice calls aren’t completely out of the question either — there’s a (inactive) proximity sensor thrown in as well. Either way, Dell’s almost sure to launch this device, expected to feature a 7-inch screen and Tegra 2 internals, at CES next week.

Dell’s Looking Glass tablet passes through FCC, shows off SD and SIM card slots originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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