Hasta La Gadget!

You know a job title is tenuous when even the guys who announce it have to put it in quotation marks — Intel’s just signed up the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am as a “director of creative innovation.” The hip hop star responsible for flooding CES 2010 and every BlackBerry event since with an irritatingly cheery tune (which we’re sure we don’t have to name) is about to commence a long-term, “hands-on” collaboration with Intel on its development of “new technologies, music and tech advocacy.” Basically, it sounds like he’ll act as an ambassador for the chip company, who’ll in turn pretend to listen to his zany ideas about mega-giga-bass. Then again, Lady Gaga’s similar partnership with Polaroid produced these glasses, so what the hell do we know?

Continue reading Intel hires Will-i-am as ‘director of creative innovation,’ whole world is nonplussed

Intel hires Will-i-am as ‘director of creative innovation,’ whole world is nonplussed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steaming down the autobahn could be about to get a whole lot more efficient. Volkswagen has carted out its newly updated Super Efficient Vehicle concept, now dubbed the XL1, which — after a great deal of fuzzy math, we’re sure — is rated at a 313MPG fuel efficiency and produces only 24g of CO2 per kilometer traveled. There’s an electric motor and a TDI diesel engine making all the buzzing and roaring noises inside, while the overall body design is focused on making the car as light and as aerodynamic as possible. Volkswagen has achieved a 795kg curb weight by using carbon fiber, magnesium, ceramics, and aluminum to shave down any excess portliness from the XL1, while wind-tunnel testing and optimizations have resulted in a rather exemplary 0.186 drag coefficient. It’s rare to see such attributes on anything outside the supercar realm, but then there’s a reason why this PHEV is still only a concept. FOF.

Continue reading Volkswagen’s XL1 concept plug-in diesel hybrid has 313MPG fuel efficiency, questionable aesthetics

Volkswagen’s XL1 concept plug-in diesel hybrid has 313MPG fuel efficiency, questionable aesthetics originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

Approximate Price: $27,000
We find more and more things to store on our computers as hard drive capacities continue to increase. Do you remember when computer games only took a few megabytes but now they take a few gigabytes! It isn’t a big deal because most desktop computers come standard with more than 100GB of disk space. Even with all of this space you will find yourself deleting files to clear up room if you are trying to store movies on your computer. That is where Kaleidescape saves the day.

Kaleidescape Server
It will be your media server and give you storage capacities up to 5.5TB! How much can you store with that much room? It will hold up to 825 DVD’s or 10,000 CD’s on the twelve 500GB disks that make this machine a media monster. If 5.5TB isn’t enough for you then you can network multiple servers together to give you the space you need.

If you didn’t want to shell out so much money initially then you can gradually expand your server to the 5.5TB. Kaleidescape makes this easy by using hot-swappable RAID drives which also provides a lot of reliability. If a drive fails then the server will not lose any of the movies or music because of having the RAID drives installed. Now you don’t have to worry about losing your database when that dreaded power outage occurs.

Kaleidescape Movie Player
The server is just for storing the movies and music so you have to have a way to get the media from the server. The movie player will let users retrieve music and movies from the Kaleidescape server and play them. Multiple people can be accessing the server at the same time to retrieve the movies from the server since they are only reading a file and not writing to it.

The movie player can be controlled by a Web-utility or by a remote control. It communicates with the server using an Ethernet cable. A big advantage of the movie player is that it can play either DVD movies or HD movies but the movies must be stored on the server because this does not have a DVD drive.

Kaleidescape Music Player
Okay, so you may think that having a music player is stupid if the movie player will already play music. You’re right in terms of playing music, but it also has the features of the Kaleidescape Reader (below) built into it. This means you can copy your DVD’s and CD’s to the server using this music player (the server doesn’t have a built-in media copier). It will take 8 minutes to copy a CD or 30 minutes to copy a DVD without compression.

Just like the movie player it can be controlled using a Web-utility or you can use a remote control. All you have to do is hook it up to the network via an Ethernet cable and you can start copying and playing music.

Kaleidescape Reader
If you don’t want to get the music player above then you can get the Kaleidescape Reader which will copy your DVD’s and CD’s to the server. This box doesn’t do anything other than read the CD or DVD and send it to the server.

It can copy a CD in 8 minutes or a DVD in 30 minutes which is also the same as the music player. The server will automatically add any media to the library that is copied over.
—–

The entire Kaleidescape System works seamlessly together so that you can get your entertainment no matter where you are in your house. They were clever when designing the whole system by making it all integrate together will little configuration needed.

Also, we hope you have enjoyed our first post in our daily CyberNotes.

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To create cross-country faster-than-sound travel, NASA is aiming to dampen sonic booms generated when planes go supersonic.

The hardware specs of HP’s upcoming tablet have been leaked, and it sounds like a beast.

A document tipped to PreCentral details HP’s purported WebOS-powered tablet, codenamed Topaz. Like the photos we saw last week, the 9.7-inch Topaz is sleek, black and nearly button-free. A glossy outer finish and minimal accoutrements (a small HP logo rests on the back center of the tablet) make for a subtle slate.

But don’t let the simple look fool you — there appears to be powerful parts under the hood. According to the document, the Topaz sports a dual-core 1.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon-based processor, HP’s answer to all of the dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processors we’re going to see in Motorola’s forthcoming Xoom tablet, the T-Mobile G-Slate from LG, and Dell’s 7-inch Streak (all of which are Android OS-powered). It’s also got 512 MB of DDR2 RAM and an integrated Adreno 220 graphics processing unit to render 1080p high-definition video.

Of course, the Topaz will have all the standards expected of 2011 tablets to come: a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity. There doesn’t seem to be a MicroSD slot, but you may not need it if you decide to go for the 64-GB storage option. If you don’t need that much hard disk space, you can opt for the 16- or 32-GB options.

When HP bought WebOS creator Palm last April for $1.2 billion, the future of Palm’s WebOS — and what devices it would be featured on — was unclear. The OS was rumored to be running the long-discussed HP Slate, before eventually settling with Windows 7.

As we mentioned in our last piece on the Topaz leaks, the device is rumored to be shipping sometime in March. HP declined our requests for comment.

Photo: webOS interface/HP

See Also:

• Report: HP Palm Tablet Pictures Leaked, May Ship This March
• HP Buys Palm for $1.2 Billion
• Palm webOS Headed to HP Tablet, Printer
• HP Slate Could Get a Makeover With Palm’s WebOS
• HP Slate Details Leaked: $550 Netbook, Minus Keyboard