Esquire makes a pretty serious claim about their new iPad app: they say it’s the hardest puzzle ever. In fact, they believe it so much, they just called it The Hardest Puzzle Ever. More »
Hot on the heels of a Wii price drop from about two weeks ago, Nintendo has announced that it’ll be lowering the DS Lite’s price to $100 (from about $130) starting on June 5th. The big N claims that its pushed over 48.9 million DS handhelds to consumers in the U.S., adding that many of the Mario DS titles have also sold well into the millions. To highlight the achievements, six of the best selling Mario themed games for DS will be getting a red makeover to their packaging — see above right — for easy pickin’s at your favorite retail shop (no discount apparently). It may not have 3D, but the drop in price, added with less eye strain, and a long lasting battery should be enough to make the 3DS a little jealous.
Continue reading Nintendo drops DS Lite to $100, makes it easier to (Mario) party
Nintendo drops DS Lite to $100, makes it easier to (Mario) party originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Outside of a bit of bootloader talk, we haven’t heard much about Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Pro since it made its debut at Mobile World Congress in February. The company’s now gotten things rolling again, however, and has made the phone available for pre-order in the UK. As you can see above, it’ll set you back £349.99 SIM-free (or roughly $575), and it should be available sometime next month. Not pictured above is one of the phone’s main selling points: a sliding QWERTY keyboard — but don’t worry, you can get a good look at it in our hands-on.
[Thanks, Amarjit]
Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro now available for pre-order in the UK originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The quality of the Urban Outfitters bike crate comes across perfectly in this over-zoomed image
When it’s not busy filling its shelves with cheap, crappy, fashion versions of bikes and record players, Urban Outfitters likes to spend its spare time courting controversy. This time the product of contention is the Classic Crate Wood Bike Basket.
I’ll leave you to Google “urban outfitters rip off,” but the short story is that many, many independent designers complain that the chain-store copies their creations without permission. Usually, though, these “homages” are simply very similar — and non-litiginous — takes on an obvious idea. And so it is with this bike basket.
Closely modeled on the hand-crafted Custom Porter Crates from Bates Crates, the basket is a wooden crate which mounts onto the front of your bike, fixed to the handlebars. Cole Bates invented his crates after waking up one morning wanting to surprise his girlfriend with pastries and coffee. Thus, the two models feature inbuilt cup holders to get the coffee back from the bakery without spilling.
Amazingly, Urban Outfitters’ crate also has these cup holders. It also looks heavier and much less well made, right down to the fixing method. The Urban Outfitters version just straps onto the handlebar and hangs there. The Bates Crates have proper metal fixings which clamp the basket into place, along with rods that support them from beneath. Bate’s makes his baskets from various reclaimed woods. The chain-store version is pine, and you have to put it together yourself.
Th other difference is the price. Cole Bates hand-crafted designs cost $125. Urban Outfitters’ tat can be had for $40.
Custom Porter Crates [Bates]
Classic Crate Wood Bike Basket [Urban Outfitters via Urban Velo]
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A trio of sources speaking to Bloomberg have seemingly shed light on Acer’s concerns with Microsoft’s new tablet strategy. Seems that the boys beneath Ballmer hope to speed delivery of the company’s new tablet OS by limiting variations. To accomplish this, Microsoft is offering incentives to chip and computer makers that agree to form sole alliances (i.e., one chipmaker works exclusively with one computer manufacturer) including enhanced feature sets and lower prices on Microsoft software. Under the plan, chip suppliers will be able to select a second company to produce a clamshell-style laptop using Microsoft’s next wares. The plan is not mandatory and does not apply to desktop use of Microsoft next operating system, according to Bloomberg‘s sources. However, if true, then it represents a dramatic departure from Microsoft’s traditional war-of-attrition approach to the laptop and tablet market that has resulted in a near limitless choice of brands and configurations so synonymous with Wintel. It all sounds incredible until you consider Microsoft’s approach to Windows Phone that already marries its mobile OS to a highly restrictive specification sheet. With Windows Next (or Windows 8, if you prefer) set to support both Intel architectures and ARM (and all its licensees), we can understand Microsoft’s desire for tighter control over its partners in hopes of accelerating development and testing. After all, Microsoft is conspicuously absent from the tablet discussion these days. We guess Steve wasn’t kidding when he called this OS Microsoft’s “riskiest product bet” yet.
Update: And now DigiTimes has jumped in with support for Acer CEO, J.T. Wang, claiming that Taiwan’s PC makers have been excluded from Microsoft’s Integrated Development Program (IDP) for Windows 8 tablet PCs. According to the Taiwanese rumor rag, long time Microsoft partners Acer, ASUS, and even HTC have been shut out of the proceedings. Instead, DigiTimes claims that chipmakers Intel, AMD, TI, Qualcomm and NVIDIA have been invited by Microsoft to choose manufacturers from a first-round list of participants limited to Dell, HP, and Samsung. Hopefully Microsoft will add some clarity to all this later today when we get our first look at its next generation OS. [Thanks, Pradeep]
Microsoft incentivizing chipmakers and tablet manufacturers to form ‘sole alliances’? (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 06:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I wake the neighbors up every morning with the screeching mechanical drone of my blender tearing fruit into a smoothie. Or I would, if I ever hauled my lazy ass out of bed before the neighbors had all left for work. The horrible metallic buzz still disturbs me, though, and usually means I have to splash a slug of scotch into the smoothie just to take the edge off my hangover.
So you can imagine my excitement over the Electrolux Powermix Silent, a blender which runs quiet enough that you can hold a conversation while you use it. Electrolux even promises that it won’t wake up a sleeping child, as if anyone cares.
The blender looks like any other fashion blender, with a 1.5 liter jug and a body that comes in “two trendy colors: antique steel and deep aubergine.” The “silent” mode is simply a matter of good engineering, with better air-flow and vibration damping in the 600-watt motor.
It’s not actually silent, though. The blender puts out 80dB, which is ten times less than the 90dB my blender screams through my apartment, but still significant. Looking for comparisons on the web, 80dB comes in somewhere between an average toilet flushing and an electric shaver. Not bad.
Electrolux is also claiming that the jug’s conical shape is also innovative, causing a vortex that pulls food down onto the blades. As an experienced blender user, I can say that pretty much every blender does this once it gets going.
The Powermix Silent is available now in some European markets for €140 ($200).
Electrolux Powermix Silent [Electrolux via Oh Gizmo]
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FirstMix lets you play DJ, without the big, back-breaking bag of records
Apart from being a handy way to sneak friends’ drugs into a club, a DJ’s box of records is increasingly pointless. Why lug all that vinyl when you can just rock up with a computer, or even an iPad? Tactile feedback, you say? Good point. And Gemini DJ has you covered with its new FirstMix USB controller.
Even schlepping the FirstMix and a laptop weighs less that even a modest bag of records (the unit weighs 1.62 pounds, or 0.74 kg). You won’t even need a power cable, as the controller runs off USB bus power. You hook it up to a PC with the companion MixVibes Cross LE software installed and you’re back in the land of old-school deejaying: The unit has a pair of turntables flanking a mixer with crossfader, and knobs to control gain, treble and bass.
It also has some handy software features, like beat matching, or you can use it as a controller for other DJ apps like Traktor, Virtual DJ and Algoriddim’s DJAY. Finally, the mixer will play M4A, AIFF, WAV, MP3, FLAC and OGG files.
The FirstMix is also cheap, coming in at just $100. The only downside? There’s no hidden compartment for your stash. Available now.
FirstMix product page [Gemini. Thanks, Mark!]
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[Image courtesy of Robert MacNeill]
Continue reading Microsoft turns to crowdsourcing service to swat away patent trolls
Microsoft turns to crowdsourcing service to swat away patent trolls originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Japanese advertising giant Dentsu today announced the launch of the designated official website for the Kibo Robot Project today, which aims at putting a communicative robot into space by 2014.
As of today the website is open for the public to enter their messages which the robot will carry into space to be read out to astronauts. Messages of encouragement and simple communication from the public around the world are aimed at boosting the emotions of the astronauts who will be living on the Japanese Experiment Module, aboard the International Space Station that will orbit earth. Messages can be submitted via twitter or email and there is a ready made logo users can download to add to their Twitter avatars also. Visitors to the site can also browse other messages of support before adding their own.
The site also links to a twitter account, @space_GAL , which will give regular updates to the projects events, and in male dominated Japan it is interesting that the creators have chosen a female figure to be the official twitter reporter. Trying to make the project more “approachable” the idea is to widen the reach of the project to demographics that wouldn’t normally be interested.
The collaboration effort between Dentsu, JAXA, University of Tokyo and Robo Garage is not only aimed at the space program however, but with the wider aim to “help solve the social problems of the future through communication”. With the growing aging society in Japan and a rise in social problems the whole project is trying to address future concerns regarding a lack of communication in a “society of singletons.”
Thanks to Plastic Pals
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First the ASUS Padfone, then the CMIT TransPhone, and now a third phone-docking tablet but with a little extra spice. Our latest contender comes from a Taiwan-based startup dubbed ICE Computer, who has just announced its partnership with ECS over its Trinity concept, a mobile display that lets you dock either a PC module or a smartphone (not necessarily an iPhone, let alone an iPhone 5 as reported by some sites; the dummy’s just for show and convenience). From our quick chat with ICE product manager Jaryson Wu, we learned that the company’s been working on this project for quite some time, though ike ASUS and CMIT, ICE also lacked a working prototype to show us.
So the idea is simple: slide in a PC module or phone of your choice, and you have yourself a fully functioning touchscreen tablet that has an upgradable core — that’s one tick for environmental friendliness, and another tick for potentially more powerful upgrades. But that’s not it, as ICE may also throw in USB 3.0 ports, additional internal storage, and even a fan inside the Trinity tablet, but that will depend on the clients’ needs. Jaryson indicated that there are no plans to launch products under the startup’s own brand, nor is it going to develop its own phone to go with the add-on any time soon — we’ll just have to wait and see what it’ll deliver in the first quarter of 2012. Video interview after the break.
[Thanks, @Stagueve]
ICE Computer shows off Trinity modular tablet concept, aims for Q1 2012 release (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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