Google Glass will not have a cellular data connection, at least initially, meaning wearers of the augmented reality system will need to rely on WiFi or tethering to get online. The headset demonstrated at Google IO yesterday includes only WiFi and Bluetooth technologies, not 3G or 4G despite early rumors, with senior industrial designer on the Google Glass project Isabelle Olsson confirming to ABC News that users out of hotspot range will need to tether to their smartphone for WWAN access.
Talk of an integrated cellular link first began prior to Google making Project Glass public, when rumors of the wearable display initially broke. Then, it was suggested that Google would equip the headset with either 3G or 4G connectivity, making the unit as a whole self-contained.
Whether that was ever true or not is unclear – Google could have attempted to include WWAN but decided to drop it over battery or size concerns, perhaps – but the current iteration lacks it, according to Olsson. The designer declined to give battery life estimates, though fellow project member Sergey Brin was overheard suggesting a roughly six hour runtime in a post-keynote meeting.
Google was forced to use USB connection tethering with Glass for its live-streamed skydiving stunt, having found the WiFi could not handle the extreme conditions. Otherwise the components are much akin to a regular smartphone, all contained in the oversized arm of the glasses.
Replacing a house full of switches and dials with a single remote seems a desirable proposition, but less-than-intuitive setup processes and fees that run far into the thousands make a disconnected home the only option for some. Like other home automation system manufacturers, Control4 has a bounty of offerings that can run up pricing into that out-of-reach range, but if you’re looking to adjust audio and video in a single room, the new Starter Kit should get you going for just shy of a grand, including installation. That price includes a HC-250 Controller, which delivers IR control for up to eight components (via splitters connected to the four IR ports on the rear), serial control for up to two receivers or other systems and IP control for an unlimited number of devices. There’s also an SR-250 ZigBee remote in the box, which offers full control through a television interface (HDMI and component outputs can be found on the HC-250’s rear). You can also have full access through a variety of add-ons, including a $999 7-inch in-wall touchscreen with camera, a portable version for the same price, or any Android, iOS or Mac device — access licenses for smartphones, tablets and computers run $199 each, or $499 to cover the entire home.
The Starter Kit can enable control of a single room, which may be fine for some users — to add additional home theater setups you can bring on more HC-250s at $599 a pop. There’s also an option to add ZigBee lighting controls ($129 per switch), ZigBee door locks ($150 to $350) or a door intercom unit with camera ($799). All-in, outfitting a large home can be quite pricey, and the Starter Kit is designed to get folks in the door, rather than to deliver a complete solution. We tested the controller with a TV, audio system, a pair of lights on two zones, the door intercom and a deadbolt, and all performed seamlessly without an hiccups. We also took a look at the intuitive drag-and-drop PC-based interface, which owners can use to change macros and add media. Introducing new components to the rig will require a dealer service call (or remote access, if you’re just trying to loop in something like a NAS to serve up content). The Control4 Starter Kit is available through third-party dealers beginning today, including Magnolia Home Theater in select Best Buy stores (in that case, Geek Squad will handle the install). That sub-$1,000 figure factors in two hours of labor, and may climb a bit higher depending on dealer rates. Still, if you’re just looking to get your feet wet, this seems to be a solid solution. Thumb through the gallery below for a closer look at the components and interface.
The SR-71 Blackbird remains an icon of American aerospace engineering to this day. Its speed and operating ceiling are unrivaled. However, it did not simply spring forth fully-formed from the head of “Kelly” Johnson—it spent years in development as the A-12 Oxcart being flown by an elite group of Air Force pilots. Colonel Ken “DUTCH 21” Collins (ret.) was among that cadre. He spoke to Gizmodo about his experience, and he joins in a live chat today at 1230 EST / 0930 PAC to talk to you. More »
Sony has been monetizing its online gaming network at a stronger rate than its biggest competitor. That is, if you don’t count the cost of Xbox Live or PlayStation Plus. We’re only talking about payments for individual pieces of content, like game add-ons, full game downloads, TV shows, and movies, and other pay-per-title forms of media. More than 15% of PS3 owners have paid for a piece of digital content on their console.
Only 11% of Xbox 360 owners made a purchase decision through their Xbox 360. “Although the digital market is growing, consumers are at present choosing to engage with both physical and digital content, rather than switching from one format to the other,” said Kantar Worldpanel manager Fiona Keenan. Kantar conducted a study to look at premium download behavior on game consoles in the UK. So these numbers apply to that region, though it’s probably a similar case in the US.
There have been other reports to show that PS3 users are more likely to take their consoles online so this statistic shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. However, Microsoft is being incredibly bullish when it comes to entertainment content on the Xbox 360. It wants your Xbox to be everything – your cable box, your stereo, your pay-per-view set-top box, your Web browser, and your photo album.
Back before Apple announced the original iPad, the Modbook team set out to take existing MacBook Pros and turn them into standalone tablets. The idea was to take the internals and add a touchscreen into the mix, giving you a powerful yet relatively portable tablet running full blown OS X. Now the company is back, and has today announced the Modbook Pro, taking the current-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro and runs with the tablet conversion.
All the specs are what you would find on the current 13-inch MacBook Pro: Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor clocked at 2.5Ghz, integrated HD 4000 GPU, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 1TB of hard drive space (plus a 960GB SSD option), SuperDrive, and WiFi b/g/n plus Bluetooth. The team has added is a Wacom digitizer to the 1280×800 display, with 512 levels of pressure sensitivity for the included stylus, with the screen also capable of registering 133 points per second.
Lots of attention has been paid to the housing of the Modbook Pro too. The tablet comes with a sloped edge design, and special grippy feet ensures the Modbook can be propped at a 50 degree angle without slipping. The usual array of ports are still onboard too, including Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, SDXC slot, and the MagSafe connector.
How much is all this going to set you back? Good question. The team hasn’t announced official pricing for the tablet yet, saying that it’s coming in the next few weeks with the tablet set to ship in the Fall. We doubt it will be cheap though, so if this strange hybrid has piqued your curiosity, you better start saving up those pennies.
Leading up to day one of I/O, there were rumors Google would launch a big update to Google Wallet that would rely less heavily on NFC. And it’s done that, sort of, with the company quietly announcing that it will begin to accept cash-free payments for items bought within video games. More »
We know you’re itching to get your hands on the Nexus 7, trawling the internet for every scrap of information you can find, but why not get all the details directly from Google? The company has thrown up a Guidebook to the Nexus 7 on the Play Store, containing around 90 pages of technological goodness. It’s not just a guide for the tablet either, featuring some in depth information on Jelly Bean.
If you absolutely crave all the information on Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, then you should probably head over to the Play Store and download the guidebook. Inside you’ll find details on Google Now, the new resizable widgets, as well as the offline voice dictation.
Here’s a quick refresher on the Nexus 7: it’s a 7-inch slate with a 1280×800 IPS display, powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, and comes with a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera. It’s the first Android device in the world to run Jelly Bean, although Galaxy Nexus owners can treat themselves to the leaked image that hit the internet this morning as well. Why not check out our review of the Nexus 7 while you’re at it?
As part of the “Apollo” ultra-energy-saving vending machine development project, Coca-Cola parterned with Fuji Electric Retail Systems to develop the “A011” peak-shift vending machine that can keep products cool without using power for up to 16 hours per day. The vending machines shift their use of power for cooling away from peak daytime to nighttime hours when power capacity is high.
By taking advantage of the surplus power capacity at night and cooling all products stored in the machine during that time, the rise in temperature is limited during the day–even after hours without power. The cooling process continues and the machine’s vacuum insulation keeps it from being affected by outdoor temperatures.
A two month-long filed testing period has been scheduled to begin on July 2 and will take place in a couple of Japan’s hottest regions including Gifu Prefecture’s Tajimi City and Saitama Prefecture’s Kumagaya City. Once the initial testing phase has been completed, Coca-Cola has future plans to test the machines and their cooling performance when there is shorter supply of power.
A couple of years ago we saw a glove that can play rock paper scissors. While that glove was smart – it learns from your patterns – it could still lose. This robot hand on the other hand will win 100% of the time, all the time. It’s not psychic, it just has insanely fast reflexes.
Scientists at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratary used a combination of a high speed camera and a fast moving robot hand, resulting in a rock paper scissors champ that recognizes what hand its opponent is going to play. In other words, the robot will wait for you to make your move before it decides what to play, but it all happens in only a few milliseconds that you won’t be able to notice it. Watch the demo below:
You know who can beat this robot? The glove. Problem solved.
Google’s IO 2012 keynote has been and gone, and while the developer event as a whole isn’t over, you can certainly tell where the focus is by what made it onto the opening agenda. I’d already laid out my expectations for IO over at the Google Developers Blog, but there have been some surprises along the way too.
Jelly Bean was the obvious inclusion, and Google balanced its enthusiasm about the new Android version from a technological perspective – with encrypted apps and the perfectly named “Project Butter” for smoothing out the UI – with features that will make more of a difference for end-users. The new notifications system should make a major difference to Android usability, meaning you spend less time jumping between apps, while the Google Voice Search should present an interesting challenge to Siri.
I’ll need to spend some proper time with “Google now” before I can decide whether it brings any real worth to the table. Proper understanding of context is sorely missing from the mobile device market- our handsets can do no shortage of tasks, but they still wait for us to instruct them – though there are potentially significant privacy concerns which I think Google will likely be picked up on sooner rather than later.
The Nexus 7 is a double-hitter of a device, the tablet response not only to concerns that Android developers were opting out of slate-scale app creation, but to Amazon’s strongly-selling Kindle Fire. $200 is a very competitive price, without cutting on specifications, and Jelly Bean comes with all the bells and whistles you need for a tablet OS.
Of course, OS support wasn’t what let Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich down, it was the significant absence of any meaningful tablet application support from third-party developers. The Nexus 7′s low price should help get test units into coders’ hands, at least, though it will take more than a fanfare this week to decide whether Android can catch up on larger screen content with Apple’s iPad.
As for the Nexus Q, I’ll take some more convincing on that. $299 is a lot for a device that also needs an Android phone or tablet in order to work, and Google’s awkward presentation didn’t do a particularly good job of explaining why you’d rather have a Nexus Q than, say, an Apple TV, a Sonos system, or even just a cheap DLNA streamer.
The big surprise today was Google Glasses. Sergey Brin’s “surprise” interruption of the IO presentation, sporting Project Glass himself and then summoning a daredevil army of similarly-augmented skydivers, stunt bikers, abseilers and others onto the stage was a masterstroke of entertainment, and you could feel the enthusiasm and excitement in the auditorium. That the segment ended with a pre-order promise – albeit one at a not-inconsiderable $1,500 – was a suitably outlandish high-point, though we’ll have to wait until early 2013 to actually see Google make good on those investments.
Google Glasses are a long way off. More pressing is how the Nexus 7 holds up to the Kindle Fire (and, though it may not be quite a direct competitor, the iPad) and how quickly manufacturers can get Jelly Bean out to existing devices. Google may be putting a new system of early Android update access into place to speed that process for future iterations, but it looks to have come too late for Jelly Bean updates. We’ll have more from Google IO 2012 over the rest of the week.
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