Hasta La Gadget!

As any touch-typist will tell you, the feel of the keys on a keyboard are quite important, a bit less that the spacing, but it’s one of the reasons why certain keyboards feel good and others don’t. Orée has just launched the Board, which is a wooden Bluetooth keyboard that looks like it’s got nice short-stroke, Mac-like keys. Now that’s not something you see every day.

The Orée Board is made out of single pieces of maple and walnut. The maple board is light brown while the walnut is a much deeper color. It’s cut to preserve the wood grain across the shell and to minimize waste.

Since it connects via Bluetooth, it will work with most mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets and laptops. The wood is sourced from sustainable sources in southern France. You can select from US, UK, Canadian English or Canadian French keyboards, as well as Mac or Windows layouts. There are also three fonts to choose from – two serifs and one sans serif.

The keyboard sells for €125 (~$164 USD) directly from Orée.

[via designboom]

With one’s share value tanking to half its original IPO value, Mark
Zuckerberg’s been in an ongoing crisis management mode for months now.
Acccepting every speaking engagement offered, ironically he spoke at
TechCrunch’s Disrupt Conference on the same date Apple’s stock escalated to an all-time high of $660.97.

On Thursday, we starting hearing claims that Google had strong-armed Acer out of launching its A800 CloudMobile in China with the Aliyun operating system. We reached out to the search giant for its response, but they declined to comment. Over the last 24 hours, though, Google has attempted to explain its stance, but at the same time has potentially created some confusion about how open Android really is. Below is the initial statement received by Marketing Land:

“Compatibility is at the heart of the Android ecosystem and ensures a consistent experience for developers, manufacturers and consumers. Non-compatible versions of Android, like Aliyun, weaken the ecosystem. All members of the Open Handset Alliance have committed to building one Android platform and to not ship non-compatible Android devices. This does not however, keep OHA members from participating in competing ecosystems.”

This is clearly outlining Google’s intention to prevent forked Android spin-offs from diluting the platform and the user experience. Fair enough. The trouble seems to be, however, defining when something is Android compatible, rather than its own separate (albeit Android-based) operating system. Amazon’s Kindle Fire will instantly spring to mind. The new tablets run on Ice Cream Sandwich, but are fenced-off from the official Play store and other Google offerings. As you can imagine, the debate has started to get a little heated, we go into it in more detail past the break.

Continue reading Google wants ‘better compatibility’ for Android, Alibaba says ‘Aliyun is separate,’ Acer takes the brunt of it

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile

Google wants ‘better compatibility’ for Android, Alibaba says ‘Aliyun is separate,’ Acer takes the brunt of it originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Sep 2012 07:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Cox TV Connect for iPad app that brings live TV streaming to the tablet while customers are at home has received another update that gives it some capabilities outside the house. While that doesn’t include the aforementioned TV viewing, version 1.1.2 integrates remote DVR scheduling (previously left to the company’s Mobile Connect phone apps) and allows access to the app and recently updated grid guide when the user is away from home. You’ll still need to have the proper TV and internet packages from Cox to make it all go, but there’s no additional charge for the app that’s available at the source link below.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD

Cox TV Connect for iPad gets remote DVR scheduling, access to the guide at home or away originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Sep 2012 04:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Shuttle OMNINAS KD20 is the company’s first NAS server. It features a pair of hot-swappable drive bays that can hold 3.5-inch HDDs (hard disk drives) with capacities of up to 4 TB each. The Shuttle OMNINAS KD20 supports RAID-1 mode (mirroring, for high data security), RAID-0 (striping and JBOD modes. The OMNINAS KD20 NAS server also features an 80mm fan for cooling, an I/O panel with one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader and Gigabit Ethernet. [Akihabara]