Hasta La Gadget!

When a company delays a product for “minor refinement,” we typically expect to see small changes that contribute to a stronger overall product. That wasn’t Wikipad’s approach — when it took its namesake gaming tablet into the lab for “minor” tweaks, it took a few inches off its screen size. The Wikipad is now a 7-inch tablet, slated to launch in spring for $249. It’s smaller, the company says, but no less powerful — it’s keeping the Tegra 3 GPU the original build promised, not to mention 1GB of DDR3 RAM, 16GB of Flash memory, a 2-megapixel front facing camera and a 1,280 x 800 resolution display.

Wikipad’s President of sales, Fraser Townley, told us the gamepad design hasn’t changed much either. “We took the pinball wizard approach,” he said. “We made everybody in the room shut their eyes, and try the controllers. It’s not about the look, it’s about the feel. Once we got the feel right, then we could worry about the look. That’s how the ten inch was born, and that’s how the seven inch stayed the same.” The attachment boasts new buttons (now labeled a, b, x and y) with a chrome finish, but seems otherwise unchanged. Wikipad is mum on specific availability, but we’re told we can expect to hear more after Chinese New Year. As the 10.1-inch original design? It’s still coming, but Townley couldn’t it narrow it down further than “before Christmas.” Read on for Wikipad’s official press announcement, or click here to find out how the tablet was cut down to size.

Filed under: Gaming

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Wireless provider FreedomPop, which offers free data to smartphone users, has announced additional funding of $4.3 million in order to bolster up its network and provide customers with more features. Case in point: the company announced that users will now be able share data with one another, whether they’re friends, family members, or just acquaintances.

FreedomPop’s new data sharing program allows you to share or trade megabytes almost like a currency of sorts, and will allow you request megabytes through Facebook or Twitter from users who are willing to hand them over. Purchasing the $99 iPhone/iPod Touch sleeve will get you 500MB per month, but if you need more, your social friends may help you out this time around.

As for the additional funding, the company says that the extra cash will help them continue to come up with new plans and social features that users will enjoy. The company outed the ability to boost the amount of free data each user gets for referring a friend to FreedomPop, a system that will not only reward users, but will also gain customers for FreedomPop.

FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols says that the company plans to do “very little” hardware development, and instead will focus on getting more customers and adding new features to their service. Stokols says that “hundreds of thousands” of users have signed up for FreedomPop so far, and the program is still in beta mode, so once the service launches publicly nationwide, we should see a huge surge of users make their way to FreedomPop.

FreedomPop raises $4.3 million in additional funding, lets users share data is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With tablets slowly working their way into the classroom, it wasn’t a huge stretch to realize that Texas Instruments would bring a graphing calculator app to the table, but would you believe its solution is just hours away? The company has revealed TI-Nspire for the iPad, which is currently available within the App Store for those in Australia. Beyond problem solving, the product is said to provide an interactive experience that should be helpful for reinforcing mathematical concepts. Depending on your needs and curriculum, you’ll find numerical and symbolic (CAS) versions of the TI-Nspire app, both of which cost $29.99. Yes, the app’s a bit pricey, but it’s not surprising given the insane profit margins of TI’s graphing calculator biz. Hop the break for a better peek of the app that might just become required within classrooms.

Filed under: Software

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Via: TI-Planet

It looks like the OUYA will see an upgrade each year. At the 2013 DICE Summit, OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman said that they want to follow a strategy similar to the mobile industry, where manufacturers release new phones each year. However, instead of releasing a brand-new console each year, the OUYA will get upgraded components at the same price of $99.

Uhrman said that the updated yearly consoles will “take advantage of faster, better processors,” thanks to the decline of component prices every year. However, it seems that the yearly console will get a naming scheme instead of simply remaining the “OUYA.” Uhrman says that each new console will be the “OUYA 2,” OUYA 3,” and so on.

However, Uhrman assures gamers that all games will be compatible with all the consoles, meaning that you don’t have to worry about an older game not working on a newer console. This is certainly great news for gamers, but since the OUYA won’t see a release cycle like all the other gaming consoles, one may worry about futureproofing, and the minute they buy an OUYA, it’ll be obsolete within a year, something that other console gamers don’t need to worry about.

In any case, the OUYA should be a huge it when it release to the public in a few months. In fact, it’s already been a huge hit. The Kickstarter campaign collected almost $8.6 million, absolutely shattering its original goal. This first OUYA comes with a quad-core A9 Tegra 3 clocked at 1.6GHz, so if the company sticks with NVIDIA for future consoles, we could see them move to the Tegra 4 chip that we’ve been hearing a lot about recently.

[via Engadget]

OUYA to release new console every year is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple had a new patent application published by the USPTO today, describing an unlocking method for digital devices that uses image identification to properly recognize an authorized user. The system would present a user with photographs from their iPhoto or iCloud collections, and then ask them to identify who or what the subject is in order to unlock the device. The item in question could also be an object or series of images.

The authentication process would work by displaying at least one image to be identified from the user’s library, though it could also display a number in succession if users are looking for more security. It’s highly likely that someone close to you will recognize another individual depicted in photos on your phone, for instance, but if you’re worried about granting access even to that inner circle of acquaintances, it becomes increasingly unlikely they’ll be able to identify each of a series of more than one picture.

Different means of input are also described in the patent, from a multiple selection list of choices for one-tap entry, to using an on-screen (on an iOS device) or physical keyboard (on a Mac) to type in the exact answer, to just speaking the name of the person or object aloud. Combined with voice recognition, you can see how the third option would provide yet another layer of added, personalized security, which would be very hard to beat via conventional machine-based security workaround tools.

If the system uses objects instead of people, the patent describes a process by which users would offer up unique, alternative nicknames for recognizable monuments and landmarks. So, for example, a picture of the Eiffel Tower could actually be linked to the phrase “The Big Stick.” Since no one else is likely to use quite the same idiosyncratic alternate names for highly recognizable objects, the system should remain fairly secure.

In most cases, Apple’s current passcode unlock system is probably sufficient for the needs of users, but should the company want to meet the needs of privacy sensitive users, a method like this that’s highly personal and hard to hack could be of considerable benefit.