When you’re in the game of leaking your own products, why not do it properly? Those self-supporting Yoga Tablets we saw sneak out via Lenovo recently seem to tally well with the above pictured IdeaPad press shots. The pictures actually come from a couple of German retail listings for two …
Here in the US, it’s easy to slip into the comfortable idea that the internet is unrestricted, a home for free speech and exploration, whether it’s meaningful and important, or dumb hashtags. It’s not that way everywhere though, and Freedom House has mapped out the current state of affairs across the globe.
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At first glance, Split might look like a pair of handy dandy wireless earphones, but they’re more than that. They’re actually self-contained MP3 players that you can control without a display or buttons.
Greenwing Audio definitely succeeded in making the most compact music players I’ve ever seen. The earbuds are magnetic, which is a handy feature since you’re less likely to lose one of them if they’re stuck together when you’re not using them. Either that, or you lose them both at the same time.
Without a display, how do you control these things? By biting down. Apparently, one bite skips a track while two bites toggles the volume. And no, you don’t need to put them in your mouth. This feature is triggered thanks to a three-axis accelerometer installed in the ear buds.
Split is charged via USB cable, with each charge lasting about four hours. Songs are also transferred to the system via USB. Unfortunately, given its size, storage is limited to 256 MB or roughly 24 songs.
It’s definitely an interesting concept, but I’m thinking this is something you definitely can’t use while you’re eating or if you have a habit of biting down randomly throughout the day. Split is up for funding on Kickstarter through 10/31/13, where a minimum pledge of $155(USD) will get you one pair.
[via Dvice]
For "Iridient No. 01, 2012," Fabian Oefner captured a floating soap bubble at the moment it burst, and surface tension was broken. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Fabian Oefner)
Swiss photographer Fabian Oefner is determined to link the worlds of art and science.
“If you look at science, science is a very rational approach, whereas art on the other hand is usually an emotional approach to its surroundings,” he said during a TED talk earlier this year that just went online. “What I’m trying to do is bring those two images into one so that my images speak to the viewer’s heart but also to the viewer’s brain.”
Oefner left the TED audience mesmerized with images and videos of his three latest projects.
First, he explained how he made sound waves visible. After placing a thin piece of tin foil over an ordinary speaker, he poured tiny crystals onto the foil. Playing sound through the speaker caused the crystals to jump, but that happens faster than the blink of an eye. He recorded the experiment with a camera that shoots 3,000 frames per second.
In the next project, he used psychedelic colors to explain magnetism. He poured ferro liquid — a dark, oily liquid that contains tiny shards of metal — onto a magnet. Fer… [Read more]
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LEGO toys aren’t just for kids so it makes sense that LEGO watches wouldn’t be just for kids either. The company has introduced a line of watches specifically for adults. The LEGO watch collection for men and women will be launched in November and be called the LEGO Watch System.
The watches are completely customizable with the ability to swap bracelets, bezels and watch faces. So basically they will be just as fun as LEGO sets. Some of the watch models include: LEGO happiness, LEGO Skull and LEGO brick skull.
Some watches have day/date combination, chronograph, and calendar. The Lego watches will come in digital and analog models in a wide variety of color options. Some watches in the collection are made of plastic body and some are made partially from aluminum or steel.
The watches are water resistant from 50 meters to 100 meters depending on the model you pick, and they will sell for $85-$185 (USD). Hit A Blog to Watch for more shots of these cool watches.
[via A Blog to Watch via Gizmodo]
Kids are easily excitable beings, and it does help if you happen to have something which is able to keep them occupied, especially during those long road trips, or in a particularly lengthy flight. Nowadays, most parents or guardians do from time to time, abdicate their position of being a nanny to the Nintendo 3DS or some other kind of mobile device. Well, whatever happened to being interactive with your own kids, and to have them cultivate other hidden talents such as drawing? This is where the Electric Paint Pen with Conductive Ink might come in handy, as it could unearth the next van Gogh.
Basically, the Electric Paint Pen with Conductive Ink will retail anywhere from $12.99 all the way to $19.99, depending on the kind of model that you choose. Either way, it will allow you to draw a circuit using conductive paint, which is a pretty cool process once you have gotten some experience with it. The Electric Paint happens to be a multipurpose electrically conductive material that is perfect for all of your DIY projects, except that it has been the recipient of the wonders of miniaturization, sized down all the way to being a pen applicator. This basically means you are able to paint circuits on walls, floors, tables, shirts, but do not try it on your skin! This is definitely an electrifying idea which is a radically different way of cultivating the drawing talent, no?
[ Electric Paint Pen with Conductive Ink helps keep the kids occupied copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Unless you’ve been horrifyingly oblivious to absolutely everything happening around you, you know that the government has been in a state of shutdown since Monday. Other than the confirmation that, yes, congress is just as inept and impotent as we all thought, you probably haven’t noticed much of a change in your daily life. But don’t let that fool you. This period of stasis could have some major detrimental impacts, particularly in the fields of science and tech. Here are some of the shutdown’s worst potential scientific casualties.
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Google, SAP and Cisco are among a number of technology companies interested in buying up portions — or all — of BlackBerry’s business, according to Reuters, which cites several sources close to the matter. BlackBerry has also apparently asked for preliminary expressions from Intel, LG and Samsung, by early next week. Portions of the business of most interest to potential technology buyers are BlackBerry’s secure server network and patent portfolio, according to the sources.
None of the companies named by Reuters provided comment on its report.
Other tech companies, including Microsoft, Huawei and Lenovo, are notably absent from the list of prospective buyers. Redmond unsurprisingly so; despite being previously linked with a possible BlackBerry bid, Microsoft is now tied up with its own $7.2 billion bid for Nokia’s Devices & Services business. Meanwhile Chinese telco Huawei has faced difficulties in the North American market over national security concerns about links to the Chinese military — likely making a bid for a company that supplies phones to government officials a difficult sell.
An enterprise-focused bidder — such as SAP or Cisco — might make the best fit for BlackBerry’s security-focused messaging handset business at this point, with the consumer smartphone marketplace now primarily centred on Android and iOS. That said, the BYOD trend has been steadily eroding BlackBerry’s enterprise reach, so even here its appeal is increasingly niche. (Albeit, it does have its own mobile device management software that seeks to tap the BYOD trend, with the ability to manage iPhones, Android-powered devices and BlackBerrys).
Late last month, days before BlackBerry reported a $965 million quarterly loss (due mostly to a writedown on unsold Z10 devices), it signed a letter of intent to go private. Its largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings, is the prospective buyer, tabling a $4.7 billion bid for the company.
Going private also opens up the possibility that a new owner might look to break up the company and sell off its constituent parts, although Fairfax claims it has no plans to do so. But, according to Reuters, BlackBerry is actively shopping itself around to potential strategic buyers anyway — as an alternative to the Fairfax deal. That deal, which values the company at $9 per share, has faced some skepticism from financial analysts — who believe a $7 per share price is more realistic — which may explain why BlackBerry is apparently looking elsewhere now.
Technology buyers are not the only potential bidders for the BlackBerry pie, with private-equity firms also asking the company to provide additional financial details about its various business segments, according to two of Reuters’ sources. However they said BlackBerry is currently focused on taking bids from industry peers.
Despite Google et al apparently agreeing to talk, it’s unclear how much serious interest there is in buying BlackBerry or which, if any, parties will bid. Potential bidders are apparently proceeding with caution, given the level of uncertainty around BlackBerry’s business and questions over the future value of its business assets.
Google’s interest is likely to be in BlackBerry’s patent portfolio. Android has faced renewed legal attacks in recent weeks, with Nokia’s lawyers scoring a preliminary win against HTC‘s Android-powered One flagship device in the U.S. last week. Google’s 2011 acquisition of Motorola was also widely touted as a patent-focused purchase aimed at bolstering Android’s IP defences. So it’s due diligence for Mountain View to at least take a closer look at BlackBerry’s patents. Samsung may also be eyeing those.
However, Reuters notes that the value of BlackBerry’s patent portfolio and licensing agreements is diminishing rapidly — likely to halve over the next 18 months. Which may temper any interest there.
BlackBerry’s patents are estimated to be worth between $2 billion and $3 billion, and its security-focused messaging system services business is likely worth $3 billion to $4.5 billion. The company also has $3.1 billion in cash and investments — however with revenues sliding and more loss-making quarters looming, that cash is going to get eaten up pretty quickly. Reuters cites Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu’s prediction that the company will burn through almost $2 billion over the next year and a half.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry’s long-touted plan to extend the reach of its consumer mobile messaging service, BBM, to Android and iOS – perhaps with the hope of creating another business asset it could shop around to buyers – has stalled.
BBM was initially slated to launch on the new platforms globally late last month but the rollout was halted after a leaked version of the Android .apk overloaded its servers. The company has since said it remains committed to launching BBM on Android and iOS but given no new timeframe for when this will happen. In the event, it may be that BlackBerry’s bits get broken up and sold off before BBM is able to make the leap onto other platforms.
Following the lead of several other TV providers, AT&T U-verse has launched internet streaming for some of the channels it carries. Subscribers can tune into up to 108 channels while at home, and about 25 while away from home either on Uverse.com or on the U-verse for iPad app. The new iPad app …
Everyone loves statistics, especially the superlatives, and hence it is no wonder that each year’s edition of the Guinness Book of World Records have done exceptionally well for itself. After all, we as humans seem somehow obsessed about stuff like the largest and the fastest, and new records which are set are always celebrated as another notch in the realm of human achievement. It is no different then, for Mushkin, an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and mission-critical computer products, have just announced yet another feather in their cap – the official availability of the fastest USB flash drive in the world, which happens to be known as the Ventura Ultra.
Originally shown off at CES 2013 earlier this year, the Ventura Ultra happens to be a USB 3.0 flash drive that carries a whopping 240GB of storage space, making it the fastest in the world of its kind. This particular flash drive would obviously boast of extremely fast data transfer rates of up to 380 MB/s read and 325 MB/s write (theoretically speaking, considering these are well within the limits of the USB 3.0 standard, but in real life one might experience something different). Not only that, it comes with a rugged aluminum casing to deliver additional durability and resistance. Just a reminder for the masses, the USB 3.0 standard is up to 10 times faster compared to USB 2.0, and best of all is, it happens to be backwards compatible with legacy USB ports and devices.
Best of all is, the Mushkin Ventura Ultra is a dying breed, being one of the few USB flash drives in the world that does offer USB Attached SCSI Protocol support, so that it paves the way for command queuing so that it can maximize the transfer rate potential. Each purchase will arrive with a 2-year warranty when it becomes available worldwide this coming October 7th.
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[ Mushkin at the forefront with Ventura Ultra USB, the world’s fastest flash drive copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
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