For a few years now, Sculpteo has taken a different approach to goal of mainstreaming 3D printing. While the competition races to produce the first popular consumer printer, Sculpteo keeps its eyes on the cloud. We’ll be discussing the company with co-founder and CEO Clement Moreau.
We heard from our friends over at TechCrunch (thanks, John Biggs!) that a company called Zivix has been showing off a cool little MIDI guitar at CES, so here it is! Dubbed the JamStik, this digital instrument serves the same purpose as the already-available You Rock, except this one comes with real guitar strings, works wirelessly over WiFi, features a lower latency (under 10ms instead of about 20ms, according to Zivix’s lab test), and it also has a shorter neck plus a much smaller body for the sake of portability — even for some casual plucking on the plane. The JamStik also supports string bending thanks to the way it detects finger movement on the neck — the rows of infrared lights and sensors under the strings make the magic happen.
Of course, you’d need a PC or an iOS device (with CoreMIDI-compatible apps like GarageBand and Animoog) to get the audio, and for the latter, Zivix will be offering three apps: JamTutor guitar teaching suite, JamHero game (very much like Guitar Hero and Rock Band) and Jam Live music remixer. We had a go using a wired prototype JamStik, and apart from the slight delay between our strumming and the audio output (which will be further fine-tuned before going retail), we had a lot of fun with it. Check out the demo videos after the break, and expect to see the JamStik hit the market this summer for somewhere around $249 to $299.
Wearable domination at this year’s show? Vuzix certainly had quite a presence at CES with those Smart Glasses we’ve been hearing so much about. We’ll be discussing the product and the state of wearables with the company’s CEO, Wearable domination at this year’s show? Vuzix certainly had quite a presence at CES with those Smart Glasses we’ve been hearing so much about. We’ll be discussing the product and the state of wearables with the company’s CEO, Paul Travers.
Vizio had a lot of cool things to show off at CES 2013, but one of the most exciting is its new 11.6-inch Windows 8 tablet. The tablet doesn’t have a name yet, but the specifications speak for themselves. First off (and perhaps most importantly to some) is the fact that this tablet is running Windows 8 rather than Windows RT, which is great news for those who want the full Windows functionality on a slate.
Another feature worth getting excited about: 1080p resolution. Despite the fact that the screen is only 11.6-inches, the tablet is still displaying at 1920×1080. That smaller screen size naturally means that the pixel density is great, which in turns means that consumers can look forward to particularly sharp visuals. Videos, especially the clip from The Lorax we saw, looked absolutely wonderful.
Powered by a dual-core AMD Z-60 APU, AMD Radeon HD 6250 integrated graphics, and 2GB of RAM, users will have quite the speedy little tablet on their hands. There were a few dropped frames when swiping through apps, zooming, and playing HD video, but overall it was a pretty smooth experience, which is impressive for a tablet running the full version of Windows 8 at 1080p resolution. The 64GB SSD this bad boy ships with should do its part to keep things moving nice and fast, which is just icing on the cake.
The tablet itself is surprisingly thin and light – Vizio states that the tablet is 0.4″ thick and just 1.8 pounds. I was expecting a heavier tablet when I picked this up from the stand, but was pleasantly surprised when I realized how light it is. More importantly, it feels good in the hand and looks really good. We’re looking forward to seeing more from Vizio’s new Windows 8 tablet as we move closer to its release date (no specifics on that just yet), but for now, it definitely seems like the company is on the right track. Check out our CES portal for even more from the show!
CES 2013: The year Ultra HD turned into the pipe dream of the future to the present reality you can’t afford. Now that UHD TVs are about to hit the market, manufacturers are, of course, showing off 4K concepts like this glasses-free 3D 4K panel from Stream TV Networks, which you will be able to drool and dream about but never ever ever ever buy. More »
iRobot had a few surprises up its mechanical sleeves this week, including the Mirra 530 pool cleaning ‘bot. We’ll be speaking with the company’s outdoor product manager, Jeff Karlson about that device and the rest of the company’s diverse roster of products.
New gadgets take the spotlight at CES. And though we’re occasionally blinded by the bright, shiny things, we know where our loyalties lie. Behind the barrage of posts and sprinting between booths, the real stars of the show are the tried and true bits of gear we’re using behind the scenes. Particularly BorrowLenses.com, who generosity is the reason you get to look at all those pretty pictures. But each of us has our own beloved item—tech or otherwise—that we’ll swear is the only reason we made it out of Vegas alive. Spoiler: There are a lot of batteries mentioned in this post. More »
Amid the chaos of CES 2013, we discovered that Pelican is plotting to enter the mobile case business. The company was showing off cases for the iPhone 5 and iPad, but it also had two cases for the Samsung Galaxy S III on hand and ready to show off. The cases we saw for the Galaxy S III were certainly impressive, and if you find other protective cases a bit too bulky, you might want to give these a look.
That’s because Pelican’s goal with these cases seems to be to protect the phone from all manner of damage while keeping the overall size down. That’s especially important with the Galaxy S III, which is a pretty thin phone – having a big, bulky case attached to such a sleek phone would ruin the aesthetic, so Pelican is trying to hit the protection bullet points while keeping a thinner form factor overall.
The first case we have is the ProGear Vault Series, which actually requires you that use screws to seal your phone within the case. While that will make removing your phone a bit more difficult than your usual case that snaps together, there are benefits in that it makes the case resistant to “wind-driven rain.” The case also offers protection against dust and scratches, thanks to the fact that its made from magnesium and engineering-grade polymer. This case really locks down every opening you can think of with your phone, with Pelican even placing acoustic membranes over the microphone and speaker openings to prevent water from getting in without hindering audio quality. The Vault Series, which is also shockproof from a height of 72 inches, will be releasing in April or May with a “tentative” price of $75-$80.
Next we have the ProGear Defender Series, which is a little more accessible for folks who want to keep their phone safe without spending an arm and a leg on a case. The Defender obviously boasts fewer features than its more expensive brother, but it’s built with the same engineering-grade polymer and sports a rubber interior to make the case crushproof and shock-resistant. It also has a smooth plastic finish to make it easier to pull your out of your pocket. At the moment, Pelican is saying that the Defender series should launch in April with a price point of $35, but those could change by the time its release rolls around.
So there you have it, a duo of new cases from Pelican for your Galaxy S III. The cases seemed pretty solid when we checked them out, and the felt pretty light to boot, which means that they shouldn’t add too much weight to your phone. Expect to see more of Pelican in the mobile space as moving forward, but for now, be sure to check out our CES portal for all the news you need from the show!
This year at CES we saw one whole heck of a lot of PCs, quite a few of them working with Windows 8 – but most of them focusing on their unique hardware offerings to the point where Microsoft’s offering seemed almost secondary. One cannot deny the influence of the touch-friendly nature of Windows 8 on the other hand, and starting right away with the very first PC we had hands-on time with, touchscreen controls were right at the center of our attention: the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC is first on our list of hands-on deliveries.
The massive beast known as the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC was by far the most unique offering in the PC hardware space at this year’s show, creating not just a massive touchscreen interface, but a table on which you can play games with specialized accessories that come with. Have a peek at the smart dice, game pieces you can use to play table hockey, and more! We’ll be looking for this monster on our review bench soon.
Lenovo also brought on one sharp looking gaming PC known as the Lenovo Erazer X700 as well as a transforming tablet with a keyboard dock known as the ThinkPad Helix. We actually have a short version of the Helix hands-on as well as an extended Lenovo ThinkPad Helix hands-on for more “rip and flip” action than you’ll be able to handle. The Lenovo ThinkVision mobile monitor was also revealed, bringing you Windows 8 touchscreen-friendly action either wired with a brand new USB 3.0 B cord or completely wirelessly and across the room – mirroring or no!
One of the most important sets of announcements of the convention as a whole came from NVIDIA, their press event revealing first and foremost a system called NVIDIA GeForce Experience, this allowing users to get instant game optimization from the folks who know how to do it best, the GeForce team. Cloud gaming companies also got a massive jolt in the side at the announcement of NVIDIA GRID, stacks of servers made to turn cloud gaming into a real way of the future. NVIDIA also tied mobile gaming to full-power PC gaming with a device called NVIDIA Project SHIELD. We’ll see more information on that system by the time of its release in Q2 of 2013 (this year). For now you’ll have to survive on this simple demonstration video courtesy of NVIDIA:
The folks at 3M showed off their rather sizable 84-inch multi-touch table the night before CES began, here bringing real-deal 4K technology to this emerging market. At the moment this machine is still a prototype, but we’ll be seeing a real product later this year. ASUS took on the Windows 8 world with a unique slate by the name of ASUS VivoTab Smart Tablet, complete with an origami fold-up cover with magnets and a wireless keyboard.
Samsung brought on some heat with the Samsung Series 7 Chonos and Series 7 Ultra, both of them extremely lightweight and bursting with immensely high resolution displays – touchscreens, too! The Xi3 7 series modular computer gained some notoriety this week as Valve was hinted to be working with them in the very near future. Vizio essentially updated their entire PC lineup including notebooks, all-in-one, and and a brand new 11.6-inch Windows 8 Tablet.
If you though you’d seen the only massive tablet-like gorilla of a unit of the show up above with Lenovo, you were mistaken. Above you’ll see the Panasonic 20-inch 4K Windows 8 Tablet, a monster with 3840 x 2160 pixels to its name, running full Windows 8 with a release date set some time later this year. Sony also brought on a little bit of heat with the Sony VAIO T15 Touch and T14 Touch, both of them ready with Intel under the hood and Windows 8 for your everyday use.
In short, what we saw this year at CES was a set of upgrades to machines that were already out, touch added to displays that were before without, and some ever-so-slightly interesting innovations in how devices were connected to one another. Let us know what you were most excited about from CES in the PC space below, and make sure not to skimp on the possibilities for the future! Also hit up our CES portal for everything we saw and reported on over the course of the week!
Tech writing is a filthy trade, with crap gussied up as treasure, marketing sleaze, lies, corporate dinner dates, favoritism, and plenty of capitalist lucre. CES is the prom of it all, so we figured, why not just make an open trade: rub me and I’ll write about you. More »
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