Jan 09

CES: Hard Candy Unveils Delicious-Looking Laptop Cases

Posted in: Today's Chili

CES - Hard Candy - Bubble Shell Banner

Hard Candy Cases is a new company, literally only a few months old, but they came to CES with a number of stylish and functional laptop cases that look great, feel strong, and come at a pretty aggressive price point. 
Hard Candy’s Bubble Shell cases come in pieces, and snap on to the top and bottom of your laptop for maximum protection and visual appeal without blocking ports or requiring you to stretch material around your screen or your keyboard to get a snug fit.

Hard Candy Cases’ Bubble Shells are available now, but in order to get
the snap-to fitting that makes their cases stand out, they have to be
designed for specific laptop and netbook models. Currently, Hard Candy
sells Bubble Shell cases for the 13-inch unibody MacBook and the ASUS
EEE PC 1005HA and Acer Aspire One 10.1-inch netbooks.

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Jan 09

CES: SilentCall Receivers Offer Independence and Safety

Posted in: safety, security, Today's Chili

CES - SilentCall - Logo

If you or a loved one has hearing problems, is elderly, or just live in a home large enough that you can’t keep an eye on all parts of it at one time, SilentCall Communications‘ alarm and alerting products may be perfect for you. 
A number of SilentCall’s receivers and alarms were on display at CES this year, including the Sidekick II and the Silent Touch SS, all products that find alternate ways to alert you to a ringing telephone, a doorbell, or a smoke or burglar alarm without relying on you having to hear it.

In addition to the hearing impaired, SilentCall
Communications’ products are also targeted at elderly consumer or their
families, who want to give their loved ones the option to live in their
own homes as long as possible without fearing they’ll sleep through a
fire alarm or even miss the doorbell when UPS shows up to drop off a
package.

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Jan 09

Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5.3 shown off very, very quietly

Posted in: hands-on, Microsoft, Today's Chili, Windows Mobile, WindowsMobile, winmo

Say, for a moment, that you’re Microsoft and you’re on the cusp of releasing a version of the much-maligned Windows Mobile 6.5 that actually made it touch-friendly for once — but like all WinMo versions before it, you’re relying on carriers and manufacturers to wage an inexcusably slow, arbitrary, incomplete upgrade campaign. Wouldn’t you think that quietly burying its launch amongst a sea of more interesting (and less controversial) products might be a good idea? Indeed, that appears to be the angle Microsoft is taking at CES by discreetly showing off a Toshiba TG01 and Pharos Traveller loaded with the long-rumored 6.5.3 with “tiles” along the bottom and finger-friendly adjustments throughout the UI. As far as we can tell, this truly is what 6.5 should’ve been — in our quick look, we’re finally comfortable not having a stylus handy, even on a resistive display. It’s still not pretty, but this is a case where function is at least earning its money trying to trump form.

Gallery: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5.3 shown off very, very quietly

Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5.3 shown off very, very quietly originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

Cannondale’s mind-blowing Simon electronic suspension system hands-on

Posted in: feature, Features, hands-on, Today's Chili
Cannondale's mind-blowing Simon electronic suspension system hands-on

If you’re a bicyclist or just a tech-minded person with a hankerin’ for cool suspension technology, you’ve got to check out the videos after the break. One is a short demonstration to whet your appetite, the other a rather longer explanation from Cannondale engineer Stanley Song of just how the thing works. What is this thing? It’s Simon, a fully electronic and nearly-instantly adjustable suspension system that does away with all the complex mechanical internals of a traditional high-end suspension system (shims, springs, valves, needles, knobs…) and replaces it with an electro-mechanical device that can near infinitely vary not only suspension strength but also ride height instantly based on road conditions. It even has an LCD on the bars. Interest piqued? Click through to see it in action.

Gallery: Cannondale’s Simon hands-on

Continue reading Cannondale’s mind-blowing Simon electronic suspension system hands-on

Cannondale’s mind-blowing Simon electronic suspension system hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video

Posted in: Today's Chili
Sezmi Box

The way video and other content is delivered is changing, there’s no doubt about it, but what isn’t as certain is exactly where we end up from here. So on our journey to the day when we can watch whatever we want, wherever we want, there are plenty of avenues for content like cable or satellite, internet, an antenna or whatever. Sezmi gets this and intends to bring them all together in a way that makes sense. The encouraging thing here is that the company didn’t just take an existing platform and paste on some internet streaming, it created a over-the-air DVR from scratch and integrated all the various sources into a unified experience. Ok, so much for the concept, but how does it work? In principle we love the idea: you buy a box, pay a monthly service for a select number of cable TV channels and get a single interface that makes sense. The problem right now is in the implementation. While we really like some of the DVR features included, like profiles catered to each viewer (custom guide listings as well as custom recorded TV etc,) only the major broadcast networks are presented in HD (no ESPN HD for example) — and the HD VOD content we watched showed noticeable compression artifacts. Sezmi is currently in a limited pilot in LA, but will be expanding and as it does we’ll be watching to see if the dream comes true.

Continue reading Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video

Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

Touch Revolution puts Android in a microwave and makes an updated Nimble tablet, we go hands-on

Posted in: Android, feature, Features, hands-on, Today's Chili
Touch Revolution puts Android in a microwave and makes an updated Nimble tablet, we go hands-on
Last year’s Nimble tablet was approved by none other than MC Hammer. So this year’s version… well, you just have to expect great things, right? Awash in a sea of keyboard-free devices we weren’t really expecting anything shocking and we didn’t get anything shocking. It’s still a seven-inch capacitive-screened tablet intended for use at home, replacing a landline phone and connecting exclusively over WiFi, providing VOIP calling and of course all the goodness that Android provides — Android 1.5. That’s a few versions behind where we’d like it to be, but given the stock OS install here that shouldn’t be too hard to rectify if/when this device comes to retail. More interesting? A microwave with Android. Intrigued? Close the door, press start, and click on through.

Gallery: Touch Revolution Nimble Tablet hands-on

Continue reading Touch Revolution puts Android in a microwave and makes an updated Nimble tablet, we go hands-on

Touch Revolution puts Android in a microwave and makes an updated Nimble tablet, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

USB 3.0 SuperSpeed gone wild at CES 2010, trumps even your new SSD

Posted in: feature, Features, hands-on, impressions, Today's Chili, usb, usb 3.0, Usb3.0
USB 3.0 gone wild at CES 2010, trumps even your new SSD

Just in case you didn’t notice the arrow, that’s a USB 3.0 cable up there, plugged into a USB 3.0 port, running in a Fujitsu laptop that is the first to pack integrated support for USB 3.0. How fast was it? On the other end of this one was a Buffalo external enclosure stuffed with an old-fashioned, platter-based hard disk, which still delivered perfectly absurd transfer rates of about 135MB/sec. When another, similar setup ran with an Intel SSD what happened the results were even more impressive: a few ticks over 200MB/sec. Yes, we’re about to enter another dimension. A time when external drives are as fast as internal ones. Where the speed at which you can fill up your MP3 player is limited only by the speed of the storage on that device itself. You are about to enter… the SuperSpeed zone.

Gallery: USB 3.0 displays at CES 2010

Continue reading USB 3.0 SuperSpeed gone wild at CES 2010, trumps even your new SSD

USB 3.0 SuperSpeed gone wild at CES 2010, trumps even your new SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

Microsoft’s Mediaroom 2.0 running on the Xbox 360

Posted in: Microsoft, Today's Chili, xbox, Xbox360
Mediaroom running on an Xbox 360

Hearing about using an Xbox 360 as set top box for IPTV providers like AT&T’s U-Verse is one thing, but seeing it in action is another. As you can see from the video after the jump, the experience is very fluid and isn’t what we’d describe as laggy even in the slightest bit. The 360 can act as a full blown client to the Mediaroom DVR which provides a pretty complete multi-room experience. As far as we could tell the entire experience was there as well, but then again we’re not exactly experts on Mediaroom. Apparently one thing the 360 can’t do is be the only set top box in your house, which is probably a detail lost on many since we’d bet very few people who subscribe to pay TV only have one set top these days.

Continue reading Microsoft’s Mediaroom 2.0 running on the Xbox 360

Microsoft’s Mediaroom 2.0 running on the Xbox 360 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

Toshiba bolsters 32nm mSATA SSD lineup, your future netbook nods approvingly

Posted in: SSD, Today's Chili, Toshiba

We like to think of ’em as the SSDs for the little guys, and we couldn’t be happier to hear that they’re getting bigger and bigger in terms of capacity. Toshiba introduced the first solid state drives to use the mini-SATA interface back in September of ’09, and while those 32nm units were made available in 30GB and 62GB sizes, the pack rats weren’t satisfied. Now, the company has introduced a 128GB flavor with an mSATA interface, offering up a maximum sequential read speed of 180MB/s and a maximum sequential write speed of 70MB/s. The 128GB modules are said be one-seventh the volume and one-eighth the weight of 2.5-inch SSDs, and in case that’s not enough, the third-generation HG SSDs will bring nearly twice the aforesaid speed and will ship in capacities of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Hit the source link for all the dirt… except for the pricing, naturally.

Toshiba bolsters 32nm mSATA SSD lineup, your future netbook nods approvingly originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 09

Jinke announces 6 and 9-inch SiPix panel e-readers

Posted in: e reader, e-book, Today's Chili
We’re certainly not wanting for e-readers this week, although we are definitely wanting for one that’s compelling enough to shell out good money for — which is fine, because company’s all over God’s green Earth seem to be working overtime to give us one. Take Jinke — the company’s switched from E Ink to SiPix panels for the A6 and A9 readers, both of which are planned to sport multitouch, 16 levels of grayscale, WiFi a/b/g, and optional 3G — as well as the usual compliment of formats (FB2, EPUB, PDF, most image formats, and MP3). The former is a 6-inch (600 x 800) device with 2GB of storage, an SD slot, and an accelerometer. The Jinke A9 features a 9-inch (1024 x 768) panel, and up to 4GB storage. Both the A6 ($275) and the A9 ($330) should be available in March.

Jinke announces 6 and 9-inch SiPix panel e-readers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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