Hasta La Gadget!

Whenever you ask a friend to suggest a good TV show, they often just bellow praise for The Wire, Breaking Bad or My Little Pony — not useful if your tastes are a little more diverse. That’s why major players Time Warner and Vudu have signed up Jinni’s taste engine to build into their platforms to help you find entertainment — no more boring grid-style guides, Jinni promises. We’re apparently entering, “a new era of intuitive, personalized user experience,” which sounds perfectly swell to us. A duo of European providers are also hopping on board — Bouygues Telecom and C More Entertainment — as well as Asia’s SingTel and Africa’s Multichoice.

Nobody’s talking specifics on when we’ll see these metadata-pulling suggestions appear in homes, but if your horizons suddenly start to broaden, you know who to blame.

Continue reading Jinni’s TV search tools selected by Time Warner and Vudu to power intelligent search

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Shenzen New Degree Technology was one of the companies showing its stuff in the Eureka Park portion of CES 2013, and this China-based hardware startup had some impressive tech to show off related to touch input. Combining capacitive and resistive touch-based input with a means to make it work even on solid stainless steel surfaces, Shenzen New Degree hopes to pave the way for a wide range of new products with built-in controls that are highly durable, retaining their touch sensitive abilities even after considerable wear and tear.

The interesting thing about Shenzen New Degree’s tech is that it can provide both the levels of accuracy and sensitivity it manages while still also remaining durable enough that you can pour water on it, as the company showed me at their booth in Eureka Park. The environmental toughness of this implementation means it’ll be able to be used in a wide range of applications where touch devices would be exposed to the elements, like in kitchen appliances, outdoor digital keypads and parking meters, and the high sensitivity will make for a much better user experience than the resistive touch tech generally used in most commercial-grade touch panels.

Another benefit, as you can see in the video above, is that the panels can detect not only standard number sequence codes, but also the degree of force used to press, meaning that if someone wanted to not only have the numeric entry, but also the force with which it was entered as a secondary security measure, they could easily do that. All in all, it’s a pretty amazing component technology that I’m sure we’ll see picked up by a lot of OEMs fairly quickly.

Every year at CES, the focus on autos and the tech they’re outfitted with grabs a fair share of the attention in Las Vegas. This installment was no different. While several companies trotted out their latest infotainment wares, the self-driving debate nabbed a prime spot as Toyota and Audi both offered show-and-tells on tech that looks to aid drivers rather than do all of the work for them. As we’ve come to expect, a wealth of infotainment systems were also on display with a couple in particular grabbing our attention. Not to be overlooked, devs received a number of notable invites to create system-specific offerings this time out. For a full rundown of the highlights, read on past the break for a brief synopsis.

Continue reading CES 2013: Auto roundup

Filed under: Transportation

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CES is far from a top-tier trade show for the digital imaging industry, but that didn’t stop manufacturers from introducing new models. Android returned to Polaroid’s booth with the underwhelming iM1836 ILC, Canon opted for a square form factor with its PowerShot N and Fujifilm introduced a more powerful version of the X100. Nearly all of the cameras we saw at the show were created for consumers, with many options coming in under the $200 mark. Nikon and Samsung offered a few exceptions, but with Photokina wrapping up this past September and CP+ kicking off in just over two weeks, there are plenty of other venues for camera makers to introduce their higher-profile models. For now, though, it’s all about CES, so join us past the break for a closer look at some of this week’s biggest announcements.

Continue reading CES 2013: Digital cameras roundup

Filed under: Cameras, Samsung, Sony, Nikon, Canon

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With CES 2013 coming to a frigid conclusion here in Las Vegas, we moseyed our way to the Genius booth and went thumbs-on with the Ring Presenter and the Ring Mouse 2. Both use a 2.4GHz wireless USB connection, providing you with a 10-foot radius of Ring Mouse action on either OS X or Windows. The Ring Mouse 2 packs the standard mouse functions, while the Ring Presenter offers left / right / middle buttons, dragging, four-way scrolling and — drum roll, please — a laser pointer. Wearers simply navigate the cursor by perusing their thumb across the Touch Control sensor capable of a 1000dpi sensitivity.

After donning the ring we found it to be quite large, so those with smaller paws might have a harder time using it. From within approximately two feet out we observed great response and ease of use. The duo of diminutive peripherals may prove interesting for a niche that’s tired of the conventional pointer, and if you find yourself in that group, you can purchase either in the near future for $50+.

Filed under: Peripherals

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Source: Ring Presenter, Genius Shop