Hasta La Gadget!

As with most accomplishments these days, we can’t help but place a rather large asterisk next to Sony’s award for managing to outsell the iPod lineup with its Walkman. According to Tokyo-based research firm BCN Inc., for the week ending August 30th, the Walkman series had a 43 percent share of the personal music player market versus 42.1 percent for iPods, marking the first time in four years that Sony’s managed to get the upper hand. Got that? Good, now for a major caveat. For whatever reason, iPhones aren’t considered part of the iPod line, meaning people who want the luxuries of the iPod touch and a wireless data plan aren’t included in the survey. That’s quite an omission — the iPhone 3GS is currently the best-selling phone in Japan, after all — and we gotta imagine it’d be more than enough to tilt the data in Apple’s favor, even if you threw in Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones for good measure. But hey, it’s still a feat in its own right, and Sony might as well celebrate while it lasts — something tells us the gang in Cupertino has something up their sleeve soon.

Filed under: Portable Audio

Walkman outsells iPod in Japan for first time in four years… but iPhone sales don’t count originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Big Red’s flexing its 4G muscle today, announcing that it has successfully completed the first true tests on its nascent LTE network — end-to-end data calls that presumably approximate real-world usage. The action actually happened way back on July 15 in Seattle, while Boston just went down today — the two markets where Verizon said it’d be running the first trials — both on 700MHz spectrum won not terribly long ago. LG and Samsung provided the mysterious, unspecified “trial devices,” but don’t worry, Motorola fans — Verizon says they’ve got devices in the pipeline as well. Both Seattle and Boston currently have ten LTE cell sites live as the carrier trudges toward a 2010 date with destiny when it’ll take “up to 30” markets live, at which point EV-DO and HSPA will theoretically feel like trying to send packets via carrier pigeon. Progress!

Update: We just spoke with Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone to expand a bit on the trials. Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Though they’re not talking speeds with these trials specifically, they’re confident in saying that everything’s in line for 7-12Mbps down and 3-5Mbps up at launch.
• The trials are being conducted on commercial LTE base station hardware, but everything else is prototype (and changing very rapidly). The end-user equipment doesn’t currently resemble anything you’d actually buy.
• Data modems will be the priority at launch, which makes sense considering the amount of industry flux with regard to voice over LTE. Though Verizon believes the solution will ultimately be some form of VoIP, there are several outstanding issues, including handling of 911 calls.
• Everything in the trial so far leads Verizon to believe that they’re on track for a 30-market launch in 2010.
• This doesn’t spell the end of EV-DO deployments — far from it. Melone says that upgrades could continue all the way through to the initial LTE launch and beyond.

Filed under: Wireless

Verizon tests first data connections on LTE network in Seattle and Boston originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clickfree, the outfit responsible for breathing new life into the notion of automatic backups, has just introduced what may very well be its most interesting and useful product yet. The Transformer for iPod / iPhone is a dual-purpose device, giving users the ability to backup multimedia from their PCs onto any remaining space on their iPod or iPhone as well as providing an easy way to retrieve content from those devices should your PC’s hard drive ever decide to call it a day life. Per usual, no software installation is required, and the adapter plays nice with Vista, XP and OS X 10.5 or later. In related news, the company is also introducing its Transformer SE next month, which will ship in a piano black finish and function with any external USB hard drive to deliver a fully automated backup. If you’re willing to pay the price for peace of mind, you can get your order in today at $49.99 and $89.99, respectively.

Continue reading Clickfree Transformer for iPod / iPhone makes auto backups, music retrieval painless

Filed under: Peripherals, Storage

Clickfree Transformer for iPod / iPhone makes auto backups, music retrieval painless originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Terrifying news, kids: we’re growing seriously close to maxing out the density limits of present magnetic memory technology as it becomes increasingly difficult to shrink the necessary grains used in the process. Thankfully, there’s a team of German scientists devoted to doing more than standing around and watching the inevitable happen. Cobalt, the element responsible for keeping your precious data intact, typically requires a 50,000 atom fleet for each grain, but boffins from Dresden have found a way to shrink that to a measly flotilla of 50. Without trampling you with technological details, attaching carbon rings to the cobalt reproduces the requisite hexagonal close packed structure, which leads to reduced space requirements. Should this technique prove viable, we can expect yet another race among hard drive makers as they strive to make each other’s most capacious drives look downright diminutive. Hit the read link for all the grisly details.

[Via Graphene-Info]

Filed under: Storage

Carbon ring storage promises 1,000 times higher memory density originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A diamond is forever. And in a few years, you could say the same about everything you say on Twitter. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have found a way to develop a carbon nanotube-based technique for storing data that could potentially last more than a billion years.

The goal, say the researchers, is to improve on what they see as the general trend for memory storage. As memory density increases, the lifespan of the storage has been decreasing, they say.  For instance, stone carvings are still largely readable after 3,800 years, while information written with individual atoms by scanning tunneling microscopes last just a few seconds at room temperature. Conventional digital memory technologies in use — such as hard disk drives and flash memory — have an estimated lifetime of only 10 to 30 years. If successful, a billion-year memory storage device could change that, enabling humans to store any data — from the digital version of an ancient manuscript to your latest tweet — from now until long after the Earth has been overrun by superintelligent, fusion-powered cyborg ants.

Here’s how it works. The device has an iron nanoparticle positioned inside a hollow carbon nanotube. Carbon nanotubes are molecular-scale tubes usually made of a carbon allotrope. For data storage, a small electrical signal is applied across the nanotube causing the iron nanoparticle shuttle to move back and forth. The movement of the nanoparticles from one end to the other of the tube creates the binary ‘1′ or ‘0′ state.

The position of the shuttle can be read out directly, explain the researchers in a paper published in the current issue of the Nano Letters journal. “The reversibility of the nanoparticle motion allows a memory bit that can be rewritten,” according to the paper.

The technique has significant potential for archival storage, say the researchers, because the nanoparticle-based bits show significant persistence. It’s also possible to store a lot of data in a small space: With information density predicted to be as high as 10¹² bits per square inch, you could store data from nearly 25 DVDs in the space of a postage stamp.

The beauty of the system is that it requires only a couple volts of electrical signal to stimulate it, Will Gannett, a graduate student in physics working on the project at UC Berkeley told campus paper The Daily Californian.

It’ll take awhile to get there, though — so far the researchers have only demonstrated the theoretical possibility of this technology.

[via Science]

Photo: Nanoparticle in nanotube representation