Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve had an analogue film to digital smartphone scanning device on Kickstarter, so here’s pretty much the reverse: a smartphone digital photo to analogue print photo enlarger on Indiegogo.

Phone-owning humans’ love affair with digital photography continues charging along at full tilt — fuelled by the ubiquity of cameraphones and the apps that allow easy digital photo remixing, whether it’s Instagram filters, or Frontback‘s dual aspect, or Rando‘s serendipity. All that snapping means a mountain of photos on mobile devices and social networks (not to mention sitting unloved on servers in the cloud). Sure you can browse them digitally, and repurpose a few as e-wallpaper, but this kind of photography is mostly a communication medium. The photos keep flowing to keep the conversation going. But what if you want to stop and linger on a few choice shots — and maybe even see real-world photo filters in action?

The Enfojer is a photo enlarger designed to make it (relatively) easy to translate digital photos into analogue black and white prints — so you can put a few digital shots up on your wall and get involved in the creation process yourself. It doesn’t reproduce colour, to keep the photo development process simple (and non-toxic), and does require you to get your hands dirty with dipping prints in and out of developing and fixing fluids but its creators claim to have streamlined the process so it’s suitable for Generation App. Once all the kit is set up they reckon you can turn an Instagram into a B&W artefact in a mere six minutes.

Enfojer can enlarge images from any smartphone (the cradle is compatible with phones up to 141 mm x 71 mm) or film up to 6×6 format. Prints can be created up to 20x20cm. The smartphone photo enlarger uses the phone’s own LED screen as the light source to expose the photographic paper. The device also has a wide angle polycarbonate “toy camera style meniscus lens” — which blurs the image slightly so it doesn’t end up looking pixellated. Think of it as an analogue filter (to go with your digital filters); “we tried sharper and better ones, but the results were too sterile,” note Enfojer’s creators.  The rest of the required kit is classic darkroom stuff like photo developing trays, fluids and a red LED light to work to.

Of course there’s no shortage of services offering to pro print your Instagram photos for you, in a variety of ways — such as Piccolo, Instantgram.me, Kanvess.com to name three — but Enfojer has an educational/enthusiast angle since it’s DIY photo printing. Enfojer’s creators say they’re aiming the device at ”budding photographers” who don’t already have access to a pro photo enlarger and are interested in learning about the dark (fading) arts of analogue photography. They also reckon it’s a cheaper photo-printing option than “average” photo printers.  Which may well be true, since printer ink is apparently more expensive than blue diamond dust.

Enfojer’s Croatian creators are seeking $100,000 on Indiegogo to fund manufacturing costs of the device — but it’s not a fixed funding campaign so they’ll get to take home whatever the crowd decides to shower on them. Backers can pay to bag an Enfojer on its own for $200, or pay up to $450 for a full kit that includes several trays, tongs, a  tray rack, darkroom light and a pack of photographic paper.

While Nokia continues to work on clawing back some of the once-market-leading smartphone business it has lost in the last few years to Apple and Android handset makers like Samsung, it has also slowly been building out a business based around its mapping and navigation division, rebranded as HERE earlier this year. That strategy — which has seen deals with the likes of Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW and Garmin for its in-car navigation systems — is going into high gear today. Nokia is launching Connected Driving, which included HERE Auto for embedded in-car navigation; HERE Auto Cloud for extra services like real-time traffic updates; and HERE Auto Companion, apps that will make it seamless to link up location data that you want to use or that you’ve created in your car, with what you are doing when you are outside the car and using your smartphone instead. On top of this, it’s upgrading its HERE Traffic system with a new data processing engine called “Halo.”

The launch today, in some regards, represents one of Nokia’s biggest challenges yet: it’s pitching itself as an operating system provider for other hardware makers (car companies; in-car system makers) to use as the platform for new products. Call it Nokia’s Android strategy.

Nokia is announcing the new products today and will be unveiling this suite of services at the the International Motor Show in Frankfurt, Germany on September 10. As with the rest of the products in HERE, Nokia’s intention is for all of this to be interoperable with different smartphone platforms. What that will mean in theory is that while HERE Auto and Auto Cloud will be loaded on to in-car systems, the apps in the Auto Companion will be launched for multiple platforms, including iOS and Android. In practice, though, Floris van de Klashorst, VP of connected cars for HERE, tells me that it’s likely that we will see the first services to be built on the platform that Nokia itself uses for smartphones, Windows Phone.

A rundown of the new services:

HERE Auto. This is Nokia’s embedded in-car navigation service. Using cached content, Nokia says it’s the first on the market that provides comprehensive mapping data even when a user doesn’t have a data connection. This includes turn by turn voice guided navigation in 95 countries, as well as 2D, 3D and satellite map views, with street-level imagery. Van de Klashorst tells me that Nokia is now also working on an SDK (yet to be released publicly) that will let third parties integrate services directly into this experience. He pointedly tells me that this will not include ads, which users they have surveyed have said are too distracting in cars. But this doesn’t rule out placing markers, for example, for a particular pizza joint when you are driving by it looking for some Italian food. Other features that are likely to come in by way of the SDK are music services and social networking services (not distracting like ads at all, right?!). Early users of this before the wider release include in-car system maker Continental, which is using them as part of its “Open Infotainment Platform.” I’d expect other app makers and navigation service companies to be added to the list soon.

HERE Auto Cloud. Like HERE Auto, this is also designed to work with and without data connections — useful for when you are in remote areas, or you are in regions where you may be roaming outside of your carrier’s network. This is Nokia’s own layer of extra services around driving — for example real-time traffic updates, helping drivers avoid congested areas, road closures or blockages that occur en route, as well as other services such as recommendations on places to eat, parking spots, information on where to charge an electric vehicle or where to find the most inexpensive fuel.

From the screenshots that Nokia provided to me, it looks like this is one of the fruits of its relationship with Foursquare:

HERE Auto Companion. This is the bridge between what Nokia is doing in the car and what it is doing outside of it. The Auto Companion, as Van de Klashorst demonstrated to me, works both on the web and as a mobile app, and it’s actually very cool: what it lets you do is create mapping instructions or take notes of a place that you’d like to visit, when you are sitting at your computer or on your phone, and then, when you get into your HERE-powered car, those data points follow you. If you start a trip in your car, and then park it, you can continue finding your way using your handset. Taking a page from the many apps that let users control what their TVs at home are recording, Nokia says that drivers can also use the app to find their car (using LiveSight augmented reality technology) and check stats for fuel levels and tire pressure. Part of this will be based on the new HALO platform, which basically will gather data using different sensors on the car. This will be used not just for app services for the consumer but to help gather more accurate information about weather in a particular place and more.

For cars that are shared between more than one person (say, in a family) each user can have his or her own interface in a vehicle:

Van de Klashorst tells me that the big idea here is to personalize those in-car experiences: “One thing that is apparent is that people have a strong relationship both with their cars and with their phones, but the in-car systems are ice cold. People cannot influence or modify or personalise them. To make them personal is a very important aspect.”

And when you think about this, it’s a potentially interesting area when you link it up with wider trends in the automotive space, such as with car sharing services like Zipcar. “With car sharing services, this car that you don’t own becomes your car. Systems like this once will be a very important part of elevating and experience to make it your own,” he notes.

Apart from the challenges of competing against other smartphone players (including Google, Apple and BlackBerry) who also have stakes in the automotive game — Apple already has integrations with several car makers and there are often rumors swirling of how this will expand over time; Google has gone so far as to create self-driving vehicles; and BlackBerry has QNX — Nokia is doing this from a position that is not without its own challenges. In Nokia’s last quarterly earnings, Here posted sales of $305 million, down 18% over last year, up 8% on the previous quarter and it remains loss-making, with a $116 million operating deficit, which is at least marginally better than the $120 million a year ago. (A HERE representative points out, however, that the division has “underlying profitability” and “strong automotive sales,” showing that it’s following through on establishing financial independence from Nokia’s smartphone business.)

Still, Nokia has in its hands a very key asset: it holds one of the biggest databases of mapping information in the world, meaning it doesn’t need to rely on third parties for it. And even with its many layoffs, it still employs hundreds of engineers that are thinking of clever ways of using that to Nokia’s advantage. Nokia has nothing to lose by trying to get out into pole position in this space at this still-early stage in the connected car revolution.

The PC industry may be shaken up by the rapid encroachment of tablets into consumer and enterprise spending habits — a trend that’s seeing lighter devices like the iPad, as well as cheaper tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and more, eat into the market share of bigger and more expensive computers. But it’s all a matter of perspective: today IDC said that it’s actually lowering forecasts for tablet shipments this year and in the future.

“Growing competition”, IDC says, from smartphones with bigger screens (the recently-legitimized phablet) and wearables like smart watches, combined with a lack of exciting tablet product launches in Q2, are leading the analysts to says that there will be 227.4 million tablets shipped worldwide in 2013, down some 2 million from 229.3 million as previously estimated.

Yes, it’s not a huge drop, and you can argue that these are only estimates anyway. And it’s still some 57.7% higher than 2012 shipments. But IDC’s figures point to some themes that are worth watching for: whether even less-expensive tablets are possibly still too expensive for what consumers are willing to pay; whether even tablets — in some regards pared-down in functionality from PCs — are still too over specced for what many consumers want and need; and the issue of how much of our wallet we will want to dedicate to these products, as more of them enter the market.

On the enterprise side, IDC notes that right now, in fact, the tablet is pretty minor but is growing: It notes that tablet adoption in sectors like education and retail collectively accounted for 10% of all tablet sales in 2012, and that will only grow to 20% by 2017.

IDC also notes that it’s starting to see more developed markets already take their feet off the gas in terms of rapid adoption, with “maturing markets such as the U.S. now expected to cede share more rapidly to emerging markets such as Asia/Pacific.” It predicts that by 2017 there will be 407 million tablets shipped.

More immediately, competitive pressures will mean lower prices for tablets coming soon, IDC notes. “We expect average selling prices to continue to compress as more mainstream vendors utilize low-cost components to better compete with the whitebox tablet vendors that continue to enjoy widespread traction in the market despite typically offering lower-quality products and poorer customer experiences,” writes Tom Mainelli, research director for tablets.

In terms of regional activity, IDC points out that North America, Western Europe and Japan, which had traditionally been the leaders in tablet adoption, are already seeing some slow-down in sales, compared to other parts of the world. Today they account for 60.8% of the market, but that will drop to 49% by 2017, with emerging markets making up the remaining 51%. (Another proof point for why it’s so important for companies like Google, Facebook and others to build out their businesses in these markets.)

“Year-on-year growth is beginning to slow as the tablet market approaches early stages of maturity,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research analyst for IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. “Much of the long-term growth will be driven by countries like China where projected growth rates will be consistently higher than the worldwide average.”

Now that you’ve picked up a freshly discounted Nexus 4, how about a seven-inch Android tablet to go with it? Well, the next-generation Nexus 7 goes on sale today in UK, Germany, France, Spain, and, er, Japan. British readers will need to digitally transfer £200 to Google Play for the 16GB entry-level model, while the 32GB version rings in £240. Want LTE? Well, O2 UK promises that its 4G-ready version will go on sale September 12th, for £320 — no details on data plan pricing though. Pre-orders for that start tomorrow and if you do, you’ll get a free “premium case” for your enthusiasm.

Filed under: Tablets, ASUS, Google

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Via: Phandroid

Source: Google Play, O2

FABtotum is an all-in-one 3D printer, cutting, milling and engraving box of tricks which supports additive and subtractive manufacturing processes so you can both print and cut to create design prototypes/objects. It also incorporates a 3D scanner function for cloning real-world items to duplicate and remix. If all that sounds too good to be true it currently is, because the Italian startup behind this hybrid maker device is looking to raise a chunk of cash ($50,000) on Indiegogo to get the machine to market. The startup is also seeking investors alongside their crowdfunding campaign, having been privately funded since 2011. They are, however, well on their way to meeting their crowdfunding goal — with more than a month of the funding period still left to run.

“Most of the 3D printers out there allow a single direction: from a digital model to a printed part,” explains one of FABtotum’s two creators, Marco Rizzuto. “Those devices are also limited in flexibility and professional use since not everything can be done in polymers, even prototypes. We think that allowing people to scan objects with our hybrid 4 axis technology allow a seamless interaction between physical and digital models. You may pick an object and fax it to a friend, he can print it straight out or make some changes in any free or professional modelling software. You may use the subtractive capabilities of FABtotum to carve foams, PCB milling or other activities that designers, engineers and makers in general can integrate in their design workflow or hobbies.”

There’s some inevitable complexity in a multi-functional manufacturing device like this — so it will be a while before the average consumer is hankering for this type of hybrid. In the meantime there’s likely to be plenty of appetite among small businesses that need to make design prototypes, and makers wanting a more streamlined workshop. As one measure of appetite, in just over a week FABtotum’s Indiegogo campaign has raised more than $38,000 from 60 public backers.

Rizzuto names the main direct competitor devices to FABtotum as Microfactory’s workshop-in-a-box hybrid machine, and Aio Robotics 3D-faxing Zeus printer — due to land on Kickstarter next month — but says FABtotum will be undercutting both rival hybrid machines on price, and will also support customisation via third party “heads” so users can expand its capabilities to suit their needs.

The FABtotum supports laser scanning (for speed) and Z probing (for high res) 3D scanning methods. Its fused filament fabrication 3D print function offers Z precision of p to 0,47 microns. Build area volume is up to 210x240x240mm.

FABtotum’s makers are offering a $699 pledge price for a mechanical kit to convert an existing 3D printer to their hybrid, or $999 for the full FABtotum machine in kit form for self assembly. All early bird pledges of $849 for the full FABtotum machine (fully assembled) are gone — full price is now $1,099.