For the average Joe that have managed to stay out of the Apple circle, the Just Mobile brand might not immediately ring a bell, but chances are you would’ve come across one of its peripheral designs at some point. The only problem is unless you knew the company in the first place, you’d easily assume that the aluminum or even plastic knock-offs are just based on generic designs, because there are simply too many of them. It’s no wonder Just Mobile co-founders Nils Gustafsson and Erich Huang take imitations of all forms very personally (especially the ones they and their lawyers see at CES), but fortunately, we were spared from prolonged ranting when we visited the duo’s office in Taichung, Taiwan recently. What we were treated to instead was an insight into how an accessory maker works with Apple and why Just Mobile manufactures exclusively in Taiwan, as well as getting a preview of the upcoming AluRack, HeadStand and AluBase that are due out this month.
How about some glass from CEATEC, eh? The folks at Nippon Electric Glass were showing off its still-in-development liquid lens technology, as well as its already-available “invisible glass.” The latter, as pictured above, is very much what it says on the tin albeit with some exaggeration, obviously, but we were still very impressed by how little reflection we saw on it. While it’s already being used in art galleries and inside cameras (as sensor covers), Nippon Electric Glass is pushing hard to get its invisible glass featured on mobile devices — the selling point here is simply to achieve the effect of somewhere in between glossy glass and matte glass, so that you’d get the best color vibrancy with minimal reflection. Do check out the video after the break.
As for the liquid lens, Nippon Electric Glass’ version uses low-power electric field to control its liquid crystal molecular orientation, thus changing the focal point. You’ll also see that the lens is also small enough to be integrated into phones and webcams. While the demo response was pretty quick, we were told that it’ll be at least another year before the technology becomes available for us mere mortals. For now, you can see our hands-on demo after the break.
While scanning through Panasonic’s booth at CEATEC 2012, we couldn’t help but notice a prototype of its world’s slimmest 100-lumen laser projector module (or OIU aka optical imaging unit, as the company prefers), which can beam out an 800 x 480 picture. It’s not clear when exactly we’ll see this 7.5mm-thick device getting into consumers’ hands, but there’s certainly room for improvement for the image quality. Likewise, the scan-type OIU (resolution at about 400 x 300) next to the slim projector is far from ready for mass consumption, as the company is hoping to actually shrink it down and integrate it into mobile phones. That said, the fact that this technology doesn’t require focusing makes it worth the wait — the light doesn’t go through an LCD filter like ordinary projectors do, and instead, it’s a single laser beam scanning out the picture, hence the name.
Also shown along side were the optical bay drive pico projector that’s already being offered by Fujitsu, as well as the PJ-SJ25U 854 × 480 DLP pico projector which was released in August this year. While the latter’s image quality was rather impressive even under the strong ambient lighting, we struggle to appreciate the ¥56,800 or $730 price tag. Anyhow, pricing is just a matter time, as always.
Update: The thickness of the slim laser OIU was originally mistyped as “75mm.” This has now been corrected. Many apologies.
While scanning through Panasonic’s booth at CEATEC 2012, we couldn’t help but notice a prototype of its world’s slimmest 100-lumen laser projector module (or OIU aka optical imaging unit, as the company prefers), which can beam out an 800 x 480 picture. It’s not clear when exactly we’ll see this 75mm-thick device getting into consumers’ hands, but there’s certainly room for improvement for the image quality. Likewise, the scan-type OIU (resolution at about 400 x 300) next to the slim projector is far from ready for mass consumption, as the company is hoping to actually shrink it down and integrate it into mobile phones. That said, the fact that this technology doesn’t require focusing makes it worth the wait — the light doesn’t go through an LCD filter like ordinary projectors do, and instead, it’s a single laser beam scanning out the picture, hence the name.
Also shown along side were the optical bay drive pico projector that’s already being offered by Fujitsu, as well as the PJ-SJ25U 854 × 480 DLP pico projector which was released in August this year. While the latter’s image quality was rather impressive even under the strong ambient lighting, we struggle to appreciate the ¥56,800 or $730 price tag. Anyhow, pricing is just a matter time, as always.
BlackBerry is in a precarious place right now. RIM’s surprise good news in user count and financial figures for Q2 2013 remain overshadowed by the tardy arrival of BlackBerry 10, now expected sometime early in the new year. Last week, RIM handed out the latest iteration of its developer device, BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B, and demonstrated a few more details of the upcoming OS and how the company believes it has addressed information-overload. We caught up with RIM in London to talk clever keyboards, game-changing context, and check out the new features for ourselves.
Star of the BlackBerry 10 show may well be the soft keyboard. RIM is known for its physical QWERTY, and initial reports that the first BlackBerry 10 device would be all-touch filled some smartphone stalwarts with dread; thankfully, unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool thumbboard addict, RIM’s on-screen keyboard is likely to satisfy.
As with just about every soft keyboard out there, RIM’s offers auto-prediction and auto-correction. Unlike rivals, however, which slot word suggestions in a row on top of the keyboard or below it, RIM’s ‘board floats them over the keys themselves. It looks messy and cluttered at first glance, but there’s method to the madness: the predicted word is in fact positioned over the next letter you’d be typing if you were trying to spell it. Rather than having to glance up above the keys to see if the system has guessed your next word, your eyes are probably already looking where the word will be shown. A simple upward flick selects it, and you’re off to the next.
It doesn’t sound like it should make much difference, but in practice it’s supremely straightforward, even for a new user. Within the space of a few minutes you can be battering out sentences with ease, and it’s merely a matter of time before knock-off versions of the BlackBerry 10 keyboard proliferate, it really is that good. What they’re unlikely to have, though, is the machine-learning behind the ‘board: BlackBerry 10 tracks not only what words you use, but the context in which you use them.
So, if you abbreviate to “C U L8R” in BBM and text messages, but spell out “see you later” in emails, BlackBerry 10 will prompt you with your preferred spelling style when you’re in the appropriate app. Up to three different languages can be juggled simultaneously – according to Rob Orr, UK and Ireland MD at RIM, 30-percent of the BlackBerry user base is multilingual – without demanding the user actively switch between dictionaries. It even learns how you press the keys: whether you stab with your fingertip dead-center, or use two thumbs and generally hit the edges of the buttons, building up a second layout map over a period of use that fits the user’s typing style.
RIM’s goal has been to reduce the amount of app jumping necessary to use a modern smartphone; as Orr put it, the “in/out paradigm” of navigation, dipping in and out of multiple apps in order to get snippets of information and functionality from each. Instead, BlackBerry 10 is designed to be used more fluidly, navigable with a single finger. A calendar entry shows attendees, which link to individual contact cards, which have tabs for previous overlaps – meetings and events you may have see that person before – as well as web-sourced background to help get you up to speed.
In practice, while RIM likes to portray Peek and Flow as entirely new innovations in the mobile industry, we’ve seen elements of each before. HTC has experimented with linking individual contacts with a history of previous communication as part of its Sense system on Android and Windows Mobile phones. MeeGo, meanwhile, took a similar approach to multitasking and notifications, splitting its homescreen into three sections: app icons, thumbnails of active apps ordered by most recent use, and a list of combined alerts.
That’s not to say that the BlackBerry 10 system is entirely derivative, or indeed that it suffers for not being 100-percent original. In practice, the Peek system of swiping a partial arc to see notification icons is incredibly intuitive, and the whole system worked smoothly on RIM’s Dev Alpha B hardware. The unified notifications list is similarly slick, customizable to show more or less of the information from each app as you’d prefer, and even Android software wrapped to run on BlackBerry 10 will have their alerts included in the timeline.
What remains to be seen is where RIM takes BlackBerry 10 next. The concepts behind Peek and Flow are surprisingly good – RIM insists BlackBerry 7 is strong enough to keep up with the best of the rest, though it can be a frustrating affair when moving over from Android or iOS, and BB10 is leagues ahead of its predecessor – but while they remove some of the “in/out” they still rely on the user actively checking updates and alerts. There’s still that Pavlovian response expected: the red LED blinks, and we leap to swipe a quick Peek at what new data tidbit has arrived for us.
The position still up for grabs, though, is for the smartphone platform that understands context too. Google has made steps in that direction, with Google Now predicting what basic information – travel, weather, etc – you might want to know next from your Android phone, and Apple’s Siri is smart enough to use location and local data to educate its responses, but the smartphone as true personal digital assistant – proactive, not reactive – still isn’t quite there yet.
Orr played it coy when we asked about the future of the platform, preferring to talk about context as regards BlackBerry 10 fitting into work and personal life: a single device that contains functionality for both business and pleasure, with the security and remote-management demanded by enterprise, while leaving the flexibility and convenience individual users expect. RIM calls this BlackBerry Balance, and it’s certainly unique among smartphone platforms: your IT department could remotely provision the “Work” side of your phone, load apps that can’t be accessed by your “Personal” account on the same handset, and then delete it all (leaving your own data, apps, and settings untouched) when you leave the company.
BlackBerry 10 is a solid start, but it comes to the market behind three rivals that are at the very least equal in their polish. Android and iOS are the obvious leaders; RIM is left to target the distant third place Microsoft would like to hold on to with Windows Phone. Peek and Flow, as well as the clever virtual keyboard and thoughtful touches like a calendar view which makes the date numbers bigger the busier your schedule that day, show there’s still a spark among the BlackBerry OS team, but RIM needs to pull something particularly innovative out of the bag if it wants to regain its momentum. Tackling the context question in a compelling way could be enough to do that.
What can one do with a robot suit? Well, it’s certainly not limited to just lifting sacks of rice, but that was exactly what we got to do at CEATEC courtesy of Koba Lab from Tokyo University of Science. First seen in 2009, the magic behind this 9kg kit are the pair of pneumatic artificial muscles (aka McKibben artificial muscles) on the back, which are made by industrial equipment manufacturer Kanda Tsushin. When pressurized with air using electrical components from KOA Corporation, the lightweight, loosely-woven PET tubes contract and consequently provide support to the user’s back, shoulders and elbows. As such, our arms were able to easily hold two more sacks of rice (making it a total of 50kg) until the demonstrator deflated the muscles. Check out our jolly hands-on video after the break.
This week we got to speak to the multi-talented Genndy Tartakovsky about his direction of the new-to-theaters animated feature Hotel Transylvania. This film is a big step in an already star-studded path for Tartakovsky whose creative career also crossed paths with or was straight up responsible for Dexter’s Laboratory, Power Puff Girls, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and soon Popeye – another animated feature coming soon. Have read here as we trade words with the director on his new vision for a monster-filled hotel filled with the likes of Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi, and Andy Sandberg.
The story we’re seeing here with Hotel Transylvania is one with lots of monsters all having a fabulous time staying in a hotel run by Dracula. Of course Dracula has a daughter who wants to see the world, this all coming to a head when a human named Jonathan arrives at the hotel by chance – and there’s not supposed to be any humans at the hotel. Thus ensues a lovely comedy fest crowned with the top-notch visuals of Sony Pictures Animation and the music of Mark Mothersbaugh.
What we’re interested in is how Tartakovsky handled this movie with his past experience in more traditional animation in mind. How does Tartakovsky work with TV shows vs a star-studded feature for the big screen?
Genndy Tartakovsky: I think that one of the main differences is the pressure. With a TV show you work for multiple shows and when the show comes out, if one episode comes out and doesn’t perform as well as it could, the audience usually forgives you. Then the next episode is going to be better. There’s a pressure to perform, but it’s OK if you have an off episode once in a while.
With a movie, you have opening weekend and then that’s it. Everything is done for that opening weekend, and if you don’t get the characters right, and the humor and the entertainment and everything, then it fails and all that work is gone. It’ll be gone within 6-8 weeks and then that’s it.
So to think of it like you have one shot, it makes you think quite differently.
SG: You’ve had quite an expansive career when it comes to animation – how would you describe the difference between shows you’ve worked on like Dexter’s Lab or all the way back to Batman: The Animated Series back up to Star Wars: The Clone Wars and this new film Hotel Transylvania?
GT: In a way it’s hard to compare because one is CG and one is 2D. The two are very obviously different in the way we use the pencil. The one big difference for me, personally, is – when I worked on Dexter, especially – is I know how to do every different part of animation production. From the lighting to the camera work to the sound editing, mixing; I’ve done it all before.
Some things I can do better than others, obviously, but I know how to do it. So if there was something to troubleshoot, I could have an opinion about it. But then on CG, I don’t know how it works – to fix something, I have to trust my official tech supervisor Dan Kramer. All I could say is “yeah I don’t like the way that’s working,” but never say “let’s use this different lens to make it work.”
GT: I could just say “this isn’t working, let’s try a different way to try and fix it.” It was something that was very difficult for me because I’m so used to problem solving and having this push that’s a big part of being a director, in my experience. Especially on technical things – “why doesn’t this camera look right?” And then I’d figure it out. So in our production I couldn’t do any of it because I just didn’t know.
After a while I realized that I’m in good hands, and it became easier that way. In some ways it was a lot easier, in some ways it was a lot harder.
SG: You recently did a Reddit AMA post answering questions from the public – could you describe the changes in the way you’re able to communicate with viewers of your shows and now movies over this rather quickly evolving time period you’ve been working in?
GT: I remember when we started on Dexter, the internet was just sort of taking off – and we never went online to see the reactions. And now you can get thousands and thousands of reactions to a movie or TV show. I remember when we were doing [Samurai] Jack and it was taking off and after each episode we’d go and see what people thought, and on Sym-Bionic Titan it was even more intense and especially on Clone Wars. You could go to Star Wars [online] and totally see that all the fans were talking about if we messed it up or not.
What’s great for television is you get instant feedback. It’s a more specific audience that’s talking back, it’s not everybody, but you definitely get a clue, and see what people like, if your stuff is landing. It was really hard on Dexter – we would do an episode, we’d air it, I’d watch it at home, and I’d go “yeah I guess people liked it, I have no idea.”
GT: Then on Monday you’d get a rating, “oh I did a 2.2″, and that’s it. It wasn’t until I started doing comic book conventions and film conventions that I actually met some of the people who love the show and they would say how much they loved it. Then our numbers would slowly start going up, and you’d start to realize – “oh, it’s getting popular”.
It’s a really hard thing to capture, the popularity, especially when, in the beginning when Cartoon Network only had 12 million viewers. You know when Nickelodeon has a 120 or 160 or something, it’s different in such a mass. But what’s so much fun about a movie is that I can go to a theater to see if I’ve failed or succeeded instantly.
SG: What’s the difference between the built-in fanbase you had with Star Wars: Clone Wars and the audience you’ll have with Hotel Transylvania? Is there a big difference?
GT: For sure when you’re doing something that’s built-in like Star Wars, it’s all about getting it right – for yourself being a fan, and for the people who know the material and the last thing you want to do is be insincere about the material and change it so much that people hate it. Like saying “that was a huge disaster!” But here you’re presenting a new idea.
And you’re selling it for the first time, so you want to try to do something – you’re trying to sell your point of view. You want to do something that’s new and fresh and people have an experience watching. It’s a really big pet peeve of mine to – you know, I’m selling my point of view, it’s what I get hired for. And if my point of view is the same as 5 other directors, then I’m screwed. Replaceable.
But if my point of view is very unique, and strong, and people can sense it, then I’m much more successful that way. To me, that’s what the difference is.
Stay tuned for more entertainment coverage straight from the source here on SlashGear and be sure to check out Hotel Transylvania in theaters right this minute across the USA! This film has already set a new record for highest-grossing September opening weekend with a budget of $85 million and total earnings of $51.1 million – keep it growing!
It’s six months since HTC launched the One X, one of its best smartphones in years, and with the HTC One X+ the company hopes it can polish its flagship back to the top of the list. Outwardly identical to the One X, albeit with a new matte black case and red detailing, the One X+ makes its changes on the inside, upgrading the processor to a 1.7GHz quadcore NVIDIA Tegra 3 AP37 and massaging the smartphone’s guts to accommodate a larger, 2,100 mAh battery. We caught up with HTC for some pre-announcement playtime.
Chip and battery are the big numbers, and HTC is pretty proud of them. The company claims performance is up as much as 67-percent compared to the original One X, while battery life has gained up to 6hrs more talktime versus the old phone.
In the hand, it’s unsurprisingly instantly recognizable as a One X: it still feels broad and flat, surprisingly slim, and the textured casing is easy to grip. The rear camera pucker – still an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.0 lens – gets a ring of red around it, matching the pared down Beats Audio logo, while the front camera now musters 1.6-megapixels and, for the first time, gains access to HTC’s Image Chip technology.
That does its processing on the RAW photo data, rather than after its been converted to JPEG, and HTC sets the One X+ to automatically shoot vanity stills in Portrait mode with skin tone smoothing and other virtual botoxery. You can turn it off if you’d rather be seen in your hideous, unairbrushed state. The front camera also now gives a countdown by default, three seconds to allow you to pose rather than be snapped while thumbing the button.
It’s not the only change to the camera software. The UI now shows how many photos and minutes of video you have left – HTC will offer both 32GB and 64GB versions of the One X+, though neither gets a microSD slot – and if you lock the phone with the camera app still in the foreground, HTC assumes you’re a shutterbug tourist and bypasses the lockscreen next time you turn the phone back on to save valuable milliseconds of photography time.
Beats Audio has its new logo and a new feedback amplifier, boosting the performance of the One X+’s speaker. This, HTC says, “constantly monitors” the signal to the speaker and tweaks it so as to make it as loud as can be without clipping or crackling. Unfortunately, unlike on the Windows Phone 8X by HTC, there’s no companion amp for the headphone jack – arguably of far more use than a louder speaker – though the power has been increased from 0.5V to 1.5V. It’s also possible to use NFC to pair the One X+ with compatible Beats speakers.
Elsewhere in software, there’s now Jelly Bean (complete with Google Now) behind the scenes with HTC Sense4+ – a new strategy of nomenclature HTC says is less focused on micro-changes and more on usable features – strapped on top. The Gallery app follows the path of the Music hub, and pulls in content from Facebook, Dropbox, Flickr, Picaso, and what’s stored on the handset itself, and you can now sort images by date, event, and location, complete with a map view showing where clusters of shots were taken.
The One X+ is PlayStation Certified, and with the app – not installed to the phone by default – you’ll eventually be able to download Sony games. HTC Watch 2 does get loaded out of the box, however, and has also evolved into a hub of sorts: now, as well as renting and buying movies and TV shows from HTC’s store, there are links to video apps like YouTube and ESPN. A three-finger upward swipe flicks the content to your HTC MediaLink HD, and if the third-party video app itself has support for the MediaLink SDK, you can continue using the phone for other tasks while video keeps playing. Otherwise it’s simple screen-mirroring. HTC couldn’t say which developers had baked in such support, though did tell us it was in discussions about it.
Finally, there’s a resurrection of the online Sense tools, now part of the “Get Started” feature which will welcome all new One X+ owners. They’ll be able to set up their new phone – arrange wallpapers and homescreen widgets, choose apps from Google Play – in their desktop browser and then, by logging into the One X+ with the same Sense account, have it automatically set up that way. You can set up your online account before you even have the phone, in fact, giving you something to do while you eagerly await the delivery guy.
Unfortunately there’s only one-way sync, at least to begin with, so any changes made on the phone won’t be backed up online. Instead, all you’ll be able to do is reset the One X+ to the original configuration you first started with. Still, HTC says it does have plans to continue building on its online Sense provision, and we can hope it will make a better job of things the second time around.
For Europe, there’ll be UMTS HSPA+ models, with the promise of LTE versions for other markets. HTC did say that it could well change that and add an LTE for the fledgling EE 4G network in the UK, however.
As for Jelly Bean for previous devices, once the One X+ launches – in the UK, that will happen in early- to mid-October, across multiple carriers and alongside the original One X which will remain on sale – HTC will be pushing Android 4.1 to the One X, One S, and One XL shortly after. It will also include Sense 4+, though some of the hardware-specific features (like the speaker amp) obviously won’t be supported on the older phones.
It’s almost time for the big drop of the new science fiction action time travel blockbuster LOOPER to hit theaters, so SlashGear took the opportunity to speak with none other than Dr. Edward Farhi of real-life time travel study fame. What we learn from Farhi, aka Director at the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, is that time travel into the future is indeed very possible – theoretically – but that backwards movement – like LOOPER suggests – just isn’t in the cards.
Farhi and colleagues Sean M. Carroll and Alan H. Guth worked on a report by the name of “An obstacle to building a time machine” which lets it be known that the amount of mass that would have to be destroyed to make a time machine work would essentially break apart half the universe. That’s a time machine that travels along closed timelike curves – what we’re interested in is a machine that jams a single human back in a metal tube from 30 years in the future to our own present – or in the case of the LOOPER plotline, just a few decades into the future (and 30 years from then.)
Dr. Edward Farhi : There are two forms of relativity – one’s the Special Theory of Relativity [STR] and the other is the General Theory of Relativity. Relativity tells us that the rate at which clocks run depends on the speed of the system. And when we talk about clocks, we’re talking about the actual flow of time. It’s not something that just feels like it’s going at a different rate, it’s actually going at a different rate.
One thing we know is that if you could get into a rocket in space and go close to the speed of light and return to Earth, you could arrange it so that a short period of time elapsed according to you would be a much longer period of time elapsed on the Earth. For example I could put you, Chris, on a rocket, and you would say that 6 months have passed and you’d come back to Earth and 100 years have passed on the Earth – if you had kids, you would meet your great great grandchildren.
We call that “skipping into the future.”
Farhi : It’s actually allowed by the laws of physics. That rate at which you’re clock runs depends on the speed – another example is the GPS satellite. When you’re in your car you communicate with these satellites that triangulate your location. It’s very important that you understand that the rate at which the clocks run on those satellites is important – if you didn’t take into account the fact that the clocks are running at a little different rate because they were moving, you’d be driving in the ditch.
Moving clocks run at different rates, and that allows you to skip into the future.
The other thing is that if you’ve got a strong gravitational field it’ll also affect the way clocks run. So if I took you and I lowered you into a strong gravitational field, your clock would run slower. And if you were watching out, if you were watching me on the Earth, you would see me moving quickly and I would see you moving slowly and when we came back together again, you would have aged less than I. Those are real effects, there’s no doubt about these things.
Farhi : If you took that little trip and you went into the future and you wanted to come back, that would be a little more problematic. One of the reasons we can see it would be a little more problematic is that if you could go into the future and come back, then maybe you could today just go back – and if you could go back in time, you could prevent your parents from coming together and making you. That’s paradoxical. Most physicists, I would say, because of those paradoxes, going back in time doesn’t seem too possible.
Check out our LOOPER review tonight and see the full film out in theaters this weekend across the USA! This is a film that’s made for those who love loud blasts, massive kills, and massive amounts of mystery. It’s an investigative adventure from start to finish, one you’ll not want to miss on the big screen – and specifically there too, it’s a real experience.
There was a time when the BenQ brand could be seen on laptops and mobile phones, but nowadays you’d have to turn your eyes to projectors, LCD monitors and cameras (in select markets) in order to spot it. If you’re in China, you might have even come across the gigantic BenQ Medical Center in Nanjing. That’s right, a hospital; and later this year BenQ will be opening another one in Suzhou, which is where the company’s Chinese operation is based. Interesting times, right? But as to whether BenQ has any intention to re-enter the two mobile markets in the near future, the answer is a firm “no.”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
