Hasta La Gadget!

The folks at HP have decided to take the remains of what once was their smartphone-making sector (originally Palm) and re-form it into a group called GRAM. This wholly-owned subsidiary of HP has been confirmed to exist by sources speaking with AllThingsD where they’ve also got word that the webOS Nation-revealed internal letter tagged with the following was and is real as well: “Potent. Light. Nimble. At the core of all things big and small.” This company is taking the place of HP’s webOS Global Business Unit as well.

This update will bring the Palm group – GRAM – to an era where creating the hardware for the operating system is not a goal. Instead, in addition to focusing on Open webOS as an open-sourced software initiative, they’re aiming to be only partially reliant on HP for funding. If HP should decide they do not want to fund the project at some point, the folks responsible from GRAM are hoping to be able to get outside funding to make themselves a continually viable group.

Have a peek at this supposedly fully straight-up copied and pasted letter taken from the employees of the former HP group and send out this month as a Call to Action.

“Hi everyone,

Thank you for all of your enthusiasm at yesterday’s new brand announcement: GRAM. We hope you will fall in love with the brand just as lots of us have already.

Please note that our Mission, Values and Plan of Action are the same. We are continuing to march forward on our timelines as usual—nothing new there.

We have much work to do, and, again, I solicit your help.

Yes, this is a new brand—it is just the beginning, and there is so much more to do. And yet unveiling the new brand is also a Call to Action:

Try it on. We don’t expect you to love it overnight. We are no longer a consumer hardware brand, we are a different company with focus on software, User Experience, Cloud, engineering and partnering. This change in identity will take some getting used to and that’s normal.

Stealth mode. We are an incubation company, and we are trusting you to keep this company name and product under the radar to give it time to take root and grow. You can wear the logo, help build the momentum of the new identity, talk to your families and friends about it. If someone from the outside asks, you can say, “GRAM is a new company. We are in stealth mode on our product offering.”

Tap your network. Help us hire the best and the brightest, refer your friends and help us in our shared purpose as we continue our rise to the top. You can use the name to help us to recruit.

Be the culture. Spread our Values: People Matter. Integrity and Trust. Deliberate Innovation. Act small, deliver big.

For those of you who could not attend yesterday’s unveiling – we really missed you. Please be on the lookout for the gift bags with our new cool branded items, which we be mailing out to you this and next week. All of you should get one, if not – let me know.

Best

Martin”

This company is, again, no longer a hardware initiative, but will be focusing on software on the whole. They’re also moving forward with cloud connectivity as well as engineering and user experience, whatever they end up making that mean for you. Partnering is one of their focuses as well, so we expect that they’ll be attempting to hook up with hardware giants to make webOS a usable operating system again in the future.

Stay tuned as webOS continues to exist and HP continues to attempt to stay in the mobile universe!

HP’s shattered Palm forms “GRAM” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week you’ll find that your Sonos player is able to hook up with none other than Songza, a system which not only allows you to make fabulous playlists, but to see playlists made by professional musicians as well. Sonos is already a system with many musical sources working with it for a fabulously harmonious system of speakers and mobile connections galore – now with Songza, you’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the sound in a whole new way.

This system is available for users in both Canada and the United States for starters, and hooking up with it is perfectly simple. All you’ve got do to is head to Songza online to sign up, then add it to your Sonos UI. Inside Sonos you only need to navigate to More Music on your Controller and poof! There Songza will be. This system is 100% free and has no audio advertisements whatsoever.

This release has several big-name music artists joining in on the party including Counting Crows, Tori Amos, Slash, and Montgomery Gentry. Each of these artists have their own playlists that you can access instantly. Sonza also allows you to make your own playlists and have them ready to go based on different times during the day as well – it’s a rather versatile system.

Dive in to our Sonos portal to see everything from hardware and software updates to reviews of products galore. You’ll also want to head to the timeline below to catch up on the newest updates to the Sonos line, and stick around as the connections continue!

Sonos updates with Songza for pro-made playlists is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Unless you’re a hardcore computer geek, you may not have any idea what an SSD controller actually is. Theses processors are used for connecting and communicating with today’s modern solid-state drives. One of the biggest companies that makes controllers for solid-state storage devices is SandForce and the company has announced a new family of controllers called the SF-2200/2100 Client Flash Storage Processors.

SandForce says that by using one of the new processors inside an Ultrabook, the machine could run for an extra hour compared to existing controllers. The key feature is that these controllers consume significantly less power than older versions. At the same time, they also enable faster system boots and faster wake times (when connected to an SSD, of course.)

SandForce designed the new controllers specifically with the Ultrabook market in mind using a low Z-height that allows it to fit comfortably inside the thin laptops. Other features include support for fast SATA 6 Gb/s host connectivity, support for almost all MLC flash products, and the ability to address 24 GB to 512 GB of storage.

This week the folks in charge of social media surrounding the Google Project Glass hardware on order right this second have created a set of Hangouts for the betterment of the project – but it didn’t turn out all that great this afternoon. The first set of Google Glass Explorers hangouts ended in mass confusion and hopeful users ending up finding out little, if anything, about Google Glass that they didn’t already know. Google Glass product manager Steve Lee and community manager Sarah Price hoped to hear feedback and ideas throughout the day.

To hear feedback from users of the device which isn’t actually on the market yet, Lee and Price noted that they’d be “hopping into as many hangouts as possible.” Participants in the event were encouraged to start their own hangouts and get to chatting about Google Glass as soon and as much as possible. The result, without much if any direction, was a collection of video chats with users saying things like “what are we supposed to be doing here?”

This is the first event of many, we expect, from the Explorers project we saw launched last week. In-depth talks and informative releases will be appearing soon with what we must expect will be more direction than we’ve seen this afternoon. People invited to the Explorers club were either Google I/O participants or people who took the opportunity to purchase the early release of Google Glass that will be sent out at the start of 2013.

At the moment we’ve only to wait for more information on the project as Google distributes it. When the Google Glass units are distributed early next year, developers as well as hardcore Google lovers will be able to send out information on their own, and the final consumer-ready version will be prepped before the end of 2013 – or so tips have tipped.

Google Glass Explorers hangouts create chaos is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This afternoon no less than Google’s Sergey Brin send out an update on Project Glass in the form of a special invite-only program in which Google+ will be a place for a limited set of future users of the hardware will be able to get special updates. The first of these updates includes Brin speaking about how he used Project Glass and a brand new app with the hardware to take photos of a trip he was on ever 10 seconds automatically. The one shot he shared was a fabulous in-car photo that might never have existed had he not been using the AR glasses in real life.

Glass is a special bit of technology made by Google that take the form of a pair of glasses with basically some extra-thick rims for all the fabulous technology you could want. Using a brand new user interface shown on a tiny piece of glass that sits up above your right eye, you’re able to control your device with a series of gestures and taps. The side of the device is touch-sensitive, while your head will do the rest.

Glass Explorers will be getting exclusive looks at updates through the future similar to the piece you’re seeing above and below here – so no worries, folks, you’ve got SlashGear on your side! That said, at the moment it appears that developers, press, and other attendees of Google I/O 2012 have received the invite thus far, but we’re seeing more and more pop up in our tip bin by the minute.

Stay tuned and hit the timeline below to follow up on all the most recent news bits surrounding Project Glass in all its greatness.

Google Glass Explorers brings VIP flavor to the AR tech is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.