Hasta La Gadget!

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

The last Switched On covered some of the major Switchie awards for the year, but there are many other products to recognize:

The “Category’s Meow” Award for Best New Category Creation goes to Supermechanical’s TWINE, a small blue box that can relay information about its environment via WiFi to a website. Its fellow Kickstarter project Ninja Blocks followed suit with a more proactive two-way link to pick up an Honorable Mention.

The “Mulligans Do” Award for Best Product Revamp goes to the Apple iPod family. After a bit of staidness in the venerable iPod nano, Apple came back with larger screens and slender profiles on both the iPod nano and iPod touch. Honorable mentions go to the Kindle family of e- readers, particularly the Kindle Paperwhite, and the Samsung Galaxy S line of smartphones from Samsung, which took a huge leap forward with the Galaxy S III.

Continue reading Switched On: The 2012 Switchies, Part 2

Filed under: Misc

Comments

New Year’s Eve is fast approaching, and workers in New York City are hard at work installing 32,256 LED lights on the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball. As we close the book on 2012, Inhabitat has been reflecting on all the top clean energy and green technology stories from the past year. From news that Germany met half the country’s energy needs with solar power to an Egyptian teenager who built a new quantum space propulsion system, 2012 was a big year for clean tech. To ring in the New Year we also rounded up the top green transportation and wearable technology posts, and we’re inviting all our reader to vote on the stories they liked best!

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: biological concrete, flexible solar cells and the top wearable tech of 2012

Filed under: Misc, Transportation

Comments

By Billy Steele, Sarah Silbert and Christopher Trout
Illustration By ILoveDust

While planet Earth has yet to meet its demise, the end of 2012 is nigh. It was a year of lengthy legal battles and shifting power dynamics in the tech industry. It brought with it great advancements and great failures — and, for some, the promise of the end of days. We’ve combed our archives to bring you just a few of the stories that made the biggest impact on our reporting this year. Herewith, an abridged look back at the year that was.

Continue reading 2012 Year in tech: A timeline

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Cameras, Displays, Misc, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Household, Laptops, Tablets, Transportation, Wearables, Wireless, Networking, Science, Internet, Software, HD, Mobile, Alt

Comments

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most extravagant flashy lifestyle, the deluxe villa, the fly palace of Samsung Semiconductor Inc. It only exists as a pile of architects’ drawings right now, and probably looks nothing like the Minecraft wonderment shown above, but when it’s finished the 10-story San Jose structure will boast the following:

• A new sales and R&D center, built in the stead of some existing Samsung offices, with floor space totaling 1.1 million square feet.
• A layout that seeks to “encourage interaction among staff” and “foster connections with the community,” while ultimately improving Sammy’s “soft capabilities“
• A parking garage and an “amenity pavilion” (whatever that is, we just know we can’t afford one)

So, that’s pretty much it in terms of detail. But to put all this into perspective, we’re talking about an HQ that will be slightly bigger than Apple’s recent 3,600-worker expansion in Austin, Texas — or around a third the size of an infinite loop.

[Image credit: MinecraftModsDL.com]

Continue reading Samsung expands Silicon Valley crib with 1.1 million square foot R&D center

Filed under: Misc, HD, Mobile, Samsung

Comments

Via: SammyHub

Looking to save some coin on your tech purchases? Of course you are! In this round-up, we’ll run down a list of the freshest frugal buys, hand-picked with the help of the folks at Slickdeals. You’ll want to act fast, though, as many of these offerings won’t stick around long.

If your holiday gadget stash could use another item or two, perhaps today’s list of discounted links can lend a hand. A 42-inch LG 3D HDTV and Onkyo home theater system may be the most eye-catching, but a Dell desktop receives a nice price cut as well. Head on past the break to view the whole list, but don’t hold out too long because these offers are sure to get snatched up in no time.

Continue reading Slickdeals best in tech for December 26th: 42-inch LG HDTV and Onkyo home theater system

Filed under: Desktops, Cameras, Misc, Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video

Comments

Source: Slickdeals