Hasta La Gadget!

Plastic Logic revealed a big shift in strategy last month, pushing its own flexible plastic-based epaper displays for third-party products, and its new video-capable color panels are top of the agenda. SlashGear caught up with Plastic Logic at the company’s Cambridge, UK, R&D center today to see one of the very first demonstrations of the new screen, a flexible panel that can support color video playback at up to 12fps. Read on for the video demo.

Video-capable e-paper has been something of a holy grail for ereader manufacturers, who so far have had to deal with the flickering page-refresh of existing E Ink screens. Plastic Logic’s display isn’t up to the sort of framerates you’d want for true video playback – that demands around 25-30fps – but it’s sufficient for animations and reasonable clips, or indeed Flash content on websites.

Plastic Logic showed us two versions of the screen technology, one a color panel that uses a special filter layer over the top of the e-paper screen itself, and another smaller, monochrome version better suited to a pocket-sized mobile device. Both use the company’s unique plastic transistor technology, meaning they’re virtually indestructible: you can bend and twist them, drop them, or hit them with hammers, and they’ll still keep working. Right now, the color screen shows six smaller video preview panes, something Plastic Logic says is down to its own test driver equipment, rather than a limitation of the panel technology itself.

Although streaming video on an ereader is one obvious possibility – and Plastic Logic confirmed it’s in talks with various ereader manufacturers, though declined to name specific names – another benefit of the faster refresh rate is more natural navigation on a tablet-style device. Flicking between pages using a touchscreen overlay layer, something else Plastic Logic can integrate, would thus allow you to see previews of each page’s content, much as paging through a document on an iPad does today.

We’ll have more from our visit to Plastic Logic very soon.

Plastic Logic color video-capable e-paper hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Less than 24 hours before the biggest Google developer event of the year, Google I/O 2012, over at the Googleplex the newest Android software version has been revealed: Jelly Bean. Just as suspected due to leaks, tips, and the fact that each of the treats thus far have been alphabetically inserted, Jelly Bean will come right after the update that’s live now: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Now we’ve just got to figure out what version number this treat corresponds with, and of course what the actual software updates will be.

We’ll be at Google I/O 2012 all week long bringing you updates on this software as well as everything else Android, Chrome, and Google’s online apps as well. I/O is an event that’s not to be missed by all Google-loving developers as well as seekers of the next big things in the mobile universe. Have a peek at our Jelly Bean timeline below to see everything that relates to what we’ve seen thus far of this ghost of an operating system as well.

The photo above comes from Google Developers on Google+, another fabulous place to check out our updates on this event at SlashGear+. And of course stay up to date through our Google I/O 2012 portal all week as we bring the updates as quick as a bunny from all corners of the software-sphere. Also don’t forget the hardware – we’ve already seen a glimpse of what very well may be the tablet that’ll be revealed this week, Nexus style – stay tuned!

UPDATE: Nothing new has been revealed on the contents of the software, but the statue has apparently been continuing to get updated throughout the day. As far as Google’s Louis Gray can show, this may well be the same Android we know and love, just filled with a few more sweets than before – it’s symbolism!

Android Jelly Bean statue appears at Googleplex [UPDATE] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft is looking to bury its Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Bing and other technologies into your next dashboard, with a job listing outlining the ambitions of the next-gen Connected Car Platform. The advert sketches a telematics system that can pulls together ”speech, gestures, face tracking, augmented reality, vehicle networking, navigation, [and] entertainment” that turns simple cars into “intelligent assistants.”

“For the next generation of the Connected Car Platform, we plan to leverage the full power of the Microsoft ecosystem including Kinect, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Live, Bing, Azure, and Tellme. The combination of rich local sensing, user identification, cloud access, and data mining will transform tomorrow’s cars from passive objects into intelligent assistants for both the driver and their passengers. The new Connected Car will know its riders, and will interact with them naturally via speech, gestures, and face tracking. It will learn their habits, and offer personalized contextual information and driving assists to get them to their destination as quickly and safely as possible. Through a growing catalogue of applications, it will inform and entertain them, and keep them connected with the people and information they care about. The possibilities are endless”

Most interesting is perhaps the degree of inter-device connectivity Microsoft envisages. Current in-car entertainment systems generally limit their interaction with phones and other devices to streaming music, making hands-free calls and occasionally tethering so as to share a 3G/4G data connection. However, Microsoft’s intentions call for “distributed, concurrent, and adaptive software running on a network of devices spanning cars, mobile devices, PCs, and the cloud.”

That could lead to cars that know your favorite routes, your preferred playlists, automatically adapt to changes in schedule, and that can be upgraded with downloadable apps in the same way that a Windows Phone might. Cloud synchronization could ensure your latest music downloads are automatically ready to be listened to on your next journey, or instantly load presets and preferences into a rental car.

Meanwhile the increasingly contentious matter of dashboard distraction – with too many buttons, dials, touchscreens and displays taking driver attention away from the road – could also be addressed using new motion gestures and simple speech commands.

Earlier this year, Microsoft’s Project Detroit demonstrated how a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback could be brought up to speed with 21st-century tech like remote starting from a smartphone, integrated WiFi and cloud analytics, Kinect sensors for all passengers and more. The conversion was intended to encourage developers to consider cars the next great frontier for apps.

Microsoft’s current Connected Car system powers telematics kit in vehicles from Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin, and McLaren, among others, and is the backbone of tech such as Ford SYNC, Fiat Blue&Me and Kia UVO (as in the Kia Soul we reviewed recently). Exactly when we can expect this next-generation of all-singing, all-dancing technology to show up in road-going vehicles remains to be seen.

[via istartedsomething]

Microsoft Connected Car plans include Kinect, WP8 and the cloud is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.