Hasta La Gadget!

Much of this stuff was shown off publicly for the first time at CES last week, but we thought it might be interesting to get everything that wireless charging company Powermat has planned for 2011 into one convenient place — and that’s exactly what this here slide deck has done for us. The first products in the pipeline for this year include a charging case for the Nokia N8, targeted for early Q2, along with a two-device portable charging mat that includes a built-in battery (7,800mAh!) that promises up to four full smartphone charges while staying completely off the grid; look for those to run $40 and $130, respectively. Later in the quarter, you’ll get a white two-unit mat (all of Powermat’s gear is black right now, so it’s a nice change of pace), several colored iPhone 4 cases, a BlackBerry Torch case, and an $80 so-called Power! Case for the iPhone 4 that integrates an external 1,800mAh battery for extra juice on the go.

Moving on to the third quarter of the year, you’ll see a dual-power one-device mat that can be powered either from the wall or a USB port for $40, a car mount that inductively charges your Powermat-enabled device, and an iPod touch case. Finally, the 1X Rechargeable Mat comes late in Q3, packing some undetermined (or at least unlisted) amount of juice into a mat that looks roughly similar to the existing one-device mat that’s already on the market; like Powermat’s other battery-powered mats, this one lets you juice devices when you’re not near an outlet, and it’ll be available for $70. Hit up the gallery for the full deck!

Powermat’s 2011 product roadmap: colorful iPhone cases, extended batteries, and more originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A game currently in development by Mattel will let you play Angry Birds in real life.

The iPhone and iPad game has been near or at the top of the Apple App Store’s “most popular” list for months, and has been downloaded more than 50 million times. It’s been praised for its realistic physics engine, which lets you fling virtual birds at wooden and glass fortresses containing little green pigs. And it’s ridiculously addictive.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that Rovio, the makers of the game, is partnering with Mattel to make a game that lets you do all this in real life. It’ll be available in May, 2011 for $15.

Game play is simple: You pick a card and build the structure shown on it. Then your opponent uses a little catapult to fling little plastic birds at the structure, scoring points for knocking it down.

What could be easier? I like the way this game takes a classic kids’ activity — knocking down your sister’s tower of blocks — and turns it into a constructive group game. I only wish the blocks, birds and catapult were a little bit bigger. As it is, the plastic pieces are too small and lightweight. In my house, they’ll probably get batted under the couch by the cat or swallowed by the dog in no time.

Until then, though, this game promises to be just as fun as, and less socially isolating than, the iPhone version.

Chocolate-maker Lotte has teamed up with izakaya chain Warawara to offer four unique menu items this month. The unusual, potentially stomach-churning dishes include chocolate and carbonara sauce dips, priced between 300 and 400 JPY each ($3.60-4.80).

What sounds like saccharine sacrilege to some might just be every girls’ dream. The key sugary ingredient behind the “chocolate food” (choco meshi, チョコめし) is of course Lotte’s trademark product, the Ghana Milk chocolate bar. It follows hot on the heels of other hype-generating Lotte collaboration stunts with ramen shops, instant noodles and hamburgers.

According to WalkerPlus a Lotte survey of 312 females from middle school age to their forties found that 13.8% were aware of “chocolate food”. Not a huge percentage but it does indicate plenty of potential for new Valentine’s Day products!

This article was written on January 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Back in 1996 when my parents took the plunge and signed-up for  the Internet for the first time, they had three different options for plans. Either they could choose something like 15 or 30 hours per month, or they could pay quite a bit more to get the unlimited hours plan. I was in 7th grade at the time and between my brother and I, we convinced them that we definitely needed the unlimited option – especially with how slow our Internet actually was with our 14.4 kilobits per second modem! Who wants limited hours of Internet anyhow? Several years after we signed-up, it seemed as though every ISP moved to only offering unlimited plans and it’s remained that way up until today. That could be about to change though with Time Warner Cable announcing that they’re going to begin experimenting with a new pricing structure. To sum it up, the more bandwidth you use, the more you pay.

Can you even imagine going from unlimited data downloads to a limited package? I certainly can’t.  While it’s understandable that they feel the people who are downloading large amounts of high definition video content should pay more than someone who only goes online to check email, limited plans just aren’t appealing to anyone.  Being limited to 15 or 30 hours wasn’t appealing back in the mid-90′s, and being limited to a certain amount of bandwidth isn’t appealing now!

Time Warner is the second-largest cable provider in the United States and they will start trying this new system out in Beaumont Texas for new customers sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year. There’s been no word on the download limits each tier would offer, or the pricing of them. For tech savvy individuals, selecting a plan wouldn’t be difficult at all. But, can you imagine your mom or dad signing up for cable Internet and having to decide which tier would work best for them? It would almost be as bad as someone walking into Best Buy with no knowledge of Windows Vista and trying to determine which version they should get. And if the Time Warner sales reps are anything like Best Buy sales reps, people would be signing up for the most expensive plan possible even if they use the Internet to check mail – much like how uninformed individuals can easily walk out of the store with Windows Vista Ultimate.

How would you feel if your ISP ended up following in the footsteps of Time Warner? Would you end up switching to a new provider if yours did something like this? If Time Warner is successful, do you think other ISP’s will follow?

Source: Associated Press

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We’re kind of getting used to Intel setting records with its earnings this year, and it capped off its 2010 with another killer quarter. With $11.5 billion in revenue, and a total of $43.6 billion for the year (up 24 percent from last year), Intel is naturally riding high. There’s danger lurking on the horizon, however, with Microsoft announcing at CES that the next version of Windows will also run on ARM chips, potentially ending a decades-long x86 dominance in the desktop OS space. Naturally, the topic came up in the earnings call, and here’s Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s level-headed statement on the topic:

The plus for Intel is that as they unify their operating systems we now have the ability for the first time, one, to have a designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don’t have today; and, secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors, running Windows 8 or the next generation of Windows, into phones, because it’s the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us.

On the downside, there’s the potential, given that Office runs on these products, for some creep-up coming into the PC space. I am skeptical of that for two reasons: one, that space has a different set of power and performance requirements where Intel is exceptionally good; and secondly, users of those machines expect legacy support for software and peripherals that has to all be enabled from scratch for those devices.

After careful analysis of Paul’s voice, we couldn’t detect any hints of panic or fear in it, and we buy about 50+ percent of what he’s putting down — a lot better than we expected, to be honest. It’s very interesting that he sees the new version of Windows being a “designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets,” and the idea of Windows Phone running on regular Windows is also news to us — though it certainly makes plenty of sense in the long run (and perhaps Ballmer has been hinting at it). Still, Intel has just as much of a disadvantage making a phone processor as ARM guys have a disadvantage at making high-powered PC processors, and when it comes to legacy support, they’ll at least be on pretty equal footing when it comes to a “designed-from-scratch” tablet OS. No matter what, Intel certainly has a great roadmap and a ton of cash right now, so we look forward to a fair CPU fight on all sides of the form factor coin.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini addresses Microsoft’s ARM move in the wake of record earnings announcement originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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