Hasta La Gadget!

Ford and Microsoft’s little voice control in-car connectivity project seems to be doing pretty well for itself, judging by the latest milestone it has passed. Sync has just been announced to have crossed the three million mark when counting the cars it’s installed in, with recent data suggesting takeup for the $395 optional extra is growing. Nearly 80 percent of purchases of current 2011 Ford models include Sync, while over 80 percent of those already using it say they’d recommend the service to others. The latter number has improved by a robust 5 percentage points over last year, so clearly something‘s being done right here, but we’re more interested in finding out what alternatives the other car and electronics makers will come up with during this year’s CES. Rest assured, we’ll explore them all.

Continue reading Ford installs Sync in more than 3 million cars, takes a moment to congratulate self

Ford installs Sync in more than 3 million cars, takes a moment to congratulate self originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Breffo chose CES to announce a big nasty friend for its existing Spiderpodium grip for handheld gadgets. Spiderpodium Tablet features eight flexible “secured and assured hold” notched legs designed to hold small- and medium-sized tablets including the iPad which we assume fits into the latter category. Otherwise, it folds down compact for toting about in a jacket pocket or bag when not in use. It’ll be on sale starting January 12th for an undisclosed price. Don’t worry though, we’ll grab a hands-on when the show opens and get back to you with the details.

Continue reading Spiderpodium Tablet stand will haunt your desktop on January 12th

Spiderpodium Tablet stand will haunt your desktop on January 12th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After buying up Gennum and its VXP video processing technology back in ’08, Sigma Designs has finally managed to shoehorn its “professional grade” scaling (previously sen in high priced boxes from Kaleidescape and Mark Levinson) into a chip destined for consumer set-top boxes. The SMP8910 system-on-chip claims to have enough power for all manner of over the top application or middleware, while the VXP processing cleans up video well enough for it to claim Netflix streams of higher quality than on competing hardware and reduced ghosting on 3D content. We’ll need to actually see the chip at work in a Blu-ray player, IPTV box or similar device to judge its capabilities for ourselves but if it was good enough to make some people consider a $4,000 DVD player and is available for more reasonably priced applications, then we’re all ears.

Continue reading Sigma finally brings ‘professional grade’ VXP video scaling to consumer boxes

Sigma finally brings ‘professional grade’ VXP video scaling to consumer boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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First announced back in August, the Finis Swimsense performance monitor is now available. This wrist device is worn while swimming, and will automatically detect the type of stroke you’re doing, then record the number of laps swum, your total distance, and the number of calories burned. It will also compute your lap time, pace, and stroke count. It’s the first performance monitor that can differentiate between the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle.

Besides showing your information on the Swimsense monitor, it also works with the company’s free analysis and training log software. The program can store an unlimited history so you can track your progress, and lets you create short term and long term goals. The monitor lists for $199. 

Iomega announces that its StorCenter NAS server now comes with the Iomega Personal Cloud service.

Originally posted at CES 2011