Hasta La Gadget!

Sound ID describes its new 510 Bluetooth headset thus: “The world’s first Bluetooth headset with its own iPhone App.” That about sums up an incredibly neat and inexplicably new idea.

Earpiece sits stuck to the side of your face making you look as dorky as any other BT-headset, and you can answer calls and change volume using the button and touch-strip on the device. But there is also a companion iPhone application which adds more features.

The A2DP headset talks to the EarPrint app and lets you monitor battery level, call people back and activate a Find-Me mode to help you track down which sofa cushion it is lost under. You can also fine tune the sound while in a call simply by dragging your finger in two dimensions on-screen to tweak the signal processing applied to the three microphones.

This is, clearly, how all Bluetooth devices should work. The app is free and available now (Sound ID smartly got the App Store approval process out of the way first) and the headset will be ready to buy in early June, for $130.

Sound ID 510 [Sound ID via Oh Gizmo!]

EarPrint [Sound ID]

In another reversal of plans, Acer has just announced its first e-reader device. The LumiRead will participate in the clear.fi initiative for keeping you constantly in the Acer loop, while also offering WiFi and 3G connectivity options. It looks very much like the tablet we saw teased earlier this morning, coming with a similar integrated keyboard and a smaller 6-inch E Ink display. Announcing a distribution agreement with Barnes and Noble and its one million-book library, China’s Founder, and Germany’s Libri.de, which carries four millions titles, Acer will try to ensure it has a strong selection upon release. It’s also throwing in an ISBN scanner, which will be turning paperbacks into instruments of their own destruction by allowing you to scan a book in for later purchase online. Supported formats are described only as “various,” and there’s 2GB of storage onboard (expandable via MicroSD) to keep things stashed. Expect this new e-reader to show up in Q3 of 2010. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Acer’s 6-inch LumiRead to offer Barnes and Noble ebooks, ISBN scanner

Acer’s 6-inch LumiRead to offer Barnes and Noble ebooks, ISBN scanner originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 07:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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if you feel like going through the process of typing in your PIN every time you unlock your iPhone is worth it thanks to the unconquerable security it implies, you might want to read this report from Bernd Marienfeldt about the chosen one’s security model. Yes, a PIN will keep casual users from picking up your phone and making a call with it, or firing off an e-mail to your co-workers saying that you’re quitting and becoming an exotic dancer, but it won’t keep someone from accessing all your data. Bernd and fellow security guru Jim Herbeck have discovered that plugging even a fully up-to-date, non-jailbroken iPhone 3GS into a computer running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx allows nearly full read access to the phone’s storage — even when it’s locked. The belief is that they’re just a buffer overflow away from full write access as well, which would surely open the door to making calls. Bernd believes the iPhone’s lack of data encryption for content is a real problem, and also cites the inability to digitally sign e-mails as reasons why the iPhone is still not ready for prime time in the enterprise.

[Thanks, Amit]

iPhone vulnerability leaves your data wide open, even when using a PIN originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 06:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Barnes & Noble has released its e-reader software for the iPad, adding yet another way to buy and read e-books. It’s as slick as we’ve come to expect, but suffers from several minor flaws and one fatal problem: Unlike iBooks, where you can buy easily and seamlessly from with the application, the B&N reader boots you out to a website, just like Amazon’s Kindle App.

The app is available only in the US App Store, but as it is free you can create a US iTunes account and grab it anyway. That way you can try out sample books and also download free e-books (credit required, although not for samples), of which there are surprisingly many (mostly romance and Star Wars novels). Once you have completed the transaction in your browser, you step back to the app and hit refresh. The books are quickly downloaded to the iPad.

I briefly tried out the reading interface, and it is adequate. There is a good range of fonts, you can highlight and make notes on text, although you can’t search your notes, and you can define words in the built-in dictionary as well as Google and Wikipedia (you’ll be asked if you want to launch the search in Safari first). The page turns are slick, and thankfully they leave out the page-turn animations that are so distracting in iBooks.

The problem is when you flip to landscape format to read. Instead of splitting the text across two pages to take advantage of the big screen, the app just goes wide. There appears to be no way to fix this, so upright reading is recommended. BN eReader for iPad (it’s full, ugly name) is a competent reader, and it’s free. If you already own a Nook, I’d recommend it. Otherwise, there doesn’t seem much point.

BN eReader for iPad [Barnes and Noble. Thanks, Brittany!]

See Also:

• Barnes & Noble Nook
• Bookstores Aim at Amazon With E-Readers of Their Own

In case you missed it, you really should go back and check out Google’s Vic Gundotra roasting of Apple during the Google I/O day 2 keynote last week. Hearing a VP from a major company in the consumer electronics industry so ruthlessly lampoon Apple was refreshing to say the least. TechCrunch sat down with the man post I/O and asked Vic about Google’s relationship with Apple, particularly after the flurry of jabs Google made in the direction of Cupertino. Vic responded as follows:

“It wasn’t necessarily jabs at Apple, we have a deep respect for the innovation they brought. And places where Android has gone further we’re very excited to show those off, we’re very proud of Android. And I think in the end consumers really benefit from healthy intense competition that leads all companies to elevate their game. And it was done in a spirit of good fun.”

When pressed on the jabs and particularly calling Apple “closed” and Google “open,” Vic responded:

“We do like to draw sharp distinctions between our various approaches. But let’s be clear we’re two competitors competing for the hearts and minds of developers and we’re trying to have some fun while doing that.”

We’ll see how much fun Google thinks this is when Steve Jobs unleashes his RDF onto the world on June 7th. Until then, watch the TC interview after the break — the good stuff kicks in at about 5:35. Oh, and we’ve also tossed in Vic’s notorious “draconian future” dig for reference.

Continue reading Google: jabs at Apple ‘in a spirit of good fun’ in fight for developers (video)

Google: jabs at Apple ‘in a spirit of good fun’ in fight for developers (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 05:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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