For this week’s Photoshop Contest, you conceptualized the technologically appalling fast food industry of the future. And better yet? Frog Design took your ideas somewhat seriously, offering a class of criticism far beyond our pay rate. The winners: More »
Put that glorious 10-inch screen to good use while your iPad’s just sitting around. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20005109-243.html” class=”origPostedBlog”iPad Atlas/a/p
The Federal Trade Commission has responded to a letter released by Congressman Ed Markey, who wrote to the agency over concerns that copiers may be hiding digital copies of scanned documents.
Most high-end digital copiers sold today store the scanned documents on flash memory or hard drives, which can pose a security risk if the drives themselves are either lost or resold.
Last month, CBS News filed an investigative report noting that many digital copiers hide hard drives inside of them, which in fact store the documents users copy on them: medical records, pay stubs, even details of narcotics operations.
Most copiers and even fax machines store images in local memory, then, over time, the buffer becomes overrun. Companies like Xerox also supply utilities that can overwrite the drive’s contents. CBS, however, visited a warehouse where previously owned copiers could be purchased for under $400. And those copiers contained hard drives, which stored the images until the drive itself was removed.
CBS nabbed a major insurance company as well as Buffalo, N.Y. law enforcement agencies with data stored on the drives.
While Apple hasn’t approved the update in the App Store yet, I’m more than happy to inspire some jealousy with a firsthand account and screenshots of the unapproved version. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12519_7-20005260-49.html” class=”origPostedBlog”MP3 Insider/a/p
If there’s any question that Netbooks are where much of the interest in laptops lies these days, consider that we’ve reviewed nine new models since the beginning of March, and Netbooks take up five of the top 10 spots in the list of most-read recent laptop reviews.
The worst of Palm’s fears may be over now that HP has played the knight-in-shining-armor role, but Sprint — the States’ number three carrier — still has a ways to go before it can claim it’s out of the woods, having gone a solid string of fiscal quarters now without posting a profit or a net gain in subscribers. Of course, this is the kind of situation that puts dudes with the word “financial” in their titles on the hot seat, and sure enough, Sprint CFO Robert Brust came out swinging at an investor conference this week. Brust points to narrowing losses and an expanding prepaid presence as reasons he thinks the company can grow revenue by year-end, not to mention an expanding 4G footprint and — on a closely related note — the imminent release of the EVO 4G. Showing a bit of humility, he also said that the company has “learned a lot” since the launch of the Pre, acknowledging that the phone “didn’t work out as well as [they] hoped.” In other words: we wouldn’t expect any more crazy two-phone exclusive deals with Palm lasting the better part of a year any time soon.
Sprint CFO: ‘Pre didn’t work out as well as we hoped’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 May 2010 16:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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On Monday, BlueAnt introduced the S4, which it calls the “first true hands-free, voice-controlled Bluetooth car speakerphone.”
Microsoft Kin Two gets torn apart, reveals Sony image sensor originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 May 2010 15:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This article was written on August 01, 2008 by CyberNet.
There’s no doubt that applications for the iPhone have become a huge hit since they became available in early July. With over 1,300 apps currently available, users have a nice selection of options to choose from. That selection will continue to grow, but could get a nice boost from Stanford students completing a course in “iPhone Application Programming.” Yes, Stanford is now offering a course to their Computer Science students wanting to learn how to make applications for Apple’s iPhone.
Teaching the course is a man named Paul Marcos who happens to be an employee of Apple, which must mean that Apple approves of the course. Why wouldn’t they? The more people out there who are familiar with the knowledge of how to create iPhone applications, the more quality apps they’ll get. A reason Apple could have had a problem with the course is because of the NDA that developers are under when creating iPhone apps. It prevents them from discussing any specifics about the platform. Our guess is that Apple gave their approval or they’ll drop the NDA before classes start. At this point there’s no need to have it.
One commenter over at TUAW made a good point and said:
Get school credit for working on an app, get an A, get app listed in the app store, use proceeds to pay your tuition…win win win win.
Those in the class who create a great app could easily slap a 99 cent price tag on it and make some extra spending cash or money to help pay for tuition. The fact Stanford is offering such a class in a way shows the popularity of the platform. Now we’re wondering how long it will be before other schools start offering the same type of class.
What an idea though, sign-up for the class and make an awesome app, and then walk away with the opportunity to make money!
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Note: We do realize this may be considered ‘old news’ but it was one of those things we had been wanting to write about for the last week but just haven’t had the opportunity.
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Robots have replaced humans on assembly lines, battlefields, space missions and rescue operations. Now how about doing something useful, like sitting through endless meetings for you?
Meet the Anybots QB, a telepresence robot that can represent you in the office by sitting in conference rooms, going to meetings and rolling about through the cubicle farm. The whole time it does so, it displays a live webcam video of your face, while transmitting to you a live video and audio stream of whatever it’s looking at.
“The QB is an extension of you,” Bob Christopher, chief operating officer of Anybots told Wired.com. “It removes the barriers between people and work so people can teleport themselves to the office space.”
Christopher was formerly the chief executive officer of Ugobe, which made the ill-fated Pleo robotic dinosaur toys. Ugobe closed its doors last year, having failed to make a commercial success of its eerily lifelike toys.
QB won’t replace video conferencing, says Christopher, but it’s a way to look over the shoulder of your colleagues and employees without actually getting into the office. The robot can be manipulated by a user at home or any other location using just a web browser, and can transmit its master’s voice and video.
Think of it as a self-propelled Skype-cam on a stick.
A device with Segway-like balancing properties, the QB has two eyes shaped like a bug’s that give it an aesthetic similar to Pixar’s Wall-E. The cameras (and screen) are mounted atop an adjustable pole, putting them at approximately eye level with your coworkers. QB has eight hours of battery life, supports 802.11g Wi-Fi, comes with a 5-megapixel video camera and a top speed of 3.5 miles per hour. A 320 x 240 LCD screen on QB offers videos and photos, and acts as a control panel.
The $15,000 robot will be available in fall, says Anybots.
Finding ways to make telecommuting easier for office workers or helping teams spread across different locations work together has been a major area of research and product development in robotics. Research firm Gartner estimates the video-conferencing market could grow 17.8 percent between 2008 and 2013, rising from $3.8 billion to $8.6 billion.
Anybots isn’t the only company to try mixing telepresence and robots. Companies like iRobot and WowWee tried to capture some part of that business. IRobot announced ConnectR, a Roomba with a video camera, while WowWee’s Rovio is a little three-wheeled webcam bot. The ConnectR was quietly killed during the Consumer Electronics Show last year, while Rovio lives on. Willow Garage, a Palo Alto robotics company, has also created a telepresence robot called Texai, though that’s not on sale yet.
QB offers a similar experience but makes it more polished — and not so close to the ground. The robot weighs about 35 pounds and its neck can go from 3 feet to 5 feet, 9 inches. And it’s easy to use, says Christopher.
Open up a web browser, log in and with just the Up and Down controls on your computer keyboard, you can move the QB around.
The QB has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and will soon support 3G networks. And because the robot is not tied to one user, it can be used by different employees logging in from an external location, says Christopher.
“Put a QB in the office and anyone who’s not there can take the robot and move it over to someone else’ desk,” he says. “After the first few minutes, people forget they are talking to a robot.”
That may be possible, but it is difficult to imagine that most companies will want to purchase many of these robots, no matter what the advantages are. At $15,000 apiece, they don’t come cheap.
Check out the video below to see Anybots’ QB at work:
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