Hasta La Gadget!

Remember the $200 smartbook reference design that we saw at CES this year? Well, it’s back, it’s holding on to that same price and 7-inch enclosure, but this time it’s also showing off an expanded OS compatibility. Adapting the open source Chromium OS and another Linux variant to the ARM architecture of the prototype device was apparently not much of a hurdle for Freescale, who has an Android option in the works as well and claims to be just optimizing and enhancing the user experience at this point. Presumably one of the enhancements will be the installation of a capacitive touchscreen as the present demonstration requires either a mouse and keyboard or a resistive torture test to operate, but we’ll accept the company’s explanation that this is just a proof of concept and not the final product. Slide past the break to see some HTML5 video running on this bargain bin tablet, and hope that your friendly neighborhood OEM picks these designs up for some retail action.

Continue reading Freescale’s 7-inch tablet runs Android, Chromium OS or Linux, costs $200 (video)

Freescale’s 7-inch tablet runs Android, Chromium OS or Linux, costs $200 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Electric motorcycles are getting more and more common, and while we don’t think they’ll ever quite capture the rush of an internal-combustion engine threatening to fly into bits as it screams toward red-line, they are starting to offer their own… unique charms. This model is a Norwegian prototype, based on a Honda chassis that had its tail chopped and motor stripped, replaced by stacks of Nickel-Metal batteries, then wrapped in some custom bodywork. The bike sports a touchscreen dash powered by Ubuntu that offers both stats about the bike (speed, temperature, etc.) as well as GPS navigation and, presumably, on the go games of Tux Racer. It’s a one-off built by Green School Motorcycles and Akershus University College, and there’s plenty more information about it in a video at the source link below — if you speak Norwegian.

[Thanks, dsbilling]

Electric Green School motorcycle shows its rebel nature by running Linux originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s better than paying £400 ($615) for a laptop from a place that won’t tell you isn’t very forthcoming about what’s inside it? Paying that much for a laptop that then comes with a £9.99 ($15) monthly fee just to use the thing. It’s the Alex from BCC, the Broadband Computer Company (not to be confused by the Alex from Spring Design, or Alex Bushill from the BBC), a somewhat chunky looking laptop loaded with some custom layer over Linux promising an always updated, always ready, and incredibly easy to use experience. It also has a round mousepad that says “Alex” on it. The machine should be secure, shipping with a USB thumb drive that must be plugged in for it to work — something we’re guessing most people will never bother to unplug. There’s online file storage and a UI full of pretty colors, but we’re having a bit of a hard time with that cost. That said, if you’re the perpetually on-call tech support person in your family it might be a small price to pay for some peace and quiet.

Update: TheLostSwede dug through the Alex site and found a spec sheet. We’re talking 1.6GHz worth of Intel T1600 Celeron power, 1GB of memory, a 15.4-inch display driven by integrated graphics, 120GB of storage, and a DVD/RW drive. Hot stuff, readers. Hot stuff.

Continue reading BCC launches Alex, the laptop free of hassles but not monthly surcharges (video)

BCC launches Alex, the laptop free of hassles but not monthly surcharges (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mention “Microsoft” and “open-source” in the same breath and you’re guaranteed to create a suspicion interrupt within the Linux community. Toss in “patent agreement” and out come the irate spokesmen. So imagine the response to the announcement that Microsoft and Amazon have reached a cross-patent agreement that gives Amazon the right to use open-source software in its Kindle in exchange for an undisclosed tithe to Redmond. Microsoft also gains rights to Amazon’s patent portfolio.

The move prompted Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, to claim that Microsoft appears to be trying to, “create uncertainty around Linux.” Mind you, this isn’t just tin-foil worry from the wire colander collective, Microsoft claims that free and open-source software violates some 235 Microsoft patents. A big enough stick to coax a number of companies — like Novell, Linspire, Xandros, Apple, and HP — into striking agreements with Microsoft or risk litigation as was the case with TomTom. Agreements that Canonical’s Mark Shuttelworth called, “Trinkets in exchange for air kisses,” or “patent terrorism” if you prefer Sun Microsystems’ take.

Microsoft and Amazon announce open-source patent agreement, trinkets in exchange for air kisses originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

There is no doubt that the typical icons laying around your desktop could probably be a little more useful than they already are. Some operating systems are trying to dive into that by making the icon a representation of what the file’s contents hold, but I’ve wondered for a long time why so many services have neglected to provide a revolutionary new icon.

Now I’m not exactly an operating system developer, but here are some of the ideas for icons that I have come up with at one point or another:

• An icon that you can flip around and write a note on. This could be particularly useful in trying to find a specific file instead of looking at non-descriptive file names.
• Color-coded icons based upon their filetype. Nothing really extravagant, but a thin colored border around the icon might help you better distinguish what kind of file your about to open.
• Change the size of an icon, and not all of the icons. This would give me the ability to make one icon really large so that it draws my attention more than the others do. When you need to get something done, sometimes it is nice to have a big reminder right in front of your face.
• Pie menu that pops out when you hover over the icon, providing quick links to open the file, open the properties, rename the file, or much more. Face it, pie menus are a lot more efficient than a traditional menu system.
• Stack icons on top of each other. If I had a bunch of related images on my desktop it might be more useful if I could just stack them on top of each other instead of creating a folder to put them in. Then at anytime I could click on the stack and they would pan out like a dealer showing a deck of cards.
• "Live" icons that can be updated much like an icon in the Windows System Tray. That way the same icon that I launch Google Talk with could also display how many unread emails I currently have. Then I wouldn’t really need both a Quick Launch icon and a System Tray icon, since they would serve the same purpose.

Okay, so those are most of the decent ideas that I have thought of at one time or another as ways to make icons more useful. And it looks like KDE 4 (for Linux) will be bringing one of those ideas to life…well, kind of. One thing that I listed was having a pie menu popup when I hovered over an icon, and KDE 4 will present the user with icons in each corner when they click on it. As seen in the mockup above, a music file would have buttons to play the song, add it to a playlist, or show the information for that particular song. Here’s a YouTube movie of this feature’s current state.

It’s not quite a pie menu like I would have preferred, but this is an awesome step in the right direction. Hopefully other operating system developers are trying to brainstorm how they can make icons more useful.

And then there are Panels which hopes to reduce the clutter in the Taskbar. This is done by placing the System Tray and Taskbar icons in expandable Panels that are only shown when the appropriate options are clicked. I’ll admit that this looks cool, but I don’t want to see the KDE interface going to something like this. When I want to switch between programs, I want to do it quickly instead of waiting for a panel to pop out to show my running applications:

Click to Enlarge

I think the KDE team is definitely on the right track, although the Panel thing isn’t my cup of tea. If KDE 4 stays on track it should be available on October 23.

Source: Liquidat [via Digg]

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