Hasta La Gadget!

If you had any doubts about the most important date in your Windows Phone 7 calendar, you can now dismiss them. Microsoft has just gotten in touch to ask us very kindly to “save the date” October 11 for a 2PM London press conference (9AM ET for Americans) that will last all the way until 5.30PM. Unless Steve Ballmer’s planning on reading the Iliad all that time, that sounds like there’ll be hands-on opportunities with WP7 devices to us. Of course, there’s nary a mention of any phones in the brief invite, but given the multiple sources nailing that exact date as Microsoft’s European launch, we’d be shocked to see anything else. Either way, we’re bringing our trusty liveblogging equipment and will keep you informed whatever happens.

Microsoft hosting a press conference on October 11, we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s yet another fine preview of the inevitable robot apocalypse — car-assembling arms in the city center overlooking us feeble humans. For now, though, these machines are merely part of an Kram/Weisshaar art installation dubbed Outrace. Throughout the week-long London Design Festival, you can go to Outrace.org to submit a short text message that you wish to be displayed in Trafalgar Square, and with a bit of luck, the monitoring staff will pick up your greeting. What happens next is that the eight LED-equipped Audi robot arms will start scribing your message in the air, which is then captured by the 36 long-exposure cameras surrounding the stage (even during the day, courtesy of welding glass filter), and it’ll end up on the LED board as pictured. Stuck outside London? Fret not, as you can see the beasts in action via the website’s live video stream, or you can watch bullet-time videos of each text submission on Outrace’s YouTube channel — you can see our message in both clips after the break. Enjoy!

Continue reading Audi robot arms take over London, write messages with LEDs day and night (video)

Audi robot arms take over London, write messages with LEDs day and night (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So picture this scenario: Nokia has its global conference and developer event — the aptly-named Nokia World — scheduled and set in stone for months. HTC swoops in just weeks ahead of time and schedules a conflicting press event in the same city (which we’re covering in just a few moments). You might imagine there’s a little bit of bad blood there, yeah? Well, Nokia’s taken it to the next level here, sending a phalanx of young folks with giant red balloons reading “I know where I’m going with Nokia’s Ovi Maps” to stand directly outside the entrance to HTC’s event. We know where we’re going, too, Nokia… and it’s HTC. Sorry! We’ll be back to Nokia World soon, we promise.

Update: Oh, and Nokia handed out “HTC press conference survival kits,” too. Pitiful, really. Peek it after the break.

Update 2: We spoke with HTC representative who told us that the company had originally planned to hold its launch on the 14th before Nokia had announced its dates for Nokia World — and when it found out about the dates, it switched to the 15th to make room for Nokia’s announcements. Seems fair to us.

[Thanks, Jonas]

Continue reading Nokia crashes HTC’s London event with red balloons, hate

Nokia crashes HTC’s London event with red balloons, hate originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 06:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Usually we’d advise you not to read too much into this — we’d point out that this was a themed ad served up before the showing of Lawrence of Arabia at London’s Secret Cinema event — but what the hell: Microsoft says the revolution‘s coming. It’s on now!

Continue reading Windows Phone 7 ad promises ‘the revolution is coming’ (video)

Windows Phone 7 ad promises ‘the revolution is coming’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time to get our guessing caps on as HTC has announced it’ll be hosting a little shindig in London in the middle of next month. No advance information is available beyond the smoky teaser image above, leaving the door wide open for speculation. Given the event’s proximity to Windows Phone 7’s launch and the recent spate of leaks, this could easily be the date and place that HTC makes its wares official. Or, on a more tenuous tangent, if you put the smoke and “dreamt up” notes together, you could perhaps surmise that this is going to be the launch for the HTC Vision, which has most recently been referred to as the G1 Blaze. All we know for sure is that we’ll be there when the fog of war is lifted.

P.S. – We’ve enhanced the image to reveal the hint of a handset hidden inside the smoke, you can see it after the break. It looks an awful lot like the back of the Desire HD, but HTC is well known for repeating design themes across its phone portfolio, so let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet.

Continue reading HTC schedules September 15 event, leaves us guessing as to what it’s launching

HTC schedules September 15 event, leaves us guessing as to what it’s launching originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Aug 2010 06:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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