Hasta La Gadget!

It’s the future and we’re still waiting for our personal jetpacks, but it looks like robot helpers in every home are closer than ever, with thecorpra’s Qbo getting us ever closer. Okay, so without arms he’s unlikely to be much of a help around the house, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t make a useful addition to your abode. He’s peppered with sensors of various types, has stereo high-def webcam eyes, microphone ears, and even an LED mouth. Inside his belly rests a Mini-ITX motherboard festooned with WiFi, Bluetooth, an Intel Atom processor and NVIDIA Ion graphics, all running some flavor of Linux. Yes, that means he could stream YouTube videos in HD… if only he had the appropriate outputs. There’s no mention of price or availability at this point but something tells us he won’t be free as in beer. Full picture with specs after the break.

Continue reading Qbo, the open source robot, gets detailed, looks cute

Qbo, the open source robot, gets detailed, looks cute originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 09:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s plan to open-source the VP8 video codec it acquired when it purchased a company called On2 hasn’t exactly been a secret, and the company’s finally made it official today as part of a new format called WebM. The WebM container is based on Matroska, with VP8 video and Ogg Vorbis audio streams packed inside — Google says the format is efficient enough to support playback on lower-power devices like netbooks, tablets, and handhelds, while the encoding profiles are simple enough to limit complexity when you’re trying to create WebM files. WebM is open-sourced and licensed royalty-free under a BSD-style license, so all those H.264 patent licensing concerns shouldn’t be an issue — and as you’d expect, Mozilla is supporting WebM right off the bat, with support in Firefox nightly builds as of today. Chromium nightlies will also support WebM as of today, with Chrome early access builds getting support on May 24 — and Opera is listed as “coming soon.”

Google’s also going to be supporting the format as an option for YouTube playback, so that should drive adoption in a big way — if you’re running these latest Firefox or Chromium nightlies you can actually try it out now. The big question, of course, is whether Apple and Microsoft will roll WebM support into Safari and IE and onto their mobile platforms. We’ll see — Google definitely has the ability to push a format into the mainstream.

Update: Industry support announced at I/O — including Adobe, who’ll be rolling VP8 support into Flash Player. Take note of the hardware partners, though: AMD, ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and TI, among others. Missing in action? Intel.

Update 2: The always-reliable Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet says she’s heard Microsoft will be supporting WebM in IE9. That’s a big deal if it’s true, but we’ll have to wait for confirmation — IE9 isn’t due out for a year, so a lot can change in the meantime. Fingers crossed.

Update 3: Microsoft’s made an official statement on its blog — while the company is “all in” with HTML5, IE9 will only come with H.264 installed be default due to technical and IP concerns. HTML5 / VP8 playback will be supported, but users will have to download and install the codec separately, which doesn’t bode well for widespread adoption. Here’s the money quote:

In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

[Thanks, Sean]

Continue reading Google launches open WebM web video format based on VP8 (update: hardware partners and Microsoft statement)

Google launches open WebM web video format based on VP8 (update: hardware partners and Microsoft statement) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s some old adage referring to smoke and fire meant to explain this phenomenon, but frankly, we’re too focused on the promise of the future to go and look it up. Merely weeks after the Steam for Mac beta proved that Linux support may be in the works, along comes this: two glorious screenshots proving as much. ‘Course, nothing much about this situation has changed, but having pictorial evidence that a Steam client exists in some stage for Linux is a boon for hopefuls. A Phoronix reader managed to snag a capture of the client working its magic early on, and while it’s pretty obvious that it’s not ready for primetime, we’re just stoked to see that there’s legitimate reason to believe such an app is on the way. Hang tight, Penguin Nation — your Steam should be just about the bend.

Screenshots emerge of Steam Linux client, BeOS wonders if it’s next originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 14:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Dashboard iPad app rejected by Apple, made open source instead

Dashboard iPad app rejected by Apple, made open source instead originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For years now, home theater and / or entertainment rigs have been built so that your sofa, recliner or aged bar stool was right in the sweet spot when it came to audio distribution. In short, you built your system around your seating arrangement. With the introduction of Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal, folks aren’t staying put in the same place as often, and that — friends — has created a problem in search of a solution. The fine gurus over at TU Dresden believe that they have the answer, and even if it fails miserably (highly doubtful, mind you), who could really harsh on a product called the SweetSpotter? The software is designed to work in conjunction with your webcam (or console camera, in theory), and as the sensor tracks your movement in real time, the code “adaptively adjusts the sweet spot of your stereo play back system to your current listening position.” In short, it results in “correct stereo phantom source localization independent of your listening position,” and frankly, it just might change your life. The code itself can be downloaded for free down in the source link (it’s open source, so pass it along while you’re at it), and if you end up creating a plug-in to use this in your favorite gaming scenario, be sure to drop us a line about it.

SweetSpotter keeps your music coming at the right angle, regardless of flailing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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