Hasta La Gadget!

The consumer electronics business, once the playground of large companies, has seen scrappy entrepreneurs charge in. But while the bar to becoming a hardware entrepreneur is lower than ever, it’s still not a gimme.

Indeed, there have been some big blowups along the way. The CrunchPad project, a stab at creating a $200 touchscreen tablet, ended abruptly this week, before the product could make its debut. Led by the opinionated Web 2.0 publisher Michael Arrington, CrunchPad was mired in delays and partner wrangling. Ultimately, after a year and a half of development efforts, Arrington declared that the idea was stillborn, blaming the company that helped him design the device, Fusion Garage. Despite that, Fusion Garage plans to go ahead with the launch next week, setting the stage for a potentially nasty legal battle.

Other projects have faced smaller but still significant difficulties. Fitbit, a $100 fitness tracker, created by first-time hardware entrepreneurs Eric Friedman and James Park, is shipping now, but its launch was delayed by months.

That’s not to say that hardware entrepreneurs are all doomed. Indeed, thanks to cheap and readily available overseas manufacturing, the bar to entering the hardware business is lower than ever. And there have been some standout successes: First-time hardware entrepreneurs have created such products as the Flip, a popular and inexpensive video recorder; the LiveScribe Pulse pen, a digital note-taking pen; the Chumby, a squeezable internet-connected display; and even new styles of notebook PCs.

So what does it really take to create a gadget? A smart product design, a realistic expectation of time and costs, and the ability to put together the right team, say entrepreneurs. Wired.com interviewed several hardware entrepreneurs to find out what works and what doesn’t.

It’s got to be more than just atoms

About three years ago, John Chuang, a former CEO of a staffing company Aquent, decided he wanted to create a new kind of PC. The device, called litl Webbook, would be a compact notebook that could be used for browsing the internet, displaying digital photos and watching TV shows. A nifty hardware trick using a pivoted hinge would allow the device to morph from the traditional notebook into a picture frame.

As Chuang drew up the plans for the machine, he became increasingly convinced he would have to think like an Apple rather than a Dell.

“Any hardware company who thinks they are just doing hardware is going to realize pretty soon that there is a software component that will become very important in their ability to differentiate,” says Chuang.

It’s the secret to the consumer electronics business in the post-iPhone world: Software and services matter as much as hardware.

“Hardware and software are inseparable,” agrees Steve Tomlin, CEO and founder of Chumby. “The wrong model is in a lot of people’s brains because of what happened with PCs,” where different companies provided hardware and software.

To deliver a high-quality consumer experience, a gadget designer has to plan the whole package: hardware, software and interface.

Having a software and services component also allows the company to be flexible, says Tomlin. Earlier this year, Chumby said it would start licensing its software to be embedded into other devices such as Blu-ray players and digital photo frames. The move, if successful, would let Chumby go beyond early adopters to a larger, more general audience.

Accept the fact that knockoffs will be easy

Hardware products are created by contract manufacturers in Asia. These are a relatively small group of companies that are willing to do business with anyone who has an idea, original or not.

The notion that you can create a mass-market consumer electronics product that can remain exclusively yours is a fallacy, say entrepreneurs. Accepting the hardware risk also makes it easier to focus on what the true value of the product is.

“If you are selling just a hardware product, the potential to be knocked off is very high,” says Jim Margraff, CEO of LiveScribe. “There’s always the risk of being copied and marginalized and in any competitive world, a standalone device means high price pressure.”

Instead, he says, raise the stakes by building a platform that can support a larger ecosystem.

Take the iPhone, for instance. If it was just about the device’s slim profile, responsive touchscreen and 3.5-inch display, creating an iPhone clone would be easy — indeed, look at dozens of cheap, unusable Chinese iPhone knockoffs. But instead, Apple’s elegant user interface and third-party app support have helped keep the iPhone ahead of its peers.

“Hardware is fast to [create] and is the easiest to copy. You can get a lot of competition very quickly,” says Chuang. “But software takes a lot of time. You can’t just replicate a great UI.”

Another option is to go open source from the beginning, says Chumby’s Tomlin. Community involvement can help refine the product and offer ideas on features you want to focus on.

“Anything we create, we are happy to open source,” says Tomlin. “Anyone can reverse engineer it anyway.”

Focus, focus, focus

Being an entrepreneur isn’t a part-time job. For gadget inventors, it can be especially grueling as they rack up the miles visiting contract manufacturers in Asia. And that’s important. Though most Asian manufacturers are used to working with international clients, the process still requires constant and close supervision.

“You want to make sure you have enough money and time,” says Chuang. “And invest in full prototypes often. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t want to do that and they end up with buggy products that take longer to fix.”

There are also administrative tasks such as legal contracts that require close attention. “Doing the blocking and tackling on the legal side consumes a lot of time,” says Tomlin.

“There has to be trust among partners, but remember, great walls make for trusted neighbors,” he says. “Good contracts can do the same.”

It will always take longer than you think

“When you work with big companies, you are on their schedule,” says Tomlin. “You are driven by their agendas.”

That can mean weeks of delay that entrepreneurs have little control over.

LiveScribe’s Pulse Pen product is no debutante. The product was already a hit in Target stores and has been available online through Amazon since 2008. Yet getting a wider retail distribution this year took longer than expected, says Margraff. Cautious retailers, skittish about the economy, pushed back on new product rollouts.

“Everything is later than expected,” says Margraff. “We were hoping to be in stores in time for the back-to-school seasons but we will now be there for the holidays.”

And that’s despite the “enormous interest” in the product, says Margraff. Layoffs in stores, changes in management, and fear about stocking and inventory levels pushed back product introductions.

LiveScribe now has inked deals with Best Buy, Staples and Apple to display its product in stores.

It will always cost more than you think

Gadget prototypes are always too good to be true. They promise an amazing set of features, almost always for the low, low price of $99.99. But when it’s time to ship the product, that price tag has either ballooned to $300 or some of the most exciting features have been quietly dropped.

“I have made that mistake,” says Margraff. “Most new entrepreneurs that haven’t gone through the the process are highly likely to fall on the sword.”

That’s why modeling the costs accurately is important, he says. “People make the mistake of just looking at the bill of materials without scrap, labor, overhead and profit, or [forget to] add the cost of marketing,” he says.

Creating a product out of a standard reference design is easy. Differentiation is what costs money, says Chuang.

“It is hard to deviate from the norm,” he says. “The supply chains and ODMs (original design manufacturers) are all used to building what exists and that’s where everything is cost effective.”

Even seemingly small things can add up. Take the pivoting hinge in the litl Webbook. “If you say you want to use a normal hinge but just want it to rotate a little more, it changes everything,” says Chuang.

Most gadgets also will bump up against heightened consumer expectations. Raised on a diet of subsidized $200 smartphones, consumers expect to see polished, sophisticated gadgets for a similar price.

“Smartphones, which have multiple hundreds of dollars in committed subscription standing behind them, have set expectations for that kind of value,” says Tomlin. “And that’s not easy for everyone else to deliver.”

Distribution will be difficult

Getting a product into hands of consumers also costs money. “The biggest naivete is how much money gets consumed in the channel,” says Tomlin. “Most of these companies can’t just call up Wal-mart and sell to them. They have to go through a distributor who takes a cut.”

Gadget entrepreneurs warn that it is difficult to get rapid mass-market adoption for a physical device that’s only offered online. If a few hundred early adopters is what you are gunning for, friends and family will always step in. But if you want to sell a product to millions, retail is the way to go, they say.

“The efficiency of the retail distribution channel in the U.S. is unparalleled in the world,” says Margraff.

And to become a part of that channel means throwing some money into the bucket.

“If you have to go through retail distribution, all the middlemen have to be compensated,” says Tomlin. “You have to make sure that cost of product does not balloon.”

A tip: Find a contract manufacturer who is willing to carry the financial burden of inventory, says Tomlin.

Choose your friends wisely

Using an independent design firm to create the product, as Arrington did, is standard operating procedure. Even big firms like Dell often work with independent design shops such as New Deal Design to create new products.

But it’s best to work with a firm that lets you retain the rights to your intellectual property, says Chuang. He created the litl Webbook with help from product-design and consulting firm Moto Development Group.

It’s also important to have some hardware competency on your own staff, say entrepreneurs. “That way you don’t end up wrangling over the IP,” says Tomlin.

Just owning the IP isn’t enough to stay ahead in the game, warns Chuang.

“At the end of the day, it is a very fluid market and the IP is a race against time,” he says. “The IP probably won’t protect you in the market for a long period of time, which is why it is necessary to keep a steady stream of innovations coming.”

See Also:

• Entrepreneurs Find Gold in Gadget Startups
• CrunchPad Tablet Dies Stillborn
• Calling CrunchPad: Is Anybody Home?
• UPDATED — Web 2.0 Mogul Michael Arrington Creates New Web Tablet

Photo: litl Webbook/litl

Prosthetic legs have gotten an image boost recently, thanks to the high-performance carbon-fiber springs worn by the likes of Oscar Pistorius and Aimee Mullins. But prosthetic arms still call to mind stiff, heavy chunks of plastic — barely one step up from Captain Hook’s creepy iron claw.

“Prosthetic legs are in the 21st century,” Dean Kamen recently told the trade publication IEEE Spectrum. “With prosthetic arms, we’re in the Flintstones.” Kamen, who invented the Segway, has been working on creating an advanced artificial limb.

The human hand is difficult to replicate. It’s an instrument that can squeeze a lime as effectively as it can hold a delicate lightbulb. The hand is not just about mechanical movement: Its sense of touch offers important feedback to the brain about the texture and nature of the object.

Conventional prosthetic arms are little more than sophisticated hooks that offer very little freedom of movement. They offer just three degrees of freedom: opening and closing the hand, rotating the hand inwards and outwards, and bending and extending the elbow. And going through those motions requires concentration and a level of skill that can be rather exhausting.

Advanced prosthetic arms promise a lot more. While not a perfect replacement for a human limb, the idea is to offer almost the same level of flexibility, dexterity and feedback that the hand can.

An extraordinary project from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency promises to make it happen. Darpa’s $100 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 Program aims to create a thought-controlled functional arm within this decade. The project is a collaborative effort with more than 30 organizations including labs, universities and private companies.

The Darpa program has created two kinds of prototypes. The first is a sophisticated prosthetic arm that can be controlled naturally, provide sensory feedback and allow for eight degrees of freedom. The second, more ambitious, venture aims to offer natural movement and a range of motion similar to a real arm.

Photo: iLimb from Touch Bionics

The title character of Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story.

New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.

The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.

These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.

Chips are already used inside bodies, most notably the tiny RFID tags injected into pets. But the flexible nature of these “tattooed” circuits means they can move elastically with the body, sitting in places that a rigid circuit board couldn’t.

The first displays are sure to be primitive, but likely very useful for the patients that receive them. You won’t be getting the full-color, hi-res images that come with ink, but functional displays. This doesn’t mean that the commercial and artistic possibilities are being ignored. Philips, the electronics giant, is exploring some rather sexual uses:

It’s certainly rather creepy, but we’re sure that the inevitable next stage of playing adult movie clips on your partner’s back will be appealing to some. We, of course, are considering the geekier side of this tech. GPS, with a map readout on the back of the wrist would certainly be useful, as would chips that cover your eyeballs and can darken down when the sun is shining too bright.

And a full-body display will eventually be used for advertising. Combine this with bioluminescent ink, for example, and you could turn yourself into a small, walking version of Times Square. At least, unlike a real tattoo, you can switch this one off.

In fact, if you start to imagine the possible uses, they seems almost endless. Just like the stories that play across the body of the Illustrated Man.

Tattoo You [H+ Magazine]

Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics [Technology Review]

Photo of real tattoo: Spacemanbobby/Flickr

A recently published patent from Apple depicts pen-based handwriting recognition software that would work with tablet-like devices.

The described invention (screenshot at right) demonstrates a method to make digital handwriting recognition better than technologies used in the past. An “ink manager” would attempt to recognize full phrases before sending them to the handwriting recognition engine, as opposed to sending separate strokes.

“The present invention, in large part, relates to the observation that client applications and handwriting recognition software in pen-based computer systems can make far more accurate ink-related decisions based on entire ink phrases, rather than individual ink strokes,” the patent states.

Though the patent relates the technology to traditional tablet devices, we doubt we would see it applied to Apple’s touchscreen tablet, which is rumored for an early 2010 release. Tipsters in several reports have described the rumored tablet as a 10.7-inch iPhone.

Assuming Apple’s tablet is indeed a larger iPhone, it’s unlikely it will feature a stylus-based interface since the iPhone was designed for finger interaction. It’s odd, actually, for Apple to be thinking about pen-based computing. Steve Jobs in January 2007 denounced the stylus when introducing the iPhone at Macworld Expo:

Oh, a stylus, right? We’re going to use a stylus. No. Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em and put ‘em away, and you lose ‘em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with — born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers.

A stylus-controlled Apple product, tablet or not, would severely undercut Jobs’ statement now, wouldn’t it?

Via UnwiredView

See Also:

• Apple Patents Clamshell Design — A Sign of iPhone Nanos to Come …
• Leaked: Apple Filing Illustrates Multitouch Tablet Technology …
• Apple Patent Details GPS-equipped Nike+ Shoes

Photo of an R2H stylus (not an Apple stylus): joshb/Flickr

Forget dual-core and quad-core processors: A semiconductor company promises to pack 100 cores into a processor that can be used in applications that require hefty computing punch, like video conferencing, wireless base stations and networking. By comparison, Intel’s latest chips are expected to have just eight cores.

“This is a general-purpose chip that can run off-the-shelf programs almost unmodified,” says Anant Agarwal, chief technical officer of Tilera, the company that is making the 100-core chip. “And we can do that while offering at least four times the compute performance of an Intel Nehalem-Ex, while burning a third of the power as a Nehalem.”

The 100-core processor, fabricated using 40-nanometer technology, is expected to be available early next year.

In a bid to beat Moore’s law (which states number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years), chip makers are trying to either increase clock speed or add more cores to a processor. But cranking up the clock speed has its limitations, says Will Strauss, principal analyst with research and consulting firm Forward Concepts.

“You can’t just keep increasing the clock speed so the only way to expand processor power is to increase the number of cores, which is what everyone is trying to do now,” he says. “It’s the direction of the future.”

In fact, Intel’s research labs are already working on a similar idea. Last year, Intel showed a prototype of a 80-core processor. The company has promised to bring that to consumers in about five years.

Tilera, a start-up that was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, started in 2007. It says its product will be available in the next few months, which means the company, if successful, will have gone from zero to shipping a powerful chip in just about three years — a very fast time frame in the semiconductor world. That’s because it has created a chip architecture that removes the challenges present in Intel’s x86 design.

As the number of cores on a chip multiplies, a major challenge is how to connect the chip to memory without choking up the processor. That’s why Agarwal says Tilera has used a mesh network architecture. It eliminates the “on-chip bus interconnect,” a central intersection found in most multi-core CPUs through which information must flow through to get between the cores of a chip. That central interconnect presents bandwidth issues of its own, and also forces engineers to limit the number of cores on a chip to avoid information gridlock.

Instead, Tilera places a communication switch on each processor and arranges them in grid-like fashion on the chip. Because the overall bandwidth is greater than that of a central bus, and because the distance between individual cores is smaller, Tilera says it can cram in as many as 100 cores on a processor without running into bus-bandwidth congestion.

Each core has a full-featured, general-purpose processor that includes L1 and L2 caches, and a distributed L3 cache. The cores are overlaid with the mesh network, which provides extremely low-latency, high-bandwidth communications between the cores, memory and the processor’s input and output.

“If you need huge computing power, say for instance to encode and decode multiple video streams, our processor can do it at much more efficiency than Intel chip or a digital signal processor,” Agarwal says.

And unlike GPU-based computing systems, programmers can recompile and run applications and programs designed for Intel’s x86 architecture on Tilera’s processor.

“Tilera has put forth a novel approach to massively parallel programming,” Strauss says. “The 100-core processor is closer to a generic processor than anything else we have seen before.”

Don’t expect it to run Windows 7 on it though. For that, consumers will have to wait for Intel’s version in a few years.

See Also:

• Overclocked AMD Processor Is Cool At 6.5 GHz
• Intel Launches New Desktop Processor
• Netbooks Set to Get More Video and Audio Oomph
• Why Intel’s Processors Aren’t Big on Cellphones

Photo: Tilera’s wafer for 64-core processor/Tilera