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Continue reading Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots goes motion-controlled for TI design challenge

Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots goes motion-controlled for TI design challenge originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 07:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, we admit it, as far as Motorola’s concerned hacks like us probably have no business browsing its Motodev pages, but we can’t help but be a little peeved at the freestyle updates the company is making to its Milestone XT720 spec sheet. The processor hasn’t changed — it’s always been a 720MHz-capable TI OMAP3440 — but its speed rating has fluctuated between 550MHz, 720MHz exactly, and now the most enigmatic value yet: “up to” 720MHz. The RAM too has gone on a rollercoaster journey, jumping from 256MB at first, to a tasty 512MB, and now back down to a lean quarter gig. What’s going on over there, too many webmasters spoiling the spec soup?

[Thanks, Marius]

Milestone XT720 spec changes again, this time for the worse originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My, my — what have we here? No, seriously, what is this hodgepodge of (rival) companies, and why have they suddenly decided to high five each other here at Computex? Frankly, we’re still trying to piece it all together, but after sitting through a Linaro launch event in Taipei, we’re beginning to get a better handle on the relationship that Samsung, ARM, IBM, Freescale, ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments and the Linux Foundation have just made official. The outfits mentioned above are coming together to form the UK-based Linaro (a not-for-profit entity), which currently has 25 engineers but will see that figure shoot up to nearly a hundred around the world in the coming days. In short, the new firm — which will have an annual budget in the “tens of millions of dollars” but below “$100 million” — is seeking to “speed the rollout of Linux-based devices,” with one of the key points being this: Linaro will “provide a stable and optimized base for distributions and developers by creating new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of SoCs, every six months.”

Read on for more…

Continue reading ARM, Samsung, IBM, Freescale, TI and more join to form Linaro, speed rollout of Linux-based devices

ARM, Samsung, IBM, Freescale, TI and more join to form Linaro, speed rollout of Linux-based devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If 3D monitors aren’t doing it for you, here are a couple of larger display options — our lucky pals over at Engadget Chinese witnessed the birth of Optoma‘s two new 3D projectors in Taiwan yesterday. Pictured on the left is the HW536 cinema DLP projector (NT$36,900 or about US$1,150), which has HDMI input and projects a 1,280 x 800 image at 2,800 lumens with a 3,000:1 contrast ratio. Next up is the EX762 business DLP projector (NT$79,900 or US$2,490) that also sports HDMI input and a network jack, while delivering a 1,024 x 768 resolution at 4,000 lumens and a 3,000:1 contrast ratio. Just to add a tad more burden to your overdraft, each pair of ZD101 shutter glasses — not bundled with either projectors — will cost you a further NT$4,000 (US$125), in return offering a wireless range of up to eight meters courtesy of Texas Instruments’ non-directional DLP Link technology (so no need to position any external emitters). A couple of close-up photos after the break.

Continue reading Optoma adds HW536 and EX762 DLP projectors to the 3D party

Optoma adds HW536 and EX762 DLP projectors to the 3D party originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What, you thought Home was the only project in the pipeline for these guys? The mobile UI experts at Sweden’s TAT are in the house at MWC this week showing off a couple other nifty developments that are keeping them busy these days: a dual-screen UI concept utilizing TI’s next-gen hardware, and an app that makes good on a concept it had demoed before. First up, they’ve been using a TI Blaze to demonstrate their vision of a phone with two displays, likely in a slider configuration (in fact, they showed a Droid to represent how they think the form factor could work) with a screen where you’d normally expect they physical QWERTY keyboard to be. It’s slick and wicked smooth on the brutally powerful OMAP4 core, but realistically, this is something unusual enough so that we’d need to play with a unit for a good, long while before drawing any usability conclusions. TAT believes we could see devices with this kind of setup by years’ end, but we don’t know what carriers, manufacturer, or time frames would be involved at this point.

Next up, Recognizr is the realization of the Augmented ID concept it showed off last year that lets you tag your face (it sounds weird, but it’s quite literally true) with icons representing services that you use, each of which exposes information about you that you want others to know; then, other users with the system can put you in their viewfinder and see the same icons. It’s not flawless — in fact, TAT readily admits that they probably need better camera tech before it can be commercialized, and they had quite a few issues during our demo time — but it’s a clever concept that’s better watched on video than explained, which is convenient considering that we’ve got videos of both of these goodies in action after the break. Check ’em out, won’t you?

Continue reading Hands-on with TAT’s dual-screen phone concept and augmented reality app

Hands-on with TAT’s dual-screen phone concept and augmented reality app originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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