Hasta La Gadget!

Toshiba have launched a new marketing campaign aimed at promoting their vision of the Smart Cities of the future. The, not hugely catchily titled, M/E/S/S/A/G/E “Symphonic Balance Of Smart Community” uses Facebook and is a pretty fun video that users can personalize.

The lego town in the video represents Toshiba’s smart city with the balls rolling around in it color coded to represent the different green energy alternatives or technologies needed for the community to function. Visitors to the site are instructed to link to their Facebook accounts and can then type in a personalized message into the site. A fun video is then played which features different avatars and characters from your Facebook friends as the balls which roll around the town symbolizing the ways in which energy and technology are used to make it function. The final scene then has the balls roll down to display your personalized message which can be captured and uploaded onto your Facebook wall.

The site also links to “Toshiba’s Technology Vision for Innovation” page which shows off some of the company’s leading technology that they see “contributing to safer and more comfortable lifestyles and a sustainable society”. As with many major industrial companies in Japan this year, Toshiba have ramped up their CSR activities since the energy concerns precipitated by the Fukushima power plant events, focusing particularly on society and new energy saving technology. Companies have seen the new focus on energy as an opportunity to push a message to the public showcasing their sustainable commodities in a way that isn’t just focusing on their reaction to environmental issues but more trying to prove that they are doing their part to help the country in it’s time of need and attain energy security.

It is this strategy, of focusing more on the concrete real issues that the public can actually see and benefit from, whether it be in staving off energy shortages or simply meaning lower prices for petrol, that stands to have far greater chance of success in driving new green technology, not just in Japan I would argue but further afield. Focusing on real tangible activity rather than the tired practices of images of polar bears or arctic ice melting, that the everyday consumer has no true connection with, which will align the consumer more coherently, and ultimately therefore really driving investment into sectors that work toward a real sustainable future.

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Right now there are three general types of laptops. You’ve got your ridiculously thin, not terribly powerful ones. There’s the desktop replacement laptop, where the power brick alone weighs more than the first category, but the system packs enough power that you don’t mind the chiropractor visits. Then, there are the mid-range machines. These laptops focus […]

You’re probably laughing to yourself right now saying, “300GB? That’s not big storage.” But, hear us out. The oh-so memorably titled MK01GRRB and MK01GRRR are not your standard hard drives — these are enterprise-grade disks that spin at 15k RPM and fit in a 2.5-inch bay. Toshiba claims they’re the highest capacity 2.5-inch, 15k drives on the market, and we couldn’t dig up any evidence to the contrary. The 6Gb/s SAS connection makes sure businesses get the most they can out of those platters spinning at break neck speeds and the GRRR models include a self-encrypting feature. The two drives will start shipping in both 147 and 300GB sizes in Q1 of 2012, but pricing has yet to be announced. Check out the PR after the break for a few more details.

Update: Seagate wrote in to let us know that they had a similar drive at the same size, capacity and speed earlier this year. So, take that, Tosh.

Continue reading Toshiba introduces tiny enterprise hard drives with big speed and big storage

Toshiba introduces tiny enterprise hard drives with big speed and big storage originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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News about Toshiba’s ultra-thin AT200 tablet has been patience-testingly slow since we went hands-on at IFA a month ago. We did recently hear that a Japanese variant of the Regza-branded ten-incher — confusingly called the AT700 — is on schedule for release there in December and we’re hoping that the US version will arrive in time for Christmas too. Encouraging, then, to see that it’s passed unscathed through the FCC’s electromagnetic rendition of Wipeout with WiFi and Bluetooth in tow. The submitted paperwork also reveals a little extra detail: the tablet is at least partly manufactured by Quanta, the same OEM guys behind the Kindle Fire and the BlackBerry PlayBook. With the tablet wars looking brutal as ever, it’s nice to know that somebody always wins.

Toshiba AT200 tablet squeezes through 7.7mm gap at the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no question that Japan gets all the cool gadgets — many of which never make it stateside. Well, we have yet another tease for you, in the form of an eight-tuner Toshiba DVR with five terabytes of storage. The DBR-M190 reserves six of those tuners (and four TBs of storage) for its Time Shift recording, which as its name implies, transports you to an alternate dimension — in realtime, mind you — allowing you to watch past HD episodes of those favorite Japanese programs that you otherwise neglected to record. OK, fine, it can’t actually shift physical time, but the home DVR does allow you to record 15 full days of HD content from six channels. Or 30 days from three channels, or 90 days from one — you get the idea. It also offers 3D Blu-ray playback. Huzzah!

There’s some pretty heavy compression in place in order to squeeze all that HD content with the allotted storage, but Toshiba reps insisted that the content looks acceptable. Clever as they are, reps also neglected to have that heavily compressed HD video available for demo at CEATEC, but were happy to let us peek at a show recorded using a much more liberal amount of compression, which nets you just one-fifth of the advertised amount (think three days, not 15). Still, three days of 24 hour content from six channels ain’t too shabby, but that 200,000 yen price tag (about $2,600) is a bit of a deal breaker, no? As is the fact that you can’t plug this puppy into cable networks overseas (Time Shift is only compatible with basic cable channels in Japan). Jump past the break to see it in action, and expect to see it hit Japanese shores sometime in mid-December.

Continue reading Toshiba Regza DBR-M190 stores 15 days of HDTV from six channels, we go hands-on (video)

Toshiba Regza DBR-M190 stores 15 days of HDTV from six channels, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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