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Posts Tagged ‘Gaggle’

Sir Howard Stringer and friends show off Sony Ericsson’s new handsets

A gaggle of higher-ups from Sony Ericsson stuck around after the conclusion of today’s event to show off the X10 mini, X10 mini pro, and Vivaz pro in person, and we seriously can’t stress this enough: the mini twins are small. Well, either that, or the men holding them were gigantic — but we’re pretty sure it’s the former since we got around to spending some quality time with the mini pro and continued to be blown away by its diminutive stature. Rikko Sakaguchi (pictured left) had two colors of the mini plus a Vivaz pro, while Lennard Hoornik was rockin’ the original X10 plus a mini pro. We’ll be honest: the company’s platform strategy is as meandering and muddled as ever, but with designs like this in the pipeline, they’ll definitely be demanding their fair share of attention over the next few months. See a bunch more shots of the execs handling the phones in the gallery below.

Sir Howard Stringer and friends show off Sony Ericsson’s new handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Evolving robots navigate a maze, help each other, plot descruction of mankind
You’ll say the whole Robot Apocalypse meme is played out. We say it’s your lack of focus that’ll eventually be the downfall of society. Gurus at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne have been working on “evolving robots” for quite some time, but the latest breakthrough is easily the most astounding (and in turn, terrifying) of all. According to new research that was just made public, a gaggle of robots programmed to use Darwinian selection in order to learn, evolve and mutate have now successfully moved sans collisions through a maze and helped each other push tokens around in order to achieve a common goal. Moreover, some of the creatures even displayed early signs of a predatory-prey relationship, which effectively assures mankind that these cute little learners will one day assimilate to rule the world however they please. Keep laughing if you must — it’ll probably make the painful sting of reality a bit easier to take when Doomsday rolls around.

Continue reading Evolving robots navigate a maze, help each other, plot descruction of mankind

Evolving robots navigate a maze, help each other, plot descruction of mankind originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ask Engadget: Best TSA-approved laptop bag?

We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Addison, who now needs a shiny new laptop bag to house that shiny new laptop that arrived for Christmas. The kicker? TSA approval is passionately desired.

“I was lucky enough to receive a new Laptop (ASUS UL80Vt-A1) this Christmahanukwanzaakah. Hurray! The only problem is, my old LL Bean Messenger bag just isn’t going to cut it anymore now that I’ll be carrying around my precious laptop along with school books and a whole gaggle of cables. Perhaps your readers could suggest to me a replacement? I would prefer a messenger / shoulder style bag, but if there is an especially cool backpack out there, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it. TSA compliance would be an added bonus since I have to fly quite a bit nowadays. What do you think, could you and the hive-mind give me a hand?”

Air travel just gets worse and worse these days, so we’re emphasizing that “TSA-approved” bit for Addison’s own good. We know the bulk of ‘em ain’t that pretty, but for the jetsetters out there who have had a chance to weed through and pick the best, we’re hoping they’ll share their secrets down below.

Ask Engadget: Best TSA-approved laptop bag? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NSFW: The Physical Impossibility of The Future in the Mind of Someone Trapped In Chicago

A weary hello from O’Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois – the world’s coldest and most inhospitable airport, right in the frozen heart of the world’s coldest and most inhospitable city. That a community organizer from this city would dream of becoming President is no surprise. Chicago is, after all, the only place in the world capable of making Washington DC look like a step up.

I’m trapped here in standby limbo: my original connecting flight to Nashville cancelled due to snow – the kind of freak weather condition that no one in Chicago could possibly have predicted for December.

Still, at least I’ve been awake since 4am GMT, and at least my flight left London an hour late because every single passenger had to be patted down by American Airlines staff at the gate, having already passed through the usual madness of security. And at least by “every single passenger” I mean there unfolded a preposterous pantomime where posh white dudes like me were given the most cursorily of rub-downs in order to keep the line moving while those poor saps who fit the terrorist profile – which is to say, anyone who looked a bit brown – were deep-tissue massaged half to death a gaggle of goons in latex gloves. And at least all of that nonsense was utterly pointless because, as any self-respecting terrorist apparently knows, they don’t dare go anywhere near your groin.

It would be very easy for me to write a reactionary column this week about how technology should have made travel delays like this a thing of the past. About how we have heated soccer pitches, and yet we’re told that heated runways don’t stack up economically. Or how there’s no point in having terrorist watch-lists if people on them are still able to get on flights with bombs sewn into their underwear. I mean, Jesus, we’re days away from the end of the first decade of The Future – 40 years after we put a man on the moon – and yet there are so many areas where technology still lets us down.

But what good would that do me? I’m already stressed – and they say when you’re in a stressful situation you should focus on the positives, not dwell on the negatives.

The fact is, for every major way in which the technology of the last decade has failed to deliver – hoverboards, teleportation – there are half a dozen smaller advances so mindblowingly significant to our day-to-day lives that we already take them for granted.

For a start, the only thing making this six-hour extended layover in the frozen circle of hell even slightly bearable is the fact that I have my laptop, a power-outlet and decent quality wifi. How the hell did we manage before wifi? It was less than ten years ago that hotspots started to appear – considerably less in the case of airports – and yet already the idea of not being able to access the Internet anytime, anywhere is genuinely impossible to imagine. Like trying to recall how we made social plans before mobile phones, or how we identified prospective sexual partners before Bebo.

Whether it be airport wifi on our laptops or oh-just-connect-you-bastard flakiness on the iPhone, the fact that the Internet has become more ubiquitous than electricity in major cities in the past decade is – without any hyperbole whatsoever- a miracle. Sure, it’s destroyed lunch conversation and pub trivia but, in common with anyone who hit their 20s or 30s in the 2000s, I’d happily swap either of those for the ability to book a flight from the back of a cab, or to consult Wikipedia from the toilet.

And, oh, Wikipedia! Sure it’s unreliable as all hell (citation needed) and anything remotely controversial becomes a battleground of edits and bullshit, but there’s still something incredible about legions of unpaid volunteers, hunched in parental basements around the globe, collaborating to produce an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. Like most hacks, I consult Wikipedia at least half a dozen times a day, safe in the knowledge that I’ll be able to find a fact – accurate or not – to support just about any theory my fevered imagination can dream up. A theory that I can write about in a reputable publication and thus, by Wikipedia standards, launder into truth.

And how about Netflix? Or Hulu. Or Pandora. Or Last.fm. Or Spotify. To our kids it will seem as natural as water, but neither you nor I will forget the first time we clicked on the title of a song or a movie, only for it to instantly begin playing with crystal clarity. As I’ve written before, it’s the same feeling you experience when a magician turns water into wine in front of your eyes. With all of our talk of DRM and musicians and directors and – oh yeah – authors losing their livelihood it’s easy to forget how utterly bloody marvelous it is that all human creativity is just sitting in the air, all queued up and waiting for us to press play.

In fact, just sitting here, staring out of the window at the snow, I can think of a dozen more technological advances of the past decade that it would be impossible to imagine the world without. Google. The iPod. Facebook. Skype. YouTube. Online banking. ATM check processing. Celebrity sex tapes. Snopes. GPS mapping for all on cellphones. The Kindle. Trip Advisor.

As if to prove my point, as I finished writing that list, my iPhone started to vibrate in my pocket. It was a friend in San Francisco who had been following my snowbound breakdown on Twitter and had decided to call to cheer me up. At about the same time, another friend – this one in London – instant messaged me with a very inappropriate joke about bombs on planes which also brightened my evening no end. Ten years ago that simply wouldn’t have happened, nor would I be able to distract myself for another few minutes by sending them both a cameraphone photo of all the snow (above).

Indeed, the technology of the past decade may not have helped me escape from Chicago but it has at least given me a mental escape tunnel to prevent me going completely mad. And for that reason alone, I raise a frozen hand in salute the technology of the‘00s and look forward with excitement with what the ‘10s will bring.

I just hope they start with heated fucking runways. Seriously – how hard can it be?

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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The Engadget Show: Kindle etching and DIY adventures with Adafruit Industries

If you’ll recall, some months ago we held a little competition for readers to submit artwork destined for laser-etching on the backsides of Amazon’s Kindle. After everyone voted on the top five out of the mountain of selections, we took the gaggle of readers down to our friends at Adafruit Industries (headed up by the lovely and delightful Limor Fried and Phil Torrone) for some time under the laser. While we were there getting our etch on with their massive laser, we convinced Limor and Phil to show off some of the other crazy kit they’ve got in the labs — and we’ve captured it all on film… er, video. Take a look at our excursion into the world of dynamic DIY’ing — we think you’ll like what you see. Check it out after the break!

Host: Joshua Topolsky
Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm
Edited by: Michael Slavens
Titles by: Julien Nantiec

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Continue reading The Engadget Show: Kindle etching and DIY adventures with Adafruit Industries

The Engadget Show: Kindle etching and DIY adventures with Adafruit Industries originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s about time: TomTom submits updated nav app to Apple

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, iPhone

Very welcome news for owners of the TomTom iPhone nav app [iTunes link for U.S. version]; the company has announced a free update that includes many of the features that people were craving.

• Advanced lane guidance giving drivers extra clarity when navigating difficult junctions. For the first time this is in both landscape and portrait mode.
• Text-to-speech helping motorists to keep their eyes on the road by enabling street names and places to be read aloud as part of the spoken instructions.
• “Help Me” providing direct access to emergency numbers and directions to the nearest emergency providers.
• Updated map and safety camera database (Europe only)
• Customizable audio warnings when approaching safety cameras or driving over the speed limit, increasing driver safety and saving money.
• iPod player control ensuring drivers can conveniently control their music from within the application.

TomTom submitted the new version to Apple yesterday, and as usual, it’s anybody’s guess when it will emerge. It won’t be fast enough for TomTom owners, who have seen their app fall behind the feature rich Navigon app and other GPS offerings.

The joker in this particular deck is still the free Google Navigation app, which is trying to get onto the iPhone and will have a gaggle of features no one else is offering.

[via Engadget]

TUAWIt’s about time: TomTom submits updated nav app to Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Physicists calculate the end of Moore’s Law, clearly don’t believe in Moore’s Law

If you’re looking for pundits with an end date for Moore’s Law, you don’t have to look far. You also don’t have to look far to find a gaggle of loonies who just knew the world was ending in Y2K, so make of that what you will. The latest duo looking to call the demise of the processor mantra that has held true for two score comes from Boston University, with physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli asserting that a quantum limit would be achieved in around 75 to 80 years. Scott Aaronson, an attention-getter at MIT, expects that very same limit to be hit in just 20 years. Of course, there’s plenty of technobabble to explain the what’s and how’s behind all this, but considering that the brainiacs of the world can’t even agree with Gordon Moore’s own doomsday date, we’re choosing to plug our ears and keep on believin’ for now. Bonus video after the break.

[Via Slashdot]

Continue reading Physicists calculate the end of Moore’s Law, clearly don’t believe in Moore’s Law

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Science

Physicists calculate the end of Moore’s Law, clearly don’t believe in Moore’s Law originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic serves up latest prototype robots, dish washing servant included (video)

Keeping those dreams alive by scrubbing dishes at your least favorite eatery? Best put those aspirations on the front burner, as Panasonic’s got a mighty fine robot swooping in to take your place — and for a whole lot less cash, to boot. At Panny’s robotics laboratory in Osaka, the company recently showcased its latest gaggle of prototype robots designed to help humans take it easy more often. Among the usual suspects were a porter robot designed to help with heavy lifting, while the star of the show was undoubtedly the dish washing bot that wasn’t afraid to get its metallic digits wet and soapy. As expected, an array of integrated sensors kept it from grabbing a wine glass too tightly, and its four fingers enabled it to do most everything a human washer could (sans the kvetching). Have a peek at these guys in action just past the break.

[Via Impress]

Continue reading Panasonic serves up latest prototype robots, dish washing servant included (video)

Filed under: Household, Robots

Panasonic serves up latest prototype robots, dish washing servant included (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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