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Posts Tagged ‘Hearts’

E-Book Readers: Will Secondary Features Win Consumers’ Hearts Or Leave Them Cold?

How many e-book readers do you think are out there right now for you to choose from? If you did a little digging, I bet you’d find 50 or so. Maybe 10 really worth checking out. But right now is a bit of a weird period in e-reader history. The Kindle cemented e-readers in the consumer headspace, catapulting them from weirdo alternative technology to mainstream gadget. That’s what the iPad threatens to do with tablets — we’ll see about that. But the Kindle and the iPad are two important data points in the current e-reader wars; the question, upon the answer of which depends the success of many a device, is whether “bonus” features like second screens and weird form factors in e-readers will be enough to differentiate them from the high-profile devices pressing them on both flanks?

See, the vast majority of e-readers were designed as a response to the Kindle, not to tablet computers, which may or may not obsolete e-readers altogether. It’s a bad situation: the whole time you’re improving your competitor’s product, someone else is skipping your entire device class on the grounds that it will be made ridiculous by their awesome gadget. Some of the special features developed to combat the Kindle will stay, and some won’t live to see their own first birthday.

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Oops: TiVo Premiere won’t have Comcast On Demand

This TiVo Premiere screenshot with a large Comcast On Demand logo on it certainly set a few hearts aflutter yesterday when it was released from the company, but our dreams have turned into bitter, bitter ashes: TiVo tells us this screenshot is actually just a mockup and not indicative of any actual partnership. And double-oops: that other interesting screenshot with “Friends Recommend” on the Browse screen is also a mockup, meaning our hopes for some social-media integration have also been dashed, at least for now. Oh well. Let’s hope our forthcoming Premiere review units can somehow turn these frowns upside-down.

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Oops: TiVo Premiere won’t have Comcast On Demand originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quasi robot melts hearts at Toy Fair, Interbots promises toy version soon

You’d have to be heartless to walk by Interbots’ Quasi and not crack a smile. Q, as we like to call him, isn’t an autonomous bot, but instead everything from his facial expressions to his speech are controlled wirelessly via a tablet PC. As you can see in the video after the break, his master can change his eye color and arm / hand movements with just a touch of the stylus. So, why did Quasi, who was born at Carnegie Mellon in 2006, make an appearance at the 2010 Toy Fair? Interbots is planning to bring an affordable child-friendly version of the $80,000 bot to market by the end of the year, and the reps on hand told us that it’ll even have similar puppeteering capabilities. Sounds like a potential nightmare for parents, but there’s something about this guy that makes us sure about his future as much-adored, bona fide family member.

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Quasi robot melts hearts at Toy Fair, Interbots promises toy version soon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola publishes schedule of Android upgrades for its handsets, steers clear of specifics

Remember last week, when Motorola said it was releasing an Android 2.1 update for the Droid, but then totally didn’t? Moto tried to “explain” the situation in forums, but didn’t really, edited its long-erroneous Facebook post retroactively, and ended up breaking a lot of hearts. Well, now Motorola has a new “Software Upgrade News” chart detailing planned upgrades for its Android devices. While this is certainly helpful going forward, the lack of clarification on the Droid update doesn’t exactly solve the confusion that got them into this mess: Motorola is merely saying that the OTA upgrade will roll out “soon.” As previously promised, we’re also going to be getting a Cliq update to 2.1 eventually as well, which is now being pegged for Q2. Sadly, upgrades for non-US handsets are decidedly less expedient — or not even assured — but at least we’ve got something.

[Thanks, Glenn]

Motorola publishes schedule of Android upgrades for its handsets, steers clear of specifics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Garmin-Asus nuvifone M10 gets handled, reviewed in the wilds of Russia

We just heard about Garmin-Asus’ WinMo 6.5.3-packin’ M10 yesterday, and already the handset has been broken out for a photo shoot and hands-on review in Russia. The design itself isn’t anything otherworldly, but we have to say — we’re kind of digging the user interface. Granted, we’ve a soft spot in our hearts for Garmin’s nuvi line of PNDs, so anything remotely familiar gets a big thumbs-up ’round these parts. At any rate, critics noted that the phone was a pleasant mix of WinMo and nuvi, which is something that really sets it apart from other Windows Mobile-based offerings. There’s nary a mention of exactly how awesome this thing would be with Windows Mobile 7, but if you’re in no hurry to ponder the next big thing, give that source link a look.

Garmin-Asus nuvifone M10 gets handled, reviewed in the wilds of Russia originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change Nikon’s D300S?

Nikon’s D300S isn’t exactly tailor made for D300 owners, but for those waiting patiently to jump into the semi-pro DSLR game, it offers up a pretty delightful array of specs. Boasting SD and CF slots, a 720p movie mode and 12.3 megapixels of sharp shooting goodness, this here cam received overwhelmingly positive reviews late last year. Strategically positioned between the full-frame D700 and the lesser-specced D90, we’re sure the D300S found its way into quite a few hearts (and under quite a few trees) between then and now. If you’ve been firing off snaps with one of these for a few months now, we’re curious to know how you’d tweak things if the power were yours. Does the “S” really add enough to the D300 package to warrant the boost in price? How’s the image quality? Is the video mode a-okay for your purposes? Spill your heart out in comments below — we’re here to hold your hand if necessary.

How would you change Nikon’s D300S? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vote for the 2009 Engadget Awards!

The nominations are in, the picks have been sorted, and now it’s time for you, the reader, to help us judge the best in tech from 2009! We’ve put together a long, long list of the top selections below — all we ask is that you cast your vote for the gadgets nearest and dearest to your hearts.

Votes will be tallied until Monday February 20th, 11:59PM EDT. You can vote in this post — the nominees are after the break. After we’ve checked for abuse (just say no!) we’ll publish the results alongside our own Editors’ Choice picks the following week. May the best gadgets win!

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Vote for the 2009 Engadget Awards! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumors and speculation: No Intel in the tablet, no Flash either

Filed under: Hardware, Odds and ends, iTunes

(TUAW Tablet concept, designed by reader Juan Secin)

Scott Moritz over at The Street has new information about the tablet today (though bewarned: Moritz isn’t first in the hearts of Apple crystal-ball gazers): he says that the tablet does not include any Intel chips inside, and that Apple has instead elected to go with another provider for the little pieces of metal and plastic that will power what many expect to be the new revolution in portable computing. He cites Apple’s “design manufacturing partners” as sources, although of course neither Intel nor Apple have anything to say about the subject.

And elsewhere in the tablet rumorscape, John Gruber has a followup to his big tablet speculation post that’s worth a read. He says that yes, of course, the App Store will deliver apps to the platform, that yes, there may be an SDK delay (although don’t forget, we’ve already heard about a possible new SDK going around), that yes, the new tablet may offer up non-app iTunes content from indie providers, and finally that no, the tablet probably won’t have Flash, for the same reasons that the iPhone doesn’t.

Which all sounds legit, though even Gruber admitted in his other post that his theories were based on reasoning more than any secrets he’d heard. We’re getting a pretty good picture of the tablet as we go along here — odds are it’ll get even clearer before we see the thing on stage.

TUAWRumors and speculation: No Intel in the tablet, no Flash either originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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