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Posts Tagged ‘Lcd Screen’

Pixel Qi screens to be used by major manufacturer in 2010

Though we’ve seen prototype devices before, we got another look at it today. The high resolution display was hacked into a Lenovo IdeaPad S10. With the backlight on the screen color looked crisp though horizontal viewing angles while watching a video clip on the screen were poor in some lightling. Similarly, when we turned the backlight off, which switches the display to just a black and white mode, the viewing angles on a movie weren’t great. Regardless, we continue to be impressed with the refresh rates of the display. Hit the break for a quick video.

Continue reading Pixel Qi screens to be used by major manufacturer in 2010

Pixel Qi screens to be used by major manufacturer in 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spring Design Announces Android-Based Dual-Screen eReader

Spring Design, a relatively unknown hardware design company, just announced that it will enter the eBook market with a dual-screen eReader based on the Android operating system. This device, the ‘Alex,’ will combine a 6-inch eInk display with a 3.5-inch color LCD touchscreen. According to Spring Design’s press release, the company will use an ‘enhanced’ version of the Android OS that has been optimized to facilitate the integration between the two screens. Spring Design plans to release this device later this year.

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Hardware

The dual-screen concept is definitely interesting and somewhat reminiscent of the rumored Barnes & Noble-branded eReader that is scheduled to be announced tomorrow. For now, Spring Design’s press release remains quiet about any content partnerships. Even though the company says that the device will be able to connect to 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM networks, Spring Design doesn’t appear to be ready to announce any partnerships there either.

Multimedia Books

Maybe the most interesting aspect of the device is that the company plans to give developers and publishers the ability to enhance the text that appears in the eInk screen with multimedia content on the LCD screen. This could open up a lot of new avenues for publishers, but at the same time, we have to wonder if a lot of publishers will be willing to develop new content for this device. Creating an eBook version of a manuscript is easy, but adding additional content to this text could quickly become a costly undertaking.

Color us Skeptical

Given how vague the details are, we remain skeptical about this device until we get more details. For now, all we know is that it will run Android, feature two screens, that it will have an SD card slot, and that users will be able to cache web content on the device and then display it on the eInk screen.

We also can’t help but look at the device and think that it would be rather unwieldy to use. It is definitely exciting to see that somebody is using Android to develop an eReader, but this device seems to forego usability for novelty. While we are all looking forward to color eInk displays, this device looks like an odd chimera that is meant to bridge the gap between these two generations. In the long run, this concept probably doesn’t have much of a future.

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Samsung’s WEP870 Bluetooth headset comes with earbuds, bundles of joy

Nothing too exhilarating here, but if you’re looking for something new to sit atop the peak on your ear, Samsung’s got a new trio it’d love for you to consider. The most interesting of the three is undoubtedly the WEP870, which marries a noise-canceling Bluetooth mono headset (with BT music streaming) to a set of earbuds. As with the less thrilling WEP850 and WEP470, this one also features multi-connection technology in order to pair with up to two BT devices at once. The 870 steps things up with an LCD screen to display battery level, call status and BT connection status, while the other two handle calls and little else. All three are available for purchase right now for $89.99 (WEP870), $69.99 (WEP850) and $39.99 (WEP470).

[Via HotHardware]

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

Samsung’s WEP870 Bluetooth headset comes with earbuds, bundles of joy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Expresso Fitness boosted by $6M

Expresso Fitness, maker of cardio gym equipment with interactive, virtual reality screens, has brought in $6 million in a fourth round of funding from Sierra Ventures, Physic Ventures, and Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, reports PE Hub. The Sunnyvale, Calif. company says it will use the new financing to add new features to its current products and to beef up its sales operations.

Expresso currently sells two types of stationary bikes — upright (which also comes in child-size) and recumbent. Both include an LCD screen programmed with different “tours” and routes designed to make the user feel like they are really on the road. These programs are matched with the difficulty and resistance of the actual exercise routine. For example, you will feel more resistance if you choose a course with a lot of hills. The bikes also include games where exercisers can earn points and compete against theor own personal bests — encouraging a better workout every time.

Expresso previously raised $34 million from the investors listed, as well as $7 million in working capital from Silicon Valley Bank. It also just named David Grenewetzki as president and chief executive officer.

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Automate Your Home Using ioBridge and Twitter

Earlier this week we brought you the story of the house that twitters. In this post we explore another experimental system that uses Twitter to automate tasks. Matt Morey, by day an engineer for Texas Instruments in Florida, has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter and ioBridge. We all know about Twitter, the now massively popular 140 character messaging service. ioBridge will be new to many. It’s a web platform for remote control and monitoring, which bills itself (no doubt with tongue in cheek) as "one step closer to Skynet."

Those with sensitive natures about the Singularity are advised to look away now. For the rest of you, let’s see what Matt has built using these two services.

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Using Twitter and ioBridge, Morey has built a house monitoring system which allows him to control lights, LCDs, temperature, and more.

Many of the Twitter automation apps we’ve seen up till now send data from objects to a Twitter account – for example this Twitter account for a toaster, which sends a tweet every time the toaster is used.

However Morey’s app does the opposite: he controls objects by updating his Twitter account. For example he can send a message to an LCD screen, turn on lights, and take a temperature or light reading. He also has a Twitter account at @MattsOffice that updates with the temperature and light readings. So this is truly a two-way system.

Here’s a video showing this in action:

But wait, there’s more. Morey has also developed an extension that allows you to see the (admittedly unexciting) view from his office by sending him a tweet. This automatically takes a photo from a digital camera and posts it on TwitPic.

For all of these processes, ioBridge acts as a gateway between the home objects and Twitter.

More About ioBridge

ioBridge is a company based in Gainesville, Florida. It was born because the founders saw "a demand for interfacing real world devices with the web." Their first beta release was in November 2008 and since then the company has been busy building out its product line and watching what developers like Matt Morey do with them.

In an email to ReadWriteWeb, ioBridge’s Hans Scharler explained that "we make a DIY (do it yourself) gateway for sensors,
controls, home automation, etc. that requires no programming." He claimed that users of all skills can "get started quickly and start making things." Primarily what ioBridge enables is sending data to – or controlling objects from – social networks, email, text messaging. Engadget has a list of other recent projects that use ioBridge, all of them showcasing the beginnings of automation via the Web.

Skynet? Probably not. But a fun way to experiment with automating your home or office using the Internet, yes!

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Pixel Qi’s 3Qi LCD screen sized up with Kindle, CTO sheds light on your questions
Turns out Pixel Qi’s CTO Mary Lou Jepsen reads Engadget, or at least the posts relevant to her company and her invention, the 3Qi screen. In addition to a side-by-side comparison of the display against the Kindle and a few other devices, in an interview with techvideoblog, she can be seen going through our most recent post and answering some of our readers’ questions, including clearing up what seems to be a pretty big misconception that the screen uses e-ink for being visible in direct sunlight — “it’s standard LCD, just clever design,” she explains. In one scene, she demonstrates that even in those very bright situations when the screen looks to go monochrome for visibility, you can still see a hint of color, with the full “Pleasantville” experience entering the more she moves the hardware into the shade. As for reports of the tech adding a $200 premium, she dismisses this as a misquote and infers that it was more of an example price for a laptop that’d be using the technology. There’s a lot of fascinating tidbits here, including some talk on the nature of the display and laptop industries. As it stands, mass production begins this Fall, and even though you’re seeing that Acer logo on the demo unit, Jepsen says it’s just a prototype built into a laptop they bought at Radio Shack and that no manufacturing partners have been confirmed. Make sure the closest star isn’t beaming down at your screen and head on after the break for the both videos.

Read – Mary Lou Jepsen answers user comments
Read – Pixel Qi vs Kindle vs Toshiba R600 vs regular LCD tablet

Continue reading Pixel Qi’s 3Qi LCD screen sized up with Kindle, CTO sheds light on your questions

Filed under: Displays, Laptops

Pixel Qi’s 3Qi LCD screen sized up with Kindle, CTO sheds light on your questions originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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