Tech News and Reviews
Archive for April, 2010
World’s largest curved plasma display flows into Japan’s Kansai airport
Apr 30th
Sure, we’ve seen 125-inch and a 145-inch curved plasma displays, but there’s a new size champ in town: the international departure area at Japan’s Kansai Airport was just graced with this 200-inch waterfall of a curved plasma. That’s right around 13 feet by 10 feet, which is relatively insane — no word on whether Jerry Jones is going to show up and play Gears of War on it anytime soon.
Viliv’s S10 Blade starts shipping out, gets its first customer unboxing
Apr 30th
Aw, Suki Suki now! Nearly a fortnight after heard that Viliv’s S10 Blade had been delayed by the factory, in flies this. Tipster Anthony seems to be on Lady Luck’s good side, as his unit not only shipped, but fell into his lap today. He ordered up the 1.6GHz version with a 64GB SSD and integrated 3G, and just to prove that he wasn’t yanking our chain, he offered up a gallery’s worth of unboxing shots. We can’t say for sure that the backlog has cleared, but it’s pretty evident that the earliest of pre-orderers are seeing their units trickle out. With that said, we’d encourage you to refresh that inbox once more and make sure a package isn’t headed your way — and when it does, let us know how you like it in comments below.
Free Shipping Apple iPad Maclove Shine Protective Case
Apr 30th
Product page: http://www.ownta.com/apple-ipad-maclove-shine-protective-case.html
8 different colors, all Free Shipping to Worldwide.
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Bookeen’s upgraded, colorful Cybook Opus to debut on May 7
Apr 30th
We were promised a color-loving version of the diminutive Cybook Opus and here’s the delivery of said pledge. Coming in seven new shades to match its May 7 release date, the newly revised Cybook Opus boasts instant-on functionality, a new Boo Reader software that helps to optimize battery life, and a category-best 12 font sizes. It’s still a monochrome E Ink display — 800 x 600 pixels — and memory hasn’t budged up from the 1GB on its predecessor, but at least the opening price has dipped down to a £149 ($199 in USA) RRP. When you consider 150 books come preloaded on the device, it’s almost like Bookeen is giving the hardware away for free. It’s not, but that’s as good a rationalization as any other. Full PR after the break.
Sony’s Dash goes on sale, officially this time
Apr 30th
Yeah, we spotted the Dash at Best Buy a few days ago, accidentally eating up shelf space, but we’ve finally hit that April 29th launch date and Sony has unleashed the non-tablet touchscreen device into the wild. The $199 unit, which is somewhat of a branded Chumby, sports a 7-inch screen, best-alarm-clock-you-ever-owned good looks, and access to streaming media from CBS, Netflix, Pandora, and more. If you can bottle your enthusiasm for just a bit longer we’ll have our own impressions of the device posted soon enough, but nobody’s stopping you from snapping this up from Sony’s website, your local Sony Style store, or whatever other retailer you might have in mind. PR is after the break.
MSI Android, Windows 7 tablets launching in June, dualscreen delayed until Q4
Apr 30th
It looks like ASUS won’t be the only Taiwanese manufacturer whipping out new tablets at Computex in early June, and MSI will be joining the party with its Android and Windows 7 touchscreen devices. According to the company, the tablets will come in 8.9- and 10-inch varieties, and will ship sometime in the third quarter. We can’t promise you big M’s Tegra 2 and Atom-powered slates will be all that different from what we’ve been seeing from the others out there, but we are told the pricing will be “extremely aggressive.” That’s intriguing, but unfortunately, that awesome dualscreen tablet we saw at CES is farther behind. According to MSI’s Andy Tung, the hardware implementation is the reason for the delay as the Atom-based tablet is not providing adequate endurance. “The two screens are a major drain on the battery, and even with a higher density battery and the Menlow CPU we are only getting three hours,” he said. It looks like we will be waiting until the fourth quarter to get some two screen action, though we guess we could always pick up an Android and Win 7 slate and tape ‘em together.
According to the company, the tablets will come in 8.9- and 10-inch varieties, and will ship sometime in the third quarter. We can’t promise you big M’s Tegra 2 and Atom-powered slates will be all that different from what we’ve been seeing from the others out there, but we are told the pricing will be “extremely aggressive.” That’s intriguing, but unfortunately, that awesome dualscreen tablet we saw at CES is farther behind. According to MSI’s Andy Tung, the hardware implementation is the reason for the delay as the Atom-based tablet is not providing adequate endurance. “The two screens are a major drain on the battery, and even with a higher density battery and the Menlow CPU we are only getting three hours,” he said. It looks like we will be waiting until the fourth quarter to get some two screen action, though we guess we could always pick up an Android and Win 7 slate and tape ‘em together.
SmartQ R7 e-reader boasts 3G, touchscreen LCD, magazine service and IPTV (video)
Apr 30th
81diggsdigg Late to the touchscreen MID party, Chinese manufacturer SmartQ was determined not to miss another opportunity. That’s why it spent the month of April touting its new R7 e-reader as — you guessed it — the iPad killer. With the same ol’ 600MHz ARM11 and 256MB of RAM inside as its ho-hum MIDs, that claim’s quite a stretch, but our cohorts at Engadget Chinese actually found the Ubuntu-powered 7-inch SVGA touchscreen device moderately capable in a recent hands-on. Like fellow PMP / e-Reader the Onda VX560, the device supports 1080p in most every video format under the sun, reads e-books (PDF, EPUB and CHM), and has a built-in 3G modem for on-the-go capability. Ubuntu standbys Midori and Pidgin handle web browsing and IM, respectively, and it can even stream live video and purchase Chinese magazines through SmartQ’s services. Sluggish as it might be, for $1,680 RMB (about $250) we’d say that’s a pretty respectable featureset. Video after the break, specs and hands-on pics at our source links.
Newest Window G89 Touch Magic MP5 Player with Widge and TV-out
Apr 30th
Product page: http://www.ownta.com/window-g89-touch-magic-mp5-player-with-widge-and-tv-out-functions-4gb.html
Window G89 Touch Magic MP5 PMP Player Features:
- 4.3 inch touch screen, 480×272 pixels
- Adopts RK2728 chipset
- Built in Widge OCX, freely custom your desktop
- Slide touch control, as good as Nokia 5800XM phone
- Virtual keyboad, easy to search or words input
- Dictionary, TTS reading
- Support MKV H.264 files，fully compatible with 720P(1280*720) files
- Support SMI、SRT、SSA subtilts
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Apr 30th
We’ve been seeing mobile browsers steadily raising their game lately, so it was inevitable that Skyfire would look to shock and awe us with its first release for the Android platform. Version 2.0 introduces a brand new SkyBar — which ironically sits at the bottom of the screen — providing users with a trifecta of new features. Firstly, the Video link serves as a workaround for those pesky “your phone ain’t got no Flash” missives by doing server-side conversions of Flash video into universally comprehensible formats like HTML5. If implemented well, this should be a major coup for the company, particularly in light of a potential iPhone release as well. There’s also a streamlined sharing feature for social networks, and an Explore function that suggests internet content on the basis of what’s currently on display. We’ll be testing out the usefulness of these shortly — for now, hit the source link to get your own Skyfire going.
Update: Check out our hands-on preview of the new browser right here. Hint: it’s pretty awesome.
Canon AE-1 Program SLR gets a digital retrofit
Apr 30th
A classic SLR film camera gutted and given a digital upgrade — blasphemy? Maybe, but there’s no denying that this mod by Diego Monge is plenty impressive. He started out with a Canon AE-1 Program SLR, and apparently simply stuffed the guts of a compact digital camera of some sort inside, resulting in what he calls the AE-1 Program Digital — a 9-megapixel camera complete with image stabilization, a functional flash, and 4GB of memory (non-removable, it seems). Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any details on the build process, let alone a how-to, but you can at least get a glimpse of it in action in the video after the break.
