Microsoft’s Surface, aka the product you’ll never be able to buy, has been unveiled in all its next-gen glory at CES. What was once a gargantuan box, costing upwards of $10,000 apiece, is now essentially a giant tablet, and only 4 inches thick. Not only that, but unlike the original Surface which only allowed for multiple single points of touch (“multitouch”), the 2nd generation has infrared “pixel sense” detection in every pixel. What does this mean? Well I’m here to tell you! The screen of the device now has the ability to image your entire hand in all its greasy glory, instead of merely your fingerprints. The amazing part of the demo at CES showed that if you place a piece of paper with writing on the screen, the sensor lets you “scan” the contents of that piece of paper. Amazing! Unfortunately, this technology can only be scaled down to 24 inch screens, so its pretty much guaranteed that this Surface technology and UI will stay in its table-style form factor.
Now that the Surface’s technology has been lightened (and thus, more portable), do any new applications or uses for it arise? What would you use it for? Since it will likely continue to be purchased by the usual clientele of hotels and casinos, even though Microsoft announced it will be cheaper than the original Surface, how do you suggest they implement it in their services? Could you see one of these replacing the usual desk in every hotel room? Maybe these could be used as secure gambling tabels in every guests hotel room? What do you think? Sound off in the comments!
Our favorite maker of cheap, get-it-in-your-livingroom-now HDTVs has joined the smartphone AND tablet fray. While the devices they have on hand at CES are supposedly far from production, Vizio wants the world to know they have these devices in the pipeline. In spite of these being early, hand-built, models, Engadget, who were able to get their greasy little paws on a prototype phone and tablet, claim that from what there is so far, they really are “excited about the direction the company is taking.”
Here are specs on the Vizio phone:
4-inch LCD – 854 x 480
1 GHz “plus” CPU
4GB onboard storage
microSD slot
Micro USB port
HDMI port
Out of the box use as a universal remote
VGA front-facing camera (for video chatting)
5 megapixel rear-facing camera, with flash
Android 2.2/2.3
Vizio tablet specs:
8-inch LCD – 1024 x 768
1 GHz “plus” CPU
4 GB of storage (2 GB for the user, 2GB for the OS)
Verizon just let loose a press release (see below) finally confirming that we will, in fact, be treated to some sweet Android-powered 4G LTE goodness this week at CES. We won’t just be getting 1 device, no; Verizon says that we can expect a “suite” of devices, meaning expect devices built by HTC, Motorola,LG and Samsung. Yes, life is quite good.
The tech interwebs already have a pretty good idea what these devices will look like and be called, and in some cases, we know their tech specs as well. We won’t get into the details of these specs just yet, since they have not been confirmed by Verizon or the device-makers just yet. But you can bet that as soon as Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg takes the stage at CES on January 6th and releases the LTE storm upon us, we will get you all the info you need!
Here is the official VZW press release tease:
VERIZON WIRELESS SHOWS WHAT 4G LTE MEANS FOR CONSUMERS AT CES
Wide Range of Ecosystem Partners Demonstrate Products and Solutions that Take Advantage of the 4G LTE Network
LAS VEGAS and BASKING RIDGE, N.J. –Verizon Wireless said today that its first-ever exhibit booth at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will show off the consumer and enterprise capabilities of its new 4G LTE network with the products, services and solutions that take advantage of the blazingly fast speed and low latency of the new wireless network. On Jan. 6, the company will also offer a sneak peek at a suite of Android-based LTE consumer devices at a news conference.
Visitors to the exhibit booth (Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall, #35216) will see firsthand how the nation’s fastest 4G LTE network can fundamentally change how consumers manage their daily lives and how businesses interact with each other and with their customers.
Working with nearly 50 different technology ecosystem partners, the Verizon Wireless booth will highlight more than 40 new solutions that take advantage of the fast speeds and low latency of the new 4G LTE Mobile Broadband network. Demonstrations will range from connected home and cars to gaming and entertainment to consumer devices. The demos will also feature new ways to do mobile collaboration for retail, customer service and other industries; home and energy management; and consumer entertainment, including multiplayer gaming, all of which leverage the 4G network in innovative ways. Verizon Wireless and its partners will also feature remote security and health care options and a car that shows different applications coming from the automotive industry.
Many of the solutions being highlighted are the result of collaborations fostered at Verizon Wireless’ LTE Innovation Center. The LTE Innovation Center, established in 2008 and located in Waltham, Mass., provides an environment for dozens of diverse companies to work collaboratively to develop innovative products and solutions that leverage 4G LTE technology.
Sneak Peek at Consumer Devices
Verizon Wireless’ news conference will provide a sneak peek of a suite of consumer-oriented Android-based devices for its 4G LTE network and will include remarks from senior Verizon Wireless executives and key ecosystem partners. The news conference will be webcast live; visit www.verizonwebcasts.com/ces/2011/news to register.
The Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network, launched in December 2010, is the fastest, most advanced 4G network in the United States, providing speeds up to 10 times faster than Verizon Wireless’ 3G network. Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network currently reaches one-third of all Americans, with plans to expand the network to the company’s entire 3G coverage area over the next three years.
Now that the holidays are over, you’ve emptied your wallets on all the latest gadgets. That means it’s our favorite time of year – CES 2011 – when many companies (except for Apple and Google; their press conferences tend to be mini-CES’s) announce new products, set the tone for the year in tech, and tell you what you should already start saving up for, for next holiday season.
We here at TheGadget411 want to make sure you here about all the best and coolest announcements out of CES, so that you can hit that “preorder” button before everyone else. Expect tons of new tablets, most still playing “catch up” with the first gen iPad, and some even anticipating it’s 2nd gen soon to be born brother. You can also bet on an onslaught of mobile devices (formerly known as “cellphones”), most of which will be powered by Google. Android has been slowly nipping at the heels of the iPhone, and I’ll tell you one thing – this is the year of the Android. There will be plenty of 3D and internet-connected TVs being announced as well, and these will continue to try and find their place in your living room. If they can just lose those ridiculous glasses, and drop the price a good bit…
Sooooooo – make sure you’re all hooked up to our RSS feed! Since we unfortunately cannot attend CES this year due to monetary constraints, we will most definitely be there in spirit. But we won’t let money get in our way; no, not at all. Our own RSS readers will be cranking out news stories coming out of CES at full speed. As soon as we see them, they will go through our Gadget411 mixer, give it our own spin, add a drop of lemon and serve it to you as fresh as we get it!
Happy RSS-ing!
Visit http://www.dialaphone.co.uk to stay ahead of all the latest mobile phone reviews, and make this CES unforgettable.
Quick intro in case you haven’t heard: On April 19th, Gizmodo put up a post fully dissecting Apple’s next iPhone (except for the software – they couldn’t turn the damn thing on (it was remotely killed by Apple)). Here’s the catch: Apple has never announced any next-gen iPhone yet. It was discovered (on March 18th – one whole month before Gizmodo broke the news) in a Redwood City, California bar disguised as a current iPhone 3GS. It seems that some Apple employee (lets just call him Gray Powell) left it behind, probably doing some field testing, and was found by a bar patron (who, according to CNet, has been identified by police (UPDATE: His name is Brian J. Hogan). The phone eventually found its way into the sweaty palms of Gizmodo, which ran them a tasty $5000, though at this time it is not clear who exactly sold them the phone (UPDATE: Yes it is – It was the same guy who found it; see link re: Brian J. Hogan).
Last week, news broke that a criminal investigation was under way, and hours later police served a search warrant on the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen and seized his computers and other electronic equipment. Some are accusing Apple of launching this entire police operation.
(Want a visual aid for this whole fiasco? Check out an ingenious flow chart created by Fast Company below, after the break!)
Has Apple gotten off their game? Or is this the most brilliant marketing scheme ever devised? Here’s why I think the Apple Marketing team has seriously topped themselves.
(Continued after the break –>)
Apple has always been known to be one of the most top secret companies (if not the most top secret) when it comes to unreleased products (I once read that they test different parts of a product in different departments so that even their own employees do not know what the finished product of their labor is going to be).
They of course field test their products all the time, but how an Apple employee could forget a next-gen iPhone (even a prototype) is beyond me. I’ll bet you that’s going to be the last beer paid on Apple’s tab!
Some new juicy info uncovered by Wired.com states that Apple tried approaching the guy who the iPhone in the bar (who we might as well be calling Indiana Jones, because from the way tech world has reacted, it seems like this dude found the frickin’ Holy Grail) before the police did. Turns out just the guy’s roommate was there, who would not let them.
Apple of course took this course of action to re-obtain what was rightfully theirs, but perhaps there was something more to it?
Since Apple likes doing things behind closed doors, why launch a very loud and public police investigation?
This could only keep them in the public eye longer, and thus continue to be on people’s minds. The iPad was released a few weeks before this news broke, and over those few weeks until around the 19th Apple was in the headlines with iPad reviews and impressions. The Wifi+3G iPad is going on sale this weekend, but this debacle will definitely keep developing until Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) which begins on June 7th. At that point Apple will likely releasesomething, perhaps even the very device that has been exposed here – expect stock prices to explode.
Apple’s key to marketing has been getting consumers ripe with anticipation for a product’s release. Once the thing is unleashed, the world pounces on it like leopards! (Yes, yes; that was a slight nod to Apple’s OS)
Some of the hardware Gizmodo uncovered answer many of worlds cries for what they have wanted to see on the iPhone for a while: front-facing camera (I’m excited for that), “much higher resolution screen than the iPhone 3GS” (though not “HD” – perhaps something better? Something alien-like?), larger back-camera (my own speculation would be a 5 megapixel cam (Update: Looks like my speculation may hold some ground: Check out this rumor via Engadget), and camera flash.
Putting an iPhone out in the wild with these hardware specs is Apple telling their fanboys (and the world) that they are listening and taking their pleas into consideration. Even if this isn’t the final design we may see at WWDC, Apple just earned like a bazillion kudos points with it’s consumers.
So, now that I have imparted by knowledge onto you – what do you think? Marketing scheme or a complete screw by what may now be a once great company (ok, maybe that stretching it a bit)?
Actually, it is more likely to turn computers OFF.
If you’re a Windows XP user and you are presented with an option today to download an update to McAfee (anti-virus software), do yourself a favor – DON’T. A seemingly routine McAfee update has caused computers running Windows XP to shut down. WORLDWIDE. Since many corporate entities operate on Windows XP, this is going to cause quite the problem. Engadget.com has reported that they know that an Intel facility as well as Dish Network call centers have been affected, but that’s only an initial report.
For the nerds among us, Engadget described the issue as being: “DAT update 5958 deletes the svchost.exe file, which then triggers a false-positive in McAfee itself and sets off a chain of uncontrolled restarts and loss of networking functionality”. Basically – the computer thinks that it is infected when it is not. Sort of like a really bad reaction to a vaccine.
Since the incident has occurred McAfee has (obviously) pulled the faulty update from their site and has released a fix for said update. A fix which only works for those who have not been affected by the bug. Yikes! Even with a fix, a McAfee tech needs to personally attend to each machine affected. Looks like we’re going to be hearing about this one for a while. The day the terminators turned on themselves.
As you would imagine, Twitter is all aflutter, as it always is when something BAD happens. Some cursing McAfee to all kinds of high heaven, others thanking G-d that they have a Mac (like me!).
So, anyone here think this might be a deliberate attack? Or some McAfee tester really screwed up (like messed with the world economy kind of screwed up)? Are we all soon doomed to a computer-less existence (at least an XP-less existence)?
(Originally posted on I On T3chnology – Jake’s official tech blog)
From day 1, Twitter’s “business model” was split up into two parts: 1) Create a service everyone wants to use. With over 50 million registered users, I would say that part one has been fulfilled. 2) Figure out a way to make money from this service. Starting today, the wheels for fulfilling that goal have been put in motion.
Known as “Promoted Tweets”, this will be Twitter’s foray into actually making money. Since its beginning, Twitter and it’s co-founder Biz Stone have looked into different ways of monetizing the service, without pissing off its users. The model unveiled today, will follow Google’s highly successful ad model: insert ads at the top of the search results page that are related to the term being searched.
As described by Twitter:
“You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate. Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand.”
The first guinea pigs in Twitter’ first foray into actually turning profit (they hope) will be Best Buy, Virgin America, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Bravo, and Starbucks Coffee.
I’ll admit it, I don’t really care much for Twitter. There, it’s out in the open. I have an account, I’ve tweeted a little bit (most of which are just automatic when I put up a new blog post), but I still haven’t found a need/use for it in my life. The times I use it most is when it’s to participate in some sort of contest. When I first got an account I was able to connect with fellow social media enthusiasts, but that kind of tapered off.
Since I am not a hardcore Twitterer, I can’t say for sure how this will impact Twitterers as a whole. But who said I can’t speculate?
As it stands now, these ads will only show up when you search for a specific term, a la’ Google Search. Over time, according to the Wall Street Journal, these ads may make their way into the stream users see when they log in to the site, which means they will even see the ads if they are using a third party app (Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Twidroid, etc.). Also, these ads will only be seen by 2% to 10% of Twitter users in the first few days of its initial rollout. So initially, I think these ads will not be intrusive or annoying at all. When they begin to roll out into the general tweet stream, that may be another story. Though many of these third-party applications have ways of filtering out tweets from the stream, so if you find them a pain in the ass, you can just get rid of them (essentially). Will Twitter know if the ads are being filtered? Even more, will they know if specific ads are being filtered?
Well that is why Twitter has built a set of rubrics for ads they call “resonance”. If an ad is performing poorly (doesn’t work, isn’t click/viewed/shared often), Twitter will notify the advertiser and pull the ad. This will benefit both the advertiser and the user.
How will Twitter decided which ads to incorporate into your stream? Whether it be based on geographic location (somewhat easy to do, considering most of twittering is done from mobile phone, the majority of which nowadays has built-in GPS chips), tweet history, or the types of people you follow, that is a question for a little bit down the road.
Well this sure isn’t something I’ve seen before. With all this “2010 is the year of the tablet” talk, did you feel that you were going to have to make the choice between a tablet and a laptop/netbook? Well Lenovo may just have the answer: Get both! The answer comes in their IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, a device that has yet to be revealed at CES (which starts on January 7th in Las Vegas). No one has actually gotten their dirty little mittens on “Hannah Montana” laptop, as I am dubbing it (because when you dock/undock the tablet/screen, its a whole different “person”! Get it?). In fact, after a quick Google News search, only Engadget has published an article about this interesting little hybrid.
Due to the dual nature of the IdeaPad U1, its specs need to separated into 2 lists:
While in full laptop mode (or, as “Hannah Montana”):
CULV Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
Windows 7 Home Premium
3.8 pounds
When the screen/tablet is removed (or, as “Miley Cyrus”):
Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon chip
16 GB SSD
Boots Lenovo’s Skylight Linux interface
Price: $999
Release: Sometime in June
Tune back to The Gadget 411 for more detailed specs when Lenovo officially announced the U1 Hybrid at CES!
(In all honesty, I can’t wait until they release the IdeaPad U2. Talk about a product placement made in heaven Bono!)
The new decade is already poised to start off in a huge way in the tech world. Google has a press conference scheduled for Monday in which they will be releasing the Nexus One, their first foray into the world of hardware. Some say this is going to be to the first “true” Google phone. Engadget already got their hands on one. Check out their first impressions.
Also, rumors have been at all time high for Apple’s “universe-changing” tablet/ebook/large-iPhone/iSlate(?). Rumors about this device have been around for at least five years, and kind of died down with the release of the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Now some serious sources like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and many others seem to be pretty confident that this “God gadget” will be coming in 2010. Some have even concluded that an Apple event will be held at the end of the month and will focus on the “mobile computing space” (aka a tablet). After waiting years for a touch-screen iPod because of rumors of its release every other week, I now only believe it when I see it. Though this time, with the fever pitch of rumors, I may just believe it before I see it. Just like the iPod changed the music industry this past decade, the Apple tablet may change the print industry over the next decade. The end of the month couldn’t come soon enough. If this “iSlate” actually does come out then, you bet you’ll be hearing from me about it!
So, which of these tech news items gets you excited/hopeful for the coming year/decade? Sound off in the poll after the break!
On Christmas Day last Friday, the United States experienced its first serious terrorist scare in months. On a plane originating from Yemen, headed to Detroit, Michigan by way of Amsterdam, a man attempted to detonate an explosive device, but fortunately was unsuccessful. You didn’t come here to read international headlines, however, and chances are, you already knew about this. I bring this up because, with every new terror scare/attempt/attack, there are alway new policies put into place, new regulations implemented and new limitations put on travel, all in the hopes of improving our travel safety. These new regulations may have an effect on the technology we hold oh so dear. Continue Reading
