Posts Tagged ‘Meet’

Meet Agent, A Smartwatch With A Second Processor For Minimizing Power Consumption And Wireless Charging

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Smartwatches are all the rage, and judging by the turnout and level of enthusiasm at the recent year one meetup for Pebble Kickstarter backers in San Francisco, there’s at least a passionate niche audience for the things. So it isn’t surprising to see them continue to pop up on Kickstarter. A new one called Agent has a few unique tricks, however, which its creators believe set it above the competition.

What the Agent has that others don’t is a combination of power management features and wireless charging. It has not one but two processors, for instance, one with higher performance capabilities and one extremely low-power variant to handle simple background tasks. There’s a new Sharp Memory Display that combines the advantages of both a traditional LCD and e-ink black and white, which is very power conscious, as well as wireless Qi induction charging with an included pad. Since it’s based on the widely-accepted Qi standard, however, it should work with charging pads from a variety of manufacturers.

The Agent is a refreshing change from other Kickstarter smartwatches in that it actually offers something new in terms of technical aspirations. The watch should get up to 7 days of battery life with its smart functions activated, or up to 30 days of standby in ‘watchface-only” mode. Even if that misses the mark by a bit, it should still beat the stated and actual battery life of existing devices like the Pebble. The gadget also features a 120HMz ARM Cortex-M4 processor, a 1.28-inch display, Bluetooth 4.0 (aka “Low Energy”), onboard motion and light sensors and an OS that allows developers to write apps for it using C# and Microsoft Visual Studio. It uses a Microsoft .NET runtime environment that Agent’s creators say will maximize memory and power efficiency, unlike with other smartwatches. The team says you’ll be able to start writing and emulating apps on the desktop as soon as the funding campaign is complete, which would be faster than the staged rollout of the Pebble SDK.

The creators of the Agent are Secret Labs, a team of engineers that has been building open-source products under the brand name Netduino since 2010, as well as smart home technologies, and House of Horology, a custom timepiece manufacturer that brings some real watch cred to the game. Early bird pledges get a pre-order for $ 129, where the final price is expected to come in at around $ 249 when the product ships late this year.

ASUS Transformer Book review: meet ASUS’ first detachable Ultrabook

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Author: James Cliff

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For a while, it looked like ASUS’ Transformer Book would turn out to be vaporware: after debuting to much fanfare a year ago, it encountered numerous delays, and even missed the crucial holiday shopping season. Now it’s finally here, priced at $ 1,499 with a Core i7 processor, a 13.3-inch (1080p) screen and a detachable keyboard dock housing both a spare battery and a 500GB hard drive. The problem is the timing: Intel is about to launch its new Haswell chips, and here’s the Transformer Book, arriving on the scene with a lofty price and a year-old CPU.

It’d be easy enough to tell you just wait for a refresh, which is how we’ve been ending all of our PC reviews in the weeks leading up to this year’s Computex. But it’s still worth investigating whether the Transformer Book (aka the TX300) is a compelling idea. Though we’ve seen many tablet hybrids (the Surface Pro, etc.), they’ve mostly had smaller 11-inch screens. So what happens when you take that form factor and stretch it to accommodate a bigger screen — and a more spacious keyboard? And how does it compare to all those convertible options out there, like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 or the Dell XPS 12? Let’s have a look.

Gallery: ASUS Transformer Book review

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, ASUS

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Ouya delays retail launch until June 25th to ensure it can meet demand

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Author: Buck Howard

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Ouya has revealed it will delay the retail launch of its Android-based gaming console by three weeks until June 25th. In an interview with Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman, Polygon reports that the self-imposed delay is to ensure that the company has enough units to “satisfy all the early orders,” and to make sure there’s enough stock ahead of its public launch. According to Joystiq, Ouya has also listened to early feedback on its controller design, expanding the button holes to ensure that they no longer stick — something we noted in our review of the console.

Meet 1995′s Google Glass

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Author: Natalie Wood

Part Google Glass, part Oculus. All 90s.

In 1995, a company called i-O Display Systems released the i-glasses! (the “!” is part of the name)

In 1995, a company called i-O Display Systems released the i-glasses! (the "!" is part of the name)

Nearly 20 years before Google Glass and the Oculus Rift were released to developers, i-glasses were on the market. The company described the product as a “unique light weight head mounted personal display system that creates a big screen television illusion.”

They debuted for about $ 800:

Some versions had head-tracking, like the Oculus Rift. Later versions included batteries and a basic video playback mechanism, like a sort of proto-Google-Glass.

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Meet Genesis Angels, A New $100M Fund For AI And Robotics, Co-Founded By Investor Kenges Rakishev And Chaired By Israel’s Ex-PM

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Author: Jamie Colby

For those startups in more recent locations like robotics, synthetic intelligence and augmented reality who grumble that VCs are too focused on customer internet companies, help is at hand: Genesis Angels is a brand-new VC that has raised a fund of around $ 100 million, with a big portion coming from co-founder and serial investor and Kazakh petrochemical magnate Kenges Rakishev, which it plans to use for early phase financial investments in emerging areas like these and others. Based in Israel, however trying to find startups worldwide, Genesis launched simply today, naming ex-Israeli head of state Ehud Olmert as its chairman.

Moshe Hogeg, the other co-founder behind Genesis Angels (and creator and CEO of mobile video/photo startup Mobli, visualized right here with Rakishev, left, and Olmert, center), says that the concept for Genesis came out of his and Rakishev’s observation that while the market for consumer net services is filled with a great deal of me-too companies, there is a growing world of R&D in areas like robots and fabricated intelligence that is not getting sufficient attention. It’s mostly giant tech companies like Google and Microsoft and scholastic institutions that are putting money into the really cutting edge of modern technology.

(Certainly, it was just yesterday, throughout Google’s revenues call, that CEO Larry Page talked about the “huge bets” that Google wishes to make on new innovation. Google is not afraid to make huge investments, he stated, since the worry is that if it does not it could miss out on out on the following big thing.)

The problem with this is that it leaves little room for start-ups. And although more current advancements like Kickstarter and Indigogo are producing a brand-new groundswell of interest and financial backing for some of these projets, there are yet others that will not want that kind of public profile for what they’re working on.

Hogeg describes Genesis’ role as something between the idea phase and when a VC may usually become interested in a business working on innovative innovation. “You can send the most dazzling scientist to a VC, however commonly it might take that scientist and his startup five years to develop their products,” he described in a meeting. “VCs will say, ‘ No problem, return in 4 years.’ Genesis will buy those business in the meantime.” Common financial investments will be in the array of $ 200,000 and $ 2 million.

If you check out Genesis Angels’ website, you will see that it currently details a variety of business in its portfolio, consisting of Hogeg’s. These are listed, he says, due to the fact that they are a few of the investments Rakishev himself has actually made. Genesis, he keeps in mind, is still raising cash for its first fund, with the total amount in play currently near to $ 100 million. Amongst those adding to the fund are merchant bank Forbes & Manhattan, in addition to exclusive people who are well-known in the space of angel financial investments particularly around areas like hardware and new modern technology. The first 3 investments that are being constructed of the new fund, Hogeg states, will be coming out soon.

Ehud Olmert’s session as chairman is about laying the foundation for the kind of help that Genesis Angels will have the ability to offer its portfolio companies, Hogeg states.

“He is a huge believer in modern technology. Irasel invested one of the most in this area when he was still prime minister,” he notes. The relatively little country currently has some 3,000 tech companies, according to this report from the AP on the launch of the new VC.

Olmert took workplace in 2006 however left in 2009 under a corruption scandal cloud that he is still battling. However that, evidently, has not influenced his larger impact. “Mr Olmert is a really effective guy and he can utilize his contacts to assist us and our business, for instance in partnering and joint ventures. He can open any door worldwide.”

There have been various other VC funds concentrated on these arising locations. Dmitry Grishin, for instance, the CEO of Mail. ru and founder of Grishin Robotics, last year started a $ 25 million fund dedicated to buying various other robotics companies (examples of his financial investments below, here and below).

It might be that Genesis teams up with individuals like this to work together on financial investments. “He shares a vision with us about this area,” says Hogeg.

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Meet The HTC First, The First Android Phone To Come Preloaded With Facebook Home

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Author: Mark Jeffries

The torrent of leaks these past few days haven’t left much to the imagination, but HTC’s Peter Chou has just officially pulled back the curtain on the first phone to ship with Facebook Home — the HTC First — at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.

According to HTC CEO Peter Chou the First will be the “ultimate social phone,” though he declined to dig into the device’s specs during his brief moments on-stage. The device will ship in four colors, and will support AT&T’s LTE network right out of the gate. Can’t wait for your chance to take it for a spin? The First will be available for $ 99 (with a 2 year contract naturally) starting on April 12, and pre-orders for the device kick off today. Those of you outside the U.S. will be able to join in the fun shortly too, as Mark Zuckerberg also noted that the phone would find its way to UK carriers Orange and EE in short order.

The mid-range First will be available in black, white, red and blue, and sports a 4.3-inch display that jibes with earlier reports. Facebook Home obviously serves to obscure the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean build that’s actually running the show, while one of Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon 400 chipsets (and not the MSM8960 that was previously reported) provides the horsepower from inside that smooth, curved chassis. It’s not a bad looking phone and the internals aren’t quite as lousy as many had expected them to be, but all this begs a very important question — will anyone actually buy this phone when you can fire up Facebook Home on your (supported) Android handset for a whopping zero dollars?

I mean, c’mon — I’m a sucker for even mildly neat hardware, but so far neither HTC nor AT&T (whose CEOs both appeared on-stage to talk about how darned great the thing is) could provide a compelling reason why it’s worth buying. LTE? A handsome design? Neither of those are exactly hard to come by these days, are they? Facebook has said that the First will feature better integration for all those notifications you’re bound to get than if you had just installed the app, but at this point there’s little way of knowing how big a difference it’ll actually make. HTC knows how to make great hardware and I don’t mean to diminish that, but a lame device that’s been put together well is still a lame device.

This marks the second time that the social networking giant and the beleaguered Taiwanese OEM have collaborated on a peculiar hardware play. The first, if you’ll recall, were HTC Status (nee Chacha) and the Salsa released back in 2011– their main claim to fame was a dedicated Facebook button for quick access to your friends and feeds. Considering that neither device was exactly a runaway hit, it’s no surprise to see that Facebook and HTC have taken things in a different, more substantial direction with the One. Of course, the First is going to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Facebook Home devices — Zuckerberg also pointed to a Facebook Home Program which allows hardware manufacturers to build Facebook Home into their own forthcoming handsets.

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Meet The HTC First, The First Android Phone To Come Preloaded With Facebook House

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Author: Nancy Kennedy

The torrent of leaks these past few days haven ’ t left much to the imagination, however HTC ’ s Peter Chou has simply officially pulled back the curtain on the first phone to deliver with Facebook House — the HTC First — at Facebook ’ s Menlo Park head office.

According to HTC CEO Peter Chou the First will be the “ ultimate social phone, ” though he decreased to dig into the device ’ s specifications throughout his short moments on-stage. The gadget will ship in 4 colors, and will support AT&T ’ s LTE network right from eviction. Can ’ t delay for your chance to take it for a spin? The First will be available for $ 99 (with a 2 year agreement normally) starting on April 12, and pre-orders for the device start today. Those of you outside the U.S. will have the ability to sign up with in the fun shortly too, as Mark Zuckerberg likewise noted that the phone would find its means to UK carriers Orange and EE in brief order.

The mid-range First will be available in black, white, red and blue, and sports a 4.3-inch display that jibes with earlier reports. Facebook House undoubtedly serves to obscure the Android 4.1 Jelly Grain construct that ’ s really running the program, while among Qualcomm ’ s dual-core Snapdragon 400 chipsets (and not the MSM8960 that was previously reported) offers the horsepower from inside that smooth, rounded chassis. It ’ s not a bad looking phone and the internals aren ’ t quite as lousy as numerous had expected them to be, however all this asks a vital concern — will anybody in fact get this phone when you can fire up Facebook House on your (supported) Android mobile for a massive zero dollars?

I suggest, c ’ mon — I ’ m a sucker for even mildly orderly hardware, but so far neither HTC nor AT&T (whose CEOs both appeared on-stage to speak about how darned wonderful things is) can provide an engaging reason it ’ s worth buying. LTE? A handsome design? Neither of those are exactly tough to come by these days, are they? Facebook has actually said that the First will feature much better integration for all those notices you ’ re bound to obtain than if you had just set up the app, but at this point there ’ s little method of understanding how big a difference it ’ ll actually make. HTC understands the best ways to make fantastic hardware and I don ’ t mean to diminish that, but a lame gadget that ’ s been created well is still a lame gadget.

This marks the 2nd time that the social networking titan and the beleaguered Taiwanese OEM have actually worked together on a weird hardware play. The first, if you ’ ll recall, were HTC Status (nee Chacha) and the Salsa released back in 2011 – their major case to fame was a dedicated Facebook button for quick access to your buddies and feeds. Considering that neither gadget was precisely a runaway hit, it ’ s no surprise to see that Facebook and HTC have actually taken things in a different, more considerable instructions with the One. Obviously, the First is visiting be the suggestion of the iceberg when it concerns Facebook Home devices — Zuckerberg also indicated a Facebook Home Program which allows hardware producers to construct Facebook Home into their own honest smartphones.

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Meet Thermodo: A Tiny External Thermometer That Lives In Your iPhone’s Headphone Jack

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Author: Gabe Hall

Danish startup Robocat has built a lot of software for Apple’s iOS devices, but today the company is branching out with the launch of a new hardware accessory for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. It’s called Thermodo, and it’s a very small hardware thermometer that fits in your device’s headphone jack, and transmits real temperature data for use in apps.

The Thermodo hardware has a passive temperature sensor, housed in an audio jack and protected by a small cylindrical end cap that only extends around a quarter of an inch out from your device. It doesn’t need its own power source, and it transmits weather data as an audio signal that can be picked up by your phone and translated into the corresponding temperature on your phone via an API, which the company will first use in a dedicated Thermodo companion app for iOS, as well as in two of its previously released apps, Haze and Thermo.

The Thermodo works offline, indoors and out, and comes with a carrying case keyring to make sure you don’t lose the tiny thing when it’s not in use. Robocat says that eventually, any device could potentially support Thermodo, including Raspberry Pi, Macs, and Arduino-based gadgets, thanks to the company’s open source SDK.

I talked to Robocat founder Willi Wu about the project, and why it came to be in the first place. He says the company branched out from its core focus on mobile weather apps based on feedback from users.

“The idea Thermodo is actually based on an indirect request from our users,” he explained.” We received several one star reviews because our users wanted the feature of measuring the temperature themselves right where they are. Currently the iPhone does not support any access to any temperature reading within the phone nor is there a dedicated sensor for this purpose. We wanted to attack to this problem anyway and came up with the most simple solution we could imagine, Thermodo.”

While other devices like the Square credit card reader and the Jawbone UP fitness band use the headphone jack as a way for accessories to communicate with smartphone devices, Wu says that Thermodo is fundamentally different in its approach. That opens up plenty more possibilities for how the company could use the tech in the future to create other kinds of sensors, he says.

“Thermodo is not translating sounds to data like Square or other softmodem-based products,” he said. “It turns out that we can apply this method to all kind of applications. What we do is converting the temperature into an electrical impedance and this impedance is determined by what we call the “Thermodo Principle.” Now we can convert all kind of things into an electrical impedance, like for example wind speed, pressure, brightness and so on.”

Wu says Robocat’s technical lead is already measuring his resistors and capacitors in this manner, and that the company is experimenting with some of these alternate sensing capabilities already. Eventually Thermodo could have a number of sibling devices to gauge just about everything under the sun (including the sun’s brightness).

Thermodo is looking for just $ 35,000 in funding, and pre-order pledges start at just $ 19 for a single Thermodo unit. This is a project that will hit its goal quickly, and I can’t wait to see what comes next from Robocat’s new hardware focus.

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Meet The Entirely E-Ink 3G Smartphone That Could Cost As Little As A Dumbphone

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Author: Tech Blogger

It takes a lot to stand out at a trade convention the size of Mobile Globe Congress. However right here ’ s one device that caught my eye today: an e-ink smartphone. Unlike Yota Phone, the Russian start-up that ’ s using e-ink as a second display to augment the back of a powerful high end smartphone in a bid to stand apart in the uber crowded Android space, this prototype gadget has simply the one screen. A solitary e-ink screen on the front of the device — so it ’ s a true e-ink phone.

It ’ s additionally a true smartphone. There were 2 prototypes on program at Eink‘ s stand, both with a 1GHz chip inside and one (the white one) with a 3G chip in it. The other had Edge connectivity. The phones run Android however, as you ’ d expect, the OS has been streamlined with a customized UI that strips back the functionality to focus on the applications that make good sense for a completely e-ink smartphone — such as a reader app, a dialer and e-mail. The UI additionally consists of a web browser because certain sorts of websites can be seen on an e-ink screen. It won ’ t support video of course but text-based websites can still be read.

The black prototype gadget (visualized below) also includes a backlight for reviewing in the dark. Both screens are capacitive, however as you ’ d expect with e-ink the refresh rate can be a little slow-moving. Ghosting on the screen from previous renders can be eliminated by shaking the device. The modern technology can support both portraiture and landscape positioning so the e-ink smartphone could possibly be switched on its side to change the positioning to more of an e-reader sized width. Both devices felt exceptionally light-weight.

Why do you want an only e-ink phone? Rate for one thing. Battery life for an additional. Not to discuss exposure in bright sunlight. Put all those elements together and this can be the best gadget for some arising markets where electricity is at a premium. The prototypes are proof of concept at this point but Giovanni Mancini, director of item management for E-ink — the business which makes the screen — stated the Chinese OEM which has made the prototypes, Fndroid, is speaking to telcos and might introduce a device this year. So the amount of would this e-ink smartphone expense? Mancini stated the device maker

would set the rate however in his view it would be comparable with a function phone price. A huge style of this year ’ s MWC has been smaller sized mobile players — from open source OSes like Firefox that are looking for to drive openness and accessibility and drive down the expense of gadgets, to mobile veterans like Nokia focusing afresh on building smarter attribute phones to target cost-conscious users in emerging markets. So it ’ s interesting to see business toying with the concept of a totally e-ink smartphone to cut gadget expenses while preserving essential smartphone features such as access to the internet and e-mail. Click to see slideshow.

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Meet Buddy, Another Ambitious, Crowdfunded Smart Watch

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Author: Laura Clark

Sanctuary ’ t all of us suffered enough abuse at the hands of Big Smart Watch? No? Well now there ’ s Buddy, a Bluetooth smartwatch that intends to resolve the issues connected with all those various other watches. Buddy is focused on social networking and notifications so it will ping you when your Facebook or Twitter feed is updated as well as send the common call/text/calendar notices you anticipate from a smart watch.

The ambitious watch is the item of Vea Digital, a smartwatch business most effectively understood for their Sportive work-out watch. The business ’ s new project, nevertheless, is wildly ambitious. It has a capacitive color touchscreen, works with iOS and Android, and contains 8GB of memory in a package 8mm thick. It ’ s a substantial watch, to be sure, and the renders/prototype designs reveal an unique and vibrant icon-based UI that might work much better than the confined black and white design of other devices.

What can it do?

Tv program notices displayed on your smartphone.
Enable you to control your smartphone (initiate calls, control songs …)
Get and show data from your smartphone (turn by turn navigation …)
Display smartphone material (images …)Your smartphone and the VEA FRIEND get in touch with Bluetooth …

The makers claim a battery life of “ 10 days or 2 weeks standby ” which appears like crazy talk. They ’ re asking for $ 320,000 to develop the first run and have actually raised $ 42,000 up until now. A black watch can be had for a pledge of $ 150 and they will be delivered in August 2013.

I ’ ll think it when I see it, but if you ’ re wanting to participate the very beginning of an acceptably cool-looking smart watch, Buddy may be the method to go.

Posts Tagged ‘Meet’

Meet Agent, A Smartwatch With A Second Processor For Minimizing Power Consumption And Wireless Charging

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ASUS Transformer Book review: meet ASUS’ first detachable Ultrabook

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Ouya delays retail launch until June 25th to ensure it can meet demand

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Meet 1995′s Google Glass

In 1995, a company called i-O Display Systems released the i-glasses! (the “!” is part of the name)

They debuted for about $ 800:

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Meet Genesis Angels, A New $100M Fund For AI And Robotics, Co-Founded By Investor Kenges Rakishev And Chaired By Israel’s Ex-PM

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Meet The HTC First, The First Android Phone To Come Preloaded With Facebook Home

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Meet The HTC First, The First Android Phone To Come Preloaded With Facebook House

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Meet Thermodo: A Tiny External Thermometer That Lives In Your iPhone’s Headphone Jack

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Meet The Entirely E-Ink 3G Smartphone That Could Cost As Little As A Dumbphone

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Meet Buddy, Another Ambitious, Crowdfunded Smart Watch

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