EV charging station announcements are almost becoming commonplace (keyword: almost) , but not so much that we aren’t happy to welcome one more. This week NRG Energy unveiled it’s first eVgo branded “Freedom Station” at a Dallas Walgreens, and aims to pepper the map with a total of 60 such units by Labor Day. Each eVgo freedom station will pack both a quick charging 480V AC/DC converter (juicing up a Nissan Leaf to 80 percent in about 30 minutes), as well as a 240V Level 2 charger (netting 25 miles of “go” per charging hour). NRG plans to cover the Dallas / Fort Worth and Houston areas with 120 of these guys by the end of 2012. Like others before it , the eVgo network plans to follow a subscription model — with the premiere plan ($89 a month on a three year contract) not only covering the cost of usage at eVgo charging stations, but that of electricity used at your home charging dock, too. Toss in a handful of generous EV owners rocking PlugShare , and Dallas has the makings of a low-emissions wonderland. NRG’s eVgo charging stations hope to catch the eyes of Texas originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Israeli parody details the rise and fall of Apple’s iBoy, humanity as a whole (video)
April 9, 2011 No Comment
For those unaware, Eretz Nehederet is effectively the Israeli equivalent to The Onion , and on the 1st of April, they covered the hardest-hitting piece of Apple news to cross their news desk in quite some time. That news, friends, is the iBoy. Available in a variety of skin tones, religious beliefs and languages, this iPad-adorned human is both the best and worst thing to happen to mankind… well, ever. There’s no word on when it’ll be on sale, but it’s fairly clear that “divorce” and “alcohol” are about to take a backseat to this guy when studying factors that rip families to shreds. Click and weep as you see fit. [Thanks, Lior G.] Israeli parody details the rise and fall of Apple’s iBoy, humanity as a whole (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Sure, it’s lacking the Pro moniker, but it’s also lacking a built-in keyboard. A fair trade, we suppose. Dell’s Venue is actually nothing at all like the once-titled Lightning , boasting a slate-style form factor and Android 2.2 in place of Windows Phone 7. To this day, it remains one of the few unlocked phones available for sale in the US with support for AT&T’s 3G bands, and for those who missed out on the Nexus One (or just opted for this for any number of other reasons), we’re curious to see how your experience has been. Were you impressed / let down by the Stage UI? How’d you manage the heft? Would you have tweaked the build materials any? Opted for WP7 over Froyo? We’re guessing that Dell’s still squarely in the learning phase when it comes to handset making, so go ahead and get real honest in comments below. Honestly. How would you change Dell’s Venue? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 22:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …D-Link does the NAS dance with new ShareCenter DNS-320 and DNS-325 home servers
April 9, 2011 No Comment
Many of us have a smartphone, set-top box, and a PC or two, and it’s always nice (and sometimes necessary) to have access to your data no matter which gadget you’ve got on hand. Enter D-Link’s newest ShareCenter NAS servers, the DNS-320 and DNS-325 to accomplish the task of digital distribution. Both pack dual SATA 3.5-inch drive bays for up to 4TB of total storage, a single USB 2.0 port, RAID support, integrated P2P, gigabit Ethernet, and a built in web file-server app (too bad they didn’t follow QNAP’s lead and give us a dedicated smartphone app as well). Available now, the $110 DNS-320′s got an 800MHz processor and 128MB of RAM, while those willing to pony up $200 for the DNS-325 get 1.2GHz silicon, 256MB of memory, photo gallery and audio streaming apps, plus the ability to host your blog directly from the device. If you want a 1TB drive pre-installed, prices jump to $200 for the DNS-320 and $280 for the DNS-325 when they drop next month. A small price to pay in preparation for World Backup Day , wouldn’t you say? Continue reading D-Link does the NAS dance with new ShareCenter DNS-320 and DNS-325 home servers D-Link does the NAS dance with new ShareCenter DNS-320 and DNS-325 home servers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Sprint still isn’t offering anything more specific than “this spring” for a Nexus S 4G launch date, but it looks like we may now at least be one step closer to a release. The Google-approved phone just turned up at the FCC this weekend under the guise of “SPH-D720,” which we’ve already had some indication was indeed Nexus S 4G’s model number, and which has also turned up on Samsung’s own site for the phone before being removed for one reason or another (see an image of the cached site after the break). As you can see above, the illustration also cuts a familiar outline, and the FCC tests reveal the presence of a Sprint-friendly WiMAX radio, which folks will hopefully be able to put to use sooner rather than later. Continue reading Samsung Nexus S 4G hits the FCC Samsung Nexus S 4G hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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While we’re not exactly in a hurry to spend $30 each on 60-day delayed movie rentals , theater owners are quite upset by the whole premium video-on-demand plan apparently being pushed by Warner, Sony, fox and Universal. The most active objector so far appears to be AMC Theaters, which announced yesterday (press release after the break) it would notify studios that it plans to “adapt its economic model” regarding movies bound for p-VOD. What it wants is likely a bigger slice of the revenue and also a heads up on which movies will be getting the earlier releases. Rival theater chains Regal and Cinemark have already expressed plans to cut promotion and screens for movies headed to p-VOD, but without any official announcement it’s still not clear which movies those will be. Of course, cutting down promo and screens cuts into the theater’s own revenue, so we’ll consider this one another waiting game and wait to see who blinks first. (Hint: it won’t be us — we wouldn’t pay $30 to watch The Adjustment Bureau on Mars, much less in our own living rooms on DirecTV, Vudu or Comcast .) Continue reading Theater owners ready to fight over $30, 60-day window VOD movies Theater owners ready to fight over $30, 60-day window VOD movies originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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The latest in a long line of terrifying (and occasionally adorable ) pseudo-arachnid robots, Kondo ‘s upcoming KMR-M6 is doing more with less. Thanks to a unique spring supported linking leg joint, this hexapedal bug gives you the heebie-jeebies with only two servos per leg. The new leg design lowers build costs while improving performance and stability, and was developed for education, research, and hobbyist markets. The base kit hits Japan next month for about
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Stealth has been in the compact computing game for some time, and the company has just rolled out its most powerful pint-sized PC to date, the LPC-670. Packing Intel’s Arrandale Core i5-520M, Core i5-580M, or Core i7-620M silicon, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, a DVD or Blu-ray burner, a max 750GB 2.5-inch HDD or 128GB SSD, optional 802.11g WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and DVI connections, Stealth’s new mini-PC has the brawn of much bigger machines. The price of such lilliputian luxury? An account-emptying $1650, and that’s just for the base model — check the right option boxes and the final tally will run you over three grand. That should ensure the customer base will be just like the machine itself… tiny . Press release is after the break. Gallery: Stealth LPC-670 Mini-PC Continue reading Stealth unveils the LPC-670 mini-PC: small in size, vast in price Stealth unveils the LPC-670 mini-PC: small in size, vast in price originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 18:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …CE-Oh no he didn’t!: Sony’s Jack Tretton says Nintendo makes ‘babysitting tools’
April 9, 2011 No Comment
Sony does what Nintendon’t? That’s the general sentiment from a brief interview that PlayStation chief Jack Tretton gave to Fortune this week, in which he talked up Sony’s strengths and played down (some may even say belittled) its competitors, and Nintendo in particular. That began with the relatively tame assertion that Sony’s decision to go high-end with PlayStation 3 is just now beginning to pay off while the other consoles are “starting to run out of steam,” before he took aim at Nintendo’s handheld business. According to Tretton, Nintendo’s handhelds all offer what he calls a “Game Boy experience,” something that’s great as a “babysitting tool,” but that “no self-respecting twenty-something is going to be sitting on an airplane with one of those.” Yow. Any self-respecting twenty-somethings beg to differ? Let us know in the comments below. [Thanks, Robert C] CE-Oh no he didn’t!: Sony’s Jack Tretton says Nintendo makes ‘babysitting tools’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 16:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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This thought was first given voice by Myriam Joire on last night’s Mobile Podcast, and the simple, lethal accuracy of it has haunted me ever since. All the hubbub and unrest about whether Google is trying to lock Android down or not has failed to address whether Google should be trying to control the OS, and if so, what the (valid) reasons for that may be. Herein, I present only one, but it’s arguably big enough to make all the dissidence about open source idealism and promises unkept fade into insignificance. Continue reading Editorial: Android’s problem isn’t fragmentation, it’s contamination Editorial: Android’s problem isn’t fragmentation, it’s contamination originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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