Antistatic E-3POD concept wins Citroen design award, job for its student creator
February 21, 2011 No Comment
Who says dreaming doesn’t pay? A young designer by the name of Heikki Juvonen recently won himself a six-month job placement at Citroen’s PSA Design Centre in Paris after producing the most compelling response to the company’s Double Challenge set to students at London’s Royal College of Art . The premise was simple — put together an aesthetic for an ultra-compact urban vehicle that Citroen could call its own, and judging by the imagery above, we can all probably agree that Heikki achieved a very distinctive look with his E-3POD. We’re not yet certain how we feel about being inside the largest of the three wheels for the duration of our electrically powered journeys, but the young gent has half a year on his hands to tweak and refine his eye-catching design. We’ll be ready to test-drive the prototype as soon as Citroen becomes mad enough to build one. Antistatic E-3POD concept wins Citroen design award, job for its student creator originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Kno looking to sell off ambitious tablet hardware business, focus on software instead
February 21, 2011 No Comment
Competition usually giveth , but sometimes it taketh away too. All Things D is reporting today that Kno, the company that aimed to deliver a most bodacious dual-screen tablet to students, is investigating the possibility of selling off its hardware venture and focusing exclusively on its software offering. Internal sources claim the “quicker-than-expected” move into tablets by big electronics makers has made the environment tougher for Kno, which is now said to be negotiating with a pair of companies about offloading its slate-selling business. Apparently, just a few hundred pre-orders of the Kno were fulfilled before the company stopped shipping them recently, which could be an indication that a deal may be close. We can only guess what a purchaser would want to do with the Kno tablet designs, but as for the company itself, it’ll look to the iPad and Android-based tablets for its new market of opportunity — no point in wasting all those textbook distribution partnerships. Kno looking to sell off ambitious tablet hardware business, focus on software instead originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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The Fistful of Lard conundrum, heard of it? Probably not because we just made it up. Nevertheless, it’s the classic dilemma faced by any home cook: how do you control the counter-top set without subjecting the TV remote or all-in-one touchscreen to a slathering of semisolid hog fat? Easy, if you own Panasonic’s new
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So the UK is finally catching up with the fine money-grubbing nations of this world and allowing product placement in British-made TV programming, starting from next Monday, February 28th. Advertising embedded in internationally sourced films and shows has long been tolerated as a necessary evil within the Queen’s realm, but now that the telecoms regulator Ofcom is opening up locally farmed TV content to the blight of commercialization, it’s come up with a suitably austere logo to warn us of its dangers. Basically, any future episodes of Hollyoaks that may contain a “stray” Diet Coke or Nokia N8 within the frame will be preceded by the above P placed within a P, which will prep you for the pernicious potentiality that the programming you are perusing may provoke you into purchasing new property. Capiche? Product placement gets a logo of its own, turns the world inside out originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 03:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Sure, folks have ported games over to the good ol’ number cruncher for ages, but getting a fully rendered classic like Doom to run on a calculator is a different feat altogether. The folks over at omnimaga have successfully moved a beta version of nDoom (a reworked version of the original id Software’s FPS) over to a Texas Instruments TI-Nspire and — with all things considered — the game runs shockingly smooth. As of right now, the only proof of concept is the video you see above, with a tragic crash bringing all things dangerous to a dismal halt. We’re looking forward to a fully working version of nDoom because, you know, video games and calculators are two things close to our nerdy hearts. TI-Nspire calculator: yes, it plays Doom originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Dell XPS 14 discontinued, will be replaced with something thinner and lighter
February 21, 2011 No Comment
Sure, it was only about four months ago that Dell released its XPS 14 , but unfortunately, those looking to snatch up the Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce 400M-powered laptop today will have a mighty hard time. Some keen-eyed tipsters noticed that Dell’s 14-inch mainstream system was out of stock, and a quick call to one of our friends at Dell confirmed that the smallest version of the series won’t actually be making a comeback. However, that’s not because the system didn’t sell well — Dell maintains that it actually exceeded sales expectations. Considering it was a very aggressively priced rig that doesn’t really surprise us, but why not bring it back? That’s where things get interesting, and we’ll give you Dell’s exact quote on this one… “With the transition to Sandy Bridge technology, we chose to re-focus our efforts on incorporating this feedback into future thin and light products launching later this year. Stay tuned!” Yep, it seems like Dell is gearing up to bring some Adamo qualities back in to the XPS brand, which is actually what were told last year when the company killed off the Adamo brand altogether. We’re staying tuned alright! Dell XPS 14 discontinued, will be replaced with something thinner and lighter originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Robot hands have been grabbing , crushing , drawing and otherwise actuating for years, but have you ever seen one properly type? That’s the primary purpose of a new Virginia Tech design. Engineers built this Dexterous Anthropomorphic Robotic Typing (DART) hand to mimic the real deal as best they could, down to individually-actuating three-segment digits and 110 degrees of wrist rotation in a package the size of a real human arm. Using a total of 19 servo motors and high tensile strength wire for the tendons, they managed to create a single mechanical paw that can achieve an estimated 20 words per minute while typing. Next, they plan to cover it in silicone skin and add piezoelectric sensors to provide tactile feedback. Imagine that: the next time a secret family member severs your arm with a focused plasma beam, you’ll know where to go for replacement. Find a quick video and the full scientific paper at the links below. Robot hand hits 20WPM, nearly ready to embrace infinite monkey theorem originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Inhabitat’s Week in Green: trains speed up, paint improves planes, and the CO2-scrubbing artificial trees
February 21, 2011 No Comment
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green. This week Inhabitat saw high-speed railways pick up steam around the globe as China announced plans to build a trans-continental railroad in South America and Japan began developing the world’s fastest high-speed train . We also saw eco transportation reach new heights as a kite-powered car completed an epic 5,000km journey across Australia and researchers developed a nanotech paint that will increase the fuel efficiency of airplanes. The automotive world is also gearing up for the Geneva car show as Toyota is getting set to roll out an all-electric IQ and Porsche pulled back the curtain on its Panamera S Hybrid and Boxster EV . In other news, this week we brought you an exclusive video interview where celebrated environmentalist Stewart Brand argues that nuclear power could save the world. We also explored several other alternative energy sources that are decidedly less controversial – PurposeEnergy is transforming beer brewing waste into a source of clean-burning biofuel, and a design duo has proposed a series of beautiful solar-powered artificial trees that scrub CO2 from the air. Roughly one in every six people do not have access to safe drinking water, so we were excited to learn about a pedal-powered water purification system based on the bicycle that holds great promise for the developing world. Speaking of cleaning up dirty water, this week Stephen Baldwin sued Kevin Costner over the oil-separating technology that cleaned up the BP oil spill. And last but not least, we were wowed by this hydrofloor system , which can save space and energy by concealing a swimming pool beneath your living room floor! Inhabitat’s Week in Green: trains speed up, paint improves planes, and the CO2-scrubbing artificial trees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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When your tablet needs a windowed UI, has it crossed some undrawn, implied boundary that makes it too complex for the kinds of casual tasks you’d want to accomplish on a tablet? Hard to say, but the mobile developers at Ixonos took to MWC last week to showcase a windowed build of Android on top of a tablet developed by Aava — so at the very least, we know it’s possible. The system is built atop Froyo and allows apps to continue running in the background — they don’t suspend, which means you can, say, play a video while you’re off composing messages. The company also demonstrated the software on a dual-screen 7-inch tablet, allowing apps to be launched on either screen and transferred between them — all seemingly without any customizations needed to individual apps, which is going to be key for a system like this to gain any market traction. Follow the break for Ixonos’ press release and demo video. Continue reading Ixonos shows off windowed UI for Android Ixonos shows off windowed UI for Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. Perhaps it bore repeating for the shock value to sink in, but Nokia CEO Stephen Elop missed nary an opportunity to defend his company’s choice of Windows Phone as its future smartphone foundation. Nokia, he said, was making “a big bet” on Microsoft and vice versa. However, Windows Phone is only one leg of Nokia’s strategy moving forward. Its “next billion” initiative is tied to handsets in which Nokia and Microsoft interests do not meet. And Nokia’s third task, creating or planning for the next disruption, will keep the company tethered to the MeeGo operating system. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal ‘s behind-the-scenes look at how the Microsoft-Nokia alliance came to be, revealed how close it came to not being at all. Nokia seriously considered Android as the operating system of choice for its smartphones, and was only persuaded differently by a big check and an exceptional flexibility to make changes to the Windows Phone 7 operating system. Because, for all the attention around Nokia’s selection of Windows Phone, it ultimately neither guarantees Nokia’s success nor dooms it to failure in the US smartphone market. Here’s what will: Continue reading Switched On: Nokia’s Windows of opportunity Switched On: Nokia’s Windows of opportunity originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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