Enter e-mail address to receive popsci weekly updates to your inbox.
Macworld 2008 Wrap-up: Beyond the Keynote
Some of the best devices at MacWorld aren’t from Apple
When it comes to gadgets with massive sex appeal, Apple knows how to
get our motors running. The new MacBook Air, is certainly high in style
and by far the skinniest laptop I've seen. But like other ultraportable
notebooks, it compromises some features for svelte design.
A few Macworld attendees I talked to said the Air simply won't
replace their desktop computer. "The Air would be useful for people
whose primary needs involve word processing and Web browsing," said
Nick P., a composer and audio professional who's been attending
Macworld for the past 20 years. (He asked us not to reveal his last
name.) he added. "Or it's a pricey toy for rich nerds," he added.
While Apple's latest offerings—also including Time Capsule, iTunes
Movie Rentals and software updates to the iPhone, iPod Touch and Apple
TV—attracted hordes of Mac loyalists, other vendors unleashed their own
hot products.
Ultrathin Laptop, New Updates for iPhone, Apple TV
Macworld Conference and Expo officially kicked off today as Apple CEO Steve Jobs took center stage and unveiled two new products, including an ultrathin laptop called the MacBook Air, and a few software updates to its existing products, including the iPhone.
Holding a manila envelope, Jobs pulled out a slick, wafer-thin MacBook Air. This is "the world's thinnest notebook," he boasted. It measures a mere 0.16 to 0.76 inches thick and weighs only 3 pounds. Even at the laptop's thickest area of 0.76 inches, the MacBook Air is thinner than today's slimmest laptops such as Sony's TZ series, which measure 0.8 to 1.2 inches thick, according to Jobs.
Part of what makes the MacBook Air so thin, Jobs explained, is that the components used inside are smaller than those in other notebooks. The Intel Core Duo processor, for example, is 60 percent smaller than Intel's current Core Duo chips. The MacBook Air's CPU sports the width of a dime and it's as thick as a nickel, said Intel CEO Paul Otellini.
Another reason the MacBook Air maintains its svelte figure is the lack of an optical disc drive. However, users will be able to buy an optional USB-connectable SuperDrive (CD- and DVD-burner) for $99 extra.
The MacBook Air has an estimated battery life of 5 hours, Jobs said. The notebook will be available at the end of January for $1,799 for the base model. The price for the 1.8-GHz or the 64-gigabyte solid state drive (in place of an 80-GB hard drive) versions have not been announced. (See the Air’s nitty-gritty specs at the end.)
Why wait to buy when you can download now? While the MacBook Air was certainly the sex symbol of Steve Jobs’s MacWorld keynote today, the product with the biggest impact may be the new Apple TV.
One of the big news items at last Week’s CES was that Blu-ray appeared to have finally won the high-definition disc war. Well, it may have been a brief victory.
BD players are still pricey items, while Apple TV starts at just $229. And Blu-ray still lacks support from two major studios. Apple TV is starting small—with about 1000 films at its launch at the end of February. But all the major studios—Fox, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony (plus several minors)—have already signed on (ironic, since Sony Pictures’ parent company created the Blu-ray format). If it catches on, it could grow very fast. Remember, Apple transformed the digital music download business and could very well do the same for movies.
Critics might point out Apple’s so-so record selling TV content—especially with NBC pulling its content from the site. (Good thing I downloaded all those Battlestar Galactica episodes before that happened.) But TV is different from movies. The networks are in the business of broadcasting, whether it’s over an antenna, cable, satellite or now the Web. It wasn’t hard to predict that they would eventually want to take Internet broadcasting in-house. Movie houses, on the other hand, have always relied on other players for distribution—whether it's theaters that show first runs, stores that sell or rent DVDs or cable TV companies that broadcast or sell films on-demand. Apple is just another one of these players. If working with Apple makes them money, why wouldn’t the studios partner with Apple?
Grace Aqunio
Sure, there are other movie download services—like CinemaNow, or Vudu. But Apple TV offers more. Unlike CinemaNow, it doesn’t require a computer—which few want in the livng room, no matter how well companies build Media Center PCs. And unlike Vudu, it also works with PCs for streaming music from the killer PC application, iTunes. Apple TV also lets you transfer rented movies to other devices. It doesn’t lock them inside the box as Vudu does. And Apple TV provides access to other online content like YouTube and Flickr photos.
And all of these features are way better than what you get with a Blu-ray player, which is just a one-trick disc-playing box. The appeal of Apple TV goes beyond just watching movies and plants another flag in the soil of the connected living room that electronics companies have been trying to conquer for years.
I predict that Apple will win this war, too.—Sean Captain
What's the crummiest phone out there? Probably an issue of personal preference, unless you're basing it on which breaks most easily. In that case, it's the Razr V3. SquareTrade, an independent warranty company, just released data on phone reliability based on its records. Motorola's Razr had an 18 percent failure rate across a two-year, normal-use time period. Even worse, in nearly 60 percent of those cases the phones became completely and inexplicably bricked. Of course, there might be more to phones than function; this data comes on the heels of CES, where Motorola phones garnered more nods than any others. Lets just hope the ROKR and T815 can do one better than their predecessor.—Abby Seiff
USA Today is reporting that A La Mobile, a small software developer, plans to announce today a host of new applications designed to run on the Google-backed operating system, Android. For now the applications are installed in an HTC smartphone, and include a browser, camera, games, contacts manager, audio player and more. HTC is just one of 34 companies in Google's Open Handset Alliance, so this is really just the start. Google says to expect an Android-based phone later this year.
Green tech guide MetaEfficient has two guides to new electric bikes—one that reviews Schwinn's latest offerings, and another that pushes a collection of European-made bikes. The eZee electric bike, made in South Africa but available here, can help riders with hills, cruise for miles on a single charge or even race faster, depending on the model. They range in price from $1,150 to $2,200. The bikes are ideal for short-range city commuters, but at that price, you'd probably want to wheel them inside, and clear some extra space in your cube, lest some green-minded thief ride off with it.—Gregory Mone
CES is chock-a-block with previews, but here's a few that have already caught our fancy. Check out this sneak peak of some Goods items, straight from the pages of our upcoming February and March issues.
Power Is Knowledge Keep tabs on your energy use with an LCD-equipped
surge protector. It displays real-time info on power draw, as measured
by a current transformer. Acoustic Research LCD Surge Protector $85; araccessories.com—Lauren Aaronson
Universal Keys Designed to work as a remote control for a
living-room Media Center PC, this pocket-sized Bluetooth keyboard can
also pair with a cellphone for typing text messages and e-mails.
Logitech diNovo Mini $150; logitech.com—L.A.
Why it’s taken so long to get MP3 players with wireless capabilities, I’ll never understand, but I’m glad to see the trend finally emerging with this year's CES announcements. While Slacker’s player delivers custom radio stations, Haier is going after the podcast crowd (is there still a podcast crowd?). The ibiza Rhapsody player starts at $200 and automatically updates your podcast subscriptions anytime you’re near a Wi-Fi hotspot. A small thing, maybe, but at least it's another weapon in the battle against cable clutter.—Mike Haney
When Slacker first started talking about a wireless MP3 player that would learn your preferences in music and build you custom radio stations, the idea was awesome. Then more than a year passed and still no player. Meanwhile, services like Pandora and Last.fm built huge fan bases offering similar services. Now the player is finally here, debuting at CES, and the idea is no less awesome. The device will come in three capacities: a $200 2-gigabyte model that will hold 15 stations; a $250, 25-station 4-gigabyte; and a $300 40-station 8-gigabyte. You can set up your stations from any browser—so the device isn’t locked to one computer—then anytime you’re near a Wi-Fi connection it will automatically load enough songs (with cover art) to keep your stations going for several hours. You can also load your own music files on it, although that will take space from the stations. And because the music isn’t streaming, quality shouldn’t be a issue. We’ll be taking the device for a test drive at the show and let you know if the reality is as great as the promise. Whether Slacker succeeds or not, I’ll be shocked if Apple doesn’t incorporate something like this into the next generation of iPhones and iPods.—Mike Haney
The Consumer Electronics Show doesn't start till next week, but there's already some cool releases starting to roll out. We're especially looking forward to Olympus's LS-10; one of the only digital audio recorders that works with a wireless remote. Place the recorder on a speaker’s podium, for instance, and the infrared remote starts it from across the room.—Lauren Aaronson
Think the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen is big? How about a handheld with a 100-inch screen? That’s the promise of Microvision’s PicoP laser projector.
By bouncing pulse of red, green, and blue laser light of a vibrating mirror, the PicoP can paint WVGA (848x480-pixel) images up to 100-inches diagonal in a dark room—or about 12 inches under bright lights—on a wall, tabletop or any other surface.
Measuring a scant 0.26 by 0.79 by 1.57 inches, the PicoP is about the size of the original cellphone cameras, and Microvision hopes to make it just as ubiquitous in cell phones and other handhelds.
For starters, though, Microvision will bundle the PicoP with a battery in a separate handheld device, about the size of an iPod—called the SHOW, a prototype that the company debuted today. Microvision says it’s already inked deals with companies that will sell the SHOW under their own brands before year’s end. Prices aren’t set, but spokesman Matt Nichols says they could be made and sold profitably for under $500.
Microvision appears to be leading the slow-paced race with Light Blue Optics and Texas Instruments to bring the first micro projectors to market. Like Microvision, TI did show an early prototype laser projector at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show. But TI has since decided to switch from lasers to light-emitting diodes for its Pico Projector, and it is not expected to show anything new at the 2008 CES next week.—Sean Captain
Apple has filed a patent for a wireless system that would let users skip lines at fast-food joints, coffee shops and more by submitting orders through a handheld device, then receiving a notice when the double tall latte is ready to go. The system would work through a music player, a phone or a PDA and, ideally, allow the tech-saavy crowd to save some time. It would also track customers' buying behavior, keep note of their favorite stores, and what they like to order.
Granted, this is just an application, and the system might never come to be, but there could be interesting implications if it does. For instance, one blogger speculates that it could transform the iPhone into a kind of mobile wallet.—Gregory Mone
Was that golden iPhone that made the rounds on the web a little ways back a bit too gaudy? Care for something that still advertises your wealth, but in a more subtle, solid way? Well, now the same company is offering platinum iPhones for the wonderful low price of $2,230.
Now, if you're not managing a successful hedge fund, or you're unwilling to run with that Apple crowd, there are other options, too. Fortune just posted a few viable iPhone alternatives. They might not have the cache, or allow you to channel the spirit of Steve Jobs, but these cellphone slash music players will keep the notes playing in your head.—Gregory Mone
Mobile Note-Taker Stores Cocktail-Napkin Inspirations
You'll never lose another brilliant idea again. The Mobile Notetaker clips to a pad of paper and digitally records every swoop and curve of your pen, storing handwritten notes, sketches and, if you happen to be searching for a Grand Unified Theory, even equations. Sure, many of us now type these sorts of things into a Blackberry, or hammer out an email detailing our big idea, but there are still note-takers in the world. If you're at a conference or in a cafe, the device itself stores your scribbles, but if you're in the office, it can sync to your PC through a USB cable. A nice gift for a beloved Luddite, it's available at ThinkGeek.—Gregory Mone
As recently as September, Apple was playing coy when it came to a rumored 3G iPhone. At a news conference that month Steve Jobs told reporters a phone wouldn't appear before they can "see the battery lives for 3G get back up into
the five-plus-hour range." Nevertheless, its carrier seems to have less compulsion to hold back. Yesterday, AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson all but announced an impending 3G iPhone, responding to a reporter's question about the possibility with: "You'll have it next year." Apple declined to comment, but presumably isn't thrilled about the slip—especially when it comes on the tails of the holiday wish-list deluge.
Meanwhile, on PPX the news incited a flurry of trading on our 3G iPhone proposition. But until Apple proffers an announcement of its own, the stock's up for grabs.—Abby Seiff
Last week, the United Nations Committee Against Torture ruled that the Taser gun is a form of torture, and "can even provoke death." The group issued the statement in response to news that Portugal has purchased Taser X-26 stun guns for its police force. Basically, the UN thinks that's a bad idea, and a violation of the UN'S Convention against Torture.
Naturally, Taser isn't too happy about this conclusion. The company says the UN group is "out of touch" and questions its contention that there is evidence the stun guns can provoke death. Yet it's not exactly surprising that people are raising questions, since two people died after being jolted by the gun in Canada in the last two months. There's no evidence that the Taser devices actually caused the deaths, but officials are looking into both events.—Gregory Mone
The ability to download books, newspapers and magazines via a cellular data connection (at no additional charge) is the headline news about Amazon's handsome new electronic book. But there are other important features not found in previous ebook incarnations. The Kindle has a keyboard and the ability to annotate text as you read: great for students or grown-up researchers.
A built-in dictionary is just a few clicks away while reading, and Kindle supports downloadable audio books from audible.com. In addition to shopping, you can use the online connection to search Wikipedia and Google and, to a limited extent, surf the Web. (But the lack of JavaScript or Flash support torpedos many sites.)
What may prove most significant, though, is the pricing scheme for downloads. Nearly all the current New York Times bestsellers go for $9.99, even when the traditional versions sell only as hardcover editions at $30 or more. Contrast that with music and movie downloads. When you buy a digital album from iTunes you pay just a few dollars less than the retail price of a physical CD for significantly lower-quality audio. Same goes for the DVD-equivalent movie download pricing at iTunes and CinemaNow, even though there's no manufacturing cost of physical goods, essentially no shipping cost, and no store rent to cover.
Amazon is the first retailer to make buying the bits financially beneficial for shoppers, even if it does take a painfully pricey $399 device to get in on the deal. —Steve Morgenstern
For more on the Kindle, see How 2.0 blogger Dave Prochnow's take here.
The e-book is still alive. Amazon.com is set to start selling the Kindle, a handheld reader that is expected to sell for $399, and Jeff Bezos is calling it the future of reading. For a slightly less biased take, this CNET piece offers an interesting round-up of the e-book market, noting that the technology has improved—the devices are lighter, it's easier to download books, and the reading experience is easier on the eyes, too. The Kindle, for example, is reportedly going to be using technology from E-Ink that allows the reader to look at the digital page from any angle, like traditional printed paper.
But it's still hard to divine how these gadgets will fit into the market in the future; whether readers will ever really embrace them. This Nature blogger suggests that they'll be great for storing reference books—looking up this or that concept—but not digging into a novel.—Gregory Mone
A Paris-based company called Ratleads is releasing a three-wheeled skateboard that can be controlled via cellular phone. The company is calling its creation, Groundsurf, more of a surfboard, because of the way it rides and turns, but the real attraction is in the technology.
An electric motor drives the single front wheel, and you can change the board's speed with a Bluetooth-enabled phone. It will most likely run with touchscreen phones, so riders can simply slide a finger up or down the screen to adjust their speed. Which sounds cool, but you have to wonder how many people will be able to keep their eyes on the road, and not be tempted to check an incoming text while on the fly. Gordon & Smith will sell them here in the US.—Gregory Mone
The board is just one in a long line of lazy man's gadgets, check out the full list here.
If you don't feel like following the crowd and buying an iPhone, and can't get your hands on an iClone, either, don't worry your little tech-obsessed heart, because a number of companies are doing their best to bring the top features to other platforms.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a good round-up of the different offerings, including Palm's newly released Centro, a smaller version of its Treo smart phone. Sprint is pushing the HTC Touch, which boasts, yep, you guessed it, a nice touch screen interface. Nokia, the 800-lb gorilla of cell phone manufacturers, has been working on several fronts, and recently debuted its N810, an Internet tablet with a slide-out keyboard and enhanced multimedia features.—Gregory Mone
Google Officially Throws Its Hat Into the Mobile Ring
After months of speculation, Google's mobile phone plans have just been officially announced: under the guise of the "Open Handset Alliance," Google will be partnering with 34 industry heavies from around the world (including Samsung, Motorola, T-Mobile, HTC, Intel, NVIDIA, Japan's NTT DoCoMo, and China Mobile among others) to create an open-source, developer-friendly software platform (akin to Windows Mobile or Palm OS) called Android. Google hopes the new platform's open-source foundation, granting all alliance members full (and free) access to the source code and the ability to
customize it, will revolutionize the closed, carrier-controlled approach common in the U.S. that often leads to frustrating feature-crippling.
It's an interesting albeit predictable move for Google, mirroring the development of the company's search technology. On today's conference call announcing Android, Google founder Sergey Brin likened it to the open-source projects that he and co-founder Larry Page used as the foundation for their innovative search algorithm, noting that today's mobile phones are often equally if not more powerful than the computers they used to build Google just ten years ago.
The first Android-equipped phones are expected to roll out in the second half of 2008. On the PPX front, Google neither confirmed or denied plans of for long-rumored Google-branded "G-Phone" hardware, stating that if it were to be developed, Android would be the platform. GPHON is currently tumbling, but reports are still circulating of a true Google Phone developed in-house by the big G.
And for a look at the competition Android will face, take a look at today's Fall Cellphone Preview. —John Mahoney
Vision Research—maker of crazy-fast high-speed cameras—stopped by the Pop Sci offices recently with their first handheld model, the Miro.
The company has been providing high-end, bulky gear for customers like NASA, the NFL, and big-budget Hollywood directors. To see what happens when pieces of foam insulation hit the Space Shuttle, for example, NASA used Vision cameras that can take up to 500,000 photos per second. (Vision is already working on one-million-shots-per-second models.)
The Miro isn’t quite that fast. It shoots 1,000 frames per second at its maximum resolution of 800 by 600 pixels, at about 2,000 fps at 640 by 480—the resolution of standard definition TV, and at over 7,000 fps at 320 by 240—YouTube resolution.
Now, I was mightily impressed with a mere 300 fps from Casio’s possible upcoming model, but at a thousand or two thousand shots, you start seeing things that you never even knew existed. Take the simple act of flicking a lighter. In the following video, you see it first at regular speed (don't blink, or you'll miss it), and then at 7,155 frames per second – showing each spark flying off the flint and the slow, complex birth of the flame.
Unlike the Casio camera, though, Miro isn’t for your average consumer. The model used for the lighter video runs about $25,000. It’s meant for customers like factory owners who need to figure out why a machine isn’t running properly. With video from the Miro, they can watch it in slow-mo to spot the problem. Having an assembly line go down for even a few hours costs a fortune, so buying a camera that costs as much as a car is a modest expense if it solves the problem.
Don’t expect to find a Vision Research camera for $199 at Best Buy this holiday season, or next. But all technology eventually trickles down. So get ready for slow-mo instant replay of your neighborhood touch football games.—Sean Captain
Pop Sci scores a look at the brand-new open-source hardware platform
Creating new software has low overhead: All you need is a keyboard and patience. Heck, you can even grab hunks of ready-made code from open-source libraries.
But creating hardware is a lot, um, harder. At best, it’s a tedious process of soldering parts together. But often it’s plain impossible. Sharp may have a great miniature LCD panel you want to use. And they’ll be happy to sell it to you, as long as you buy 999,999 others along with it.
Bug Labs is tying to make hardware hacking nearly as easy as code mashing with its Bug platform: A series of components that snap together like Legos to form new gadgets. They announced their plans months ago and have shown renderings of the components, but today they took the wraps off the actual pieces. We saw them, and took pictures, a few weeks ago while working on an article for our upcoming January issue.
Key impression: The stuff is really small. Initially, I’d pictured a large, unwieldy, Rube-Goldbergian contraption. But this stuff is svelte. The Bug Base – a Linux computer that forms the heart of any gadget (top left in this photo) -- is a trim 5 x 2.5 x 0.6 inches. Not quite as small as an iPhone, but not much bigger. And the modules are a tiny 2.5 inches square by a quarter inch thick.
Four modules (enough to fill every socket on the base) will be available when the product debuts before the end of the year: A GPS receiver -- next to the base in the photo above -- and, from bottom left to right, -- a motion sensor, a touch-sensitive LCD screen and a camera. Bug labs hopes to release four new modules per season -- if they can score the parts.
Peter Semmelhack, Bug’s founder, said that it’s very difficult to get component makers to sell them parts in smaller-than-typical quantities (a few hundred or thousand vs. hundreds of thousands). To get a mini LCD panel, for example, he had to convince the maker to buy into the overall idea of Bug Labs and do the sale out of the goodness of its corporate heart.
The struggle continues. Wi-Fi is supposed to be included in the Bug Base, but as of a few weeks ago, Semmelhack was still looking for a supplier.
One possible future piece will be easy for Bug to put together -- the Von Hippel module. It’s named for MIT professor Eric von Hippel, who advocates the theory of “user innovation” -- that end-users influence product innovation at least as much as manufacturers. His namesake module will contain just an empty circuit board, to which hackers can attach whatever they want.—Sean Captain
It's imminent! Implausible! And now imminent again! We're talking, of course, about the rumored G-Phone, which would mark the search giant's entry into the wireless market. It has been talked about for months, with leaks getting squashed as quickly as they pop up, but today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google will make an announcement on the subject within the next two weeks. The company is expected to announce a suite of new software and services for mobile phones—it doesn't sound like Google is actually going to start making hardware. While Google remains hush, Wall Street has been happy with the news: the company's stock has been edging close to $700 a share.—Gregory Mone
Oh you poor saps with five-inch thick LCD TVs. Hitachi put them to shame today with its new 1.5-inch “Ultra Thin” line of panels.
The secret to that slim figure is in the backlight behind that panel. And that secret, for now, is remaining a secret. On a conference call from Japan today, Hitachi representatives would say only that it uses an “external electrode fluorescent light,” as opposed to the fluorescent tubes behind a regular LCD. What exactly this new term means was left to the imagination. But Hitachi did say that the TV requires a special LCD panel with “a conductive material fused into glass.” So the best guess for now is that the panel creates an electrical field around a container of gas to make it glow—as opposed to having electrodes inside a glass tube.
In addition to making the TVs thinner, Hitachi says that the new backlight technology extends the lifetime of the sets and makes them more energy efficient. It also improves color on the screen, expanding it to beyond what the HDTV standards require and especially improving reds, said a Hitachi spokesperson
The Ultra Thin TVs will be available in 2008 in screen sizes of 32, 37, and 42 inches. They are not the same as the super-duper ultra thin TVs that Hitachi showed off at CEATEC in Japan earlier this month. Those waifs measure only 0.75 inches and are scheduled to appear in 2009. Hitachi is saying even less about how those sets work, but some industry experts suspect that Hitachi uses light-emitting diodes for the backlight.
Hitachi didn’t specify exactly how much any of the Ultra Thin sets will cost. But Kevin Sullivan, the senior vice president of sales, said “It will definitely be a high-priced product” targeted at “highly affluent” customers who “seek luxury, prestige and style.” The 32-inch panel will be available in 2008, followed by the 37- and 42-inch models around mid year. All will debut under Hitachi’s Director Series line of premium products sold in specialty A/V shops and by high-priced custom installers, but Hitachi plans to offer the technology in more mainstream products later on.—Sean Captain
Steve's Blog: Third-Party iPhone/iPod Apps Are Back
The Web is still a-twitter after Steve Jobs's pronouncement yesterday that an official software development kit is in the works (due next year) for the iPhone, allowing programmers to build native third-party applications. There's something about the tone of this communique—effectively a CEO's blog post—that I just love, so to quote:
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.
As many are pointing out as the dust begins to settle today, Steve saved the best for his love note's conclusion:
P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.
While programming for the iPhone is great and all, that last juicy morsel is what seems to be getting Mac developers most excited. No matter how successful Apple's superphone becomes, its sales will likely remain a drop in the ocean when compared to the iPod, a gadget that has managed to sink its hooks into mass consumer consciousness like none before it. Safely assuming most future 'Pod permutations will be sporting higher-performance processors and an OS X operating system like the iPod touch, developers are licking their chops at the prospect of selling their applications to such a huge market of users.
In the end, though, Apple will have final say over what apps can and can't do via an "an advanced system which will...protect users from malicious programs." So you can probably stop crossing your fingers for that iPhone Bit Torrent client. The outlaw days were fun while they lasted. —John Mahoney
Nokia Internet Tablet Upgrade Brings Keyboard, Memory, Better Software
Nokia just strutted out the N810 Internet Tablet ($480) at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The most obvious upgrade to the earlier N800 is the addition of a huge QWERTY keyboard—revealed when you slide the wide LCD screen up. But other big changes are under the hood.
Nokia didn’t just happen to launch the new tablet at Web 2.0. They’re making the point that the 810 is fully equipped for the interactive Web with support for Adobe Flash (to support many online video sites, including YouTube) and AJAX (to support interactive Web sits that update info automatically, without reloading the page). Both are made possible by switching from the Opera Web browser to a new Mozilla-based browser. For more entertainment pleasure, the N810 also supports Microsoft’s Windows Media audio and video formats.
These are the biggest changes in the new Linux-based Maemo OS2008 operating software. (N800 owners don’t have to shell out for new software. They can download and install the new software on older devices.)
The 810 also gets built-in memory—two gigabytes, along with an SD card slot that can hold up to 10 gigabytes more. (The 800 has only SD card slots for memory.) Plus it adds a GPS receiver for location-based services, like local walking maps.
Like previous models, the N810 is not a phone, although it can hook into cell networks by being “tethered” through a Bluetooth connection to a cell phone. Its main connection, though, will be through Wi-Fi. In conjunction, the Boingo Wi-Fi network today announced that owners of the Nokia Internet Tablets, and its S60-based smartphones like the N95, can download an app that lets them connection to any Boingo hotspot for $7.95 per month.
The one glaring omission on the new N810 is any kind of office software. The big keyboard would make it a great laptop stand-in (or a poor person's OQO). But the only productivity app is a note-pad program. When I asked about it, the only answer was that people could use an online application like Google Docs. Hmmm…not too handy for a device that can usually only get online when you’re in range of a hotspot—and certainly no help on an airplane. Of course, Maemo OS2008 is totally open-source, and Nokia just announced plans to formally support developers through its Forum Nokia. So if there’s an app that users want, chances are someone will develop it. —Sean Captain
A Focus on Focus for New Olympus Professional Camera
Claims E-3 SLR has fastest-focusing lenses in the business
Unless you’re shooting a still life, fast focus is key to getting good photos—as I found out after taking a cardfull of blurry snaps at a dance party over the weekend.
And by its own admission, Olympus has been, er, not famous for the focus speed of digital SLR cameras and lenses. But the company claims its new E3 model is the world’s fastest—from 33 to 200 percent faster than any competitors. Them’s fightin’ words in the pro arena, where photojournalists embrace or shun a brand based on split seconds. (Canon’s speed advantage a few years ago allowed it to overtake and nearly burry Nikon.)
Olympus, famous for introducing technologies that competitors eventually copy, has developed several new tricks for the E3. It starts with the autofocus chip, featuring 11 cross-shaped sensors, for a total of 44 data points. Olympus overlaid an identical set of sensors—creating a houndstooth pattern they call cross-lamination. So if one set can’t lock on an exceptionally dark or smooth surface, the other set may pick up.
Then things get crazy-precise. A temperature sensor by the focusing chip allows the camera to determine how far the plastic mount has expanded or contracted, and adjust focus calculations accordingly. Instructions go to the new lenses which focus using “supersonic wave drive” motors that turn in increments as small as five microns—less than the diameter of a human red blood cell.
Given my experience over the weekend, I’d have been happy to get the lens in focus within the diameter of a human finger. But the Olympus tech might not have helped me at the party, because it was so dark. Like Canon (whose Rebel XTI SLR I was using), Olympus doesn’t put a focusing lamp on the E3. (Nikon does, however, and I’m contemplating switching.)
The E3 goes on sale in November for $1,699 along with Olympus’s first supersonic wave drive lens, a 12- to 60-millimeter zoom selling for $1,000.—Sean Captain
Motorola held a "research experience day" at their headquarters in suburban Chicago last week. The company served up booth after booth of technical delight to show what’s brewing in the labs. Some of the new tech is bound to make carrier and cable execs salivate but leave consumers cold. Want to pay extra for YouTube through your cable box? How about content-targeted ads in your text messages? I’ll pass, thanks. There were a few promising stand-outs, though.
Fiber-optic Amp
Fading signals have historically limited fiber’s ability to carry torrents of data over the "last mile"—from the carrier’s central office to your house. Motorola’s range-boosting amp could increase fiber-to-the-home availability—pushing gigabit speeds that put cable and DSL to shame.
WiMAX Gear
WiMAX, a next-gen, long-range wireless standard, has been in the pipeline for a while, and the menagerie of WiMAX hardware on display promises ubiquitous wireless broadband (though not as fast as fiber optic service)—whether at home or even in a speeding car. Sprint plans to start deploying a WiMAX network soon—though that could be on the rocks. To give a sense of the seamlessness, Motorola techs walked a WiMAX laptop across the auditorium floor, streaming video without a hiccup while the connection jumped from one base station to another.
Cable Communities
Motorola’s working on ways to bring social networking to the television—starting with a cable box community where you can keep tabs on what your friends are watching. The demo hardware consisted of two networked TVs, hypothetically installed in separate houses. A push of the button on one TV (right) brings up a list of what’s playing on the other TV (left, Inside Huskie Sports) — so you can share a pseudo-social vegetative experience without leaving the couch.
Gesture-based Remote Control In a similarly slothful vein, the company is working on a Nintendo Wii-esque gesture-based remote for your cable box—sparing you a grueling button push. The concept-remote I witnessed in action required rather violent gesticulation to change the channel or up the volume, so an energy savings over old-fashioned channel flipping may be a ways off.
RFID Shopping
One of the more amusing demos involved a hypothetical prom dress shopping-trip crisis, convincingly dramatized by a grown man who was at a loss for the right accessories. But RFID saved the day. A sensor registered the radio tag in the garment, and brought up a list of matching accessories on a screen embedded in the mirror. Disaster averted. The mirror can also send a history of your shopping trip to your cell phone, so you can review the day’s selections and show them to friends for second opinions.—Eric Mika
CEATEC in Japan was bursting with techno gadgets. Some were full-fledged products with price tags, others simply way-out science experiments. Launch the gallery here for a quick roundup of things from both categories.
For our complete coverage of the show, click here. —Sean Captain
Some of the Best Sights and Sounds from the Japanese Gadget Fest
This year's CEATEC wasn't just about ogling shiny gadgets, but about watching the gear in action. Following, in no particular order, are our some of our favorite video moments from the show:
MuRata’s Bicycle Bot
The best robot we saw, MuRata’s little guy uses gyroscopes to keep himself balanced while riding a mini bicycle.
Sony Rolly
Oh alright, we tried to resist following the herd and ogling the freaky robotic speaker. But dang, this totally pointless gadget is a lot of fun. So far, it’s a Japan-only product. But we already know hackers who are working on software for it with an interface that Americans can read.
Pioneer's 3D Navigation System
Pioneer displayed a technology concept in which you conjure up 3D images of items you are interested in - such as maps of intersection maps or gas stations, and fling them onto the GPS map to find their locations. Playing with the system would likely quickly become the number one source of road accidents. But it was fun to fiddle with while stationary.
ePaper Phone Pad Arrives Too Late
Japanese Telecom giant NTT was showing off a concept phone with a keypad made of electronic paper that allows symbols on the keys to change for new functions--especially handy in a country with three alphabets, and where Latin script and Arabic numbers are also often used. This would have been a great idea before the iPhone's keypad-less touchscreen came out.
Cutting Edge Image-recognition Software Makes Fun of You
Image-recognition software calculates your age, fixes hair loss. The horror! Image analysis was one of the hot trends at this years CEATEC show in Japan. In addition to Pioneer’s road-analyzing navigation system, both NEC and Toshiba showed how far the technology has come.
NEC’s system, called FieldAnalyst, is like camera face-recognition software on steroids. Beyond just spotting your mug, it does a critical once-over to see if you are a man or a woman and to guess your age. What’s it good for? Think extremely targeted advertising—a la Minority Report—in public places like shopping malls.
That’s something I’m not looking forward to—not because of privacy, but because of vanity. According to Field Analyst, I’m about 40 years old. Forty?! I’m a fit and young-at-heart 36. At least I thought so. Now according to NEC, the system on display at CEATEC only contained profiles for Japanese people—who apparently age more gracefully than we haggard gaijin.
Maybe FieldAnalyst inflated my age when it spotted my semi-glossy dome. In any case, Toshiba has a fix for that—via a digital extreme makeover. The real purpose of the exhibit was to show off the power of their SPURS engine—which takes the mighty, multi-core Cell processor that Sony so effectively wastes in the PlayStation 3 and employs it in PCs. Toshiba hasn’t set a timetable for selling systems with SPURS. But it showed off some amazingly souped-up Qosmio laptops fitted with the coprocessor. Two of them were running powerful Toshiba software that can create computer models in real-time. So you can apply special effects, like this awesome coiffeur and outfit I got, to live video. —Sean Captain
After years of promises from tech companies and premature prognostications by magazines like—oh, PopSci—the OLED TV is here. All 11 inches of it, for about $1,700.
What? I’m supposed to shell out all those bucks (Actually Yen, since it’s only in Japan) for a glorified portable DVD player? Sure, the colors are brilliant, the contrast is eye-popping and the screen is implausibly thin. But let’s remember the main reason we love new TVs—because they’re huge.
So why is Sony holding back on us? Turns out they haven’t quite figure out how to make a bigger OLED TV. For the small panels, Sony heats up the organic material into a vapor that condenses, sifts through a screen, and settles neatly on the glass. But this method won’t work for big screens and high resolution. (The current model is a sub-high-def 960 by 540 pixels.)
To go bigger, Sony has to switch to a new method in which they lay a sheet of OLED on the glass and somehow use a laser to make it stick. That’s about all I could get through the broken-English explanation. (Not that I’m complaining. I’m so grateful for all the Japanese who struggled to say something to me that I could understand.)
So when will they get that new method down and start pumping out the big(ger) OLEDs? It’ll be a few years, they say. Sigh.—Sean Captain
Screen resolution is so early-2007. At the CEATEC show in Japan this year, the big TV news is contrast—the difference in brightness between the lightest and darkest parts of the screen. The higher that difference, the easier details are to see and the more images “pop” off the screen. Nearly every TV maker is trying to push contrast higher, and they are doing it in many different ways.
Pioneer is showing off its new line of Kuro plasma televisions—named after the Japanese word for “black.” The screens require less power to stay charged up, allowing them to remain darker while the set is on. But that’s old news. Kuro TVs are already on sale in the US.
Newer things are happening with plasma’s big rival, LCD. Here the problem is blocking out the strong backlight behind the screen that washes out dark parts of an image. To fix it, companies are switching from big fluorescent tubes to tiny light-emitting diodes that can be brightened and dimmed individually in different parts of the screen. Samsung is already selling such TVs, and now others are following.
Dolby, of all companies, is getting into the business, with a set that pumps the contrast ratio by individually modulating LED backlights. (The photo at top shows the Dolby TV, at right, vs. a regular LCD.) How did they do it? By buying a company that already had the technology. Brightside (a PopSciBest of What’s New winner in 2006) pioneered the LED backlight concept years ago, and now Dolby is running with the tech, which they aim to license to other companies as they do with virtually every audio technology. So, is Samsung running afoul Dolby’s patents? A representative simply said that if companies are using the LED-dimming method, they should be talking to Dolby. Stay tuned.
If he’s right, maybe JVC should be talking, too. It showed off a 42-inch prototype TV with 128 individual LED segments and a purported 100,000 to one ratio. (Regular LCDs get, at best, a few thousand to one.) And unlike the competitors, JVC doesn’t use white LEDs but instead clusters of red, green and blue lights that expand the color range to about 116 percent of what the HDTV standard calls for. (There is already an effort to expand that standard in the future.)
While LCD is the flat-panel juggernaut, new technologies are trying to tackle it. Sony, a huge maker of LCD sets, debuted the world’s first TVs to use organic light-emitting diodes. Like the goop inside a firefly, OLED glows on its own, so the panels don’t need a backlight. That makes them super-thin (Sony’s 11-inch diagonal model is only 3 millimeters thick); and it gets rid of the leaking backlight problem. According to Sony, the new sets get a one-million-to-one contrast, plus 110 percent of the HDTV color gamut.
But wait. There’s more. Like Jason from Friday the 13th, a technology called field emission display will not die—though it’s not quite alive, either. The idea is simple. Take the phosphor-coated screen from an old CRT and remove the big vacuum tube on the back. In its place, put on a plate of microscopic spikes—each of which acts as an electrode to light up the phosphor. FEDs also have great blacks, and they can refresh screen images insanely fast for blur-free video. At CEATEC, Field Emission Technologies was showing off TVs that get at least a 20,000-to-one contrast and that flash 240 images per second—twice as many as the fastest HDTVs on the market. Sounds cool, but don’t hold your breath. Little Field Emission Technologies is venturing into a technology swamp that has already swallowed up industry giants like Samsung, Motorola, Canon, and Toshiba. FED may well be the future of TV technology, and it may remain so forever.—Sean Captain
Where Apple goes, Sony is soon to follow. Or vice-versa. So
Apple has its wireless gadget for getting iTunes video to your TV. And so will
Sony, maybe.
A chance encounter on the train from Makuhari station to Tokyo, I overheard talk
about a possible video-streaming system for Sony Vaio PCs that uses
ultrawideband to send uncompressed high-def video to TVs. On the PC end, it
requires adding a wireless chip. On the TV end, there will probably be a
wireless adapter that simply plugs into the HDMI audio/video port.
Watch for it in the next couple years.—Sean Captain
While in Tokyo for CEATEC, I made the pilgrimage to Casio headquarters and geeked out at their museum. I saw the world's first electronic calculator (about the size of a toaster oven) and also the first digital camera with—if you can believe it—an LCD screen on the back.
But my real purpose was to meet with the father of that old camera, Jin Nakayama, to see his latest offspring. It's so new, in fact, they haven’t chosen a name yet. But it’s the wildest camera I've ever seen. By mating a high-performance CMOS image sensor with a new, lightening-fast processor, the camera can shoot up to 60 (yes, 60) six-megapixel photos per second or—get this—300 video frames per second. That’s National Geographic-style slow-mo video from a consumer camera. Well, if Casio goes ahead and builds a consumer camera. For now, it’s just a science experiment. But the prototype I saw looks pretty darn close to a real product.
Enough talking. If a picture's worth a thousand words, this 300-picture-per-second clip of me drinking water is the Magna Carta.—Sean Captain
In Japan,
a phone company’s R&D goes beyond finding new ways to lock you into
oppressive contracts. The telecom giants play with all kinds of technologies,
like this fly-through video system that KDDI introduced at the CEATEC show near Tokyo.
Called Free-Viewpoint Video, it uses thirty cameras to
capture a scene from almost every angle. Software mashes the images together to
generate a 3D computer model like those used in video games. So, just like you
can walk around a virtual room Halo 3, you can zoom through a real-live scene
in Free-Viewpoint. The demo video, which provided almost unlimited voyeur opportunities of cheerleaders, was well-calibrated for this mostly-male geekfest. And KDDI
is considering providing various sorts of 3D eye candy for cellphones. But the
technology’s designer said Free-Viewpoint could also be used for
serious-business, like virtually-there video conferencing. —Sean Captain
Pioneer's GPS Concept Reads the Road Ahead for Better Nav Tips
Getting bleary-eyed from staring at the road on a long car
trip? Pioneer’s new navigation technology provides an extra set of eyes. Called
the Image Recognition Car Navigation System, it combines a traditional GPS nav
system with a video camera and software that analyzes the scene ahead to
provide better directions, warnings, and even suggestions for a more scenic
route.
Instead of showing just a digital map, as in other GPS systems,
Pioneer’s prototype technology displays live video of the road ahead with
information superimposed. For example, it adds an arrow to show you
exactly where an upcoming turn is—say, just behind the McDonald’s sign that’s
obscuring your view. It can also tell you the distance to a car ahead—by measuring
how large it appears—and warn you when you get too close. And it watches the
road lines to make sure you don’t drift out of your lane.
Best of all for people on long, dull road trips, the system
analyzes the view to decide how interesting it is. Lots of sky and flat,
featureless terrain ahead? The computer recognizes that as dull, and suggests a
more interesting way to go. Like many technologies debuting at the CEATEC show outside Tokyo this week, the
Image Recognition Car Navigation System i
Some of the best devices at MacWorld aren’t from Apple
