“The initial versions of Glass were just Sergey [Brin]‘s Oakleys with a phone taped to them,” Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures, told me in a noisy cafe in Midtown Manhattan. Given his position and our topic of conversation — Google’s Project Glass — he was conspicuous for wearing no eyewear whatsoever. “[Sergey's prototype] was not very compelling.” You’d forgive him for being a bit skeptical back then about what the company’s leadership was hoping would be the next big thing — or, at least, a thing worthy of the time and money required to iterate from those humble beginnings to the sleek device we now know and covet.
So, then, how did we get from those initial doubts to the launching of the Glass Collective, dedicating millions of dollars to finding, funding and fostering innovative applications (not just of the software variety) for Google’s new wearable? Maris spoke of Glass project lead Steve Lee and a later prototype that took photos every few seconds. “Imagine if you had this for your entire life. You could ask: ‘What did I do 10 years ago today?’” That was compelling enough for Maris to commit to the foundation of the Collective, helping Google move the project beyond a single product and into the all-important realm of the platform. This is a platform, he believes, that could change our lives over the next 10 years just as smartphones have over the past decade.
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There’s a good reason that Microsoft’s recent anti-Google efforts — including a recent admonition not to get “scroogled” by Google Shopping — feel like political attack ads: the team behind them is led by former pollster and longtime campaign advisor Mark Penn. Penn, who worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, joined Microsoft in mid-2012 as a senior vice president for “strategic and special projects.” The New York Times has profiled Penn, who came to Microsoft as the company was starting one of its most aggressive publicity pushes in recent years. “If any of our competitors say things about us that we don’t think are true, we’re not going to sit on the sidelines,” says Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw….
Getting an iPhone in China has always been hard. For most of its life-cycle, the phone has been unavailable in the Mainland except through the grey market. Now that Apple is allowed to sell units in Shenzhen, however, it’s gotten amazingly strict on sales per-person.
The primary limit is on walk-in sales. Users cannot buy iPhones at the store and instead are limited to picking one up per-day, per-customer. You can also only buy ten iPhones per credit card and you can buy limited amounts using gift cards, a loophole the grey market discovered early on.
Apple’s Chinese website also controls the numbers of orders coming in at once, effectively reducing the possibility that hundreds of consumers walk in to pick up the iPhone after a massive flood of orders. Apple also forced buyers to have their phones activated on the spot by employees and there are a number of safeguards in place to prevent repeat offenders from shopping.
Not surprisingly, little of this really works. Pallets of Apple products still flood the grey market and, like most normal consumers, the Chinese buyers resent this intrusion, thereby giving more power to the markets. It’s an endless, clever circle that often involves older Chinese ladies standing outside of Apple stores in New York waiting for iPads Mini while smugglers shoot iPads across rivers into the Mainland with a crossbow.
Arguably, I doubt there’s much grey market demand for, say, the Lenovo Yoga so it may be worth the effort just to keep demand high.
Samsung’s got one problem, but delicately designing a wondrous $ 9,999, 75-inch smart TV ain’t one.
Psst… and don’t forget that magic 30 million number.
Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, Samsung
Samsung video shows us the design story behind its 75-inch ES9000 smart TV originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Nov 2012 01:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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LG’s been stepping up its mobile game recently, with the Optimus G being the firm’s clearest display of podium-position ambitions yet. And just like its regional neighbors, it’s getting in on the “explaining-ideas-behind-concepts” video action. In this clip we see senior research engineer, Sebastian Hochan Song, explain the inspiration and process behind the new phone’s QSlide multitasking function. Again, like its fellow Korean nationals, nature and the real world play a heavy part in the idea process. Head past the break if you want to see LG’s thoughts about pushing Android multitasking forward, and keep an eagle eye out for one of our very own editors’ quick cameo appearance.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, LG
LG tells the story behind QSlide multitasking, won’t be mad if you tweet at the same time (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google’s stock price has been on a steady rise over the last three months — thanks to that growth, the search, advertising, and mobile giant surpassed Microsoft earlier this morning as the second-most valuable technology company, according to Bloomberg. It’s been a few hours since Google first surpassed Microsoft, and as of this writing both companies have market caps right around $ 248 billion. But given the huge rise in Google’s stock over the last three months while Microsoft’s has been essentially flat, Google should move past Microsoft into sole possession of second place before long (though we can’t make any guarantees where the stock market is concerned).
Over the past few years, Google and Microsoft have been increasingly…
Brad Pelo is suddenly in charge of a major Nintendo initiative for the Japanese company’s next big console, the Wii U, despite not being an employee at Nintendo. Instead, Pelo is CEO of i.TV — a “social television and second screen technology company” that’s worked with everyone from Entertainment Weekly to Engadget parent company AOL — and he’s the man responsible for Nintendo TVii.
At least he’s the man responsible for the company providing the software behind Nintendo TVii (the guy behind the guy, if you will). And his company brings more to the bargaining table than just software — existing relationships with cable providers and TiVO in the US bolster what i.TV offers Nintendo in a major way. “For Nintendo TVii, there is a mutual benefit in existing relationships we have. Like TiVO for example — we were the first to bring TiVO to the mobile platform. There’s also the benefit of tests that we have done over the years with the cable companies, based on components of our platform,” Pelo told Engadget.
But how did this all come about? He said it wasn’t long after Nintendo’s original Wii U E3 reveal. “The genesis of the experience you’re seeing here was really when the Wii U was announced, and it was clear that this is the ideal second screen,” Pelo explained. “Ideal,” in Pelo’s eyes, means a closed system with a “dedicated second screen.” In so many words, while he acknowledges that tablets offered by other manufacturers are technically superior, they don’t offer the same whole-system approach that Nintendo’s Wii U is offering. “You might not think of it as the ideal hardware compared to an iPad if I really had a dedicated second screen. But it is in the living room, and it’s persistent. It doesn’t even really work outside of the living room — it’s attached to the main viewing service in the home,” he explained, referencing the Wii U’s tablet-style controller.
Gallery: Nintendo TVii press shots
Continue reading Here’s the company behind Nintendo TVii (spoilers: it’s not Nintendo)
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD
Here’s the company behind Nintendo TVii (spoilers: it’s not Nintendo) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Call of Duty: Black Ops II delivers the most groundbreaking and visceral Call of Duty experience ever. Set in the year 2025, Call of Duty: Black Ops II propels players into global conflict featuring advanced weaponry, robotics, and drone warfare in a new Cold War scenario whose seeds are being sown in today’s headlines. New graphics technology drives the stunning cinematic action of the single-player campaign’s branching storylines and non-linear missions. Video Rating: 0 / 5
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In an effort to recreate the fusion reaction that occurs in start formation, the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA has been building up to some extremely powerful laser shots. Back in March, researchers fired off 411 terawatts, and we know that kind of power doesn’t come cheap. NIF’s latest test shot, fired July 5th, set a new record with 192 lasers producing more than 500 trillion watts of peak power and 1.85 MJ of ultraviolet laser light. Mind you, that’s more than a thousand times more energy than the United States uses at any given moment, not to mention a hundred times more power than other lasers can fire consistently. More record-setting shots are sure to come, and in addition to enabling research on harnessing nuclear fusion, NIF’s mega-lasers are helping inform the design of new laser facilities being built in China, Japan, Russia, France and the UK.
Filed under: Science
NIF sets record with 500 TW laser shot, lab-based nuclear fusion not far behind originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 06:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This behind-the-scenes video presents the making of a State Government video about leading technologies at the Automation and Robotics Laboratory (LARA) – UnB. Video Rating: 0 / 5
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