During a trip to Switzerland, my family started off on a day hike to reach the nearby foothills of a mountain. It looked doable, but as time passed the range seemed to recede before our approach. After many hours we turned around, having apparently failed to close any distance.
Crossing from now to the future in technology can likewise seem illusory. When we scrutinize and celebrate each tiny incremental invention as if it were a milestone, we lose track of time as if we were counting grains of sand dropping through an hourglass. Game-changing inventions are rare, separated by epochs in which progress adds up to a lot of sameness. Futurism is an unforgiving business. But sometimes, as in the cases of cloud computing and media convergence, redemption comes with patience.
Continue reading Editorial: The future comes slowly, but revolutions are worth waiting for
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Household, Internet
Editorial: The future comes slowly, but revolutions are worth waiting for originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Last year, Google launched its PageSpeed Service, aiming to improve our experience across the web while reportedly deferring its own financial interests. The concept was sound — similar services like Akamai work to accelerate web browsing by caching pages in much the same way — but there’s always room for improvement. The latest PageSpeed beta uses some straightforward techniques to improve performance even further, using a new rewriter called “Cache and Prioritize Visible Content.” Using this new tool, your browser will load content that appears “above the fold” before fetching text and photos that would be initially hidden on the page, while also prioritizing other content ahead of Javascript, which often isn’t needed as quickly as more basic elements. Finally, for pages that contain HTML that isn’t cacheable, such as when personalized info is returned, standard portions of the site are cached and displayed immediately, while other content loads normally. The new tool isn’t a perfect fit for every webpage, but we’ll take a boost wherever we can get it.
Filed under: Internet
Google updates PageSpeed Service so you don’t waste precious seconds waiting for pages to load originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve seen a few telepresence devices in our day, including the incredible AnyBot, but this little guy looks like it may make life at the office a little less weird and a little more bearable. It’s essentially a little telepresence platform for your Android phone (if the creator, Claire Delaunay, nets $ 100,000 she’ll make an iPhone version) that roams around and lets you chat with people in the vicinity. Think of it as a little robotic dog wearing your face.
The early bird robot price is $ 199. To interact with the bot, you simply call it via Skype after downloading the proper software. Motion controls allow you to move Botiful around the office, room, or under and around obstacles. Delaunay recommends using it to play remotely with pets and/or kids and to visit hard to reach places like a crawlspace or dungeon.
Interestingly, $ 399 gets you a Botiful dinner with Claire herself. You’d call in remotely, of course, and you guys could chat about Botiful in Silicon Valley from the comfort of your home desk chair.
The robot will come in red, white, and blue and she’s looking for $ 90,000 to tool up and start shipping. I, for one, welcome our dinner-having, small-motor-powered, Android-based overlords.
Last summer, try as we might, we couldn’t get too much out of Microsoft’s creative director for Kinect Games, Kudo Tsunoda, about what’s next from the interactive peripheral. More recently, in an interview with Venture Beat, Tsunoda was a little more verbose about what he thinks the next big thing in Kinect is — and it isn’t a Kinect 2. The good news is, he believes that no new hardware will be required, and the innovations will likely come from developers, as they better understand and utilize the capabilities. A combination of voice, tone and facial recognition along with motion detection will likely be the tools that push the experience into the next era — such as allowing users to participate in a game’s story like an actor. Hit the source if you want to read the full interview, but you can be sure we’ll be at E3 again this year to beat him, and others, with the question stick once more.
Kudo Tsunoda: ‘Waiting for the next big thing isn’t about waiting for the Kinect 2′ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform continues to pick up steam and hardware partners, one company has managed to stay out of the Windows Phone game despite their long relationship with Microsoft. Taiwan-based Asus has created developer units for the platform in 2010, and leaks indicate that they haven’t managed to get Microsoft’s mobile platform off their minds.
So with all that said, what on earth is taking the Taiwanese company so long to officially throw their hats into the Windows Phone arena? According to a brief interview with Pocket-Lint, Asus GM of Mobile Devices Benson Lin says it’s only a matter of time. The thing is, it’s been a matter of time for over a year now.
Let’s flash back to MWC 2011 — in an interview with Forbes, Lin mentioned that the company had the ability to launch a line of Windows Phones “but decided to look for the best timing.” They had begun work on their fledgling Windows Phones back in 2009, but ultimately ended up sitting out the platform’s launch because they “didn’t have the bandwidth” for a new cellphone project.
Lin took a similar stance at this year’s Mobile World Congress, where he told Pocket-Lint that they would do it when the time was right. According to him, the company’s strategy is to “focus and focus and focus” before making such a big move.
In fairness, it’s tough to blame Lin for taking the conservative approach here — while Asus is no stranger to the handset market, none of their previous smartphone efforts have caught on in a big way. Their sole model to hit the United States for example, the Asus Garminfone, was plagued by software issues. Certainly not the most auspicious start, but Asus has picked up their share of tricks in the intervening year and a half.
For now, the company is focusing all their attention on the Padfone, a smartphone/tablet hybrid that I got the chance to goof off with at MWC. It’s a novel product, but one whose ambitions may ultimately limit its potential among consumers. It’s got a solid enough spec sheet to be sure, but I seriously doubt anyone will be looking to buy the Padfone phone on its own. The device’s appeal comes into play because of the various suits of armor it can be slotted into — a very cool concept that was ultimately executed better than I’d expected.
Windows Phone could be a welcome outlet for Asus, and if their oddball device ideas are any indication, there’s a fair bit of creativity coursing through their halls. Meanwhile, most Windows Phones have already fallen into the doldrums of design — save for Nokia’s colorful entrants, many are nondescript black or grey monoliths. Microsoft has set forth a stringent list of hardware requirements to help unify the user experience, but those only provide a foundation upon which Asus could build. I don’t doubt that they could bring something interesting to the table, but at this point, the wait is looking like a rough one.
We do like a good indecipherable timepiece ’round these parts and Click’s KeyPad certainly fits the bill. Resembling an old-school mechanical numerical keypad, each button packs an LED — press any number and it’ll blink out the time in single digits, so if it was 9:15am, the zero, nine, one and five buttons would flash in sequence. Push the hash key and the watch will oblige you for today’s date. If you enjoy frustrating colleagues who ask you for the time, then you’ll be delighted to hear that it costs $ 90 and is shipping now. However, we’re not sure we could pull one off — maybe the hipster down the street will have better success.
Click KeyPad Watch is the timewasting retro-timepiece you’ve been waiting for originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sony’s Personal 3D Viewer’s finally found its way off the showroom floor and on to the shelves of Harrods? That’s right, the dual screen 1280 x 720 0.7-inch OLED sporting headset’ll initially be a limited exclusive to the well-heeled UK retailer, with a general country-wide release set for later this month. US gamers will have to hold out just a few more days until its end of October launch, but if you’re super impatient, there’s always that import option. Think you can shell out for the £800 (about $ 1,276) price tag? Then plan to pick one up the next time you’re in town to see the Queen.
Sony’s 3D HMD goes exclusive for Harrods, leaves America waiting originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We can’t imagine this Admiral wants to stick around in the docks for much longer, yet its date of departure from port is still unclear. Fortunately, the Motorola Admiral — the device that we presume will become the fearless leader of the Direct Connect fleet — is one nautical mile closer to the sea of finished products, now that we’ve been handed some pics of the skipper itself in the wild. It’s exactly as we’ve expected, as it looks rather close to the version we saw in the now-pulled “official” video. According to the image snapper, the Admiral is “awkward to hold due to the bottom being so thin and the phone being very top heavy.” It’s also known as the XT603, and unsurprisingly runs on Moto’s proprietary UI (formerly called MotoBlur). We didn’t hear of any change in the specs, so for now we’re still expecting to see the military-certified handset come with a 1.2GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8655 CPU, Android 2.3, 3.1-inch VGA display, a 5MP rear camera with 720p HD video capture and a 1,860mAh battery. One more pic of the sides below. Sound off, loose cannons — is this Admiral going to command your next two-year contract?
[Thanks, anonymous]
Continue reading Motorola Admiral spied in the wild, waiting patiently for its turn to sail out of harbor
Motorola Admiral spied in the wild, waiting patiently for its turn to sail out of harbor originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Oct 2011 20:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tired of trekking down the 101, just to charge your damn Tesla? Must be rough, but at least SolarCity’s looking out for ya, as it’ll soon install ClipperCreek’s EV chargers in your digs, right alongside the company’s residential solar equipment. The $ 1,500 SAE-J1772 compatible juicers will work with almost any plug-in vehicle we can think of — including the Volt, Leaf, Prius plug-in, Focus BEV, iMiev and aforementioned Roadster (provided you’ll spring for an adapter) — and being of the Level II ilk, top-up your automobile 5x faster than a 120V plug. Pair that with a solar panel lease, and you’ll apparently cut charging costs in-half — according to SolarCity, anyway. We can’t vouch for that, but if it doesn’t work you could always try to install something just a tad bigger.
Continue reading SolarCity gets in the EV charging game, we’re still waiting for our Leaf
SolarCity gets in the EV charging game, we’re still waiting for our Leaf originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Waiting does suck, but the wait is almost over! True Blood Season 4 premieres this summer only on HBO. For more information on True Blood, go to itsh.bo or jump in on the Twitter conversations twitter.com #waitingsucks Watch True Blood online at HBO GO® itsh.bo With HBO GO, you can watch every episode of every season of True Blood on your iPad® (itsh.bo iPhone® (itsh.bo or Android™ (itsh.bo smartphone. Free with your HBO subscription through participating TV providers. Check out True Blood on Facebook & Twitter: www.facebook.com www.twitter.com Video Rating: 4 / 5
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