Reality Bites
We would normally roll our eyes at the thought of someone willing to broadcast themselves online for a day straight—unless that someone is Conan O’Brien. Starting at 1 pm EST, the CoCo Cam will go live on YouTube. More »
You’ve probably seen quite a few flatbed scanner bars in your lifetime, but the $400 Lexmark Genesis printer doesn’t have one of those — it’s got a 10 megapixel digital camera with a fish-eye lens that produces nigh-instant images. 750 milliseconds after you close its front-facing scan bay, the CMOS sensor generates a preview on the 4.3-inch color touchscreen, and 2.2 seconds after that, it’s got a full 300 dpi image saved on your USB-connected computer or winging its way across 802.11n WiFi. The company’s calling the system FlashScan, and the raw speed was definitely impressive when we saw it in San Francisco this week, even though other parts of the print system left something to be desired.
The printer uses special algorithms to translate the fish-eye image back into a flat sheet and reproduces text quite well, but the twin RGB flashes it fires to reproduce color didn’t always do an accurate job, and we were disappointed to find a number of features (including some obvious oversights like image rotation for copies) weren’t accessible via the touchscreen. It does have a number of neat web apps for completely untethered use, however, including the ability to scan right to Evernote and Photobucket and Box.net, and Lexmark told us it’s working with a number major photo hosting services, Twitter and Facebook to let Genesis users directly upload. See it in action on video after the break, along with the full press release.
Continue reading Lexmark intros Genesis all-in-one printer with camera-based scanning, we go eyes-on
Lexmark intros Genesis all-in-one printer with camera-based scanning, we go eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It may have “Windows” in the branding, but Windows Phone 7 is not the desktop PC experience shoehorned into a cellphone. Microsoft tried that with Windows Mobile… and we all know how that turned out. Today, eight months after the Windows Phone 7 OS unveiling in Barcelona, we're finally seeing the official launch of the retail hardware: nine new WP7 handsets, some available October 21 in select European and Asian markets and others from early November in the US. The phones will find their way to over 60 cellphone operators in more than 30 countries this year. Microsoft tapped Dell, HTC, LG, and Samsung to deliver the Snapdragon-based handsets with a carrier list that includes AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Vodafone, TELUS, América Móvil, Deutsche Telekom AG, Movistar, O2, Orange, SFR, SingTel, and Telstra. And that's just for the first wave — Microsoft has even more handsets coming in 2011 including the first for Sprint and Verizon in the US. Here's the lineup of 480 x 800 pixel (WVGA) phones announced today:
“Glance and Go,” is the slogan Microsoft is using to differentiate itself from an already crowded smartphone market. Something we’ve already seen alluded to in that leaked AT&T ad. As Ballmer notes, “Microsoft and its partners are delivering a different kind of mobile phone and experience – one that makes everyday tasks faster by getting more done in fewer steps and providing timely information in a ‘glance and go’ format.” He’s referring to WP7’s customizable Live Tiles, of course. Xbox Live integration is another biggie with EA Games just announcing its first Xbox Live-enabled wares coming to Windows Phone 7 in the fall including “Need for Speed Undercover,” “Tetris,” “Monopoly,” and “The Sims 3.” The other big differentiators are the slick Metro UI, integrated support for Zune media and Zune Pass subscriptions, Bing search and maps, Windows Live including the free Find My Phone service, and Microsoft Office Mobile.
Now quit stalling and jump past the break for the full list of handsets per carrier and country.
Update: Added the official WP7 overview videos after the break.
Microsoft announces ten Windows Phone 7 handsets for 30 countries: October 21 in Europe and Asia, 8 November in US (Update: Video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This video shows the Sikorsky X2 breaking the world's helicopter speed record: 260 knots—that's 299.2mph vs the 172mph of conventional helicopters. Bonus: The video shows their X2 Light Tactical Helicopter too. More »
Android/iOS/Windows Mobile: If your main objection to location sharing services is that you don’t want to share your location all the time and when you do you’d like easy and private sharing, Glympse is a private and real-time location sharing tool. More »
It’s hard not to love the crazy stuff happening at Microsoft Research, but it’s also hard to imagine when any of it is going to actually start changing the way we interact with our PCs. Surface was bested by SecondLight as the coolest tech we can’t buy, and now here comes another successor: LightSpace. This gets rid of the expensive table in favor of a (surely not cheap) series of projectors hanging from the ceiling paired to a 3D camera. The camera detects the relative position of things and instructs a projector to apply a Surface-like interface onto any flat surface. From there a user can literally grab any file they like and carry it over to another surface, where it will be displayed. It’s all demonstrated quite handily in the video below, and while the system does look a wee bit rough at the moment, the potential is surely there. Just like it was with SecondLight, and Surface, and Courier…
Continue reading Microsoft LightSpace brings Surface (plus shadows) to any table (video)
Microsoft LightSpace brings Surface (plus shadows) to any table (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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![Click here to read Cellphones Can Ruin Your Sex Life? [NSFW]](http://cache-03.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/09/160x120_5cm5jtfjlhe.jpg "Click here to read Cellphones Can Ruin Your Sex Life? [NSFW]")
My sex-ed class was pretty comprehensive, but it most certainly didn’t cover how a simple gadget could could ruin someone’s sex life. Why was I never educated about the dangers of butt-dialing while fooling around before? More »
Imagine yourself on a beautiful, tropical vacation—or just fake it. For around $40 a couple hours of your time, you can have a highly-usable portable green screen and put yourself anywhere. More »
Can’t get enough of the Galaxy Tab? Then Samsung’s got you covered with its latest, and possibly most detailed video overview of the tablet yet. Running just over nine minutes, the video doesn’t exactly offer a ton in the way of surprises (apart from a rather curious contact listing for someone named “Bill Jobs”), but Samsung’s demonstration of the Tab’s email client did catch our eye. As you can see above, it shows a Gmail account with what appears to be starred emails. Unfortunately, it’s not clear if those stars are actually tied to Gmail, since the client also showed the same stars in a Hotmail account during our first hands-on with the device. So, is a star just a star, or a star? Just one of many things to ponder as you watch the complete video after the break.
Continue reading New Galaxy Tab video offers thorough overview, glimpse of starry mail client
New Galaxy Tab video offers thorough overview, glimpse of starry mail client originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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HP has done plenty of its own teasing of the HP Slate, but in-the-wild spottings are few and far between. Now our favorite YouTuber and yours, x313xkillax, has a video of an HP Slate prototype. (There’s some speculation that this is a fake, but from everything we know about the tablet we’re pretty sure this is the real deal.) The hardware looks similar to what we’ve seen before, though perhaps a bit further along than version Conecti.ca “reviewed” back in April. We’re pleased with the boot time of the device and seemingly fine Flash performance, and x313xkillax calls the touchscreen very responsive, but as you can see in the video after the break, Windows 7 still isn’t really designed for finger operation. Just like HP seemed to realize when it bought Palm and bumped this tablet from a consumer launch to a niche enterprise product.
Continue reading HP Slate prototype caught in the wild, booted to Windows 7
HP Slate prototype caught in the wild, booted to Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
There are a lot of reasons to want to watch a YouTube video simultaneously with someone—such as conversation that doesn't involve constant mentions of timestamps. The simple way to get in sync like that? YouTubeSocial. More »
