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A smartphone with two screens - one of which uses e-ink technology and is "always on" - has been launched. The Russian company Yota said the phone would go on sale online immediately in Russia, Austria, France, Spain and Germany. The Android-powered phone promises to extend battery life by transferring web pages and other applications to the e-ink screen. Experts said it may prove attractive to users fed up with drained batteries. The phone has one LCD display, similar to those found on other smartphones, and a second e-ink screen which the company says lets users see the information they want without having to wake up the phone.
The frosted-glass doors on the 11th floor of Google’s NYC headquarters part and a woman steps forward to greet me. This is an otherwise normal specimen of humanity. Normal height, slender build; her eyes are bright, inquisitive. She leans in to shake my hand and at that moment I become acutely aware of the device she’s wearing in the place you would expect eyeglasses: a thin strip of aluminum and plastic with a strange, prismatic lens just below her brow. Google Glass.
Roll it up. Drop it. Squish it in your backpack. Step on it - without any damage.
Researchers are working on just such handsets - razor-thin, paper-like and bendable.
There have already been prototypes, attracting crowds at gadget shows.
But rumours abound that next year will see the launch of the first bendy phone. Numerous companies are working on the technology - LG, Philips, Sharp, Sony and Nokia among them - although reports suggest that South Korean phone manufacturer Samsung will be the first to deliver.
Sharing music with friends used to be intimate, even messy. We visited each other’s homes with stacks of records, and plundered album sleeves until vinyl littered the floor. Everyone negotiated song choices in real time, and when consensus proved impossible, DJ duties fell to whomever reached the turntable first. Sometimes this led to the 40,000th playback of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” And sometimes you had to listen to that weird friend-of-a-friend’s freakbeat sitar jam. “It’s number one in Berlin!” he’d assure you, as if this flimsy bit of context could convert your musical faith. Now Google wants to update this conversation-based music discovery system for the digital age. At its I/O keynote Wednesday, the company unveiled Nexus Q, a sleek streaming-media sphere that’s 4.6 inches in diameter and looks like pop art. Nearly devoid of outward-facing controls, Nexus Q is a puzzle — a satin-coated curio that begs to be touched and examined. But when you gaze into this mysterious black ball that crackles with light, you don’t see the future but rather blasts from the past: a return to speaker-driven audio, along with all the real-time social sharing that vinyl once inspired. READ ALSO : http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-media-receivers/google-nexus-q/4505-6739_7-35339164.html
Microsoft Research has shown off software that translates your spoken words into another language while preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation of your actual voice.
In a demo of the prototype software (starts around the 12 minute mark), Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s chief research officer, says a long sentence in English, and then has it translated into Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin. You can definitely hear an edge of digitized “Microsoft Sam,” but overall it’s remarkable how the three translations still sound just like Rashid.
At the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show, computer makers will be pushing a new breed of ultra-thin, ultra-light laptops amid a sea of razor-thin smartphones and tablets.
Last year, 140,000 people in the technology industry convened at the Las Vegas Convention Center to mingle and gawk at cutting-edge hardware. The organizers expect to welcome at least that many people next week.
Electronics makers use CES as a platform to show the types of products they plan to release in the coming year. The compact disc player, high-definition television and Blu-ray each debuted at past conventions. Decades since its formation, the yearly six-day event is a spectacle.
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Meet Google’s “talking shoe,” which aims to translate movement data in witty messages to users and their friends. The concept apparel, showcased at the search giant’s swanky SXSW Interactive headquarters, is part of a new arts project - ”Art, Copy, Code” – which aims to breathe a social, life-like experience into everyday objects. “If standing still was a sport, you’d be world champion,” the trash-talking shoe projects on a monitor hanging over a rainbow-colored obstacle course after it senses I’ve been standing still. At a distance, users seem a tad pathetic trying to trigger positive feedback from the shoe. But when I strapped it on, I felt oddly compelled to impress my new automated coach. Combining coaching (even robotic coaching) made lifeless data unexpectedly motivational. Essentially, it’s Richards Simmons in a shoe.
The annual glimpse into the future of consumer technology. 2013 in all its glory, glistening white and chrome. Covered, perhaps, with a thin layer of Gorilla Glass. Banks of HDTVs seemingly mounted in the sky like a Matrix fever dream, following you through the packed halls. Hundreds of thousands of bodies pack into a convention center in the desert in an artificial city built for human pleasure. Yes, it’s the Consumer Electronics Show, still the world’s biggest, and it kicks off in just a few days. The Verge is heading out to Las Vegas in full editorial and video force to bring you the most in-depth coverage of the show, the city, and the culture behind world of tech that you’ll find anywhere. What’s on tap for CES 2013? Read on!
California-based Double Robotics has come up with a piece of kit, called Double, that turns your iPad into a telepresence robot. Cost? $1,999.
Imagine you’re at your company, seated at your desk, when this iPad perched on a kind of pared-down Segway rolls up beside you. On the screen is the face of one of your co-workers located in another country who today is poking about your office, getting to know the layout, meeting some new people, asking a few questions. After a brief chat, it rolls off to the other side of the office. You look up five minutes later and do a double-take as you notice two of these devices having a conversation with each other by the water cooler.
Thanks to Double Robotics’ iPad-on-wheels – otherwise known as ‘Double’ – such a scenario could one day become a reality.
Watch it in action : http://player.vimeo.com/video/47000322
Playsurface addresses touch table design from both mechanical and electronic design trajectories, and includes: - A new, application-specific closed-loop digital image processing module to provide touch detection and tracking functions apart from the gaming/application computer - An open-hardware cabinet and surface design developed for cost optimization and flat-pack shipping - A USB interface standard and driver that reduces implementation of the touch table to the same level as plugging in monitor and mouse peripherals
Il l'avait promis, c'est chose faite. Le petit génie indien Pranav Mistry rend accessible à tous dès aujourd'hui, le code source et les plans du hardware de son invention révolutionnaire, SixthSense.
Via Jean-Philippe BOCQUENET
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