CrunchGear

CrunchGear

Link to CrunchGear

Sharp unveils glasses-free 3D display for ebook readers, tablets

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 05:01 AM PDT

It was just a matter of time, but now Sharp has unveiled a 10.6-inch display [JP], which is 3D, can be used without glasses and is suitable for e-book readers, tablet PCs and digital photo frames. Just like with the 3D TV the company showed today, technical details are relatively scarce (both devices were publicly shown for the first time today).

What we do know is that Sharp’s LCD is still in prototype stage, an LCD, a touchscreen, and that users can make the display switch between 2D and 3D images by the push of a button. Technically, it’s probably based on the “Mobile 3D Display” Sharp unveiled for portable devices ten days ago. Just like with that 3.4-inch model, Sharp claims their 10.6-inch 3D screen is extremely thin.

But in contrast to the 3D TV the company presented today, Sharp didn’t give any details as to when they’ll be able to mass-produce the new 3D display (the TV will be released in Japan in the summer, with the rest of the world following this year). We’ll keep you posted.

Via IT Media [JP]

Sharp announces world’s first four-primary-color, super-bright 3D LCD

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 01:21 AM PDT

We all know Sharp is particularly strong in the LCD panel space, which means it’s not a big surprise the company is the first to announce a 3D LCD with four base colors (Sharp has added yellow to the usual trio of red, green and blue). The company also claims the new screen is about 80% brighter than conventional models, boasting the highest brightness in the industry.

The display will be sold in Japan “sometime before summer”, as part of Sharp’s Aquos LCD TV line (they showcased a 60-inch prototype during a press event in Tokyo). Global sales are scheduled to start by the end of this year. Executive Vice President Masafumi Matsumoto said his company will reveal technical details about the device next month.

What we know is that unlike the smaller 3D display Sharp announced a few days ago, the new TV will require glasses. It will also feature side-mount scanning LED backlight technology to boost picture quality and a response time of less than 4ms.

Sharp bets high on 3D. The company expects the 3D TV market to expand to 10 million units in 2012. 3D AQUOS TVs are expected to reach 5-10% of all AQUOS models within the first 12 months, with Sharp projecting this number to grow to 20-30% after that.

Via AV Watch [JP]

CrunchGear Week in Review: Pro-Am Edition

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 12:00 AM PDT

Seagate teams with Paramount pictures, pre-loads DRM-laced movies onto FreeAgent Go portable hard drives

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 08:59 PM PDT

Seagate and Paramount are trying something new. The thought here is to offer consumers an alternative source for movie content and so select FreeAgent Go portable will soon come with 21 of Paramount’s best flicks. But of course these movies aren’t free. Nope, while they are actually pre-loaded on the drive, they cost between $10 and $20 and require a few annoying steps to be used. Still, while there’s nothing wrong with experimenting, this scheme doesn’t seem thought-out and probably won’t spur hard drive sales or stop anyone from downloading illegally — its two main goals. But at least someone is trying something different. Big props to that.

This is what you see when you plug in the drive, two folders — one with the movies, one with some Seagate software — along with a Seagate registration program. The movies folder contains 20 movies along with their cover art. These files are protected by some sort of DRM and while VLC plays them, the picture is scrambled. Users are supposed to login to a website to actually buy the rights to them, therefore descrambling the content.

But the process isn’t a fool-proof. First, there isn’t any files on the drive explaining the process. There’s only a small promotional flier that’s included with the drive’s documentation explaining what these movie files are and how to use them. What happens if this small piece of paper is thrown away like most instructional docs? There really should be some sort of included program on the drive that directs users to this website or at least explains how to unlock the video files. Hopefully Seagate has beefed up its phone support because they are likely going to get lots of calls regarding these files.

Okay, so let’s say the user gets past this first step. They still have to create a profile on a Windows and Internet Explorer 8-only website to purchase the movies — of which there are only 21 to choose from so far.

These are good movies, at least by my standards, but they’re also not omg-I-must-buy this-drive-to-own-these-type of flicks.

  • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
  • GI Joe
  • Shooter
  • The Hunt for Red October
  • The Italian Job (2003)
  • Ghost
  • Patriot Games
  • Beowulf
  • Enemy at the Gates
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles
  • The Love Guru
  • Coach Carter
  • The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
  • Nacho Libre
  • Jackass 2.5
  • A Plumm Summer
  • Carriers
  • Dance Flick
  • Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

The drive is supposed to come with a promo code to unlock the new Star Trek movie. I can’t figure out how to use it. The code doesn’t seem to do anything and I’m not spending $20 on the 720p movie just for this post. Sorry, I’m a starving blogger. The press release however states that “The films will be licensed for multiple devices to allow for portability and enjoyment of them on a desktop computer, laptop computer, or widescreen television, using the FreeAgent Theater+™ HD media player.” Don’t expect that much portability, though. These files are locked down.

It’s clear that both companies involved are at least trying to provide consumers with a legitimate storefront for digital media. That’s great. A good amount of consumers want to follow the rules and not download illegal content. But at least this implementation doesn’t work. It’s clunky requiring consumers to bypass needless hurdles while only offers a tiny amount of content at a high premium. Back to brainstorming, boys. Let’s try again.

Panasonic announces Micro Four-Thirds pro camcorder

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 04:27 PM PDT


This isn’t really something many gadget lovers will want (at an estimated $6000 it’s well out of our price range), but it does demonstrate Panasonic’s commitment to the M4/3 format, and not just at a consumer level. The AG-AF100 will fit with whatever lenses you see fit to buy for your EVIL Panasonic camera, and shoots pretty much every format you might want to shoot, as long as you don’t want to shoot any larger than 1080p at 30fps.

The device that springs to mind when I see this thing is the RED Scarlet, which may (if it’s ever released) actually provide more versatility and more resolution in a smaller package and at a lower price. We’ll see how things hash out; Panasonic makes good camcorders and if this thing gets released first, it could tempt a lot of pros not willing to wait on RED’s perfectionism.

Specs and formats can be found at the press release. 4/3 gets more interesting by the day.

[via 4/3 Rumors; image via DVX User forums]

iPad helps couple get engaged

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 03:00 PM PDT

We just got a cute story from a reader named Zach. Apparently he found a new way to propose to your best girl, using Apple’s new wunder-device. I’ll let him tell his own story after the jump.

This weekend I brought my girlfriend to a local ice cream shop where we had our first date. I also brought along my iPad, since I wanted to “field test” it, as I told her. We sat outside on the same bench we had 2 1/2 years ago, and I asked her to put on earphones. I then handed her the iPad and played a slideshow with music and photos of the two of us together, with a message at the end: “will you marry me?” I got down on one knee and proposed, and fortunately she said yes. Maybe Steve Jobs was right–the iPad is magical!

So good luck to you Zach, and your unnamed fiance, from all of us at CrunchGear.

Slow-motion RC cars look shockingly awesome

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 02:12 PM PDT


How did I miss this earlier this week? Take a tiny car, slow it down to about 1/10th normal speed, and all of a sudden it’s the greatest thing in at least a week. Nice drift at 1:40. I was also pleasantly surprised by that Nissan commercial from the other day — apparently RC cars are pretty cool in any context. Like the Micro Machines NES game. Racing around a kitchen table with Cheerios for lane boundaries is more thrilling than you’d think.

[via Jalopnik]

Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China, Part 2

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 10:11 AM PDT

Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government’s SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam’s writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here.

Read Part 1 of this series.

I am sitting in the lobby of the Royal Plaza Hotel in Mong Kok waiting for the owner of the factory that makes our Neverlate and Quad-Timer items to pick me up. The final legs of my journey were largely uneventful although it was nearly 2am local time before I finally closed my eyes to go to sleep last night. Dealing with the jet lag on the way out is easy. I basically stayed awake the entire time, dozing in out of a half-sleep the way that someone who is over six feet tall does on airplanes. Some five small airplane meals later, I had lost track of what meal I was supposed to be on. Acclimation to the time zone on the way back is much more difficult and if you've ever been to the International Pavilion at the CES you can attest to this first-hand through the observation of countless sleepy Asian booth attendants nodding off in uncomfortable plastic rented chairs.

Before I continue where I left off from last time, I'd like to pause to address the question that was the inspiration for writing this article. That question is why? Why "go it alone"? Why take the route that I've taken rather than license your idea (actually, let me be more specific – your product concept) to another party? I am of the opinion that there is a place for licensing, but it is not for low cost – say, sub $100 – consumer products. If you have a proprietary technology – something that you embed in another product then, by all means, license it. If you have an idea for a consumer product and the desire/willingness to put for the effort to bring it to market, then you should go it alone. The reasons are many, but the main ones are (1) IP, (2) margin and (3) control. Let me speak to these one at a time.

1) IP, or intellectual property. There are proponents and critics of the US intellectual property process and I would definitely fall into the category of proponent. That said, I know first-hand the realities of obtaining a strong US patent for a consumer-type device. Anyone can file for and receive a utility patent but there is a vast chasm between that and receiving a utility patent that is useful or, in patent parlance – "strong". If you plan to license your device, then at a minimum you need a stong patent – one that is defensible in a court of law. While you may not be able to read and make sense of the claims for a utility patent, you may rest assured that counsel for the company you are attempting to license your concept to can and will. Aside from the fact that patents are time-consuming to write, and ultimately expensive to file, many great product ideas simply are not patentable in a manner that will serve the end that you have in mind. Take, for example, a very cool toy that I saw while mining for new ideas in a Hong Kong Toys 'R' Us store. It's a children's train set similar to the wooden track toys of my youth. What's cool about it? Instead of plastic or wooden track, it came with a pulp-maker and a set of press molds. The child grinds up newspaper and makes pressed track sections using the kit, which are then assembled for the battery-operated train. Is it a brilliant take on a new "green" toy? Absolutely. Is the idea of molding paper pulp into train tracks patentable? In the eyes of the USPTO probably not or, at best, very very narrowly (i.e. a patent that the inventor of this toy might be granted will probably not be broad enough to protect against a host of similar knock-offs).

2) Margin. Speaking now from the perspective of the licensor – product margins on consumer electronic products are thin. Manufacturing costs continue to rise, consumers (that's you!) continue to demand rock-bottom prices and retailers remain stubborn in maintaining their, often very aggressive, margins. The result is that the guy in the middle gets squeezed. There is more room in some product segments than others but for electronics it can be hard to make the numbers work. As such, the idea of handing over an additional percentage to a product entrepreneur who walks through the door with not much more than an idea (and this happens to me once or twice a month) is not very attractive.

3) Control. Licensing an idea necessarily means relinquishing some degree of control over its final implementation. And that's fine for some but not for me and maybe not for you. After all, your product is your baby and no one else is going to develop it in just the way that you want. I respect what Chris Hawker did with his PowerSquid product (see related CrunchGear series). In fact, it was his article that inspired me to reach out to CrunchGear. However, you need only read his series to get a feel for the pain that he experienced. While ultimately successful in his endeavor, it wasn't clear to me that Chris felt very satisfied with the end result. It may have just been my interpretation of his story but I got the feeling that had he to do it over again, he may have tried his hand at bringing the PowerSquid to market independently.

Now all of this is not to say that doing it my way is all a bowl of fruit. It definitively is not. One nice thing about licensing that is not true of bringing a product to market on your own is that someone else manages the marketing, sale, customer service, accounting and logistics of your product once it is "done". Albeit at a great cost, but it is one way to see your idea come to fruition without having to spend the rest of your life dribbling it up the court, as I must.

So what exactly, you must be asking by now, is involved with sourcing this thing yourself? Ultimately what all of this productizing boils down is execution. What I mean by this is the "putting of the one foot in front of the other". There are lots and lots of little steps involved and it takes a detail-oriented demeanor to get it done right … to get it done at all, in fact.

Alright, back to the task at hand. One step at a time. When we left off at the end of the previous installment, you had a "long list" of possibly appropriate factories that you located on GlobalSources.com and a decent product specification. Hang onto your product spec for the moment. The next step is to blast off an RFQ to the members of your long list using the automated features of GlobalSources.com to do so. The automated RFQ (or you can manually email to the listed contacts, if you prefer) is a teaser.

The form fields will ask you to describe your project and you should do so at a high-level. Be sure to clarify that you're not looking to purchase and private-label an existing product that the manufacturer produces but that you have an OEM project (a custom, ground-up design) that you'd like to discuss.
Your RFQ blast should result in a decent response rate. You'll typically hear from one of the company's marketing or project managers. This is typically a young woman (but not always) that has a good command of the English language and a decent grasp of the technical process behind developing a custom product. She is the liaison between you and non-English speaking members – management and/or engineering – of the factory. She may even ultimately be your main contact for the duration of the project, depending on the factory.

Next you want to request that the factory sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) before you send over your product spec. Get one off the internet. The NDA is basically non-enforceable, in practice, but you should send it anyway. The factories know this, but sending the NDA (a) makes you appear serious about your idea and the protection of your IP – which you are and (b) is a handy way to take a first pass at eliminating factories that are not serious about working with you. This small bit of admin will quickly separate those that are genuinely interested in hearing more from you from those that aren't.

If you started with 12 factories on your long list, you're probably now down to five or six. Send these factories your product spec attached to an e-mail describing your interest in working with them. You should reasonably expect two to four legitimate quotations to result from the dialog that remains with the factories that signed your NDA. Some will determine that they're not a good technical fit for what you're after, others will simply lose interest. Along the way they'll ask you questions that you don't know the answers to, like: What will be your initial order quantity? What's your target FOB cost? What does FOB stand for anyway? (they won't really ask you this, but you should know). These are all questions that are elusive to a first-time product designer, but questions that have easy answers … perhaps in the next installment that I write?
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)