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Borders Looking Bleak Despite Ereader Offerings

Posted: 31 Dec 2010 04:08 AM PST


Book chain Borders sales are looking bleak and the company is apparently not paying publishers. The company is down two-fold over last year and, although some talks point to a potential Barnes & Noble merger, nothing has been finalized.

Sadly, Borders came late to the ereader party and is currently suffering for it. With Nooks and Kindles flying off the shelves, the Kobo is losing ground quickly. Here’s hoping something restructures them enough to survive the next year.

via BBC


Bill Murray On Tech

Posted: 31 Dec 2010 03:38 AM PST

“I don’t mind robots. I mean, R2D2 was alright. He was a fine actor.”

A Longer Version appears here via BB


Eleven 3D Printing Predictions For the Year 2011

Posted: 31 Dec 2010 03:33 AM PST

This is a guest post by Joris Peels, the Community Manager of i.materialise, a 3D printing service for designers, inventors and consumers. They are part of Materialise, a company with over 20 years experience in 3D printing and the market leader in 3D printing services and software. Making predictions is a sure fire path towards getting ridiculed. But, I'll be brave and go right ahead and make 11 predictions for 3D printing in 2011. Makerbot will sell more than 10,000 3D printers in 2011. To put that in perspective, there are approximately 30,000 3D printers in the world today. Makerbot would have to scale to meet this kind of production but given their strong brand and loyal following it should, together with some prime time TV coverage, be possible. Bre Pettis will appear on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in 2011. Bre Pettis is the congenial Maker in Chief of Makerbot. Possibly he will be holding a Makerbot. And for all you Kevin Rose watchers out there, this will not be the beginning of the end.


iPad Grabbit Case Helps You Keep A Grip On Your Tablet

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 07:51 PM PST

iPad case design concepts keep coming out, with more and more of them starting to look the same. The concept is simple: a hard case, with a hand-strap grip on the back that rotates 360 degrees. The case looks like a great idea if you depend on your iPad and use it for extended periods of time.

The problem with the Grabbit is, there’s already another product identical to it out there, called the Handstand. The Handstand is currently listed as patent pending, so the Grabbit people might be disappointed depending on when they filed their patent request. The Grabbit case also is “available soon” according to their website, so it appears that they might not be in production yet. The Grabbit is currently available for pre-order for $49 (plus shipping) from their website. Be aware, this is part of the Kickstart project, where a product will only be produced if enough random people ante up the money.

If you’re interested in looking at some other cases, check out our iPad case round-up from earlier this month.

[via iPodNN]

HTC Scribe Could Be HTC’s First Tablet

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 05:44 PM PST

Not a lot to see here, but it’s worth mentioning: HTC has filed a trademark request for something called the Scribe, and describe what they’re protecting as a “handheld wireless device, namely, a tablet computer.” That sounds a lot like a tablet computer to me.

Beyond that, nothing is known except that it was only just filed (on the 26th) and there are no corresponding patents, images, or logos.

[via PocketNow and Unwired View]

Proof That We’re Living In The Future: The iPhone Heart Monitor

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 04:19 PM PST

We’re living in the future, folks. Really, look around you: we have the biggest collection of knowledge in history available for free, at our fingertips — and we can access it in a car, at 70 miles per hour, without any wires. Planes can transport us across the country, or across the world, in hours (or, as Louis CK so wonderfully puts it, “You’re sitting in a chair.. in the sky.) Technology that changed the world and cost many thousands of dollars just 20 years ago now comes at a fraction of the price, and at a fraction of the size. Everything is amazing.

The thing in the video after the jump (which’ll be announced at CES next week) is just one more example.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Firmware For Canon T2i To Allow 4K Recording On 1/1/11

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 03:49 PM PST


This is pretty cool, though let’s all just admit right off the bat that the limitations are pretty major as well. This custom 3rd-party firmware is set to put out a release on 1/1/11 that will enable 4K recording (that’s 4096×2304) on the T2i, which is normally limited to 1080p.

The trouble? At that resolution, you can only record for six seconds. I’m assuming that’s due to running out of cache, but I could be wrong.

The max bitrates are around 175MB/s, which is the highest supported by the fastest Class 10 SD cards on the market right now. A dual-card setup might be able to stripe it, but at the moment that’s the limit (and also part of the reason it’s not for the 7D or 5D at the moment, I suppose). The bitrate is so much higher because it looks like it’s not compressing the image data, which would have taken up quite a bit of processing power. So you won’t have that smeary H264 look.

And yes, you can use it with Magic Lantern.

Of course, it could be a hoax — they haven’t posted any verification video or whatnot, but we can all wait until Saturday, I think. I’ll update this post then with whatever breaks.

[via Alexandros Maragos and Reddit]

With Nintendo 3DS Release Looming, Speculation Turns To Its Price Outside Japan

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 02:30 PM PST

We’re rapidly approaching the release of the Nintendo 3DS, and all sorts of things are being speculated right now. The latest concerns the price: what will it be? Nintendo has already said that it’ll launch on February 26, and that it will retail for JP¥25,000. That converts, at time of writing, to around $306. But will it actually be that expensive?

Pocket-lint wants to know, too. A UK retailer has slapped a £194.99 price tag on the system, but with a suggested retail price of £199.00. Given that UK folk typically have to pay much higher prices than others (the 120GB PS3 Slim can be had there for £259.99, or around $399, while the same thing can be found on the U.S. version of Amazon for $298), some have taken the £194.99 price tag to mean that the 3DS won’t be quite as expensive as once figured, if not feared.

Can Nintendo truly get away with charging, say, $300 here in the U.S. for the 3DS? Take your pick: a PS3 or a 3DS. I’d be shocked if it ends up retailing for more than $250 at launch. I think at $250 it’s pretty much an instant buy, because once you throw in the cost of a game—let’s assume for now that Ocarina of Time won’t be a pack-in—you’re looking at a $300 outlay.

The only thing I do know is that of all the fancy new toys that are expected to be released in 2011 I’m most looking forward to the 3DS. I have zero interest in any of the 8 million tablets that are coming out, and the Verizon iPhone is a big yawn—will it be so different that you’ll stop in your tracks, kicking up dust like in a Road Runner cartoon, and visit the VZW store in double-quick time? Nah.

Bring on Mario and Zelda in 3D, I say.

O Canada! World’s Most Web Connected Land

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 01:53 PM PST


According to a recent comScore report, Canada has beaten out the US, the UK, France, and everyone else in the world in various metrics relating to broadband and internet use. While the conspicuous absence of the likes of Sweden, a perennial leader in these categories, fills me with suspicion, the numbers are still fun, and slightly surprising.

One statistic calculated to both please and terrify is that, by comScore’s measurements, just over half the population of Canada is on Facebook. That amounts to about 16 million people — a drop in the bucket with Facebook’s user base — but it’s the proportion that matters. US usage is around 40% by some estimates, which is of course significant, but it’s fun that Canada has passed us up in this race. I’m guessing it has something to do with the weather up there.

Continue reading…

European Satellite To Bring Broadband To Isolated Areas

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 12:50 PM PST

I’ve never really liked the idea of satellite internet access, maybe because of the limited uplink, but I’m lucky enough to have lived in an urban area most of my life, and have the option of high-speed cable and DSL. There are cities, towns, and regions all over the world where satellite is the only way to get more than a few hundred bits per second, and demand is going up. European company Eutelsat has just launched a new high-capacity satellite that they say could provide high-speed internet to 20 million Europeans.

The new satellite is called Ka-Sat (artist’s conception, right), and although bandwidth and capacity aren’t mentioned, one can only imagine the kind of throughput that thing will have to maintain to serve so many users. I think we’re only going to see more of these — wired internet is great and high-speed, but it’s not cost-effective for the vast swaths of the world where there’s barely electricity.

By the way, isn’t it amazing that private companies are launching satellites into space in order that millions of people might have broadband internet? This is the future, people.

Android Malware Being Distributed On Chinese Markets

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 12:15 PM PST

There’s a new threat in town. And by town, I mean China. Malware authors have created a bit of code called Geinimi that hitchhikes on existing apps when they are redistributed on third-party markets. At the moment it doesn’t do much but lurk, but its capabilities resemble that of a botnet server, according to Lookout, a company that makes antivirus software for Android.

Continue reading…

Uproar Surrounds Possible French Tablet Tax That Would Exempt Windows-Based Tablets

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 11:50 AM PST

A proposed French law (well, an expansion of an existing law) has supporters of Android and other non-Windows operating systems slightly upset. The law would make it so that France’s private copying levy applies to all non-Windows tablets, that is, Android tablets and the iPad. The private copying levy was first introduced several years ago and adds a "copying fee" to several forms of recordable media, including blank audio CDs and portable media players of a certain size. The question becomes, what’s so special about Windows-based tablets that would exempt it from the law?

Certainly Archos would like to know the answer to that, being one of the few French tech companies you could name without having to google "french tech companies." The company’s CEO, Henri Crohas, came out against the proposal [French], arguing that its tablet PCs are merely small computers, despite the fact that they run Android. Since the French private copying levy doesn’t apply to plain ol’ computers, Crohas says the new law shouldn’t apply to its products.

It’s all to do. The private copying levy was first enacted in order to ensure that artists and related parties wouldn’t go broke as a result of the digital music revolution. A sort of, "Sure, you can buy that stack of blank CDs, but we’re going to have to tax you extra because we’re going to assume you’ll be using them for nefarious ends."

The question here is twofold. One, should the law apply to tablets in the first place, and two, if so, then why are Windows-based tablets exempt? Could it be that French politicians are trying to cosy up to Microsoft? Comments and message board rants would seem to indicate just that.

Starting with the first question, why should the law even apply to tablets in the first place if plain ol’ computers are exempt in the first place? Other than physical size, what’s the difference between an iPad and a Dell laptop? It seems artificial to apply the levy to tablets but not "regular" computers.

And if we accept that, that it’s fine to apply the levy to tablets, then why should Windows-based tablets be exempt? As Archos asked, what’s the difference between Android and Windows? They’re both operating systems, right? And given that Android is basically a tricked out version of Linux, does that mean the levy should apply to all Linux PCs?

It seems to be a case of creating artificial distinctions between nearly identical devices in order to curry favor with one group or another. You don’t want to see that.

The final decision will be made at a January 12 meeting.

Kindle Users: Go Forth And Loan

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 11:25 AM PST


Back in October, we heard from Amazon that Kindle users (on all platforms) would soon be able to lend their books to each other. It was one of the features the Kindle lacked that Barnes & Noble really liked to shove in consumers’ faces, but as of today that’s no longer a problem. The loan program is now live, and the process looks pretty simple.

All you do is go to the book management screen and click the “Loan this book” button. You can send it to anyone at all, since the Kindle app is cross-platform, and the recipient has seven days to accept. The total loan period lasts 14 days, so after that’s expired, it comes back to you, or the person who has it can return it at any time.

There are a few rules, of course: you can only lend books to users in the US, and not all books can be loaned.

On a side note, Amazon should work on the lend/loan thing. I mean, the grammarians of the day (such as they are) seem to consider them interchangeable, but traditionally lend is the verb and loan is the noun. So books are lendable, but the button says loan this book? Anyway. They’ll work it out.

In 2011, AT&T Resolves To Beg Jobs For iPhone Exclusivity & Android To Stop Ripping Off iOS

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 11:00 AM PST

Some of these are pretty good. AT&T, for example, genuflecting at the feet of Steve Jobs to ensure the iPhone remains exclusive to them (fat chance).

Then there’s good ol’ Android ripping off iOS at every opportunity, and Facebook steamrolling all over your expectations of privacy—keeping in mind no one has forced you to join Facebook in the first place.

It’s not Pryor, but worth a chuckle.


Chaos Communication Congress: PS3 Security An ‘Epic Fail,’ Dongle-less Hacking Solution Now Possible

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 10:00 AM PST

Darn shame that none of us thought to attend the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. Why cover fun stuff, right? Thankfully PSGroove made it out there, and came away with video of a video game console security discussion. The Wii has been "broken" (hackable, in other words) pretty much since Day One; the Xbox 360 has been hackable for a few years now (JTAGing is the way to go these days); and the PS3′s security is dead as disco. This, despite all of Sony’s huffing and puffing, particularly with regard to its stance toward Linux. In other words, Sony’s security can now be considered an "epic fail." Note to self: do not get on the Linux’s community’s bad side.

The gist of the talk, which is broken into several 15 minute chunks, is that the PS3 can now be hacked with a dongle-less solution, making all of those paid dongle solutions a complete waste of money. The hack wasn’t invented to placate silly kids who want to download the latest PS3 game, but for folks who want to be able to run homebrew code (read: Linux) on the hardware they own.

All of this would seem to invalidate Sony’s original decision to remove the Other OS option for the PS3, fearing that it would leave the system susceptible to hacking.

And now it’s been hacked. Good job.

Mireo Shows Off Slick Croatian GPS Mapping Software For The Notion Ink Adam

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 09:30 AM PST


Give this video demo a chance. The first part looks a little antiquited — almost like an old version of MS Streets & Trips — but the party begins once the route is executed and the virtual trip is started. It seems Mireo traditionally only does European mapping and mainly in their home country of Croatia, but perhaps the mapping software is compatible with other provider’s maps. Still, if nothing else, it shows that Adam is capable swanky software outside of the homebrew apps.

Dear Manufacturers: You’ve Had A Rough Year, But Step It Up

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 09:20 AM PST

It seems, at least at first blush, that we are out of the slimy gullet and into the potentially less dangerous teeth of this recession. Joblessness is still high but folks I know who are working in IT and CS are in high demand. People are hiring, but not out in the open, and shoppers, as evidenced by this year's holiday season, have a little bit of cash. But CE manufacturers, back in 2008, pulled into their turtle shells and haven't come out. The past few years have passed in a slothful haze and I'm worried that 2011 will be another year of negative innovation. Consider what happened this year: we saw a load of Android phones, we saw an iPad and a new iPhone, and saw some tablets. That's it. 3D TV was a flop, most other product lines saw little or no improvement, and generally CE industry sat this year out. CES, if all portents can be believed, will be a bust as well. People ask me every year what my favorite gadget is. That's almost impossible to answer. Sadly, for me, it's like asking a proctologist about his favorite patient: they all sort of blend together and none of the experiences are very nice. So what is my favorite gadget? The gadget that truly stood out? It's the freaking Parrot AR.Drone. That's right. A toy. Here's why, and here's what manufacturers can take away from this toy.


Amazon, Netflix Top Customer Satisfaction This Holiday Season

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 09:00 AM PST

2010 was a great year if your name was Amazon (whereas it was merely an average year if your name was Roy Hodgson). The new Kindle seems to have done quite well for itself, and now there’s word that people were quite happy with Amazon during the holidays. A new report from ForeSee Results shows that Amazon earned itself an 86 (out of 100) in customer satisfaction this holiday season. That’s the top of the heap, mind you: it, along with Netflix, were the two most satisfying electronic retailers of the season.

Obviously you can read a chart, but the other retailers in the 80+ bracket were QVC, Avon, LL Bean, Newegg, and Apple.

Foresee Results says that customer satisfaction isn’t merely accrued by having the lowest prices around—though that certainly helps. People look for things like ease of use (your Web site had better be easy to navigate, etc.), information accuracy, and the actual merchandise available ("why don’t they have that item I need, aaaagh!").

It should be noted that overall consumer satisfaction was down one percent from last year, but even that’s still an improvement over previous years.

NookColor is Barnes & Noble’s Top Seller This Holiday

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 08:58 AM PST

In a few short weeks, the NookColor sold “nearly a million units,” at least according to B&N, making it the company’s best selling product. Launched in October, the NookColor is a hackable Android tablet originally designed to only read B&N’s line of ebooks and play a few games. Since its launch, however, it’s become a hacker’s plaything and a popular alternative to the do-it-all iPad.

In short, the NookColor could be B&N’s ultimate weapon against Kindle hedgemony and has definitely put them firmly in the ereader race. Full PR after the jump.

NOOK™ Line of eReading Devices Becomes
Barnes & Noble's Biggest Bestseller in Its History

NOOKcolor™ is Company's Top Holiday Gift

Millions of NOOK™ Devices and Expansive Digital Catalog Combine to Result in Nearly One Million NOOKbooks Sold on Christmas Day

New York, New York – December 30, 2010 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller, today announced that with millions of NOOK eReading devices sold, the line has become the company's biggest bestseller ever in its nearly 40-year history. The new NOOKcolor Reader's Tablet, introduced just eight weeks before Christmas, is the company's number one selling gift of the holiday season. Barnes & Noble also announced that it now sells more digital books than its large and growing physical book business on BN.com, the world's second largest online bookstore. With its growth across device and NOOKbook™ sales over the critical holiday selling season, Barnes & Noble has successfully established itself as a leader in digital reading.

Demand for the critically acclaimed NOOKcolor remained high following the product's introduction in late October through the holidays. Sales have continued to exceed the company's high expectations. In addition to a great customer response, NOOKcolor has received high praise and critical acclaim from leading technology and consumer media outlets including being named "Editors' Choice" and the "Best Android Tablet of The Year." The company also experienced robust sales for its award-winning line of NOOK 3G and Wi-Fi devices, which feature an E-Ink display and a color touchscreen for navigation.

The company also reported record holiday sales from its comprehensive two-million-title catalog, including nearly one million NOOKbooks purchased and downloaded on Christmas Day alone. Through Barnes & Noble's eReading offerings, customers can buy and read their NOOKbooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOKcolor, NOOK 3G, Wi-Fi®, and using NOOK apps on popular devices including iPad™, iPhone®, Android™ smartphones and more. Among the best-selling titles of the holiday season were James Patterson's Cross Fire, Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Confession by John Grisham, and Decision Points by former U.S. President George W. Bush.

"NOOKcolor became the gift of choice over the holidays for people who love to read everything – books, magazines, newspapers, children's books and more – in rich, beautiful color," said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. "The success of NOOKcolor, along with our unique ability to market NOOK devices to readers in our stores and through our strong channel partnerships with Best Buy, Walmart and Books-a-Million, resulted in the continued explosive growth of our Digital Content business and our NOOK line, our most successful products ever. We have a large online book business at BN.com, that's been recently growing. And the fact that eBook unit sales now exceed physical book sales through BN.com, illustrates how quickly we've grown this exciting new business at Barnes & Noble."

NOOKcolor is the first full-color touch Reader's Tablet that integrates books, magazines, newspapers and children's books – all in amazing, rich color in a device that weighs less than a pound. It features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen and is the most social reading device ever built. NOOKcolor is available at your local Barnes & Noble store and at www.NOOKcolor.com, as well as Best Buy, Walmart and Books-A-Million stores.


What Do The Most Pirated Games Of 2010 Tell Us About Ourselves?

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 08:00 AM PST

Trusting in TorrentFreak’s numbers, Call of Duty: Black Ops was the most downloaded (read: pirated) game of 2010. You probably could have predicted that, but there’s something far more interesting in the Xbox 360 numbers, and it’s that Black Ops was only the fifth most pirated game of the year. The number one Xbox 360 game on this ignominious list is Dante’s Inferno. That’s an odd one.

Lord only knows how TorrentFreak is able to put together these lists, but they’re the best we’re ever going to get, so it’s worth a quick discussion.

First of all: can we finally put aside the notion that piracy is only possible on the PC? To install a PC game these days pretty much requires you to draw a chalk outline of Metatron in your kitchen, then hope to high heaven that Ubisoft’s (or whoever’s) authentication servers remain online. Why don’t you have to do that with the console version?

Oh, right: because piracy online exists on the PC, so let’s spend untold sums either developing or buying a DRM regime. That’ll solve the problem.

Then there’s the obvious one: what good did all that DRM do if people are still able to pirate the game?

The Nintendo list is also worth a mention, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 coming in first place. What’s most interesting here is that, looking around various Usenet indexing sites, it seems that Nintendo games have a habit of disappearing from popular servers. Could Nintendo be quietly fighting Usenet-based piracy? It would certainly seem that way.

As to my headline question, it would suggest that we’re all fine with playing generic shooter after generic shooter, over and over again. Let’s not forget that all those music games pretty much ruled the world a few years ago, and where are they now? Could the same thing happen to the current Call of Duty craze?
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