CrunchGear |  |
- Mechanical Engineering Community GrabCAD Grabs $4 Million
- Daily Crunch: Compartment
- HP Unveils Two New Desktop PCs: The Omni All-In-One And The HPE h9 Phoenix
- Holo Promise: Google Moves To Ensure UI Integrity On All Android 4.0 Devices
- The Cord-On-Board iPhone Case Hides A Charging Cable Inside
- India’s Low-Cost Aakash Tablet Pre-Orders Hit 1.4 Million
- Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) Specs Trickle Out
- The SiriusXM Lynx Is A Portable Satellite Radio… With A Twist!
- The Swift Rise And Sad Fall Of The Asus Transformer Prime Android Tablet
- Miss Your Cat? Now Fluffy Can Send You Tweets All Day Long
- Siri Android Clones Are Laughable At Best
- RIM’s New PlayBook Promo: All Models For $299
| Mechanical Engineering Community GrabCAD Grabs $4 Million Posted: 04 Jan 2012 04:24 AM PST  GrabCAD, which operates a community for (and founded by) mechanical engineers, where they can share knowledge and collaborate on CAD models, engineering projects and whatnot, has raised $4 million in Series A to add to its its $1.1 million seed round from back in June 2011. The Series A round was led by previous investor Matrix Partners; the firm’s David Skok will be taking a board seat. Other existing backers such as Atlas Venture also participated. GrabCAD, which notably ‘graduated’ from not one but two tech startup accelerators (Seedcamp and TechStars Boston), says its community has now attracted over 70,000 registered engineers. Recently, they passed the 1 million download mark, and GrabCAD founder and CEO Hardi Meybaum tells me there have been another 200,000 downloads of CAD models in the past 3 weeks. The capital will be used to grow the GrabCAD.com marketplace and community, and to hire 15 new people (mainly software engineers and product managers) in the Boston and Talinn, Estonia regions.
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| Posted: 04 Jan 2012 01:00 AM PST  Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets posts: Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) Specs Trickle Out The Swift Rise And Sad Fall Of The Asus Transformer Prime Android Tablet India's Low-Cost Aakash Tablet Pre-Orders Hit 1.4 Million The Cord-On-Board iPhone Case Hides A Charging Cable Inside
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| HP Unveils Two New Desktop PCs: The Omni All-In-One And The HPE h9 Phoenix Posted: 03 Jan 2012 09:01 PM PST  Ultrabooks are all the rage for 2012, and we’ll probably see quite a few of them at CES next week. But there are still some of us who prefer a more robust computing experience, which is why HP has today announced the Omni 27-inch all-in-one and the Pavilion HPE h9 Phoenix, the most powerful Pavilion model to date. I actually was lucky enough to get hands-on with these puppies a few weeks ago, and the 27-inch Omni is a sight to behold. It’s sleek, seemingly well-constructed, and speaks to the minimalist in me. The PC hosts all the ports you’d expect out of an all-in-one, including HDMI-in, Blu-Ray disc drive, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, and an ethernet jack. You’ll also find up to 2TB of internal storage under the hood, along with an Intel Core i5 2400S processor and Beats Audio. The 27-inch screen reclines and can be adjusted so that everyone’s comfortable in front of the computer. HP also included its LinkUp software, which lets you sync content between devices over the WiFi network. The base model will start at $1,199. The Phoenix, on the other hand, really spices things up in the design department. It doesn’t exactly suit my tastes, but I’m glad to see HP getting a bit more aggressive in terms of design. It’s the latest in HP’s Pavilion E series, and packs an FX-8100 (8-core) processor, AMD Radeon 7670 graphics, has a 160GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM. Connectivity is in no short supply, with memory card readers of all shapes and sizes, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, and two optical drives. Wireless mouse and keyboard are included, which is also the case for the Omni. Base units start at $1,149.
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| Holo Promise: Google Moves To Ensure UI Integrity On All Android 4.0 Devices Posted: 03 Jan 2012 06:53 PM PST  Google has posted a bit of new info to the Android Developers blog that is probably less of a big deal than people are making it into, but still worth looking at. The post details a requirement that all manufacturers include in their Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices the default Holo theme. They don’t have to use the theme, they just have to have the data composing it on the phone. This is less a blow aimed at third-party UIs and more a general integrity check that ensures apps and services will have the choice to provide a consistent face to the user across many devices. Imagine you are designing an app that finds nearby restaurants and pulls recommendations from your social stream – or something. You have your default buttons, your text fields, your animations, and so on that you make yourself a nice little interface with. For some time, it has been the case that a theme like Sense or TouchWiz could pre-empt those default UI items and substitute their own — a color scheme or set of icons consistent with the rest of the theme. This practice probably wasn’t very common (I have no data to support this but I haven’t run into it much) but it’s potentially destructive to apps that are designed with care. Google will now require manufacturers to include in their distribution, custom or not, the original Holo theme files. It is up to app developers to determine whether they are used or not. You can signal whether you want your app to use whatever UI items are the default on the phone (so, Sense on an HTC phone if they were to put out a Sense-based ICS device), or you can choose to force the elements to be in the Holo theme provided by Google. This allows developers to be totally sure their app will look the way they want it to look, while at the same time allowing manufacturers the freedom to create custom launchers, themes, widgets, and so on. It just prevents those manufacturers from affecting and possibly breaking (though, again, I haven’t heard this is a major problem) apps that use and rely on default theme elements. Those are the immediate effects. But imagine you’re a developer. There’s little reason not to put the flag requiring the use of Holo. Your app may look a little different from some others on a themed device, but UIs on Android are already all over the place, and really, most people won’t notice (though I wish they would) that the text field in one app has a grey gradient and in another there’s a blue one. Choosing Holo guarantees your app will look the same on every compatible device. It’s just consistency at a different level. None of this means that a certain look will be required on an Android device, even for access to the core Google apps and Market. I’m not sure they even could (launchers and themes could easily run atop the default). But it does show Google acknowledging that a consistent UI is a plus and making that an easier play for devs.
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| The Cord-On-Board iPhone Case Hides A Charging Cable Inside Posted: 03 Jan 2012 04:55 PM PST  After a decade of iPods, Apple’s little white charging cable seem to be pretty much everywhere these days. Open a random drawer, there one will sit. Ask a pack of strangers, “Hey — anyone got an iPhone cable?” and half a dozen will be thrown your way. At this point, it’s almost hard to not be within reach of one… until you actually need one. Then the damned things seemingly don’t exist. Looking to make sure no iThing owner is ever caught out-and-about without a charging cable in tow is the Cord-On-Board, a (rather cleverly named) shock-resistant iPhone case with a 9.5″ charging cable tucked inside. To state the obvious: yeah, the whole there’s-a-cable-jammed-inside thing makes the case a bit… hefty. That’s where the “shock-resistance” comes in; as they had a bit of room to play, the guys at CaseInity built the case out of a rubbery thermoplastic material, ensuring that the case takes the brunt of most falls. It’s chubby, but with plenty of good reason. Alas, this thing has a way to go before it finds its way into the real world. The designers are currently fightin’ for funding on Kickstarter, where they’ve raised about $1k of the $20k they’re aiming for. $25 bucks in their funding bucket gets you one of the first cases off the line.
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| India’s Low-Cost Aakash Tablet Pre-Orders Hit 1.4 Million Posted: 03 Jan 2012 12:22 PM PST  Update: Datawind confirms that the “pre-orders” are no-money-down reservations, not paid-in-full pre-orders. So it’s more like people waiting in line than real orders. The Aakash is sold out but more will be manufactured, and the reservations are in part for the Ubislate. Regardless, demand seems to be high for the low-cost device and its slightly-higher-cost successor, more than enough to justify the increase in capacity. The low-cost Indian tablet known as the Aakash, which we have followed in its career over the last year, is finally shipping. In late December they opened up orders for the first batch of 30,000 units, and brought so much traffic to their retail site that an Indian cyber regulation agency called to inform them they were possibly under attack. And in the last two weeks, they’ve racked up over 1.4 million pre-orders — iPad-scale numbers. It’s being sold for Rs2500, which translates to just under $50. The government then subsidizes sales to students, bringing the cost down to $35. But while the government originally suggested a million devices would be on the ground before the end of 2011, the Indian manufacturer won’t be pushing out devices at a decent rate until this coming April, and at that point the Aakash may find itself an orphan device. Despite the original bluster from the Indian government, which fanned the flames of sensationalism with increasingly absurd price estimates (at one point they were talking about a $10 device), the device has passed trials that have killed many a device, and is in fact finalized, in manufacture, and shipping. But India does not have enough manufacturing capacity to supply the hundreds of thousands of orders that are rolling in. New factories being built by Datawind in Cochin, Noida, and Hyderabad will solve that problem, but in the meantime the Aakash is under attack from other directions. Datawind, which manufactures the device, has begun to push an alternative to the Aakash: a slightly more expensive device with better specs called the UbiSlate 7+. At Rs2999, it offers a much better processor (700MHz Arm Cortex A8 vs the Aakash’s 366Mhz Arm11), a bigger battery, a newer version of Android, and mobile data (on GPRS). It’s not unthinkable that this device might be embraced by the many institutions that have been waiting patiently for the promised flood of cheap, standardized tablets. The delays on the government’s part may end up making the Aakash an obsolete device that isn’t even much cheaper than the competition. And Problems with the hardware and software, while haven’t stopped the device from pulling in tons of pre-orders, suggest that even after all this time it is still being rushed to market. The tech market is merciless, and even the pro-Aakash contingent may find itself rooting for something more practical after a few months. India’a Aakash experiment has been a long and strange one, and may yet prove to be a success or failure. Either result would be limited, however: a success would be minor as they must still struggle to justify and produce the device in the face of increasing competition, and failure would mean mainly that they would have to scrap the current model and try again fresh for a 2012 launch. And either result is respectable, because the entire idea is respectable, and the rocky road upon which it has traveled was more or less expected. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit moving within the government, and has its roots in a desire to better their population’s lot and to try something new. And at any rate what’s more interesting than the device itself is the continuing investment in an infrastructure in which a national tablet is developed, manufactured, and nurtured. TechCrunch has many readers in India, and their comments on the topic (being closer to the matter) will be appreciated.
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| Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) Specs Trickle Out Posted: 03 Jan 2012 10:54 AM PST  Until now the 4G LTE-capable Nokia Ace (or Lumia 900, if you prefer) has been largely a mystery. We got a peek at some leaked press shots last week (pictured), but all we’ve heard is that it’ll hit AT&T shelves on March 18, it’ll be powered by the Windows Phone platform, and that it’ll come equipped with an LTE radio. Today, however, PocketNow claims to have confirmed the specs on this bad boy. If true, we’re looking at a 4.3-inch WVGA display (a tad larger than what we’ve seen so far out of the Lumia line), an 8-megapixel camera, a front-facing camera, and 512MB of RAM. The phone features T-Mo’s 1700MHz band, so there should be a way to hop onto the pink network shortly after the phone’s release. According to PocketNow, the Lumia 900 weighs in at 160 grams with a waist line of about 12mm. The source also confirms that this particular handset will run Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, rather than the incremental Tango update. All in all, this looks like a solid flagship from Microsoft and Nokia, and we expect to see the official announcement cross the wires at CES or Mobile World Congress. Stay tuned.
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| The SiriusXM Lynx Is A Portable Satellite Radio… With A Twist! Posted: 03 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST You may have forgotten that there was such a thing as “satellite radio,” what with all the streaming services available now, but it exists and its still going fairly strong. The latest way to listen to this form of radio is the Lynx, a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capable player that records up to 200 hours of music and offers a full schedule of upcoming shows for your listening pleasure. Priced at $250 it’s a pretty hard sell but if you’re trying to get satellite on the go or in your home, this may be an interesting alternative device. The device runs an unnamed version of Android. Lynx gives subscribers more control over how they listen to SiriusXM satellite radio, allowing them to start a song from the beginning when tuning to a Favorite music channel or store broadcast content to listen to later. Subscribers can also restart their favorite content while connected to SiriusXM Internet Radio via Wi-Fi®. Subscribers can control their listening experience easily using the large touch screen display. Lynx can stream SiriusXM content to Bluetooth® stereo speakers, headphones, vehicle stereo systems or optional accessories for the home, vehicle or portable use. Lynx is based on the Android operating system and is fully updatable via a Wi-Fi connection. Tune Start™: Automatically starts the currently playing song from the beginning so listeners will hear the whole song when tuning to any of their satellite radio music channels saved as a Favorite channel. Radio Replays: Subscribers can build a library of up to 200 hours of programming from their Favorite satellite radio channels which are automatically recorded to allow for playback anywhere. Pause, Rewind and Replay: Listeners can replay up to 30 minutes of live SiriusXM content on the currently tuned channel, and also access replay content on 5 favorite preset channels currently displayed. Featured Favorites™: A dynamic set of presets that can be automatically added as favorite channels, allowing users to easily discover new and specialty programming. Show Finder™: An easy-to-use electronic programming guide offering a complete list of what’s on over the next 7 days by channel, with the ability to set reminder alerts when favorite shows are being broadcast. The Lynx will be available “soon.”
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| The Swift Rise And Sad Fall Of The Asus Transformer Prime Android Tablet Posted: 03 Jan 2012 08:59 AM PST  The Asus Transformer Prime was the latest tablet to wear the title of iPad killer. It was supposed to rise up, powered by the all-mighty quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3, and finally stand tall against the iPad. It was supposed to use its keyboard dock as a mighty quarterstaff and deliver a memorable blow against Apple’s champion. But that didn’t happen. Asus is letting the Transformer Prime wither on the vine. There is nothing sadder than watching a promising product die early. In the case of the Transformer Prime, interest and hype peaked before the tablet even launched. Then when the tablet finally hit retailers, users and developers quickly discovered locked software and buggy hardware. The tablet still has a chance to sell well. It is, even with the early hiccups, a stellar product relative to its competitors. This is new ground for Asus. Before the original Transformer tablet, the company never had a halo product. Three short years ago Asus was just flourishing PC component maker testing the consumer market waters with a relatively small notebook/desktop lineup. The Eee brand made Asus a household name. But the Eee PC netbooks were just another bulletproof Wintel product. Sure, problems arouse and the Eee PCs were far from perfect, but the company successfully flooded the market with enough models to counter any bad press. Android tablets are a completely different product than Windows notebooks. They require more precises marketing and launch schedules. Consumers also expect a more complete experience from the products thanks to the high bar set by the iPad. Asus is learning this the hard way. Asus started teasing the Transformer Prime back in October through a Facebook campaign. There was never any talk of the launch schedule or price point. The tablet was finally announced on November 18th, but Asus still didn’t include the release schedule. Eventually, over the following month, several leaked screenshot from retailers indicated that the Prime would hit stores prior to Christmas. Then finally, Asus put rumors to rest and announced the tablet would be in stores and online on December 19th. That didn’t happen. Retailers pushed back pre-orders as Asus failed to deliver the product on time. Eventually, just before the end of 2011, several shops started shipping out their first batches. It’s still not widely available from Amazon and Best Buy, though. Even if it was available, would-be buyers would be smart to hold off for a bit. Early adopters are singing a song of woe right now. XDA forum members collectively erupted in rage yesterday after it was discoverd Asus locked down the Prime’s bootloader. Apparently 128 bit encryption is employed to keep owners from accessing key components and flashing new roms and kernels onto the tablet. The Prime is effectively grounded. This move prevents owners from unlocking the full potential of the tablet. Owners are at the complete mercy of Asus for system updates and improvements (like the current GPS and WiFi bugs). So much for Android being “open”. This practice of locking down the system files is not new. However, every time a vendor ships a halo product with a locked bootloader, the Android community explodes with frustration. This particular move by Asus speaks to the company’s naivety. They simply don’t know what the hell is going on or who buys their products. Transformer Prime buyers are looking for a digital sandbox to explore Android. Geeks buy Asus products. They’re not John looking up recipes on Epicurious. If Prime buyers wanted a completely curated experience, they would have bought an iPad. The troubles keep piling on. Owners are now reporting that the Prime’s GPS function is nearly unusable and the WiFi support is flaky. It takes forever to lock onto GPS satellites. So, in a classic anti-consumer move, Asus simply removed most references to GPS from their websites. The sensor is missing from spec list on this swanky product page although it’s still listed under specifications on this one. Reportedly the tablet’s thin metallic casing is to blame for both although Asus just pushed an update that is supposed to address the issue. Asus could recover some lost love by unlocking the bootloader, but conflicting statements from Asus continue to enrage and frustrate owners. The Asus US Facebook team posted a message several hours ago promising an official statement was in the works. However, the company posted a patronizing message on its Italian page that said, in part, “Finally speech root: our position in this regard is simple. The product is guaranteed as it is.” Asus is clearly in uncharted waters here. The company flubbed the launch and alienated their key demographic. That’s the formula for failure. Even if Asus recants and unlocks the bootloader, some of the damage is irreversible. CES kicks off next week and there will no doubt be several Android tablets competing for the iPad-killer label and looking to steal some of the Prime’s allspark. Update: Asus just announced via its Facebook page that a boot unlocker is in the works and Android 4.0 will hit the device starting on January 12. Asus claims that they had to lock the device in order to meet certain DRM requirements and if owners choose to unlock the tablet, it will void the warranty and remove the ability to rent videos from Google. The argument stands, though. Asus a company learning how to properly handle consumer electronics. As usual, early adopters are in for a good amount of pain and frustration.
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| Miss Your Cat? Now Fluffy Can Send You Tweets All Day Long Posted: 03 Jan 2012 07:20 AM PST  You like cats. Even if you’re a “dog person,” or allergic, I still know your little cat-loving secret. And how do I know? Well, since you’re here on TechCrunch it’s apparent that you’re at least mildly interested in the internet, which happens to be infested with cats. If your cat obsession translates over into real life, as does your ability to hack, then boy do I have a treat for you. It’s called Kitty Twitty, and here’s how it came to be: Mark de Vinck’s wife was absolutely love-struck when she got her new cat, but missed little Chester every time she went to work. Instead of constantly intervening to give her updates, Mark decided to build something that completely removed him from the situation. The result is a little wooden cat toy that sends you a new tweet each time your cat starts to play with it. Courtesy of Arduino, de Vinck was able to put a switchboard inside a little wooden box that instantly relays messages via Twitter. Of course, the Kitty Twitty is also equipped with a wire and a cat toy at the end of it to make sure little Chester (or whoever) is always interested. Mark says this can get even more in-depth by adding sensors to the food bowl or the kitty bed, and that dog lovers should be able to implement the same idea with something Rover might like. The full instructions on how to build your own Kitty Twitty are here on MakeProjects, and we’d love to hear if yours turn out as well as Mark’s.
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| Siri Android Clones Are Laughable At Best Posted: 03 Jan 2012 07:14 AM PST  When we first introduced the Siri clone Iris, I figured that would be the last of the outright Siri-alikes. I was wrong. Programmers are taking advantage of less experienced users and creating apps that are downright insulting to the average intelligence. One app, called Siri for Android is a hard link to Google’s voice controls while another, called Speerit is a Korean clone that purports to connect to Apple’s servers (which is untrue). Whether you believe these apps should exist on the Android Market or not, its clear that there are enough new users out there who will fall for some of the oldest software tricks in the book. A word of advice: if it’s called “Siri” and it runs on Android, it’s probably not real.
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| RIM’s New PlayBook Promo: All Models For $299 Posted: 03 Jan 2012 06:09 AM PST  Well, if you were hoping to snag a BlackBerry PlayBook on the cheap, it looks like now’s the time to act. In what seems like a move born of desperation, all models of the PlayBook are now going for $299 on RIM’s online store. Previous PlayBook sales have set the beginning price point at $199 for the 16GB model, but this time you’ll be able to purchase a 64GB PlayBook for the same price as a 16GB model. Not too shabby, especially if you didn’t jump on a local truckstop special. Of course, that supposes that there are enough of them to go around — with every variant sporting the same price tag, I expect RIM to sell though their 64GB PlayBooks before long. RIM is no stranger to PlayBook price cuts, but this new promotion is slated to run through the beginning of February, which would make it one of the longest, most drastic price cuts in the tablet’s troubled history. With PlayBook OS 2.0 scheduled to hit devices sometime next month, it could be a ploy to move units into people’s hands ahead of the update. Then again, RIM’s most recent earnings statement shows that the audience for the PlayBook is slowly dying, with shipments slowing considerably throughout 2011. It’s beginning to look like the only way people will buy one of these things is with some hefty discounts involved, which doesn’t exactly bode well for RIM’s financial position. Still, their loss is your gain — the PlayBook is a flawed tablet to be sure, but this is a solid deal if you’re already stuck using a BlackBerry.
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