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Olympus Yells “Me Too!” With The MEG4.0 Wearable Display Prototype
Samsung’s New Galaxy S III Combines LTE And Quad-Core Processor
Is This A Thing? A Business Man Carries iPad In His Pants Through Grand Central Station
Motorola Quietly Reveals The LTE-Friendly, Kevlar-Clad Atrix HD
The Warby Parker Of Gadgets? YBUY Gets $1M From Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures To Open Its 50k-Strong Waitlist For Test-Driving iPads, Jawbones And More

Olympus Yells “Me Too!” With The MEG4.0 Wearable Display Prototype

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 01:28 PM PDT

Watch out, Google. Here comes Olympus with the MEG4.0 and don’t dismiss this as a Google Glass knockoff. Olympus has been researching and developing wearable displays for more than 20 years. The MEG4.0 concept, and with that, its eventual production counterpart, has been a long time coming and could be a serious competitor in the space.

Olympus made it clear in today’s announcement that the 30g MEG4.0 is both a prototype and a working name. The stem-like system sits on one side of the glasses and connects to a tablet or phone through Bluetooth. A 320 x 240 virtual screen floats above the wearer’s eye line. The MEG4.0 is designed for all-day use and should last eight hours on a charge, although Olympus states the glasses are designed for bursts of use, 15-seconds at a time.

Google isn’t the only player in the augmented reality game. In fact several companies have toyed with the concept for the last few years including Olympus. The company introduced a working set of AR glasses back in 2008. Called the Mobile Eye-Trek (shown above) the glasses were designed to be worn on a daily basis, feeding information like email to the wearer on a screen placed 50cm in front of the eyes, making it appear as a 3.8-inch screen.

While the Mobile Eye-Track never hit the retail market, Olympus indicated at the time that the prototype would lead to a production version by 2012.

However, much like Google, Olympus is not revealing the user interface yet. If the MEG4.0 is to be a success, the interface, and more importantly, the depth of the information available needs to be as mature as Google Glass. Price and availability was not announced.

Samsung’s New Galaxy S III Combines LTE And Quad-Core Processor

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 11:09 AM PDT

There’s an argument to be made that Samsung’s Galaxy S III is the best Android phone on the market today, but that doesn’t mean that its formula can’t be improved upon.

Case in point: now the Galaxy S III has wormed its way around the globe, Samsung is preparing to launch a version of its flagship handset that outshines the both the international and U.S. models, thanks to some craftily combined hardware.

The new version of Samsung’s LTE-friendly Galaxy S III — which is expected to land in Korea on July 9 — sports both a quad-core Exynos processor and support for LTE service from carriers SK Telecom, LG U+, and KT. To round out the package, Samsung has also thrown in 2GB of RAM to match the “future-proof” U.S. model. The remainder of the new S III’s spec sheet is the same as that of the original, so I won’t rehash those little details here.

In short, this version of the Galaxy S III is the one to covet — just don’t expect it to make an appearance in our neck of the woods for a little while.

Combining quad-core processors and high-speed LTE radios may seem like the next logical step in the way for smartphone spec supremacy (and you’d be right to think so), but making it happen is a process that’s easier said than done. You see, quad-core devices like the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III tend to get futzed with as they jump from market to market. One of the major concessions that HTC and Samsung had to make when they brought their respective phones to the U.S. is that they couldn’t have both a quad-core chipset and an LTE radio onboard because of compatibility issues.

Both companies ended up swapping into dual-core chipsets instead of sacrificing high-speed data support, and their choice has paid off — neither dual-core device is significantly slower than its quad-core counterpart, and we consumers get to watch cat videos on YouTube that much faster. That said though, companies like Samsung and NVIDIA (purveyors of the popular Tegra series chipsets) aren’t going to stop pushing their quad-core offerings, and now that they’re figuring out how to make them jibe with LTE, the competition among top-tier handsets is poised to heat up even more.

Is This A Thing? A Business Man Carries iPad In His Pants Through Grand Central Station

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 07:38 AM PDT

Every morning, my lovely girlfriend walks through Grand Central Station in New York City on her way to work, and every morning, she sees something odd. Such is the nature of living in the Big Apple.

This happened: she saw a man — a regular dude in slacks and a button-down — carrying his iPad in his butt.

Witness the horror.

Admittedly, there’s very little news value to this story, but I have to wonder, is this a “thing”? An iPad easily fits in a bag, and there are plenty of covers that include handles, allowing you to carry the tablet like a briefcase. But to a New York straphanger, perhaps this isn’t accessible enough. Perhaps the tablet needs to be as available as the phone in your pocket, and thus the butt tuck.

My main question, if we just assume that this is acceptable behavior, is whether or not the iPad is safe. How tight are this man’s slacks to allow for a securely stowed iPad? And moreover, is it not totally sweaty and disgusting when he whips it out?

Unofficially, feel free to participate in a caption contest in the comments. There is no reward except our amusement.

Motorola Quietly Reveals The LTE-Friendly, Kevlar-Clad Atrix HD

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 06:30 AM PDT

Rumors and questionable leaks of Motorola’s next Atrix device have been making the rounds for what seems like ages, but Motorola finally put all that speculation to rest last night. The company recently revealed the new Ice Cream Sandwich-powered handset on their website, albeit with a notable lack of fanfare.

With its rounded corners and gently sloping back, the Atrix HD looks an awful lot like a softer version of its Verizon-bound cousin, the Droid RAZR. The similarities don’t end there though — like the Droid RAZR, the new Atrix sports an 8-megapixel main camera, and its rear-end is also clad in Kevlar (though it sports a slightly different weave pattern). Meanwhile, the device’s 4.5-inch 720p Colorboost display is swathed in a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass to help things from betting too hairy when the Atrix takes a spill.

A quick look inside reveals that the Atrix HD is running on an unspecified 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and packs 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, an LTE radio, and an embedded 1780 mAh battery. While it isn’t quite as thin as its Verizon counterpart, the Atrix HD squeezes all of that into a (titanium or “modern white”) frame that comes in at 8.4mm thick.

Though the device’s spec sheet is now available for our prying eyes to pore over, we’re still left without some salient details. Even though its logo is displayed prominently under the Atrix’s screen, AT&T has yet to officially acknowledge the device’s existence. As such, there’s no word on a release date or pricing, but I wouldn’t expect things to stay that way for too much longer.

The Warby Parker Of Gadgets? YBUY Gets $1M From Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures To Open Its 50k-Strong Waitlist For Test-Driving iPads, Jawbones And More

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 06:20 AM PDT

The retail world of consumer electronics is a tough game, with a lot of the traditional bricks-and-mortar trade continually pushing online to compete against the likes of Amazon and eBay for consumers that prefer to get a wider selection for cheaper prices to seeing the products in action before purchasing. A startup called YBUY is trying to turn that ecommerce model on its head, by offering a kind of extended lease service to online buyers, giving them the chance to try out gadgets at home before closing the deal. With daily new sign-ups registering around 2,000 at the moment, today YBUY is announcing it's picked up $1 million in Series A funding from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's investment firm Tomorrow Ventures.
YBUY says that the money will be used mainly to help it continue growing its business, which has had a strong response since launching at the end of 2011. Currently it has a waiting list of nearly 50,000 people to use the service — so most immediately it is gradually opening up the service to them.

The concept behind YBUY is fairly straightforward: for a flat fee of $24.95 per month, it offers a selection of consumer electronics and kitchen gadgets — both new and refurbished — giving users the option of getting them for 30-day testing periods before actually agreeing to buy them. YBUY pays for all the postage and packaging to send you the product and get it back if you don't want to keep it.

Stephen Svajian, the founder and CEO, tells me that the product selection is pretty varied: it ranges from iPad tablets to Jawbone and Breville kitchen products. But it also features products from Kickstarter campaigns. The idea is curating and aggregating the best and becoming an alternative to, say, a Google product search. "We only represent what we think is the best product in a particular category," he tells me. "We do a lot of the work [looking for them] the online shopper would typically do."

YBUY is not yet disclosing its total number of customers or tunrover but says that it's been growing 25 percent month-on-month, and as an example created 2,000 accounts yesterday. Svajian says that in customer interviews, the main reasons for going for YBUY over something like Amazon are multiple. For one, there is the issue of financial commitment. Even if sites today have good return policies, "They don’t like to see the $600 leave their bank account on something they’re not sure about." Then there is the issue of returns: these can be a hassle, but YBUY encloses return packaging with each product. The third reason is a bit of a surprise: "They feel bad," he says. Apparently there is a kind of stigma or guilt around returning products that keeps people from doing it, whereas here it's built into the business model, almost being encouraged. There is also the issue of trust: online there is a bit of a worry that people will never get all their money back in return situation.

Although YBUY bills monthly, Svajian says he doesn't put itself into the category of "subscription e-commerce." That's because they are getting ready to introduce another model as well:

"We felt it would be useful to have a subscription early on to drive engagement and to be able to run experiments to track against different months," he says. But in the next few months, the company will be rolling out a different option for customers. "They’ll be able to choose whether to bill monthly or just get billed when they receive a product. We’re big believers in one, single experience for customers and our customer interviews have told us they want this model, but we’d like to see the data before we commit to just one option."

If there is a comparison between YBUY and another business, it might be Costco, where YBUY appeals to the discover/demand driver, and Costco to discounts. "We’re both a membership club with a disruptive distribution channel that delivers long-term value to customers," he notes, but adds: "It’s strange thinking about us like Costco, because we just give you cool stuff and Costco gives you cheap stuff, but I think our manner of disruption will be similar and we’re focused on the long-term."

What's perhaps most compelling is that as the service continues to grow, it's actually making better and better margins on the service. In December, he says, they were losing $50 per customer. Now they are making around $35 per customer, with the value per customer at $450, with the profitability per customer ranging between 25% and 50%.

In terms of partnerships, YBUY currently has no plans to do any white-label agreements with brands to offer this kind of leasing service on their behalf, or for any other e-commerce sites that want to introduce this kind of service into the purchasing mix. And Svajian says that he is reluctant to make direct deals with manufacturers full stop, even for promoting on their own site: "We’ve done a deal with a manufacturer and we’re reluctant to do that again. We think its more important to have integrity around the process. If we are paid by the manufacturers to slot their products, then that detracts from our value prop to customers – to get them the best stuff. We need to be rabid about the value we deliver to customers and we don’t want anything to get in the way of that."

The whole try-before-you-buy space is pretty nascent at this stage but we are seeing others moving here, too. Warby Parker is doing it with eyewear; and Trunk Club's applying it to fashion, among others. On that trend, Svajian is adamant that it's not just a fad but something that speaks to what customers are actually needing today: "This isn’t disruption for disruption’s sake. Rather, it’s important to note that this disruption is being driven by the customer. Customers want to try before they buy. The consumer will drive the push into this model." For now that will keep YBUY in the U.S. with international growth somewhere down the line.

Svajian is a lawyer by training but has been a serial entrepreneur, with YBUY being his fourth company. Jim Patterson, the Yammer chief product officer, has been a partner in two of them — in addition to being an angel investor in YBUY. One of them, AudioCaseFiles, targeting the legal market, sold for a 10x return for its investors when it was sold to Courtroom Connect.

Other angel investors, in addition to Patterson, in this Series A round include David Hanna, Chairman and CEO of CompuCredit Corporation.

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