Comcast smears the XFINITY brand across all its services

Apparently worried its On Demand Online project would suffer the shame of a silly name all by its lonely, Comcast has rebranded its cable TV, internet and phone services as Xfinity TV, Xfinity Internet and Xfinity Voice. Other than the name not much is changing (@ComcastCares will still be doing its thing on Twitter), although the rollout of the new branding (starting next week, the first 11 markets include Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco) should sync up with 50mbps or high speeds becoming available. Of course, if those slick flame colored letter started showing up on TV repair guy trucks at the same time as a truly revolutionary new DVR software package instead of the slightly spruced up version we’ll be getting over the next few months, then they could call it anything they want to.

Comcast smears the XFINITY brand across all its services originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple gets a patent on smart screen bezels

Apple might have finally released the iPad, but the rumor mill is already on to prognosticating about the next rev — and as usual, Apple’s patents and patent applications are everyone’s favorite place to start. (And for good reason, really — that very first design patent we inititally noticed way back in 2004 is exactly what the iPad looks like, down to the bezel and Dock connector.) The latest tidbit is a patent granted earlier this week on an intelligent touch-sensitive bezel, which would essentially extend the touchpanel beyoned the edges of the screen to create an entire border of context-specific soft buttons — the iPod app might have playback controls at the bottom, while Safari could put the navigation bar down there and Pages could do formatting stuff at the top. It’s sort of interesting — Palm similarly extends the touch area beyond the screen on the Pre and the Pixi, but not quite like this — but we can’t see how touching the bezel next to an on-screen label is much better than just pressing the screen. Of course, there’s no guaranteeing Apple’s actually going to use any of this in any future products whatsoever, but we’re sure that won’t stop some analyst from waving their magic analyst wand and saying their “supply checks” have indicated a major ODM is already producing these. It’s nice that the world is so predictable sometimes, isn’t it?

Apple gets a patent on smart screen bezels originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Symbian’s revealing something tomorrow, but what? (update: open source!)

Oh, Symbian, you tease! For an organization as committed to openness and sharing its roadmap (and its code) as the Symbian Foundation, it’s pretty unusual that they’d be counting down to a big unveiling of anything — but sure enough, they’ve been tweeting decreasing numbers with the hashtag “#symbiancountdown” starting back on January 26 with 108. Today we’re down to 12 (it’s hard to say what sort of jacked-up counting system they’re using here) with a note of “what will tomorrow bring?” so it looks like we can expect this all to go down in just a few short hours. One thought is that they could announce that Symbian^3 has gone Functionally Complete, a key milestone in getting it pushed to devices — but that’s a shot in the dark. Don’t disappoint, guys.

Update: Looks like it may be the full source for Symbian^2, the Foundation’s first open release.

Symbian’s revealing something tomorrow, but what? (update: open source!) originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments

Acer pulled closer to HP than ever in the third quarter of 2009, when it shipped 8.86 million laptops compared to HP’s 9.91 million, but it looks like things swung well back in the other direction during the fourth quarter. According to DigiTimes, HP shipped a whopping 11.38 million laptops worldwide in Q4, while Acer moved 9.5 million units during the same time period — an sizable increase in itself, but likely not enough to cause too much celebration at Acer HQ. As you might suspect, the holiday shopping season was largely responsible for the jump in sales from both companies, with strong sales in North America in particular said to be the main reason behind HP’s widening lead.

HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Horizon debuts H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system for R/C cars

Continue reading Horizon debuts H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system for R/C cars

Horizon debuts H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system for R/C cars originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pegatron on board to make next iPhone, might do 720p video recording?

The silly little sensor in the latest-gen iPod nano might have you thinking that high-quality video recording isn’t anywhere on Apple’s radar, but if you look in the smartphone space, HD video is shaping up to be the next gotta-have-it feature among the world’s most buzzworthy handsets — and sure enough, we’re getting some hints here that it’ll be on board the next iPhone. Remember that mysterious “N89″ device in the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK? We’ve been tipped off that a gander at the MediaValidator.plist file reveals a few telling stats: the maximum video width is up from 768 pixels to 1280, and the maximum number of pixels per frame is up to 921,600, which just happens to work out to 1280 x 720. The device’s AVC profile has been bumped from 3.0 to 3.1, too, which adds in support for 720p — so yeah, all the signs are there, and industry trends pretty much require that we expect it at this point.

On a related note, DigiTimes notes that ASUS spin-off Pegatron has allegedly been picked up as an OEM for the N89 (or whatever the new iPhone’s internal code happens to be) — but it won’t be alone. The indication seems to be that Foxconn will continue churning out phones for Cupertino, too, perhaps a sign that these guys are expecting the need for more capacity than the old OEM alone can deliver, or that there could be multiple generations in the retail channel (a la 3G / 3GS) at the same time. Given Apple’s typical iPhone cycle, it could be a few months before we know for certain — so go ahead and take your sweet time speculating on this round.

[Thanks, Dan L.]

Pegatron on board to make next iPhone, might do 720p video recording? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft Arc Keyboard hands-on

Continue reading Microsoft Arc Keyboard hands-on

Microsoft Arc Keyboard hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Zeppelin spotted again, Android-ness confirmed

Yes, we’ve seen this puppy before — but last time, we’d merely heard it was running Android. This time around, we’ve got a little more confirmation that the so-called Zeppelin from Moto is sporting Google code (allegedly Cupcake, sadly) with a dash of Blur added in for good measure. Gizmodo Brazil — which scored some time with a prototype — suggests that this’ll see duty on the lower end of Motorola’s smartphone lineup, and we tend to agree considering the HVGA display that takes up far less space than it could if Moto had wanted to go for broke. A keyboardless companion to the CLIQ / DEXT, perhaps? Carriers are an open question here, but we’ve heard rumblings of interest on T-Mobile USA’s part; the site says it’ll hit streets in March, so we shouldn’t have long to wait to find out.

Motorola Zeppelin spotted again, Android-ness confirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI Wind modded with sliding keyboard and touchscreen

The original MSI Wind is so two years ago, but an Insanely Wind forum member with the handle of ac0ff33 figured out a way to make it so two years from now. Taking a cue from slider phones, the modder has managed to flip the Wind’s 10.1-inch display around, fit it on top of the keyboard, and add a resistive touchscreen. He appears to still be working on getting it to slide up to reveal the keys, but from the comments in the forum he’s got a pretty solid plan to make it all happen. And if all that isn’t good enough, he’s also added a plastic power button next to the screen, along with a key for choosing either Win 7 or OSX when booting. We’re looking forward to seeing how this project comes along, but in the meantime check out the two videos below of the touchscreen performance in both Win 7 and OSX.

Continue reading MSI Wind modded with sliding keyboard and touchscreen

Filed under: Laptops

MSI Wind modded with sliding keyboard and touchscreen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Open-PC is the nettop for those who won’t be constrained by you and your corporate ways

Nettops come in all sorts of shapes, from Wii would-bes to keyboard come-alongs, but they’re all small, and most are running some variant of Windows. Not the Open-PC. It isn’t particularly svelte (345 x 425 x 100mm) and it is entirely free of commercial software, with a KDE core neatly wrapped in a collection of free software. It was designed by the community, specifications and even price determined by a set of surveys, and by the end of the month it will be available to those who said they wanted it — meaning it’s put up or shut up time, Linux fans. Price is €359 (including a $10 donation to the KDE project), a bit steep for a machine rocking an Atom N330 processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive, but then again you can’t put a price on stickin’ it to the man.

Open-PC is the nettop for those who won’t be constrained by you and your corporate ways originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel swings 25nm factory doors open for a tour de fab

Intel and Micron’s recent announcement that their collective superhero body, appropriately named IM Flash, is sampling 25nm flash chips has been accompanied with a whirlwind tour of their Utah production facilities for a few lucky journalists. PC Perspective bring us the atmospheric photo above, along with some videos, as they prance about one of the most hallowed (and cleanest) environments known to gadget lovers. Apart from the die shrink, the lads also discuss Intel’s reputed plans for a G3 SSD refresh some time “later this year” with snappier controllers onboard, which apparently was echoed by Micron who also intend to pump out faster processors with their SSD products. While you wait for all that to happen, hit the source link to find out how and where the stuff that gets put inside SSDs is made.

Intel swings 25nm factory doors open for a tour de fab originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS N82 and N61 join the USB 3.0 laptop party

We’re kind of starting to figure out ASUS’ naming scheme — E is for Easy, and N is for eNtertainment, jolly good. In other self-evident news, Engadget Chinese is the place to go if you want the lowdown on happenings in China and its nearby states. Joining HP’s Envy 15 in the USB 3.0-sporting ranks will soon be the familiar 16-inch ASUS N61 and the seemingly brand spanking new N82 14-incher. See the galleries below for the eye candy, but keep it here for specs. Core i5 and i7 CPUs will populate the role of orchestrator inside, while ATI and NVIDIA discrete graphics options will also be made available when these make their imminent Taiwan debut. In live demonstrations, the one USB 3.0 port (yes, you only get one) was shown to be three times as fast as USB 2.0, so not quite reaching its theoretical superiority, but hardly an unwelcome improvement. Let’s hope for quick global distribution following the Taiwanese launch, which is slated for the middle of this month.

ASUS N82 and N61 join the USB 3.0 laptop party originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Large Hadron Collider schedules holiday for 2012, full 7 TeV power for 2013

It’s good to know that even huge inanimate objects appreciate the need for a work-life balance. After a nice winter hiatus, Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider is coming back online soon, set to resume smashing protonic beams at one another with the force of 3.5 trillion electron-volts (TeV) per beam, or 7 TeV in total. We have to swallow hard when we hear such force described as “low-energy,” but that’s what the LHC designers consider it, and moreover we’re learning they’ll skip past the middle and go for the full 14 TeV potential smashes after a retooling break during 2012. Although this may delay the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, other physics research shouldn’t be stalled in the meantime — scientists claim they’ll be able to extract data from the low-energy collisions that could lend us more information on aspects of string theory, extra dimensions, and supersymmetry. Doesn’t all this sound like nerds trying to avoid getting real jobs?

Large Hadron Collider schedules holiday for 2012, full 7 TeV power for 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FlexiKnob paddle controllers are perfect for playing your old Atari Breakout ROMs

Spend any time in a audio or video editing suite of applications and you’ll find yourself overwhelmed by a selection of on-screen controls that have absolutely zero relevance to your on-desk controls — keyboard and mouse don’t really equate to slider and dial. FlexiKnobs bridge that gap, and allow collaborative work too. A project by researchers at the University of Applied Sciences, they’re little wooden mice of a decidedly non-ergonomic shape, but they allow you to move cursor (shown after the break) over on-screen control, then click in the wheel and spin it to adjust the value. The cursor changes depending on whether it’s locked on or floating free, and each bears the color of the FlexiKnob it is associated with. Up to 250 of the things can be paired with a computer at once, which sounds like heavenly pandemonium to us.

[Thanks, Sam]

Continue reading FlexiKnob paddle controllers are perfect for playing your old Atari Breakout ROMs

FlexiKnob paddle controllers are perfect for playing your old Atari Breakout ROMs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android display battle: In the end, there can be only One

It’s not everyday you get to see six (6!) Android devices pitted against each other in a display-quality grudge match. No, not that sensor sensitivity nonsense again, rather, just a plain ol’ video playback comparison for your subjective observations. Fortunately, the Android-loving kids over at HDBlog shot a video of the MyTouch 3G, HTC Hero, Motorola Milestone / Droid, Acer Liquid, Nexus One, and Samsung Galaxy (laid out clockwise in the image above). In our opinion, the Nexus One with its 3.7-inch AMOLED display packing a 800 x 480 pixel resolution comes out on top with the best overall image (though slightly on the red end of the color spectrum) — good thing the video wasn’t shot outdoors where that AMOLED is all but unreadable. But hey, that’s our opinion, form your own in the video after the break.

Continue reading Android display battle: In the end, there can be only One

Android display battle: In the end, there can be only One originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ricoh CX3 gets back-illuminated CMOS sensor, much geek lust

Just like clockwork, here’s Ricoh — six months after its last CX series refresh — with a new superzoom point-and-shooter to tempt us into breaking open those piggy banks. The package on offer is compelling: there’s a new 10 megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor, an enhanced noise reduction algorithm borrowed from the GR Digital III, and a 3-inch 920k-dot LCD, while the 10.7x optical zoom lens (28-300mm in 35mm equivalence) is carried over from the CX2. 720p video recording — fast becoming a standard feature in compact cameras — is present and accounted for, with recording in 16:9 ratio available to the ubiquitous Motion JPEG format. The CX3 is arriving this month, with early prices of AU$499 ($441 in US currency) matching the cost of the current generation.

Ricoh CX3 gets back-illuminated CMOS sensor, much geek lust originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hasselblad creates 40 megapixel H4D-40 medium format camera, wants $20k for it

Tough though it may be to believe, Hasselblad’s 39 megapixel H3D II actually came out in 2007. Yeah, last decade. In other words, it’s about time we saw a true successor hit the market, and with PMA just about ready to get going in Anaheim, the bold and beautiful H4D-40 is making its grand entrance. Boasting a 40 megapixel sensor, this medium format behemoth — which we spotted in a leak late last month — also features a “True Focus” AF system and ships with an 80mm lens and a viewfinder. The kit is said to be shipping now across the globe for $19,995 (or €13,995 / £12,995 on that side of the pond), which should make choosing between a new shooter and a public college education remarkably difficult.

Hasselblad creates 40 megapixel H4D-40 medium format camera, wants $20k for it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nikon Coolpix P100 joins the superzoom party at 26x

Nikon just fired off its first pre-PMA camera announcement with the new Coolpix P100 superzoom, which packs a five-way stabilized 26x optical zoom lens in front of a 10.3 megapixel CMOS sensor with ISO 3200 sensitivity, Backside Illumination and Active D-Lighting. Yeah, it’s not quite the 30x zoom from the new Olympus SP-800UX, but the lens can also do macro shots at 0.4 inches, and there are in-camera HDR features, a 40-shot pre-shooting cache, and a 3-inch 460,000-dot tilting LCD. We’re also told the P100 shoots 1080p video, but we don’t know anything about frame rates or formats yet — we’re looking for more, we’ll let you know. Should be out in March for $400; peep the full PR after the break.

Continue reading Nikon Coolpix P100 joins the superzoom party at 26x

Nikon Coolpix P100 joins the superzoom party at 26x originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nexus One’s big update can be had without the wait

Android’s devised one of the slickest, most widely-deployed systems for delivering over-the-air operating system updates to smartphones, but there’s a problem: you’ve got to wait until your carrier (or manufacturer) blesses you with them. They’re typically deployed in rolling batches so that it’s easier for the company to do one final test of the code’s veracity and limit potential damage before sending it to a wider audience — but where there’s a will, there’s a way, right? As is often the case with these things, some folks have found a way to get the Nexus One’s glorious new multitouch code on the phone before Google’s willing to give it to you, and for anyone who’s done this before, it’s a fairly standard-issue procedure: copy the update to the root of your microSD card, reboot into recovery mode, and apply the binary. We’ve tested the procedure and it works like a champ, so if you’re feeling impatient, go ahead and pull the trigger — we’re going to go out on a limb here and say that the risk of bricking is pretty low.

[Thanks, Jeremy]

Nexus One’s big update can be had without the wait originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rupert Murdoch: Amazon now ‘willing to renegotiate’ e-book prices

You didn’t think the price hike would stop at Macmillan, did you? In today’s News Corp. earnings call, chairman Rupert Murdoch gave indication that his HarperCollins would also soon be changing its e-book prices with Amazon. As relayed by All Things D, the mogul has been unhappy with the $9.99 tier, that Apple’s iBookstore “does allow some flexibility and higher prices,” and here’s the kicker: “And now Amazon is willing to sit down with us again and renegotiate.” Nothing’s changed yet, but we gotta imagine it’s only a matter of time — not just with HarperCollins, but probably all “big six” publishers before too long.

Rupert Murdoch: Amazon now ‘willing to renegotiate’ e-book prices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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