Technology Blog

It looks like adding Bluetooth 4.0 was just the trick for taking the Pebble smartwatch over the edge -- and by over the edge, we mean to an insane level of Kickstarter success. The watch not only crossed the $10 million fundraising mark -- it aimed for a paltry $100k -- but its initial 85,000 units are now sold out. The campaign still has eight days to go, and though additional backers won't get in on that first wave of Pebbles, there's a second batch on the way.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Pebble smartwatch sells out initial supplies, enters Kickstarter hall of fame with $10m raised originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you've ever wondered if designer names alone can send a product's price tag through the roof, this should suffice as confirmation. Hermès, the Parisian fashion giant best known for its prohibitively expensive wearable accessories, has teamed up with Leica for some creative marketing. Two special M9-P editions will be available -- a total of 300 Edition Hermès digital rangefinders will ship beginning in June for $25,000, while 100 "very special" (even more exclusive) Edition Hermès - Série Limitée Jean-Louis Dumas models will be available in July for, ahem, $50,000 (that's fifty thousand, in case you assumed it was a typo).

Likely realizing that it would be insanely absurd to unload the M9-P for either price without lenses included, Leica has opted to offer both as complete kits. The less expensive version uses some fancy calfskin leather with a silver chrome finish, and ships with a Leica Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH. optic. The "very special" version, on the other hand, includes a Leica Summicron-M 28 mm f/2 ASPH., a Leica Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH. and a Leica APO-Summicron-M 90 mm f/2 ASPH -- all finished in anodized silver. It also comes with a bag and a book. Due to the incredibly limited production run, you'll probably want to pitch a tent (or have your assistant park their assistant's Maybach) outside the Washington DC Leica Store, beginning sometime later this month.

Update: Need little more convincing about the craftsmanship? There are making-of and unboxing videos embedded after the break.

Gallery: Leica M9-P - Très Fancy edition

Continue reading Leica teases our wallets with $50,000 Edition Hermès M9-P, $1,000 scarf sold separately

Leica teases our wallets with $50,000 Edition Hermès M9-P, $1,000 scarf sold separately originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Physicists have already been able to store a single image in a cloud of rubidium gas, but researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland have now made a new breakthrough that could open up some new possibilities for quantum memory. As Technology Review's Physics arXiv blog reports, they've managed to store two sequential images in the cloud (not to be confused with "the cloud") and retrieve (or view) them at different times with about 90 percent accuracy -- something that could technically be called a movie. That was done using much the same technique that allows a single image to be stored in the gas, although storing multiple images apparently has the side effect of causing them to be retrieved in the reverse order of how they went in. As TR notes, however, even with that quirk, this new method could give rubidium gas a leg up over something like holographic storage, which has only been able to store and retrieve multiple images at the same time.

NIST researchers store two images in a cloud of gas, open new possibilities for quantum memory originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 18:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second and third generation Apple TV boxes have a new software update to keep an eye out for, and now that the changelog has been posted for 5.0.1 we can see what it brings. According to this screen grab from Apple's support page, the update adds HD previews for TV shows and movies in the iTunes store, and fixes issues affecting AirPlay, Home Sharing, Netflix and more. Of course, FireCore warns jailbroken fans to stay away from the update button for now, all others should get a prompt on their hockey puck sooner rather than later.

Apple TV 5.0.1 update rolls out, brings HD iTunes previews and a few fixes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 19:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

London's red telephone boxes are iconic, sure, but just how relevant can they be in this century? Spectrum Interactive has a solution that both ensures their preservation and provides customers in search of internet a free ticket online. The company has converted some 1,800 pay phones throughout London into WiFi hotspots, offering passersby a free connection so long as they provide their mobile numbers and download an e-coupon for a nearby store. Spectrum initially began testing the program with the help of Nokia late last year, and while it's amassed an impressive number of WiFi access points, it's lost the support of its Finnish partner, and is still assessing how willing local businesses are to pay for getting coupons in the service. On top of that, there's the whole issue of how many people will think to scope out phone booths rather than, say, an internet cafe. Here's hoping Spectrum has some very flashy signs on the windows.

[Image credit: Elliott Brown, Flickr]

Spectrum Interactive brings WiFi hotspots to London's phone boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 19:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Motorola's applied to patent a new display layer that aims to prevent all those smudges that inevitably accrue on our finger-friendly devices. A modern-day touchscreen problem for prim-and-proper types, the application solves it with several minute, raised layers across the surface of the device, with little reflective caveats to capture oils and other unwanted impurities, optically disguising them from your eyes. The layers wouldn't degrade compared to chemical coatings that could also get scratched off. In typical patent application style, the wording's pretty hazy -- Motorola could either be describing an add-on layer applied to the phone afterward or something already fused to the display. In the application's words:

"A viewable surface of a device, and more particularly a viewable surface of an electronic device, and even more particularly a viewable surface of a transparent cover for a display in an electronic device, includes transparent pedestals projecting from the surface of the viewable surface, the pedestals having reflective sides that conceal, or suppress the appearance of, smudges on the viewable surface."

For some more specifics on Motorola's smudge-disguising solution, you can peruse the official filing down at your local patents and trademark office -- or just hit up the source below.

Motorola files patent application for anti-smear display tech originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Okay, it may not be one of the sleekest laptops we've seen of late, but Panasonic's B11 is packing a hefty amount of horsepower underneath that beastly shell to make you forget its looks. This Let's Note B11 is a worthy refresh to the B10 series we showed you a while back -- although aesthetically it didn't change much. Inside the Japan-bound B11 is Intel's latest Core i7-3615QM chip, which you can pair alongside a 750GB hard drive or a 256GB SSD. You can also choose up to 16GB of RAM if you go the quiet route, while the HDD configuration only allows a maximum of 8GB of memory. The 15.6-inch (1920 x 1080) B11 is set to hit Japanese shelves on May 18th, with pricing ranging from a whopping 170,000 to 250,000 yen (around $3,100) depending on how you set it up.

Panasonic outs Let's Note B11 laptop series in Japan, Ivy Bridge in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PC users of a certain age will be all too familiar with defragging and disk checking, normally as a last-ditch attempt to reinvigorate a flagging or faulty system. Fast-forward to 2012, and Microsoft is reassessing the role of the whole NTFS health model for the modern world (well, Windows 8 at least). It turns out that these days actual corruptions are rare, but people still like to run chkdsk just in case -- or out of habit. In the old approach, health check was either happy or unhappy, and the machine was taken offline for as long as was needed to fix. Even with optimization and improvements in later versions, the galloping sizes of hard drives has swallowed up much of the benefit. In the redesigned model there are four states: healthy, spot verification needed, scan needed and spot fix needed. In any of these states, the system remains online, with the user deciding when to restart if a fix is needed. The reboot process should also be much quicker, with the spot fix already targeted. Advanced users can go a stage further and invoke the spot fix while still online for sections of the disk not in use. The proof, of course, is in the pudding, but anything that involves less death-staring at a disk check is a good thing in our book. Hit the source for a blow-by-blow breakdown.

CHKDSK is changing how it works (step 1 of 1) 56 percent completed... originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 20:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week at CTIA in beautiful New Orleans, we were lucky enough to spend some time with Richard Kerris, VP of Developer Relations at Nokia. Obviously, there's bit of a chicken and egg situation when it comes to attracting software talent to Windows Phone. Developers favor platforms with an established community, and users prefer an ecosystem with a broad selection of apps. We talked about what Nokia announced at the show -- including apps like City Lens -- and how the company is helping developers with its Business Development Kit (BDK) and App Highlights showcase. Want all the details? Just take a look at our video interview.

Brad Molen contributed to this report.

The Engadget interview: Nokia VP of Developer Relations Richard Kerris at CTIA 2012 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 20:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Listen up, maggots. Fresh off all the recent hoopla surrounding BlackBerry 10, Research In Motion announced that the U.S. Department of Defense has approved the use of six BlackBerry models on its networks. The smartphones receiving the green light are the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930, BlackBerry Torch 9810, 9850 and 9860, and BlackBerry Curve 9360. RIM added that DoD and Army personnel will be able to use several capabilities added by the military for its BlackBerry users last year, including universal search, near field communications, augmented reality and the potential land mine that is Social Feeds 2.0 (whaddya mean that was classified?). No word on whether a certain BlackBerry user-in-chief will be getting an upgraded version of his device as well. For more details, feel free to march into the PR after the break.

Continue reading Sir, yes, sir: BlackBerry 7 smartphones get DoD approval

Sir, yes, sir: BlackBerry 7 smartphones get DoD approval originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 21:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Moving along a similar path to his previous untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0, hacker pod2g has followed up announcements of an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4 and iPad 3 running iOS 5.1 with a quick demo video (embedded after the break) as evidence. The video shows a jailbroken iPad 3 that manages to stay that way even after a reboot, the key difference from the current tethered hack already available. There's still no word on when the community at large may get a crack at the software, although tweets mention "stabilizing the payload" before taking a crack at the recently released iOS 5.1.1, and that the new Apple TV may not be able to come along for the ride.

Continue reading iOS 5.1 untethered jailbreak gets a video demo, not yet ready to meet the public

iOS 5.1 untethered jailbreak gets a video demo, not yet ready to meet the public originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 21:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Looks like RIM is more interested in fuel cell technology than we thought: the BlackBerry maker has just applied for two closely related patents for including a fuel cell in an electronic device, one for the frame and one for the fuel tank itself. Although the primary aim of either patent is to show how to fit a fuel cell into the tight space of a mobile gadget, they do show a more rectangular and modern device chassis than the last patent we saw, which had more than a slight whiff of the classic BlackBerry about it. Neither application is necessarily a roadmap for the future, and they don't mean your next BlackBerry smartphone will need top-ups of lighter fluid or methanol every few weeks. Still, they hint that fuel cells are at least somewhat more than a passing fancy in Waterloo.

RIM continues its fuel cell streak, applies for two more patents originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 22:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

European Union countries already had a data roaming cutoff law in place to prevent bill shock after your next Balearic vacation, but the price of the data in question should get much cheaper very soon. The European Parliament has just voted 578 to 10 to cap the price customers pay at no more than 70 Euro cents (91 US cents) per megabyte starting from July 1st, with that price eventually dipping to 45 Euro cents (58c US) a year later and just 20 Euro cents (26 US cents) in 2014. Voice and text price caps are going down to as little as 19 and nine Euro cents (25 and 12 cents US) in that two-year span, and if you're visiting from outside the EU, you'll be glad to hear that the anti-bill shock rule will apply to you this year as well. So, while you still might want to avoid uploading large videos from your phone while in Spain, you'll at least have the option of checking in on Foursquare without having to take out a small mortgage.

Europe votes to cap data roaming prices, will make it cheaper to tweet from Ibiza originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 23:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you like your computing to be neither seen, nor heard (or less seen and less heard), J&W has announced another bantam slab of nettop for your consideration. On the inside there's a choice of Cedar Trail D2550, N2800 and N2600 dual-core options, with support for up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Diminutive machines don't mean lack of I/O, and in this case you'll be getting three USB ports, a multicard reader, LAN, HDMI, VGA and RS232. Fanlesstech points out that it's actually a nano-ITX system, which measuring in at only 135 x 128 x 45 mm means it can be tucked away into even more convenient crevices. Just make sure not to hide it away too securely, else that 8011.n WiFi might suffer.

J&W announces M001 Cedar Trail nettop, to keep desks and ears happy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 23:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The carrier-backed Isis mobile payment service added a batch of new financial partners earlier this year, and it's now back with another fairly big addition. The venture announced today that it has brought American Express' various credit card offerings into the fold (including the company's own mobile-linked Serve cards), which will let users of those cards load them into the Isis app and make payments with their NFC-equipped smartphone -- when the service begins its rollout this summer, that is. As you may recall, American Express itself had already signed on as an Isis partner last year, but this is the first time that the company has committed to tying its cards to the platform -- which is a rather important little detail.

Continue reading Isis bolsters its mobile wallet with American Express cards

Isis bolsters its mobile wallet with American Express cards originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 00:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Most every touchscreen in the market today can only register your finger input as coordinates; that's fine for most uses, but it leads to a lot of double-taps and occasionally convoluted gestures. A pair of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Chris Harrison and Scott Hudson, have suggested that shear touch might be a smarter solution. Instead of gliding over fixed glass, your finger could handle secondary tasks by pushing in a specific direction, or simply pushing harder, on a sliding display. Among the many examples of what shear touch could do, the research duo has raised the possibility of skipping through music by pushing left and right, or scrolling more slowly through your favorite website with a forceful dragging motion. The academic paper is still far away from producing a shipping device, although a Microsoft doctoral fellowship's partial contribution to funding the study indicates one direction the technology might go. You can take a peek at the future in a video after the jump -- just don't expect a tablet-based Van Gogh this soon.

[Thanks, Chris]

Continue reading New shear touch technology lets you skip a double-tap, push your device around (video)

New shear touch technology lets you skip a double-tap, push your device around (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 01:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

You remember CineSkates, right? They're the camera tripod that looks like a Gorillapod that's just discovered the miracle of rollerblading. It's got a little sibling now -- the miniSkates Video Dolly, a rollable mount that works with phones and cameras that weigh up to 1.5 pounds. The minis are available for $150 as a complete set (Gorillapod included) or $95 for just the skates. Check out the smooth video after the break.

Continue reading CineSkates go mini, still harnessing the power of smooth

CineSkates go mini, still harnessing the power of smooth originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 17:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Remember those Braven speakers from a few weeks back? Well, guess what, the trio made an appearance here at CTIA and we finally got to put our shaky, caffeine-fueled hands on them. The Six Series of Bluetooth boxes is (going from left to right in the image above) the 600, the 650 and the 625s. Both the 600 and 650 are crafted from the same aircraft-grade aluminum and are all but indistinguishable at a glance. The lone physical differentiator is the numerical labeling in the bottom right corner. Both have a pleasant heft and a matte finish that makes them feel like decidedly high-end products. And, at $150 and $190 respectively, they're priced that way too. The 3W speakers and dual passive subwoofers were perfectly pleasant sounding and got surprisingly loud -- drowning out the crowded showroom floor with relative ease. The only issue, predictively, was that the low end started to distort as the volume was cranked -- particularly on the 600. We were even able to daisy chain them through a mini stereo cable (though not turn them into a stereo pair via Bluetooth), clearly irritating Braven's booth neighbors.

The 625s is a slightly different beast. It also features an aluminum speaker grille, but the rest of the casing is wrapped in shock-absorbing rubber. It felt quite a bit lighter, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since the company appears to think you should use this as a flashlight (hence the LED attachment). The unit even has a drybag should you decide to take it with you kayaking. We were even able to jack our iPhone in to the USB port for a bit of juice before heading back out on the floor. For more check out the gallery below.

Gallery: Braven Six Series hands-on

Joseph Volpe contributed to this report

Braven Six Series hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 17:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Intel unveiled its Hybrid Memory Cube at IDF late last year, and there's already an alliance dedicated to standardizing and implementing the technology. Now Microsoft wants in on the action: the outfit just announced that it will lend its clout to the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium. To jog your memory, HMC technology promises seven times the efficiency of current DRR3 memory modules and is being vaunted by Intel et al. as the solution for monster systems requiring lower power usage and higher bandwidth. Redmond's joining a well-attended party; IBM, Micron, Samsung and many others are already members of the consortium.

Continue reading Microsoft joins Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium to develop new DRAM standard

Microsoft joins Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium to develop new DRAM standard originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mystery, solved. That SGH-i667 'Mandel' Windows Phone that cropped up earlier in the month (and is shown above on the left)? Word on the street at that point was that it had been nixed from AT&T's lineup, but somehow, that same device actually made the trip to New Orleans. Sure enough, it debuted at CTIA as the Focus 2, a mid-range followup phone that's destined to tempt smartphone buyers to the WP7 side with a rock-bottom $50-on-contract price point. Hard to say if Samsung and AT&T mutually decided to carry through with launch plans after initially spiking 'em (or if that intel was just wrong to begin with), but we can think of it least one recently-canned phone that's hoping it's the former.

Samsung's SGH-i667 'Mandel' Windows Phone: surprise, it's the Focus 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 17:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.