It’s been a big week of sequels for LG at CES 2010; first they launch the LG Lotus’ slightly-upgraded sibling, the Lotus Elite, and now they’re following up the LG Rumor with the finger-centric Rumor Touch.
The LG Rumor Touch is a feature phone, but it’s probably about as fancy as feature phones come before you start wondering why the didn’t pack a bigger, badder operating system on it. It’s got a 3″ WQVGA touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera, support for up to 32GB of storage via microSD, and support for Sprint 3G. In terms of availability, LG is only going as far as to say it’s coming “in the first quarter”, and they won’t say a word about pricing. The past 2 Rumors have launched at $49.99 – but considering the touchscreen upgrade and the $99 price tag on the similar Lotus Elite, I’d wager that this thing will come in somewhere between $100 and $150 at launch.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Peugeot SR1 Concept – Click above for high-res image gallery
French automaker Peugeot will pull the wraps off a brand-new concept vehicle called the SR1 at the Geneva Motor Show in March. Unlike a number of recent Peugeot cars and concepts, the SR1 isn’t hallmarked by quirky, love-it-or-hate-it styling. Instead, we see a somewhat traditional long-hood, short-deck profile with some interesting details, such as the creased indentation in the doors that’s echoed in both the front and rear fascias. Also note the redesigned Lion logo, which we surmise will show up on all future Peugeots from here on out.
Power for the SR1 (which, of course, has nothing at all to do with the Corvette ZR1) comes courtesy of Peugeot’s HYbrid4 technology, which pairs a small 1.6-liter turbodiesel four-cylinder engine powering the front wheels with a 95-horsepower electric motor at the rear. Peugeot says that its all-wheel drive, through-the-road hybrid system will make its production debut in 2011 inside the 3008 crossover, with other models to closely follow.
Other concept-appropriate bits and pieces include a new removable plastic roof panel using technology that’s borrowed from the world of sailing, a three-seat layout with the third passenger behind the twin front seats and instrumentation that pairs futuristic crystal tubes displaying current fuel consumption and remaining range with a classic timepiece designed by Bell & Ross. Continuing the old versus new theme are black nickel and satin chrome trim with traditional wood and leather inlays.
With 313 combined horsepower, fuel mileage estimated at 57.7 mpg (European, 48 miles per gallon U.S.) and carbon emissions of just 119 grams per kilometer, the Peugeot SR1 ought to be a mean, green performer. Plus, its speed-sensitive four-wheel steering and lightweight structure should equal formidable handling prowess. Of course, we may never know for sure, as this car, though it apparently signals Peugeot’s new styling direction, is nothing more than a concept at this point.
The Nexus One is an over-hyped Android phone. But that doesn’t stop it from being the best Android phone. It is, for two reasons: Hardware and software.
Despite the buzz, it’s not revolutionary, certainly not because of the way it’s being sold—unlocked for $530 or subsidized, with a T-Mobile contract for $180. Sure, Google created its own web store that breaks the act of purchasing the device away from choosing a carrier—it’ll soon even be sold by Google for use on the Verizon network. But people have been doing this for years by buying unlocked GSM phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson and hooking them on to any GSM provider. It’s just not the giant step forward that everyone was expecting.
Specs
Quickly, the specs. The Nexus One—built for Google by HTC—has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB RAM, 32GB-capable microSD slot, a 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display at 800×480, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and 720×480 video capture @ 20FPS, dual microphones for noise canceling and a trackball. There is no slide-out keyboard—everything’s done with the onscreen virtual keyboard.
On paper, those specs are impressive. In actuality, each bit has its own quirk that makes the Nexus One less than perfect and just good. The 5-megapixel camera is built by HTC in such a way that the bezel around the ring juts out noticeably from the otherwise smooth back. The bulge protrudes just enough to either scratch surfaces that it’s placed on, like your glass table or your laptop, or even scratch the lens if you’re unlucky enough to rub it over something rough.
The AMOLED screen is gorgeous, and all the colors pop to the point that it makes both the iPhone 3GS and the Droid look washed out. It’s really, really good. And it has a generous 480×800 resolution—slightly shorter than the Droid’s, but still very ample for a phone, when compared to the iPhone’s 320×480. But, again, as good as the screen looks, it doesn’t have multitouch support in the US. No matter what the reason for that is, it’s frustrating to the end user. But, on the bright side, every input you’re giving it is more responsive than on the Droid, because of the improved internals.
Design
The Nexus One is probably HTC’s best looking phone to date. The body is made up of two different materials: a metallic bezel that surrounds the front and side of the phone, which curves around to a custom-engraveable strip on the back. The battery cover and bottom of the phone are both covered in a rubbery plastic material that’s solid and grippy, yet soft and pleasant. It’s also thinner and lighter and curvier than the iPhone 3GS, and is much less sharp and masculine than the Droid.
Besides the requisite power and volume rocker buttons, there are five “buttons” on the face: one trackball and four haptic-based touch buttons. The trackball is basically useless—you’ll only use it for its color-based notifications that tell you that you have a new email, text message or missed call without having to turn on the screen. As for using it as a scrolling device, the fact that scrolling around the OS or a webpage gives you inconsistent results depending on what “element” of the screen you land on means the ball is essentially useless for navigation. However, you will have to use it for text selection, because you can’t hold your finger down to move the cursor—you have to use the ball to navigate to exactly where you want.
The four touch buttons for homescreen, back, menu and search do have haptic feedback when you hit them, but they’re not that phenomenal either. Half the time they don’t register a press when you want them to, and the other half of the time they think you’re hitting it when you just wrapped your hand around the phone slightly too far.
You don’t get a rocker switch for silencing the phone without looking, like on the Pre or the iPhone, but you can do the same thing quickly from the lock screen by swiping across the screen to the left. (Swiping to the right unlocks the phone.)
Software
The Nexus One runs on Android 2.1, which will make its way to many other phones, like the Droid, fairly soon. This means that all these great features will be available on some older phones—HTC and Moto for sure—so you may not have to buy all new hardware to take advantage of these capabilities. And take advantage you will.
As soon as you turn on the phone you’ll notice the live wallpapers, which are essentially animated backgrounds that you can interact with. They’re fairly useless, even if there are a couple that retrieve data in realtime, like blades of grass against a sky that mimics the actual time of day, or an analog sound meter whose needle moves to the music you’re playing. The other guys at Giz put it this way: There’s no reason for something like this to exist, and it sucks up your battery unnecessarily, but it might be the single coolest reason to get this phone right now.
This same engineer-driven “can we do this?” paradigm is evident in other parts of Android 2.1 as well. The photo gallery thumbnails tilt into or out of the screen as you tilt the phone, which is superfluous and fairly distracting. And the apps screen is even worse. You bring it up by hitting the apps button, which zooms the icons in in 3D. Then, instead of just quickly scrolling onto or off the screen, it wraps around as if on the surface of a cube. This would be fine if the extra 3D effect—added because they can—didn’t cause any slowdown, but it does. There’s a noticeable lag when you’re flipping up, which makes us wish Google had eliminated the effect and let you just scroll through your programs in 2D.
These effects are definitely cool, don’t get me wrong, but I’d prefer it of Google was spending its man hours on improving speed and performance (and getting multitouch on its apps) than putting in eye candy that doesn’t help usability.
But things aren’t all bad. There’s a new beta-ish version of voice recognition that lets you speak into almost any text field (the names field in email isn’t included for some reason, whereas the name field in text messages are).
Voice search works about 80% of the time, but you have to speak slowly and enunciate everything, and pronounce marks. And it doesn’t recognize some proper nouns, transcribing “Jesus” (pronounced the Spanish way) to “Hey Zeus,” Bruce Willis style. The major downside is that all the voice transcription is done in the cloud—you know, it’s Google—so you have to have a net connection to use it. It’s awesome to dictate text messages or emails, though I probably talk too fast and mumble too much for this to work well.
We’re still not big fans of typing on Android’s virtual keyboard. Sure, the keys are actually responsive now, thanks to the muscle of the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, but somehow Google’s word prediction still lags behind the iPhone’s, and gives you strange options for when you’re typing really fast on the phone. It’s less of a blast-and-forget than Apple’s virtual keyboards. And, coming from the iPhone, the keys here are spaced a bit too close together and a bit too tight, but if you actually prefer the iPhone’s style, you can download “Better Keyboard” from the Android Marketplace.
Real-World Use
It’s fast fast fast. Part of this is due to performance gains just from using Android 2.1—people who’ve hacked 2.1 onto the Droid have mentioned better speeds—but a lot of it is the 1GHz processor. Every single aspect of the phone is affected when you have faster hardware on board.
Battery life lasts around a day with normal use, which includes calling, browsing, Google Mapping, push Gmailing and clothed sexting. That’s on par with other smartphones now, and won’t see much change until we get a dramatic boost in battery technology.
T-Mobile’s 3G is decent, but not astounding. It really depends on where you are, how many other T-Mobile users are in your city and how deployed the 3G network is there. And if you want, you can download PDAnet from the Android Marketplace, and the accompanying PDAnet application for Windows/Mac, and tether the Nexus One to be a 3G modem on the go. This will work much better when the device is on Verizon—if you care to pay $30 a month to make it happen.
HTC placed two microphones on the device, one on the bottom and one on the back, for better noise cancellation. And the extra microphone pays off. The other party said that the Nexus One sounded, through their speaker, as loud as an iPhone 3G, but noticeably better. Not astoundingly better, just enough so that you’d mention it. But the speaker on the Nexus One, on the other hand, makes conversations sound tinny and thin. Actually, the better microphone setup is evident when you do a Nexus One to Nexus One conversation, because the resulting sound out of N1’s speakers is less tinny.
The speaker on the back of the phone, used for speakerphone and for speakers when playing music, is fine. Not fantastic, just fine.
The camera app loads up a lot faster than on the Droid, and shoots a lot faster than the Droid’s camera—but the image quality is similarly mediocre. Compared to HTC’s earlier Windows Mobile phones, whose cameras were passably bad, the Nexus One’s 5-megapixel camera is quite good, even if it doesn’t have the iPhone’s touch-to-focus.
What Does This All Mean?
Google’s Nexus One is the best Android phone available right now, and we’re seeing as high or higher interest in this than the Droid, which had Verizon’s million-dollar marketing campaign behind it. But, since T-Mobile’s 3G coverage (and voice coverage) is not as built out in certain areas, you might want to wait a few weeks until the phone is available on the Verizon network. (Google will sell that version, too.) And if you’re looking to buy this unlocked for AT&T, be aware that you won’t be able to use AT&T’s 3G network.
But why is Google working so closely with HTC to design the phone, and why is Google selling it themselves? Our theory is that Google’s injecting these devices into the market to make sure that OEMs are pushing forward with new Android versions, and the latest hardware available. They don’t want stagnation, like with the Windows Mobile market, and are willing to sink manpower and money into ensuring forward movement.
It might seem like selling the Nexus One directly from Google’s website is two middle fingers up to manufacturers who have been selling Android phones already. Not exactly. HTC’s still the manufacturer, and it sounded like—both from the subtext at the press event and the presence of Motorola’s Sanjay Jha—that a future Nexus Two might not be from HTC. Google’s spreading the love, essentially, to any manufacturer willing to make the “best” phone it can; one Google’s proud to attach its name to.
So What About the Nexus Two?
Google said it’s going to be a while until the Nexus Two, but “a while” probably means one year. The previous phones, T-Mobile’s G1 and the MyTouch 3G and even the Hero, don’t quite measure up to the Nexus One in terms of speed and performance. It’s really just like a little computer, so if you want to jump into Android, it’s pretty safe to do so now. Better yet, you can get this thing unlocked and out of contract for $530—keep whatever cheap T-Mobile plan you currently have—and resell it in a year when the Nexus Two is available.
Incredibly fast
Gorgeous screen
Will be on Verizon in a few months
It’s on T-Mobile (subsidized), which doesn’t have a fantastic 3G network
Unlocked, unsubsidized phone costs $530, doesn’t work on AT&T 3G
Prosecutors in Los Angeles will seek an involuntary manslaughter indictment against the doctor suspected of giving Michael Jackson a lethal dose of a sedative, The Associated Press reported Friday.
A law enforcement source told The AP that Houston physican, Dr. Conrad Murray, will be prosecuted on a theory of gross negligence.
Dr. Murray, who had been hired to help the King of Pop prepare for a marathon London concert series, was at the 50-year-old singer’s rented mansion when paramedics arrived on June 25, finding him unconscious. Suspicion has swirled around the doctor, who had offices in Las Vegas and Houston, ever since. Investigators have searched his home, offices and a storage locker he used.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini at CES announced an app store for applications on netbooks. The store is called AppUp Center, and it’s a place where users can purchase programs that cater to a netbooks’ unique screen size and mobility. Intel AppUp center launched today for Windows and will support Moblin-based open source operating systems and a number of runtime environments later this year.
The first set of apps are now available for download, for free or to purchase, and more will be added as they are validated. App categories include entertainment, business, games, education, health and social media. Additionally, Acer, ASUS, Dell and Samsung have announced plans to collaborate with Intel on their own app stores.
According to Intel, by participating in the program, developers gain access to the fast-growing, consumer-centric computing netbook category. In addition, developers gain revenue opportunities from the netbook-installed base, and potentially hundreds of millions of other Intel processor-based computers and devices — should Intel and partner storefronts expand into new market segments.
Intel is also working with partners to bring the app stores to consumers. The partner stores give access to the developer and store services the Intel AppUp center offers. The services include validating and categorizing apps and utilizing a common transaction infrastructure to administer purchases and downloads for these tailored stores.
DigitTronics showed us their ultra fun RCX4 Star Stryker, a flying, hovering X-Wing fighter-clone that costs $399. It lasts about ten minutes on one charge. Anyone want one? They’re $100 off at the show.
We had a chance to meet with Memorex this morning, and spotted a few cool items for you. Specifically, a charging device for you iProduct, some Wii accessories, and a pretty interesting mini-camcorder with a touch screen.
XtremeMac showed us a combination wall charger and li-ion battery pack. It’s got dual USB ports on the bottom, and has a 1 amp outbput to charge your devices quickly, and a fold out arm which turns it into a viewing stand. MSRP is $79.99, which seems a little steep for a fancy battery pack. Maybe we’ll see it a little cheaper when it actually comes out in 2Q2010.
For the Wii, Memorex has a new racing wheel that ensures that you have access to all your buttons (including the trigger underneath), and supports the MotionPlus. The best part is the price, it comes individually for $9.99, or as a family three pack for $24.99.
The most interesting thing we saw was a new mini-camcorder. It’s got a few features to set it out from the pack; it shoots in full 1080p, the entire back of it is a touch screen, and it will reportedly support an external microphone and there are even rumors of a wireless setup, making this a potentially great camera for video blogging. The new camera should be available this fall, with an MSRP of $169.
We also saw some new iPhone/iPod docks, which are necessarily a new thing, but they are a little different. The design is definitely sleek, and what made me notice them is that the iPhone or iPod is actually protected when it’s docked. We don’t have a lot of information about these products yet, but we’ll let you know the details when we find out more.
If you’re out in the middle of the Yukon wilderness and really have to send a tweet about the moose you just killed and ate with your bare hands, Delorme’s PN-60w GPS is just the device you need.
Leveraging the SPOT satellite communicator/ messenger service to connect to internet services such as Twitter and Facebook, not to mention as SMS, you can maintain communications with the mainstream world even when you’re literally in the middle of nowhere (and no cell towers are to be seen). Going beyond a list of pre-written form messages, you can type custom message of your own to update the masses on your activities and whereabouts. The only problem? There’s no keypad, keyboard or touchscreen on the thing.
There’s also standard GPS features like mapping, a compass, emergency assistance and geocaching. As for availability, the PN-60w will be available in the spring for $450 on its own and $550 bundled with the SPOT communicator. In short, this thing is good if you’re a man of the wild, not so good if you spend most your time hunting for machiattos. [Delorme]
Phonescoop grabbed a quick interview with Ms. Blue Lagoon herself, Brooke Shields at the LG booth. While she recited the regular marketing claptrap she had a little bit to say about AT&T and the iPhone:
PS: Why did you get an iPhone?
Brooke: First I got it because it was cool. I felt comfortable with the touch screen. The email was great. Texting was great. I was so happy that I could film my kids and take pictures of them and share them with my husband, The phone was a big problem, though. My time is limited, and when I have a few moments to call my kids, I don’t want the call to drop. That’s what happened with the iPhone.
If Ms. Shields is against you, AT&T, who can be for you?
Congrats to Phonescoop’s Eric Zeman, above, for being allowed to go near women again.
Kodak showed us their clever little Slice and Playsport cameras. The Slice is a touchscreen point and shoot and the SportPlay is a completely waterproof mini-camcorder. Both aren’t quite ready and will be available in the Spring of this year but both are pretty cool.
The Slice has a large rear screen with touch controls. You slide through photos with your fingers and then tap little icons to set sharing. Dave wrote up the main specs:
The cutely named Slice is a seemingly typical P&S camera, albeit with a 14MP sensor and the previously mentioned touchscreen interface. It’ll shoot 720p 30 FPS video, features image stabilization and a lithium ion battery, just like the other cameras in this market segment. Kodak really isn’t doing anything new with the Slice, however I will have to admit I do like the look of the little guy. The price may be a bit of a problem though, it’s going to MSRP for $350 which might be a bit steep for the casual purchaser. Expect to see the Kodak Slice at your favorite electronics retailer sometime in April 2010.
Video after the jump.
The Playsport shoots at 1080p and has an HDMI out along with an SD card slot for expansion. It is rubberized and the slots are kept safe and dry with little flaps. It will cost $140 Both will be available in April.
Pixel Qi‘s magic transforming displays seemed too good to be true: One screen that’s both a bright, full color LCD and a reflective, E-Ink quality display for reading in light. It is pretty damn incredible.
It’s not hard to see the overall trend with gadgets: They’re being reduced almost entirely to the display. Which is why, in this near-future vision of a single tablet thing that does everything—computer, video screen, reader—what Pixel Qi’s doing simply makes sense. If you’re carrying something that’s basically just a screen, and expect it to do lots of different things, a screen that adapts to precisely what you’re doing is how it has to be.
In the Pixel Qi display’s current form, it’s impressive, though nowhere near perfect. In its backlit LCD mode, it’s just about as good as any other 10.1-inch, 1024×600 netbook display, except that the viewing angle seems more limited, before the color started warping. Head on, color seems solid. Though it won’t win any illumination showdowns, it’s plenty bright—Pixel Qi won’t reveal how many nits it’s at when running at full brightness. How it handled motion was a bit harder to gauge, given the quality of the available video clip. On the Lenovo S10 used as the demo unit, it immediately switched to the electrophoretic reflective mode—where backlighting is replaced by ambient light reflecting off the back of the screen. In that mode, it really is just as crisp as the Kindle for reading text. You can watch video in this mode too, though it’s not exactly pretty (the point being you don’t have to wait 10 years for the damn screen to refresh when you turn a page). They wouldn’t speculate on how much battery life improves when you turn off the backlight, simply stating that it saves you 2 watts of power.
Pixel Qi CEO Mary Lou Jepsen says that they’ve signed up more fabs to produce their displays, which doesn’t just mean they’re on track to produce “millions” of them this year, but that they’ll be able to produce different sizes, for different form factor devices, meaning we should see them in a lot of different things over the next year or so. (Tablets! Netbooks! Phones?!) Probably, we’ll see the first stuff later this year. Device makers using the screen have got full multitouch running, since in terms of adding capabilities like capacitive touch, it’s just like any other LCD. Which is the real advantage here: Their screens are made using existing LCD factories and existing LCD technology, which is why we don’t have to wait for years to see them in the real world. (Pixel Qi works a bit like the chip designer ARM—the design the screens, license the tech, and somebody else makes ’em.)
In a battle against e-ink, which has so many obvious limitations, this really is the projected winner. We still need to see this thing in a device that’s capable of running for “days” without a recharge, but we are hoping for that soon.
I’d say it’s two generations away from being perfect enough—a wiiiider viewing angle, much higher resolution—for a truly finicky company to put these screens in their tablet or notebook, but it’s clear, I think, that a screen like this one is the key to a future where everything is about the screen.
Gegevens
Naam: Gemini I (Marsh & McLennan Building)
Hoogte: 73 Meter
Plaats: Capelle aan den IJssel, Rivium
Oplevering: 1994
Functie: Kantoren
Architect: van Tilburg en Partners
_______________________________________________________
The recent cold spell across the U.S. has ushered in the return of $3 gas, which some economists think is enough to put a dent in consumer spending, reports CNNMoney.com.
The average price of an unleaded gallon of gas in the U.S is approximately $2.71, according to AAA.
Prices have gone up by 7 cents in the past week, and now are now higher than they were during at any point last year.
Natural gas prices have also jumped thanks to the U.S. cold spell, which will create an additional headache for consumers since it could raise the cost to heat their homes.
Researchers recently learned that Quercetin, a popular antioxidant, inhibits the synthesis of proteins needed for Hepatitis C replication.
Natural compound blocks hepatitis C infection
Finding may lead to a new treatment
January 4, 2010: Researchers have identified two cellular proteins that are important factors in hepatitis C virus infection, a finding that may result in the approval of new and less toxic treatments for the disease, which can lead to liver cancer and cirrhosis.
An estimated 270 to 300 million people worldwide are infected with hepatitis C and the conventional treatments – interferon and ribavirin – can have significant side effects. A new drug targeting cellular proteins rather than viral proteins would be a valuable addition to the treatment arsenal, said Samuel French, an assistant professor of pathology and senior author of the study.
French and his team set out to identify the cellular factors involved in hepatitis C replication and, using mass spectrometry, found that heat shock proteins (HSPs) 40 and 70 were important for viral infection. HSP 70 was previously known to be involved, but HSP 40 was linked for the first time to hepatitis C infection, French said. They further showed that the natural compound Quercetin, which inhibits the synthesis of these proteins, significantly inhibits viral infection in tissue culture.
O esboço artístico do novo MINI SUV ainda sem nome vazou recentemente na internet para o delírio dos fãs da marca Mini que planeja apresentá-lo em Março.
Nós já vimos muitas fotos espiãs desse modelo camuflado em testes, mas os desenhos apesar de em preto e branco mostram claramente os detalhes do veiculo escondidos pela camuflagem nas fotos espiãs.
Ele se caracteriza por ser maior que as versões anteriores do Mini com rodas grandes e uma lateral mais longa podendo ser vendido nas versões de 3 e 5 portas.
A versão básica desse modelo será vendida por nada menos que 22.000 Euros.
It may be time to stop looking at Amanda Bynes as the cute little comedienne from Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show – perhaps the image of the blonde stunner all grown up and slithering around the Feb. issue of Maxim in her bra and panties will help with the transition.
“I had the best time on this shoot,” the former What I Like About You star says in a new interview with the men’s mag. “I think every shot I did was sexy. Some people still see me as a kid, but I’m a 23-year-old woman now.”
“I want to show people who I am,” she adds. “My parents were like, “Does this mean you’re gonna do sexy movies now?” I said, “Well, if they’re done the right way, then maybe!’ I mean, I’m not gonna do porn, but if it’s a Leonardo DiCaprio movie or whatever…”
As day two of CES unfolds, lots of innovative new products and initiatives are showing up, including as-yet-unseen concepts for netbooks and mobile displays, numerous type of tablets and more. Here are some of the most notable debuts.
Lenovo and others are demoing portable computers equipped with new PixelQi display technology. These LCD displays operate in two modes — a normal color mode like most laptop displays and a non-backlit mode that allows viewing in bright light. Once the backlight is turned off the display is viewed in a black-and-white mode like that used in traditional e-ink readers.
Yahoo has announced that it’s releasing a kit to allow developers to create their own TV widgets. It’s aiming to put “ConnectedTV” widgets on living room media devices, Blu-ray players, and cable and IPTV set-top boxes.
Rovi (formerly Macrovision) arrived at CES this week armed with its new TotalGuide digital programming guide (formerly “Liquid”) and a slew of new content partners, hoping to win over the hearts and minds of CE manufacturers looking for a way to integrate traditional TV content alongside broadband video. Check out NewTeeVee’s take.
ASUS has debuted a number of new notebooks and netbooks. Its EEE PC Seashell KR Collection features glitzy designs done in collaboration with designer Karim Rashid. The pink-and-black systems run Intel N450 processors, are 802.11n-ready, and have up to 250GB hard drives, but it looks like the cases are the real selling points. ASUS also showed off a concept netbook that unfolds into a big-screen tablet, and there were lots of other interesting portable computers shown.
Meanwhile MSI is demoing a dual-screen netbook prototype with touchscreen features and no physical keyboard. The 10-inch screens are capable of 1024 x 600 resolution, and a displayed keyboard provides tactile feedback as you type on it.
Ford’s new MyTouch platform, which will appear in the 2011 Ford Edge, puts an 8-inch touch-screen in the center of a dashboard. It provides for navigation and climate controls and more. You can also plug in a 3G modem and connect to the Internet. GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d) also has an analysis of Ford Sync, a new communication and entertainment platform for cars that responds to voice commands.
Dell has showed off its first-ever tablet, based on the Android OS, with a 5-inch screen. It joins numerous other tablets, including an HP-branded one that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer displayed during his keynote, and another Android-based tablet, with a 7-inch screen, from Motorola.
And Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced last night that the company is bringing the Moblin mobile Linux operating system and the Moorestown chip to smartphones. He showed the LG GW990 phone running both and performing complex multitasked chores. LG and Sprint also unveiled new Lotus Elite and Rumor Touch smartphones. The Lotus Elite can play voice mail messages without the user having to open up the phone.
Think of this as your own personal trainer that you keep in your pocket. DirectLifeis a personalized fitness program that is meant to create awareness of your activity levels and help you set and attain goals. It is a wearable monitor that records your daily movements and then transfers that information to a website and emails you summaries of your progress.
You are also afforded access to an online professional coach and you can choose to track yourself amongst your family and friends. You will have a personal webpage with your stats, tips and activity ideas, personalized activity plan, with realistic goals, and weekly feedback summaries by e-mail with motivational tips. The approach DirectLife takes is unique because it works to change habits in your daily routine. It focuses on making everyday life more active, rather than expecting people to have dedicated times at which they work out, play sports or exercise. Does Wii Fitness count? The site recommends companies to use this as a means to “encourage” employees to be healthy and thus lower insurance costs. That’s just a little too 1984 for my taste. The DirectLife website offers more information.
These are heady times for foodies—you know, the people who love farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs), and hate Big Ag. They’ve turned the documentary movies “Food Inc.” and “Fresh!” into big hits. And they’ve turned “Slow food” into a generic term (there actually is an organization by that name that boasts more than 100,000 members in 132 countries).
A seeming army of foodie bloggers (of which I am one) sees the hand of Big Ag’s pesticides and feedlot practices (Monsanto, Con Ag, Tyson, etc.) in the explosive growth of chronic disease, and genetically modified food. It’s a neat good-guy/bad-guy scenario, with only one wild card: Is the U.S. government with or against the foodies?
The movement is about more than symbolism. After years of decline during the last century, the number of small farms (those with less than $250,000 annual sales) increased about one percent between 2002 and 2007. Many of these farms have adopted innovations in farming practices popularized by farmers like Eliot Coleman and Joel Salatin—using compost and seaweed rather than commercial fertilizers to build up soil, putting chickens onto pasture so they eat bugs and grass, using pigs as low-maintenance rototillers, and substituting mineralization and homeopathic programs for antibiotics and vaccinations to improve animal health.
Increasingly, the heroes in this ongoing food drama are President and Michelle Obama, along with the president’s appointees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Michelle Obama has received much acclaim for planting an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn. A popular blog, Obama Foodorama, even chronicles the Obamas’ food and eating experiences, including menus at state dinners, and Michelle Obama’s guest appearance on Sesame Street, promoting fresh vegetables.
Subordinates are trying to get with the program. Over the summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture set up a farmers market in a parking lot outside its massive Washington headquarters. And to the accolades of foodie bloggers everywhere, it launched an initiative, “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,” to encourage expansion of the local food boomlet.
It’s tempting to view all these developments as part of a shift in long-time official priorities, to encourage small farms practicing sustainability, at the expense of Big Ag. Unfortunately, this view is more mirage than reality.
In a classic example of the government speaking out of both sides of its mouth, the Obama administration is actively supporting another movement—one that really does favor Big Ag at the expense of the budding local food movement. It’s the Congressional push for sweeping food safety legislation, which has passed the U.S. House, and is pending a vote by the full Senate. It’s overlooked by the foodies because it’s endorsed by a wide range of consumer organizations, and besides, who wouldn’t want to counter the high profile cases of serious illness, and even a number of deaths, from contaminated spinach, hamburger, peppers, and peanut butter, among others, over the last three years?
But in their 119-page House and 133-page Senate versions, these bills do much more than increase the FDA’s army of food inspectors. They take a sledgehammer to a problem that may well benefit more from highly targeted, and less invasive approaches. Consider:
Both bills require all food producers, including even the smallest makers of specialized cheeses and jams, to put together highly detailed production plans (known as HACCP plans, for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), at a cost of many thousands of dollars requiring dozens and sometimes even hundreds of hours of specialized input designed to identify potential “hazards” in the food production process; this despite the fact that nearly all cases of food-borne illness have come from products made and distributed by mid-size and large concerns.
Moreover, it allows FDA inspectors complete discretion in approving or disapproving such plans. Working within such an arbitrary system isn’t a big problem for multimillion dollar corporations, which can afford fines of possibly $10,000 a day (under the House legislation) and expensive consultants to work through any problems.
It was a USDA requirement in the late 1990s that slaughterhouses have HACCP plans that led to the demise of hundreds of small local and regional slaughterhouses. Today’s small farms raising cattle and pigs bear a heavy burden as a result—they must often schedule slaughtering months in advance and send their animals hundreds of miles away, only to be shipped back for local distribution, adding substantial costs and energy consumption.
The pending legislation actually thrusts not only the federal government, but also possibly the United Nations, right into the middle of the food production process currently experiencing so much innovation in the U.S. The Senate bill requires within one year the development of “updated good agricultural practices”—a seemingly benign term that is used by the Farming and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (GAP, in its lingo) to describe its establishment of standards covering use of fertilizers, crop rotation, animal grazing practices, and other such fundamentals of farming. The U.N. organization has been active working with farmers in places like Egypt, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, and Burkina Faso.
How will the U.N.’s standards mesh with those of Eliot Coleman, Joel Salatin, and other American farming innovators developing sustainable techniques for rejuvenating soil or aging cheeses or bringing back old varieties of vegetables and fruits? The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund worries that the FDA “will adopt regulations that treat small farms growing a diversity of crops organically (whether certified or not) the same as a facility growing thousands of acres of a single crop conventionally.” Farms that fail to measure up—perhaps fail to follow government standards for making compost or for crop rotation—would have their products considered “adulterated,” according to the FTCLDF, and thus be subject to huge fines.
In allowing for the establishment of “science-based minimum standards for the safe production and harvesting of those types of fruits and vegetables that are raw agricultural commodities,” the Senate bill provides an opening for the FDA to embark on a big foodie no-no: the irradiation of leafy green vegetables. The FDA gave irradiation its stamp of approval last year.
On and on it goes. The legislation thrusts the FDA, which has been limited to regulating food and drugs involved in interstate commerce, into the intrastate sphere, allowing it to regulate businesses that are truly local. “The bottom line is that local jam-makers, cheese-makers, and bread-makers have to register with the FDA, and if (the Senate bill) passes, they will buried in federal red tape,” says Judith McGeary, head of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, and a lawyer.
The real impact of the pending food legislation is difficult to fully gauge, partly because the language in the two bills is in many places vague and obtuse. For example, the distinction between farmers and food producers is up for grabs. “If a farm processes food—which could be as simple as sun drying tomatoes or making jams from their own fruits—it will be treated as a processor” under the Senate bill, says McGeary.
As admirable as this legislative push is for trying to fix flaws in existing food safety regulations, and thus reduce serious outbreaks of illness, it is equally onerous for going way beyond the business of safety. The legislation would do better to focus on identifying and going after repeat offenders and large producers that are the most frequent food-borne-illness culprits rather than placing unreasonable burdens on the budding local-food movement. Otherwise, there could well be many fewer smaller farms and food producers turning out the locally-produced items so prized by foodies.
![Screen shot 2010-01-08 at [ January 8 ] 11.46.13 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Screen-shot-2010-01-08-at-January-8-11.46.13-AM-272x300.png "Screen shot 2010-01-08 at [ January 8 ] 11.46.13 AM")
Incredibly fast
Gorgeous screen
It’s on T-Mobile (subsidized), which doesn’t have a fantastic 3G network
Unlocked, unsubsidized phone costs $530, doesn’t work on AT&T 3G
We had a chance to meet with Memorex this morning, and spotted a few cool items for you. Specifically, a charging device for you iProduct, some Wii accessories, and a pretty interesting mini-camcorder with a touch screen.
If you’re out in the middle of the Yukon wilderness and really have to send a tweet about the moose you just killed and ate with your bare hands, Delorme’s PN-60w GPS is just the device you need.
Think of this as your own personal trainer that you keep in your pocket. DirectLifeis a personalized fitness program that is meant to create awareness of your activity levels and help you set and attain goals. It is a wearable monitor that records your daily movements and then transfers that information to a website and emails you summaries of your progress.