Category: News

Dual microphones, capacitive volume control, a built-in six-band equalizer, and the ability to pair with eight phones make the Spracht Aura EQ bluetooth headset sound as insanely futuristic as it looks. Heck, it might make bluetooth headsets appealing again. Maybe.

I’m not—and suspect that I never will be—crazy about any sort of headset, but the robotic alien symbiotic look of the Aura puts it among the more appealing headsets I’ve seen in a while and it doesn’t hurt that it’s got more features than it can handle phones. Considering that the gadget will go for about $80 when it hits shelves in March, I’d say it might be a hit. [Engadget]

FoMoCo said today that it completed the transfer of its UAW retiree health care liabilities to the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust (VEBA Trust) on Dec. 31, 2009.

“The transfer of these health care liabilities to the VEBA Trust is the culmination of several years of work and will significantly improve our competitiveness in the U.S.,” said Lewis Booth, Ford’s chief financial officer. “We have removed a substantial health care liability from our balance sheet and have significantly reduced health care expenses. We also have shown confidence in our liquidity and One Ford plan by pre-paying $500 million of debt owed to the VEBA Trust.”

For said that the New Notes will represent about $7 billion in incremental debt on Ford’s balance sheet.

More details in the press release posted after the jump.

Press Release:

FORD TRANSFERS ITS UAW RETIREE HEALTH CARE LIABILITIES TO VEBA TRUST AND PRE-PAYS VEBA DEBT

DEARBORN, Mich., Jan. 4, 2010 – Ford Motor Company announced today that on Dec. 31, 2009, it completed the transfer of its UAW retiree health care liabilities to the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust (“VEBA Trust”).

Pursuant to a court-approved settlement agreement, the transfer of these liabilities was implemented by Ford transferring on Dec. 31 the following assets to the VEBA Trust:

* An Amortizing Guaranteed Secured Note maturing June 30, 2022, with an original principal amount of $6.7 billion with a corresponding estimated present value of $4.8 billion (“New Note A”);
* An Amortizing Guaranteed Secured Note maturing June 30, 2022, with an original principal amount of $6.5 billion with a corresponding estimated present value of $4.7 billion (“New Note B” and, together with New Note A, the “New Notes”);
* Warrants expiring on Jan. 1, 2013, to purchase 362 million shares of Ford Common Stock at a price of $9.20 per share;
* Assets in a Temporary Asset Account consisting of cash and marketable securities with an estimated value of $620 million; and
* Assets in Ford’s internal VEBA trust consisting of cash and marketable securities with an estimated value of $3.5 billion.

Also on Dec. 31, Ford made the following payments on the New Notes:

* A scheduled payment of $1.4 billion on New Note A;
* An additional pre-payment of $500 million on New Note A; and
* A scheduled payment of $610 million on New Note B, which was paid in cash, in lieu of Ford’s option of making New Note B payments in Ford Common Stock. Had Ford chosen to pay in stock, the shares would have been issued at the 30-day volume weighted average price of $9.13, while Ford Common Stock closed at $10 on Dec. 31.

As a result of these actions, the New Notes will represent about $7 billion in incremental debt on Ford’s balance sheet.

Additional details about this transaction are included in Ford’s Current Report on Form 8-K filed today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is not it

This just in: the WSJ is reporting that an Apple Tablet device thinger will ship in March after a January announcement. The announcement should come on the 27th the 28th, according on various sources.

Apple Inc. plans to unveil a new multimedia tablet device later this month, but doesn’t plan on shipping the product until March, people briefed by the company said.

The device should sell for under $1000 and come in multiple finishes and may come with a nationwide Wi-Fi subscription similar to Boingo.

Our own sources believe that the tablet is well on its way. More as we get it.

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Finally, it’s January 2010, and technology watchers will have some answers to a few highly hyped questions. The first week of January will see both the Consumer Electronics Show and an eagerly anticipated event from Google at which the company is expected to unveil its own Android-based phone, the Nexus One.

But by far the most tech hysteria is being reserved for an Apple event, said to be scheduled for Jan. 26 in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center, at which CEO Steve Jobs is expected to announce and show off what’s being dubbed the iSlate.

The rumor mill says the iSlate (if that is in fact its name, if in fact it exists) will be a tablet computer based on the iPhone that will function as an e-reader, movie player, and general-purpose communications device. Apple watchers are expecting it to be priced at $800 to $1,000 and be available in the second quarter.

Saving News?

No one is watching Apple’s next move with as much interest as the news industry. Indeed, The New York Times’ David Carr gushed that Apple could fix what has ailed newspapers since they started putting content on the web for free.

“A simple, reliable interface for gaining access to paid content can do amazing things: Five years ago, almost no one paid for music online, and now, nine billion or so songs sold later, we know that people are willing to pay if the price is right and the convenience is there,” he wrote.

The iPhone is already proving this concept, said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies. “A good example of this is the GQ app for the iPhone. Each month’s issue is delivered as an app for $2.99, cheaper than the newsstand paper copy,” he said.

“Apple gives the publishers a new way to monetize content…

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Intel has introduced new chipsets and central processing units earlier than expected. The chipmaker on Monday released details on seven desktop Clarkdale CPUs and 11 mobile-computer Arrandale CPUs several days earlier than the official announcement.

Intel President Paul Otellini is slated to make a major announcement during his keynote speech at this weeks Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the new chipsets and CPUs were expected to be part of that speech. While some details of the chipsets have been released, Intel will still make the official announcement at CES, according to Nick Knupffer, an Intel spokesperson.

Details of the new processors come after Lenovo unveiled a new line of laptops powered by Advanced Micro Devices processors. Intel said Otellini will make additional announcements at CES.

At the Core

Otellini’s speech comes at the right time for Intel, which has faced several blows in recent months, starting with a $1.45 billion antitrust fine from the European Union on behalf of AMD. In addition, Intel is being investigated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The Clarkdale CPUs are the first with an integrated memory controller and a graphics core created with a 45nm process. They are expected to begin mass production in the first quarter, ahead of AMD, and will come in Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3 forms.

Intel’s Arrandale processors, on the other hand, will be used in smaller computers that use less power and require less cooling. The processors will also improve performance by including a dynamic frequency. This allows the Arrandale processor to change the speed of the GPU function and the CPU, significant for people watching Blu-ray Disc or high-definition devices. The Arrandale processor optimizes graphics performance.

Clarkdale, part of the dual-core Westmere family, will compete in the $100 to $200 market that has been dominated by AMD.

Reviews…

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Filed under: Hardware, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch

It’s kind of a shame the iPhone didn’t include an IR port at all. While it’s not a necessity (certainly the device has sold plenty of units without one), I have quite a few devices in my house that still require an old school IR remote to control — it’s 2010, but my TV still isn’t hooked up to Bluetooth or WiFi. That’s why this accessory looks interesting — it’s an IR transmitter that plugs into the iPhone’s port and turns the device into a touchscreen-based universal remote. It’s made by a company called L5 Technology, and they’ll show it off at CES later this week. Previous systems have required you to connect up your television (or other device) to expensive controllers so the iPhone can access them via WiFi, but this seems like a much more sensible solution.

They’re asking $50 for it, which sounded expensive at first, but that’s relatively cheap when it comes to high-end universal remotes. Assuming that the accompanying app is well-designed and full-featured enough to compare to some of the other offerings out there, it might end up being a nice solution for combining all of your various remotes into just your iPhone or iPod touch.

[via Cult of Mac]

TUAWiPhone as TV remote coming to CES originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPod Family, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK

Rumors are hitting the ground hard and strong about exactly what to expect in the upcoming (yeah, yeah, possibly mythical) Apple tablet device. And the most important of those rumors, the fact most consistently cited, is the introduction of extra pixels. You might roll your eyes and say, “of course a tablet means more pixels,” but what exactly does that extra resolution mean to you as a developer? After all, we don’t know what the pixel count will be or whether the (possibly mythical) tablet will offer widget-mode applications using the current iPhone resolution size or full-screen options. So let’s look at some of the challenges having extra screen space might offer up developers.

For example, the (possibly mythical) tablet might run what essentially amounts to iPhone Rosetta — little virtual iPhone apps running in their own little simulator windows, 20-pixel-high status bar and all (we aren’t sure the tablet will run on ARM or not). And those 20 pixels matter. Many iPhone devs have designed their apps for 320-by-460 or 480-by-300 screen geometries, the geometries that have been native to the iPhone and iPod touch throughout the first three generations of devices. (Strictly speaking, the iPhone is in its 2nd generation with the 3GS and the iPod touch is in its 3rd with the latest model unit.)

Take away the status bar, however, and you’re dealing with just the first break in the geometry story. Apple doesn’t offer specific UIKit-based calls for querying status bar heights and other standard items like 44-pixel navigation bar presentations. When moving between an iPhone and a tablet, that’s the kind of information that an application should be able to find out for itself.

With an expected (and currently hypothetical) 960-by-1440 minimum resolution, tablet software doesn’t just have to change aspect ratios but also deal with magnification. Art that looks terrific at 320×480 may not look so hot at 960×1440. Although Apple has always encouraged developers to design for resolution independence, the fact remains that most iPhone artists have delivered photoshop-quality art at device-level resolution. In my experience, sadly little development has centered on vector-graphic-based art. Consider the image at the top of this post, showing a screen shot from my App Store Draw application at the original resolution (top-left insert) and zoomed in to 960×1440. Simply scaling up art is not an Apple-worthy option. (Do note, however, that vector art can have anti-aliasing issues of its own.)

Apple’s current SDK offers little in the way of resolution control or querying. You can ask a shared UIScreen object to report its dimensions and provide an “application frame” to fit your application into, but little more. The calls just aren’t there yet — although hopefully a 4.0 SDK would provide hooks to allow exactly that.

In response to this kind of uncertainty, iPhone developer (and talented High School student) Jacob Bandes-Storch has been developing the open source ResKit project at github. ResKit offers “a library for testing resolution-independent iPhone OS applications”. You can establish it to run with a simulated screen size of 800×600 for example, to see how your application works at that given size. The screen shot to the right shows ResKit in action, displaying its virtual screen.

And while pixels are important, they won’t provide the only developer challenge for migrating iPhone OS applications. Because when the touch screen dimensions change, so does the way a user’s hand can interact with that screen. A larger screen means more hand lifting and movement. Imagine a standard landscape game running in a standard 480-by-300 window floating in the middle of a 7- or 10-inch tablet.

Now imagine trying to thumb-control any touch-based buttons at the bottom-left and -right of that floating window. Not going to happen, at least with a window in the middle of the screen for normal-sized hands. It’s time to start designing for a one-hand-to-hold-and-one-hand-to-manipulate reality. Because any applications that are not full-screen will have to deal with a floating ocean of space when presenting their GUIs.

And even if you scale up, and move your game into a full-screen total resolution mode, consider the simple physical weight of a tablet device. If your users are going to hold it in such a way that their thumbs can manipulate buttons at the bottom of the screen, think about what the simple weight of the device will do to their interactivity. To get a sense of this, pick up any standard DVD movie case. Hold it in landscape position and manipulate it as if you were manipulating a thumb-based tablet game. The tipping backwards you’ll experience from just a lightweight plastic case gives only a hint of what a more solid device will do when grasped in a similar fashion.

There’s the accelerometer to consider as well. Because accelerometer readings simply may not make sense for any application that is not centered on the screen. Think about it: what does tipping a device to the left mean to an off-centered floating widget application, let alone one that doesn’t have the current focus (assuming a multi-application environment as the tablet would likely support).

These are just a few big issues: resolution, geometry, widget-based windows, touch/grasp limitations, device manipulation differences, and physical device limitations Between these, a lot of App Store offerings may need to re-think, re-design, and re-engineer their offerings.

A January SDK refresh would go a long way towards allowing developers a head start for addressing these issues. If Apple follows previous years, however, the SDK launch may lag months behind the product announcement. So developers are warned to really think through each of the issues I’ve mentioned and start planning now how they can keep their applications current and device-appropriate.

Expect Apple as well to repeat the 3.0 migration experience. Remember how apps were tested for 3.0? I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Tested for Tablet” certifications to start appearing in App Store, especially if there is a processor shift away from ARM. Certifying apps would give a better idea to consumers as to which items will run smoothly on their new systems. As, iPhone developer John Fricker points out, ” I think we can safely assume that Feb will be known as ‘Refactor Hell Month’ if the tablet runs iPhone OS.”

Thanks Landon Fuller, Scott Lawrence, Avi, John Fricker, tehbaut

(p.s. As a side note, a front-mounted camera might make the cameraViewTransform property of the UIImagePickerController class finally make sense.)

TUAWiPhone devsugar: Working with tablet resolutions originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ShoZu Goes to Critical Path – Cross Network Publishing Doesn’t Seem to Be a Stand-Alone Business

Hours after high-profile Silicon Valley social aggregation service Seesmic announced that it acquired angel-backed cross-network publishing service Ping.fm, a much larger but similar deal was announced in Europe. Identity management service Critical Path, maker of software called Memova, announced that it has acquired mobile uploading service ShoZu, a company that had received an enormous amount of venture capital.

Sponsor

Rumors of the deal were first reported in mid-December by Robin Wauters of TechCrunch. Now the deal is done, reports leading European mobile blogger Ewan Spence. We’re hearing that the announcement will be officially released later today. Update: We just received the official press release as well.

ShoZu raised more than $30 million to build a mobile app that allows users to publish photos, videos and text to more than 50 different destination social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Blip.tv and more. The service has long been popular on Nokia phones and sells an iPhone app for $5. Shozu was voted one of our readers’ favorite mobile apps in 2007. For more about ShoZu see this Techcraver interview with the company’s CEO.

Critical Path is a little like a combination of Plaxo and Verisign. It offers messaging and social apps, APIs, Identity Management and Access Control.

Was this the big exit that ShoZu’s investors sought? Almost definitely not. Critical Path is an innovative service that’s got some big customers like BT, France Telecom and Orange, but it’s unlikely that ShoZu came at a high price. Spence alludes to the same when he writes that Critical Path “saw the potential of combining their Memova platform suite with ShoZu’s engineering.” Update: In the official release, ShoZu Board Director Nigel Pilkington from lead investor SEB Venture Capital UK, called the deal “a successful outcome for us.” Maybe that’s being polite, maybe it’s true or maybe it was a small success financially.

It’s most likely a talent deal and evidence that cross-platform publishing tools like ShoZu, Ping.fm and competitor Pixel Pipe are probably not stand-alone businesses. Just like FriendFeed’s aggregation across scores of APIs wasn’t enough to make it a success outside of being scooped up by the much, much larger Facebook – these other companies that create the pipes for the tubes just aren’t compelling enough to a large number of consumers.

They do make nice acquisition targets, though, and show that the future of the social web may not be found in reading and writing to one single network like Twitter or Facebook. The savvy companies that are building value on top of those networks are also dedicating resources to bring on engineers skilled at working with far more networks to publish or read from.

Discuss

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L5 Remote turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a universal remote originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According John Paczkowski over at All Things D, Apple is planning a “major product announcement” for Wednesday, January 27th — not the 26th as we’ve heard in previous reports. Additionally, the French site Mac4Ever says developers have been given a beta of the iPhone OS 4 SDK which includes a “simulator” for reformatting / scaling applications to a new, tablet-sized screens. Here at Engadget, we can confirm that sources very familiar with the situation over in Cupertino have been given info about a tablet heading for launch at the end of January, which will — in fact — require reformatting and resizing for (we assume)… yep, its new screen size and resolution. As far as details, they’re pretty scarce right now, but you can probably begin preliminary salivating and / or player hatin’ as it relates to new Apple hardware. We’ll have more info as it becomes available, but for now, stay tuned.

Update: The Wall Street Journal just added its support for the rumor by saying that Apple will unveil its “new multimedia tablet device later this month” with a “10- to 11-inch touch screen” with plans to ship it in March. The WSJ’s sources claim that Apple believes it can “redefine the way consumers interact with a variety of content” as we’ve been hearing all along. [Thanks, David]

‘Major’ Apple announcement coming January 27th, devs already working with beta SDK (update: shipping in March) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the first business day of the new year and oil is trading above $80 a barrel, which means the price has re-entered the danger zone where it can crush industrial economies.

This is a central element of the predicament we find ourselves in. The US economy is essentially a Happy Motoring economy.  

During the whole nervous period since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, American gasoline consumption hardly went down at all, though so many other activities collapsed, from house-building to trucking. Yesterday, The Seattle Times published a story with the idiotic headline: Oil Touches $80 on US Economy, Demand Optimism.  Apparently, they think high oil prices are “a good sign.”

How much can a nation not get it? Would $100 oil ignite a new orgy of “consumer” spending and another round of investment in commercial real estate? Welcome to the Futility Economy.

Read the rest at James Kunstler’s blog –>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Avatar Audience Cheers Film Exposing The End Of US Power
• The Dark Side Of Our Insatiable Thirst For Rare Earth Metals
• The Coming Shortage Of All The World’s Most Important Industrial Metals

Wondering what the endcap for LG’s 15-inch OLED TV would look like if you were able to go see it in South Korea? Wonder no more, our passport-less friend, as YouTuber eurozero captured footage of the thing doing its thing at a retail establishment in Seoul. That video is embedded below, showing off the display’s thinness, but also reminding just how small a 15-inch display looks these days — especially when sitting next to what appears to be a clothes dryer.

Continue reading LG OLED TV spotted in Korean store showing James Cameron’s magnum opus

LG OLED TV spotted in Korean store showing James Cameron’s magnum opus originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new survey from ChangeWave research indicates that future smart phone buyers are considering Android than that of Palm, Windows, and Blackberry.  Only three months ago, Android was last place in terms of consumer preference, tied at 6% with Palm.  Fast forward to today and Android (21%) sits only a few points behind iPhone (27%).

“That change rivals anything that we’ve seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,” said Paul Carton, ChangeWave’s director of research. “This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,” added Carton.

The survey conducted between December 9-14 also found that Motorola has stepped right back into the consumer spotlight.  The handset maker jumped from an almost non-existent 1% up to 13% in terms of future buying preference.  Whether it be Android, Verizon, or a massive advertising blitz to thank, this marks the first increase for Motorola in a ChangeWave smart phone survey in three years.  HTC has also seen a decent jump in demand as well.  The Droid Eris and Hero (Sprint) have helped to nearly double HTC’s planned buying numbers from 5% to 9%.

As for current Android owners, a large chunk of them are “very satisfied” with their handset.  Coming in right behind iPhone, Android has a 72% Cell Phone Satisfaction rating.  We’d like to think that number will rise as consumers are presented with more choices and better hardware.  To read the full report, head to ChangeWave’s website.

If the DJing/reality thing doesn’t work out, Pauly may have a bright future at the local Hair Cuttery….

OMG, what have the guidos done to Michael Cera?!!

DJ Pauly D’s fingers aren’t just good for fist-bumpin’ and working magic on the turntables, the Rhode Island native does a pretty “sick” blowout, too. The star of MTV’s Jersey Shore treated the Youth In Revolt star to a makeover fit for a “juicer” in New York this afternoon.

“in NYC filming a skit for Michael Cera’s new film “Youth in Revolt”…this is going to be hilarious,” Pauly Tweeted Monday.

Images Courtesy Of Pauly D’s Facebook….em>

Now the WSJ is quoting people “briefed by the company” as stating that the 10 or 11-inch Apple Tablet will be shipping in March for $1000, but will be announced at the January 27 event this month.

To familiarize yourself with the rumors so far, not including this one, head to our giant rumor page.

According to the WSJ, the tablet will be pretty much what we expected: movies, TV shows, games, browsing, books, textbooks and newspapers. WSJ also mentions two different material finishes for the tablet, and if we know Apple, they’ll only have one; the two are just final prototypes so that Jobs can decide which one he likes more.

So it’s good to hear that at least some of the rumored features might be delivered, but that $1000 price seems a bit high. Not high as in we think it’s wrong, high as in cost-prohibitive-MacBook-Air-style high. [WSJ]

In an effort to improve margins through the addition of a greater number of models, Mercedes-Benz is planning a competitor to the BMW 5-Series Gran Trusimo and the upcoming Audi A7 with an estate version of the second-generation CLS. Insides say that plans for a CLS estate have existed since the CLS sedan was launched in 2004.

“We’re seeking to improve our returns by better utilisation of existing platforms,” a source revealed to AutoCar.

The new Mercedes-Benz CLS sedan and estate will be based on a slightly modified E-Class platform and will take design cues from the 2008 ConceptFascination.

Internally known as the X218, the CLS estate will be produced alongside the CLS sedan at the company’s Sindelfingen plant in Germany from early 2012. Engine choices will range from a line of new V6 and V8 units

– By: Omar Rana

Source: AutoCar

Korean website KBench.com has published a video comparing the performance of the HTC HD2 vs the other Windows Mobile heavyweight, the Samsung Omnia 2, and despite the only 200 Mhz difference in the clock speed of the devices, the more modern chipset in the the HTC HD2 clearly shines through, with much smoother, better performance on the HTC HD2 than the Samsung Omnia 2.

The conclusion is certainly that if you are looking for raw performance, the HTC HD2 is the device for you.

Do our readers agree? Let us know below.