Category: News

It appears that the Vaio T’s return is only the tip of a giant iceberg of refreshes coming out from Sony HQ this month. Greek e-tailer Compuland has a trio of new models listed — seemingly prematurely — for sale: the Vaio Y11 (pictured) is a relatively standard 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 machine with 4GB of DDR3 memory and 320GB of storage, and its nomenclature seems to fit given that its specs land somewhere between the underpowered X and fully-equipped Z series. Speaking of the latter, Sony is adding a Core i5-520M to its refreshed Z line, as well as to the new 16-inch F11 model which adds a half terabyte storage drive just for kicks. The lesser Core i3-330M Arrandale chip finds a home in the new 13-inch S11 laptop, which may or may not be replacing the SR series we know and love, as well as a freshened up CW number. Hit the read links for early pricing and more details, and if you hope really hard maybe we’ll get proper announcements from the official channels some time soon.

[Thanks, SpaceCowboy1973 and Al]

Read – Compuland (VPCY11S1E)
Read – Compuland (VPCF11M1E)
Read – Compuland (VPCS11X9E)
Read – Laptopshop.nl (VPCZ11X9E)
Read – Laptopshop.nl ( VPCCW2S1E)

Sony Vaio Y11, S11 and F11 leaked ahead of launch, Z and CW series refreshed originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The WakeMate, a sensor-laden wristband packaged with sleep analysis software, determines the optimal wake-up point in your REM cycle and adjusts your alarm for that moment. It also lets you say you really use your iPhone 24/7.

One of the fundamental reasons we love gadgets is because they help us do things better and smarter while we go about our days. But there are considerably fewer gadgets that help us go about our nights. Sure, there are some, but by and large the activity of sleeping is one that is untouched by technology and thus unoptimized. Enter WakeMate.

The WakeMate wristband uses Actigraphy to monitor your sleep cycles and pinpoints the precise moment when you should wake up, in a twenty minute window set to your specifications. (Otherwise, my “optimal wake up time” would be sometime around noon, seven days a week.)

But that’s only half of it. The WakeMate collects your nightly sleep data and over time develops a detailed analysis of your sleep schedule.

Though I’m not sure I need quantify things with a “sleep score”—Sleep? That’s where I’m a viking—it’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of sleeping smarter with the help of gadgets like WakeMate. The WakeMate is set to ship by the end of the month and is available for preorder now. [WakeMate Thanks Mikey!]

The AllThingsD tech team was on call this week with a whole slew of posts to help you ring in the new decade in the know. Even if queen-bee Kara was still off in the islands with her famously fun family, Walt, John and Peter kept their offices humming and their fingers typing with all the news and reviews you need.

Walt was back in action after a week off and delivered a new year’s review of a different sort of net book. The Litl’s big twist on the now-ubiquitous net book is its absence of a standard OS, in favor of complete reliance on the cloud. While Walt praised the device for innovative features and thinking, he thought it wasn’t quite there. Also a strong sticking point, the Litl is about twice the price of a standard net book and doesn’t deliver as much.

After a week on hiatus, John was back, and Digital Daily delivered some awesome year-end perspectives. Early in the week, John posted that Nokia’s (NOK) official new year’s message read something like, “Dear Apple; It’s on.” The Nordic electronic behemoth filed legal documents stating that Apple (AAPL) violated Nokia patents on virtually every mobile device it makes. Sounds like it’s going to be a good year for the legal industry. The costs of future litigation may be high, but Apple’s fourth-quarter profits may take some of the sting out. John reported that everyone’s favorite brushed aluminum retailer was expected to post huge Q4 sales figures for 2009, buoyed by record iPhone sales and brisk Mac shipments. John rounded out the week with a post-mortem of the year in venture backed IPOs. The short version is that they were DOA. With only one more venture-backed IPO than in 2008, John is sure it’s going to be a long climb out of the hole.

Media Memo was a little more positive last week with some posts about the new tech world we’ve created. This new decade may see dollars spent on ebooks outpace those spent on hard copies, but Peter reminded all the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle-heads out there that that doesn’t mean that book sales are going up. 2009 saw a major move from buying a book to licensing an electronic copy. It’s a line in the digital sand that etailers may never again want to cross. In a post that brought just the right amount of luster to the old year, Peter reported that retailers had an all right quarter to round out a so-so year. The superlatives continued. He added that they did a little better than predicted, though only on comparison to last year’s colossally dismal numbers. And to round out the old year and ring in the new, Peter took the reliably self-obsessed temperature of twitter and delivered some tweets bearing the novel hashtag, #10yearsago. It wasn’t all about peoples’ cats, or whatever else people tweet about, as all the worlds’ tweeps seemed to be reflecting on what they were doing back when Y2K was king.

In a year when downs outnumbered ups, Weekend Update’s resolution is a net book for every lap and a smartphone in every pocket. Happy New Year.

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What have Hironobu Sakaguchi and his Mistwalker studio been up to since the release of Lost Odyssey nearly two years ago? Well besides a mysterious new “blockbuster project” and taking pictures of himself Lego surfing with his dog, apparently he’s working on an iPhone game.

“Oh, by the way, we are also working on a project for iPhone,” Sakaguchi wrote in an update on the Mistwalker website (where the above Lego surfing image can also be seen). “This should be released soon as well. We will put our efforts together and do our best! I’m sure you’ll love it.”

This iPhone project is in addition the new project he hinted at back in October, which he also gives an update on in the post: “2010 is the year of my long-awaited new blockbuster project. I’m putting my heart and soul into this production. I’m taking a full swing and making this the best project,” he wrote.

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Filed under: Budget, Sedan, Videos, Toyota, India

At India’s Delhi expo on January 6, Toyota will be revealing the Etios, a small sedan specifically created for the Indian market. The entry level four-door, engineered to compete with Suzuki’s Swift sedan (sold under the Maruti badge in India), will be available with a 1.4-liter diesel that’s used in the Yaris, and either a 1.2-liter or 1.3-liter engine.

Toyota has big plans for the Etios, both in India and other world markets. It will begin production on the subcontinent, and once the company gets that operation where it wants it to be, Brazil is said to be the next destination for Etios assembly. Follow the jump for the teaser video, and if you’re in India, get ready for the Toyota invasion.

[Source: YouTube via Paul Tan]

Continue reading Video: Toyota Etios sedan teased ahead of India reveal

Video: Toyota Etios sedan teased ahead of India reveal originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FMyLife’s developer community has a new reason to visit the site this week: to complain about the restrictions the company has recently started to enforce on its API. From now on, FMyLife requires all applications that feature advertising or that have a price tag (e.g. on the App Store) to send 50% of their revenues back to FMyLife. Apps that are available for free, sans advertising, will be able to operate as usual.

For those who haven’t been introduced to the FMyLife phenomenon, the site invites users to leave brief personal stories that generally end in catastrophe or extreme embarrassment. All of the stories conclude with “FML” (or F*** My Life), which has become a catchphrase outside of the site as well. It’s a great Schadenfreude fix, and you may even wind up feeling some empathy for your peers (or not). The site, and the third party applications it has spawned, have proven to be extremely popular.

Now, FMyLife disallowed paid applications and advertising when its API launched in February 2009, but the company has been inconsistent about enforcing those rules. Some developers have offered their applications with advertising for some time. And FMyLife has even approved the use of advertising and premium versions in some cases, without anticipating just how popular these applications could become. As it turns out, some of these applications have turned into big businesses in their own right, and some have proven to be drains on FMyLife’s servers. Rather than kill off all applications that are monetizing the service, FMyLife has decided it wants a cut.

Here’s how FMyLife co-founder Didier Guedj is describing the changes to the policy:

The Fmylife API was created to spread FML stories on the internet for free, in the spirit of sharing. However, in recent months, several developers made a very big business by selling FML’s applications or by advertising on it. This has led us to change our policy:
1) Access to the Fmylife API remains free for those using it for non-business purposes.
2) We will now ask that those who are using Fmylife for profit share their revenue at a fair 50/50.

The recently policy changes are directly related to a conflict FMyLife has had with Enormego, a developer that built two applications for the iPhone: “F MyLife and” “F MyLife Pro”, (the free version was briefly ranked as the top application on the App Store) . Here’s how Guedj describes the situation:

Enormego created two applications for iPhones (”F-MyLife” et “F-MyLife Pro”) which generate consequential revenue (through the sale of the apps, plus advertising) because they got more than a million hits per day since April 2009. These two iPhone applications only work thanks to our website, its concept and content. It was agreed with Enormego on July that any revenue generated by these apps would be split 50/50 (no contract was drawn, just via an email exchange). Enormego has never paid to Fmylife any money, and has not replied to any of our Emails since September. After several warnings without any answers, we decided to cut off their access to the API function. Since, they have been pirating the content of our website to feed their applications. We then asked them to stop. They did, only a few days ago.

We’ve reached out to Enormego for their side of the story.

FMyLife’s motivations for implementing a more restrictive API are obvious: they want to make money off the site they’ve built. At the same time, the FMyLife service has certainly benefited from the efforts of these third party developers — you can be sure plenty of people who downloaded these mobile apps are also frequent visitors of the service’s homepage. FMyLife can do what they want with their data, but it’s clear that they should have been consistently enforcing their policies from the start. Some applications have already been discontinued (or removed FMyLife support) since the change.

All of that said, it does sound like FMyLife would be willing to work something out if a developer has already built an application using the API and objects strongly to the changes. From Guedj:

For new applications (premium or ads), we explain the new rule to their developer and they have the choice to share the future income, or they don’t have access to the API.

We’ve never disabled an application (except Enormego’s) because these developers work hard too, and we respect their work a lot. We talk with them, explain the situation and all of them have agreed easily (for now) with our new conditions.

Image via sjdvda on userlogos.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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We recently wrote about Skimble, an online destination for anyone who wants to plan and track an activity or workout goal. Today, Skimble has launched a free, companion iPhone app to help track sports activities and monitor your athletic progress on the go. You can download the app here.

Skimble’s online and mobile tools let you discover activities, by giving you information on popular outdoor active trips, i.e. a hiking trip to Lake Tahoe; and gym workouts, i.e. indoor rock climbing. You can join one of these trips or you can create your own. When you create a trip, you can create a feed of news and updates about the trip and share the page with other friends. The feed also pulls in any Tweets about the subject of the trip.

Skimble’s app taps into the iPhone GPS to allow users to set your workout and activity trip location and share geotagged “action shots.” Skimble’s activity tracking tool focuses on helping you create a calendar and schedule of your activities, and will chart out your performance based upon time spent on the activity. You can also compare your progress to a friend’s.

Skimble, which was incubated in The Funded’s Founder Institute, was co-founded by Maria Ly and Gabriel Vanrenen.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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I’ve been a long time critic of so called “security measures” and not because a nutjob made it on to an airplane with a potential bomb. It’s because the measures are for show, they can’t be effective with the volume of travelers and the mass of crap moving along with the travelers. Society seems to demand a zero risk environment when they fly; something completely unattainable and as a traveler, I say completely undesirable.

What’s the most dangerous thing you do when you travel? Drive to the airport. By far. Here’s a handy image that puts the risk of terrorist attack in perspective:

Get a grip people. This is life and there are risks. Let’s take them on intelligently and in proportion to their probability of occurrence and severity of negative outcome. Not simply by reacting senselessly. No movement in the final hour of flights, no electronics, no carry on baggage. Puhleeze. Get a grip.