We first heard of the Shredder back in September, a crazy, treaded contraption that looked fit to appear in the next Starship Troopers film — or maybe a TMNT reboot at least. It’s the product of the overactive mind of Ben Gulak, the guy behind the Uno transforming and self-balancing motorcycle that we saw at CES. When Ben showed us some videos of the DTV Shredder at the show we knew we had to ride it, and so we did, hitting the sand in New Mexico and managing to come away from the experience unharmed and only a little dehydrated. Come on in to check out our experience on both the consumer-friendly Sport and rather brawnier Military edition, both of which could be in production by the end of the year.
AT&T’s teased that some of its existing models will eventually have HSUPA enabled, which should help mitigate the flack they’ve been taking over branding a network with glacial uplink speeds “4G.” The recently-launched HTC Inspire 4G is among the models with disabled HSUPA out of the box, but the good news is that it shouldn’t be disabled for much longer: an FCC Class II Permissive Change — which gets generated when a device’s RF characteristics are modified — has just hit, clearly stating that “HTC Corporation will enable HSUPA function of this product.” There’s no time frame for the switch, but at least we know it’s going to happen at some point; just try not to turn your Inspire into an FTP server in the meantime, alright?
No prizes for guessing what the next tablet from HP-Palm will be called. The giant computer manufacturer recently filed for 3 new trademarks, following the HP Touchpad from last week and the previous PalmPad trademark. The new trademarks filed are “HP Duopad”, “HP Touchslate” and “HP Touchcanvas”. It looks like they’re undecided on the product’s final name, or they’re preparing to release a whole onslaught of tablets this year the latter would be more likely considering how the trademark names sound like different kinds of tablets and they have previously mentioned that they would have a wide range of webOS 2.0 devices to show off at their upcoming February 9 event. What do you think of the trademarks?
Sometimes, I have a video of the product that I am writing about, and I usually put it after the jump. It’s put there in case you the reader want to know see it in action, and I highly recommend you hit the jump and check it out now.
This a display of the Belgacom Holocube HC70, and it is a bigger version of the Holocube that we have reported on before.
The HC70 has a 70-inch transparent screen that can be viewed from both sides. It is powered by a Windows 7 Embedded machine with 40 GB of flash storage which allows it to loop eight to eighteen hours worth of three-dimensional footage with a 1080p projector.
The video shows some interesting things in 3D. These are things that I usually see before in these holographic displays like a cell phone, and a cute little kid that looks like she is in free-fall. They never seem to have what I would like to see in hologram mode, like the entire Star Wars trilogy, for example.
I wish I was at this place where they had this cool hologram on display. Does anyone know why they have this weird creepy music going on in the background? I think that holograms are pretty inspirational, and I would rather hear some more dynamic and not macabre music to accompany it.
It’s our best guess that the UI and all together feel of Microsoft’s Surface hasn’t changed all that much over the years, at least that was our experience about a year ago. And just when we thought the product had all but met its demise – they still haven’t appeared at a ubiquitous rate in hotel lobbies and bars as Microsoft had hoped some years ago – the company goes and launches the second iteration of the product, the Surface 2.
Microsoft has partnered with Samsung for the hardware and is using an NEC camera, which MS calls “PixelSense”. As a result the Surface has been slimmed down to a mere 4-inches thick, which basically means it can go any where a flat screen TV could go, not to mention it can display in full HD. Inside the box is a dual-core AMD Athlon II X2 and Radeon HD 6700M graphics cards supported by Windows 7′s GPU acceleration.
The screen itself measure 40-inches and much like the previous model it is still resistant to spills and heavy items. It can handle up to 50 simultaneous touch points, capture text (OCR) and work with a tagging system that can be adhered to the bottom of a can of soda or beer to enable apps to automatically launch when placed on the Surface.
The reported price of the Surface 2 is $7,600 – half the cost of the original - when it launches later this year. We’d love to review one, but something tells me it will be a challenge scoring this piece of kit.
We just played with a wonderful tablet, and it wasn’t running Android, webOS, iOS, or even Windows. It was running a funky realtime operating system called QNX that RIM bought in April, combined with WebKit and a heaping helping of Flash, and plans on releasing to the world in Q1 of this year. The BlackBerry PlayBook is surprisingly polished and responsive at this stage, even though RIM says it has a lot of work to still left to do. In fact, the only thing frustrating about our roughly 30 minutes with the tablet (under the caring gaze of Mike Lazaridis) was the fact that you can’t buy an actual BlackBerry phone right now that’s anywhere near this enjoyable to use. Follow after the break as we talk through the product, along with a video walkthrough and stress test of that dual-core proc’s multitasking chops.
Things are getting real with Motorola — it’s just announced the LTE-equipped Droid Bionic which, like the Xoom tablet introduced alongside it, will be headed to Verizon. The phone packs a dual-core processor with each core humming along at 1GHz, a 4.3-inch QHD screen, 512MB of RAM, a front-facing VGA camera, an 8-megapixel on the rear, and a Mirror Mode that will let you do simultaneous streaming of video to the TV and on the device. Head on past the break for the complete press release, and hit up the link below for the product page.
Want OnStar? Sure, why not, the company fields over three million calls a month from six million mostly from satisfied customers. But, until now, that blue button has only been able to be pressed by those who own General Motors cars. Now it’s spreading out to just about anyone, 99 percent of cars will be able to be supported by the new OnStar mirror, which the company is simply calling its “retail product.” For $299 (plus installation) you get a replacement mirror that will wirelessly connect you to the OnStar service. It also has Bluetooth, so it can connect to your smartphone, but we’re guessing many cars won’t be able to have their doors unlocked remotely, what is surely OnStar’s killer app. Quite naturally you’ll need to pay up to use it, service fees currently going at $18.95 a month, or $199 annually. Best Buy will be the exclusive partner here, which is perhaps bad news if you’ve read the horror stories about what sometimes happens in those blue and yellow stereo install bays.
OnStar showed off its ability by having mirrors installed in a variety of vehicles, ranging from a Camry to a Grand Marquis — hot cars they’re not but a pretty effective demonstration of the range of applicability here. GM also took this opportunity to show off the latest revision of its two-wheeled EN-V, which we’ll be taking for a spin a little later this week. All that fun is captured in the galleries below.
Want OnStar? Sure, why not, the company fields over three million calls a month from six million mostly from satisfied customers. But, until now, that blue button has only been able to be pressed by those who own General Motors cars. Now it’s spreading out to just about anyone, 99 percent of cars will be able to be supported by the new OnStar mirror, which the company is simply calling its “retail product.” For $299 (plus installation) you get a replacement mirror that will wirelessly connect you to the OnStar service. It also has Bluetooth, so it can connect to your smartphone, but we’re guessing many cars won’t be able to have their doors unlocked remotely, what is surely OnStar’s killer app. Quite naturally you’ll need to pay up to use it, service fees currently going at $18.95 a month, or $199 annually. Best Buy will be the exclusive partner here, which is perhaps bad news if you’ve read the horror stories about what sometimes happens in those blue and yellow stereo install bays.
OnStar showed off its ability by having mirrors installed in a variety of vehicles, ranging from a Camry to a Grand Marquis — hot cars they’re not but a pretty effective demonstration of the range of applicability here. GM also took this opportunity to show off the latest revision of its two-wheeled EN-V, which we’ll be taking for a spin a little later this week. All that fun is captured in the galleries below.
It can’t be easy to make your product stand out in the vast ocean of iPod & iPhone accessories. But Breffo manages to do just that with their rather unique Spiderpodium, so named because of its 8 flexible notched legs which allow it to grip any compact device. It won’t do much for your laptop or iPad, but it can be used to prop up or hang smartphones, MP3 players and even compact P&S digital cameras. If you ever had one of those wire & rubber Gumby characters as a kid you won’t need to peruse the instruction manual to figure out how to use it, and at $19.99 I’d say it’s about $10 above being an impulse buy.
Sometimes, I have a video of the product that I am writing about, and I usually put it after the jump. It’s put there in case you the reader want to know see it in action, and I highly recommend you hit the jump and check it out now. 
