Daily Crunch: Hip Idea Edition

GE?s 17-Year LED Bulb Now For Sale TDK?s Retro-Futuristic Boomboxes Look Sweet The ONA Union Street Messenger Bag Looks Waxily Amazing Obscure Gifts For The Hipster In Your Life, You Probably Haven?t Heard Of Them 1 Million Galaxy Tabs Sold: W2G Samsung!

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/12/04/daily-crunch-hip-idea-edition/

Qlogic . Progress Software Planar Systems Perot Systems

Best Buy sees big drop in TV sales, eases pain with beefy mobile revenue

Best Buy's stock took a 14.8 percent beating today on news that it earned $217 million in the third quarter -- a 4.4 percent decline year over year -- and felt compelled to revise its fourth quarter forecast downwards. The reason? Seems folks are holding off on buying televisions in a big way: the company suffered a "low-double digit' decline in boob tube sales, even worse than an industry average in the single digits, which would suggest that 2010's 3D revolution hasn't attracted the kind of consumer attention manufacturers (and content providers) would've liked. If there's a silver lining, it's that double digit increases in phone sales -- combined with a single digit boost in tablets and related mobile devices (read: iPads) -- helped to offset the TV decline. Of course, we're sure people will need new LCDs and plasmas eventually... but maybe it's going to have to wait for 4K.

Best Buy sees big drop in TV sales, eases pain with beefy mobile revenue originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/14/best-buy-sees-big-drop-in-tv-sales-eases-pain-with-beefy-mobile/

Fiserv Google Grupo Iusacell Harris

8pen is a painful way to enter text on Android devices

Text entry on a small screen is a formidable problem; as can be expected, there are a ton of competing solutions, with Swype (and Swype-like keyboards, such as SlideIT) getting a lot of attention.

8pen takes a completely different tack to the keyboard problem, by eliminating it altogether. To paraphrase Bob Marley, "no keyboard, no cry." According to 8pen, by drawing "natural" gestures on your touchscreen, you'd be able to "write without viewing".

The idea is to give you a central graffiti-like area with a grid of characters. All gestures originate from the central area and terminate there, too. To type the letter "e", for example, you have to start at the center, swipe down, hang a left (crossing the green line) and go back to the center area. To type "l" (a lowercase L), you have to do the same, but continue one quadrant further, returning to the center dot from the top quadrant, having crossed both the green and blue lines.

If this sounds insanely complex, you're right. I'm no stranger to alternative keyboard layouts, and I know full well that switching input methods takes some getting used to. But compared to SlideIT, 8pen is downright painful. And yes, I will review SlideIT soon.

Still, if you're curious and/or masochistic, I've put up a QR code for 8pen after the jump. Enjoy! (I guess...)

Continue reading 8pen is a painful way to enter text on Android devices

8pen is a painful way to enter text on Android devices originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/12/13/8pen-is-a-painful-way-to-enter-text-on-android-devices/

Syntax-Brillian Synopsys Synnex Symantec

Visualized: Leica's first digital camera

In 1996, Deep Blue defeated chess grand-master Garry Kasparov for the first time, Dolly the cloned sheep was born, and digital cameras were still out of the reach of most consumers. This was also the year that Leica released its first digital scanning back, the S1. This bad boy was designed for the company's 35mm R-series lenses (with lens mounts for a number of other manufacturer's optics) and captured 1.4-inch square images. And what did you get for your $21,500? A camera that operated at ISO 50 and produced 48-bit (151Mb) image files with "little if any of the artifacting, blooming, and fringing that continue to plague us to this very day," according to B&H. And as one would expect from Leica, it has a design that inspires significant gadget lust. Hit the source link for plenty more photos.

Visualized: Leica's first digital camera originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/14/visualized-leicas-first-digital-camera/

Fair Isaac Factset Research Systems F5 Networks Epicor Software

IBM's Watson supercomputer will play Jeopardy! on these dates

What are February 14th, 15th, and 16th? We've known it was going to happen for a while, but now we know when to set our DVRs. A rack of servers -- soaked with natural-language processing, armed with a battalion of esoteric pop culture knowledge, and "represented by a round avatar" -- will face off against Jeopardy! millionaires Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter (both profiled in video after the break) for three days starting on Valentine's Day 2011. We're also hearing that Watson will sign autographs after it's done decimating its opponents. It will then donate all its winnings to charity and spend the rest of its natural life dodging paparazzi on an undisclosed beach in the South Pacific.

[Photo from Ben Sisto's flickr]

Continue reading IBM's Watson supercomputer will play Jeopardy! on these dates

IBM's Watson supercomputer will play Jeopardy! on these dates originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/14/ibms-watson-supercomputer-will-play-jeopardy-on-these-dates/

Motorola Moody’s Miscrosoft Office Microsoft

Samsung May Be Planning a $1,000 Luxury Galaxy Tab

There are many things to complain about regarding Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, but the fact that its price is $350 too low is not one of them.
Nevertheless, Samsung plans to release a $1,000, leather-clad edition of its surprisingly popular and well-reviewed Galaxy Tab, according to European reports.
The 7-inch tablet usually goes for about $650 and is [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/12/luxury-galaxy-tab/

Microsoft Microsemi Micros Systems Micron Technology

Toshiba building new factory to churn out iPhone LCDs, says Nikkei

Word on the street -- and by that we mean a Nikkei Business Daily report -- is that Toshiba's dropping a cool 100 billion yen (around $1.2 billion in US currencies) for a new factory in the Ishikawa prefecture, Japan. Its raison d'être? Low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels, primarily for the iPhone (no indication on which version; Apple is said to be investing in a portion of the factory, as well). Construction begins early next year and production is apparently slated to commence in the second half. More than enough time to stockpile unicorn tears for the assembly line.

Toshiba building new factory to churn out iPhone LCDs, says Nikkei originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/13/toshiba-building-new-factory-to-churn-out-iphone-lcds-says-nikk/

International Business Machines Inventec Kddi Kla-Tencor