The Windows release of Kinect is coming up in a couple days, but for most people that won’t be a major event: the Kinect they have is sitting on their TV or in a drawer, waiting to be taken out for an impromptu Dance Central 2 party. Of the 10 million Kinects out there, the only ones connected to computers are the ones being fiddled with by the various hackers and students making science projects out the things.
But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle a pair of prototypes, which were confirmed to be official, not just one of the many experiments that hide within Microsoft’s various lairs. → Read More
We took a break from the Android round-up in December because, well, to be honest I was on vacation. But January gave us a few extra smartphones and the holidays are over, so we’re back. What we’ve got for you today leans into more expensive turf, and unfortunately, our favorite Android devices for the past two months are also exclusively at Verizon, so Big Red subscribers should pay attention.
Without further ado, these are our favorite December/January releases of the Android persuasion: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the LG Spectrum, and the Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx.
Enjoy! → Read More
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HP’s had quite a 2011 and Jon Rubinstein, former Palm CEO and a top-level executive at HP after the giant acquired Palm in 2010, was along for the ride.
But according to a report out of AllThingsD, Rubinstein has officially left the company. → Read More
These things are pretty old but sometimes it’s nice to see two dudes really happy about a piece of technology that really works. This ornithopter is made by the guys at FlappingFlight and comes in multiple models including the Park Hawk with “instant glide” feature that allows you to stop flapping and swoop around like a bird of prey at the touch of a button.
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We get a lot of PR pitches (“Write about our social media network for fish lovers! If you don’t, we’ll take our exclusive to TetraLover.blogspot.com,” “We’ll give you a private jet if you write good things about Apple – Sincerely, Tim Cook,” “Take a look at these iPhone gloves!”) and there are few I’ve dreaded more than writing about the aforementioned iPhone gloves mostly because the founders kept emailing me about these damned gloves. These things come from a Dutch company called Mujjo and they purport to allow you to interact with your iPhone with any part of your hand, including your wrist, knuckle, and palm. The founders must have used them to punch out emails on the icy Hague metro every day of the past month because they were pretty darn persistent.
The question when dealing with these sorts of pitches, really, is two-fold: a) does the product advertised work? and b) will I write about the product after being literally hounded for three weeks by these guys? In answer to both, I would respond with a resounding (literally) “Yes.” They work and yeah, what the heck, Mujjo, people like gloves, right? Also a post will get Mujjo to stop emailing me. → Read More
The Wii U brand is a bit underwhelming. At best it builds upon a very successive product. But at worst the name suggests its simply an add-on rather than a completely revamped system. A new report just surfaced that sources a Nintendo insider stating the company is considering renaming the next-gen Wii.
Nintendo is quickly spiraling down. The Wii U — or whatever it’s to be called — needs to be a hit. Nintendo cannot misplace another piece in Tetris. → Read More
Somewhere, someone out there is curled in a corner, sobbing because they missed out on the last HP TouchPad sale. Ebay messed up, he says. It wasn’t his fault. He clicked the button but Ebay’s servers crashed. So now he’s alone. Left to sulk in his missed opportunities.
But fear not, friend! I bring you great news from the land of the Internet! Woot finagled another batch of TouchPad tablets! They’re refurbs and priced higher than before, but they’re TouchPads! But you better act quick! Don’t let another chance to own a failed tablet slip between your fingers! → Read More
Bad news from Japanese tech powerhouse NEC: the company yesterday announced [PDF] a net loss of $1.13 billion in the three months through December 2011, compared with a net loss of “just” US$350 million in the same time frame last fiscal. NEC said it wrote down its deferred tax assets.
For the three-month period, revenue dropped from $9.3 billion to $8.7 billion year-on-year. For the full fiscal (which ends in March this year), NEC now expects a net loss of $1.3 billion. The company says restructuring costs alone will cause a US$520 million net loss. → Read More
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Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.
Here are three recent examples. → Read More
The New York Times has published a long article on Foxconn which, while it doesn’t provide much in the way of new information, does act as a sobering reminder of just how companies like Apple can make so very much money. When our own John Biggs visited Foxconn, he focused on the company itself, its scale, its intentions. When I wrote about Apple’s suppliers failing to meet environmental standards, it was more about the laxity of regulators within China. Today’s NYT piece depicts Apple as prime mover and potential catalyst of change — but its actions and information from insiders suggest that it is simply unwilling.
There is a certain genius to negotiating down the price of every screw and wire, and never paying a yuan more than is absolutely necessary. As in design and build quality, other companies aspire to Apple’s accomplishment in this area. → Read More
As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go.
On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying games I don’t need when I should be pretending to be a productive member of society.
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Following Fujitsu, another Japanese electronics maker is ready to sell color e-book readers: Toshiba announced [JP] the so-called BookPlace DB50 today, a 7-Inch device that comes with direct access to big T’s BookPlace store (which currently offers around 43,000 different Japanese e-books and magazines).
Toshiba says they plan to expand the range of available titles to 100,000 by March this year, the largest in its home market. The store has been available in America since 2010. → Read More
3DS sales have picked up lately, but Nintendo‘s financial numbers are still weak. Big N today released [PDF] another set of disappointing results for the first nine months of its fiscal year (April to December 2011). The company lost a whopping US$630 million, compared with a profit of US$635 million in the same time frame last fiscal.
Sales were down 31.2% year-on-year to US$7.2 billion. → Read More
Intel is to buy “a significant number” of patents (approximately 190 patents and 170 patent applications) and video codec software from RealNetworks for a purchase price of $120 million. Under the terms of the deal, RealNetworks says it retains certain rights to continue to use the patents in current and future products. → Read More
Nokia earnings are out, and the contrast with Apple’s blow-out quarter results is astonishing. The Finnish phone maker, still the largest in the world by volume, reported a Q4 net loss of 1.07 billion euro, down from a 745 million euro profit in the fourth quarter of 2010.
The company’s smartphone sales decline paints an even bleaker picture: Nokia sold 19.6 million units in Q4 2011, down a whopping 31 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago (even though it’s up 17 percent from Q3 2011 thanks to somewhat decent Lumia sales).
Nokia says it sold “well over” 1 million Lumia devices to date (not just in Q4) and that it plans to bring the Lumia series to additional markets – including China and Latin America – in the first half of 2012. → Read More
AT&T this morning released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011. Consolidated revenues clocked in at $32.5 billion, up 3.6 percent compared to the year-earlier quarter. They recorded a huge net loss for Q4 2011: $6.7 billion, or $1.12 per diluted share.
Zooming in on smartphone sales, it’s worth noting that AT&T delivered its best-ever quarter to date, hands down. → Read More
Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
I read with great interest Vinod Khosla’s column two weeks ago that discussed the role of tech in healthcare. But as much as tech has to offer the healthcare institution, its effects are perhaps more reliably trackable in the actual medical devices field. A functioning “Dr. Algorithm” would be great – but a “tricorder” device, like that being chased by this X-Prize? That would be something else.
Until these pie-in-the-sky projects come to fruition, though, more modest advances, but which nonetheless save lives, will be made. Medtronic, a major med-tech company, is hoping that the next big thing will actually be small and cheap: a pacemaker for developing countries. → Read More
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, DODOcase released new special edition iPad and Kindle Fire cases. They cost slightly more than the standard versions with the Kindle Fire models costing $69 and then $79 for the iPad 2 versions. But nothing says love quite like a unique case. → Read More
Those of our readers old enough to remember the 90s will almost certainly recall cassette tapes fondly. The clacky little tapes and their creaky cases have more or less disappeared from the world, and no surprise: they were fragile, limited, and sounded pretty bad.
But they were also hugely empowering, and helped produce in an age of comparative consumer powerlessness the same feeling we take for granted today: that we should be able to copy, lend, and duplicate the content we’ve bought. Cassette is a documentary looking for a few bucks on Kickstarter that hopes to highlight cassette culture then and now. → Read More
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