Tech Today w/ Ken May

The comparisons between Siri and HAL 9000 were pretty tough to avoid, and the folks at ThinkGeek have now come through to do what they do best: take things to a ridiculous extreme. In this case, that comes in the form of the IRIS 9000, a familiar-looking fellow that doubles as a dock for your iPhone 4S. It has a remote that lets you activate Siri from afar, a built-in mic and speaker that lets you interact with Siri (or make phone calls) and, of course, a glowing red LED eye that makes Siri suitably menacing. Now, ThinkGeek has been known to produce some faux products in the past, but last we checked it wasn’t April Fools’ day , and the company has assured us that this is indeed real and set to be available in the spring of next year for $60. Video of your new favorite desk mate is after the break. Continue reading ThinkGeek IRIS 9000 promises to make 2012 a desk-bound odyssey ThinkGeek IRIS 9000 promises to make 2012 a desk-bound odyssey originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Typically, road rage responses range from a flip of the bird to some gentle highway drag racing. For an enterprising hacker by the name of Gagandeep Singh, however, those on-road hijinks have given way to a more eloquent, albeit LED-lit resolution. Conceived as means of informing errant drivers of their transportation follies, Singh rigged up a 40 x 16 LED matrix display and affixed it to his car’s rear window. Using an AT89C51 micro-controller, hard-coded messages and animations are then fed to the 2cm x 2cm grid, much to the chagrin of reprimanded drivers following close behind. Eventually, this helpful hack’ll hookup with a mobile phone over Bluetooth, delivering real-time updates (and insults?) to the display. Until then, you’ll just have to make due with Singh’s step-by-step DIY at the source. Jump past the break for a scrolling view of this corrective driving tech. Continue reading Rear window LED hack minds bad drivers’ manners, has nothing to do with Hitchcock (video) Rear window LED hack minds bad drivers’ manners, has nothing to do with Hitchcock (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 07:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

OCZ Technology’s pushing SSDs on step further this morning, with the introduction of the Octane SATA 6Gbps and Octane-S2 SATA 3Gbps SSDs. These guys promise “record-breaking access times” and up to 1TB of capacity, with Indilinx Everest internals playing things out on the inside. Oddly enough, the company claims that this is the world’s first SSD to hit 1TB, but in fact, we saw the first one from pureSilicon way back in early 2009. At any rate, the company claims that these guys can deliver up to 560MB/sec of bandwidth and 45,000 IOPS, and they rely on a proprietary page mapping algorithms allow for steady mixed-workload performance. The Octane series also includes a number of features unique to Indilinx — including latency reduction technology — enabling both read and write access times as low as 0.06ms and 0.09ms, respectively. Aside from that 1TB flagship, there will also be 128GB, 256GB and 1TB models, and while no pricing details are being outed just yet, we’re told to expect around $1.10 to $1.30 per gigabyte. Interested? They’ll start shipping on November 1st. Continue reading OCZ pushes access-time boundaries with Octane and Octane-S2 SSDs OCZ pushes access-time boundaries with Octane and Octane-S2 SSDs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Google has taken the stage in Hong Kong to make the next version of Android OS, nicknamed Ice Cream Sandwich, a thing of reality. Better known as Android 4.0 appears to offer a massive redesign to the user interface and adds a plethora of new features. So here’s what’s new: first, we’re seeing a new notification menu, as well as NFC-enabled Android Beam, video snapshots and an improved task manager. ICS also includes a fancy unlocking method called “Face Unlock,” which uses facial recognition to ensure strangers can’t use your phone without permission. Ice Cream Sandwich also includes enhancements in almost every native app within Android itself. After the break, we’ll cover all of the nitty gritty details. Gallery: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now official Developing… Check out all the action on our liveblog happening right now! Continue reading Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now official Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now official originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

IDC and Gartner have come out with their latest Q3 rankings of the world’s PC manufacturers, which means it’s time for us to do some dissecting. Not much changed at the top of the heap, where, according to IDC, HP still rules the roost with about 18 percent market share (despite that whole PC thing ). But the most dramatic shift came from Lenovo, which scurried past Dell for second place, with 13.7 percent market share (13.5, according to Gartner) — a 36.1 percent jump from the third quarter of 2010 (25.2 percent, says Gartner). Dell’s pie slice, on the other hand, shrunk slightly to 12 percent this quarter, down from 12.6 percent last year. On the global scale, meanwhile, PC sales increased by about 3.6 percent compared to Q3 2010 (3.2 percent, in Gartner’s books), though both research firms acknowledged that this figure was well below their respective projections. Why? IDC points to several economic factors, including the threat of a double-dip recession, while Gartner blames the rise of “non-PC devices,” including tablets. Surprise! Continue reading IDC and Gartner: Lenovo leaps past Dell for second place, still trails HP for the gold IDC and Gartner: Lenovo leaps past Dell for second place, still trails HP for the gold originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

They may have barely finished component convalescence after being kitted out with NVIDIA’s GTX 570M, but MSI’s GT780DXR and GT683DXR are getting yet another technical leg-up. This time, the processors are being nudged up to an Intel Core i7-2670QM , replacing the Core i7-2630QM we found on these gaming rigs last time we met. The ultra slim X460 series will also get the same CPU refresh. We’ll admit, it’s a pretty gentle update, but it should help keep MSI’s latest offerings close to the bleeding edge of high-end laptops. Continue reading MSI infuses more gaming juice into its G Series notebooks with processor refresh MSI infuses more gaming juice into its G Series notebooks with processor refresh originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

It looks like Bookeen may finally be through teasing us — the company is preparing to unleash the Odyssey, a reader sporting its High Speed Ink System. The modified Pearl E Ink screen has been shown off multiple times, playing back video and browsing the web . Now it will finally make the transition from interesting tech demo to actual product. Better yet, the 6-inch, full motion-capable screen has been paired with a touch layer, which means it could deliver a tablet-like experience with battery life closer to a traditional e-reader. Underneath the hood is a an 800MHz Cortex A8 processor from Texas Instruments and a WiFi radio, presumably for downloading content and browsing the web. The Odyssey is expect to start shipping in Europe in the next few weeks, but Bookeen has yet to reveal a price. You can check out the machine translated PR at the source link. Cybook prepping Odyssey reader with High Speed Ink System screen originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink