Ever heard of Mobile High-Definition Link, or MHL for short? Today, it’s a way to connect a smartphone to a HDTV or monitor via microUSB. But the new SuperMHL could challenge HDMI and DisplayPort dominance over your entire home theater. Read more…
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Look Out HDMI and DisplayPort, There’s a New Cable in Town
There’s a new challenger to the throne when it comes to replacement laptop chargers that are considerably smaller than the monstrous power adapters typically included with a notebook. And while the Zolt’s compact form factor makes it one of the smallest and lightest, what sets it apart—and ahead—of the competition is its ability to actually charge a laptop and two other devices all at the same time. Read more…
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This Tiny Laptop Adapter Charges Two Other Devices At the Same Time
I mean, sure, technically we knew that Sony’s flagship XBR-X900C Ultra HD television was a ridiculous 4.9mm thin the moment Sony announced it. Technically. But it’s another thing entirely to see what that means: it’s thinner than an iPhone 6 Plus. Read more…
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Sony’s Flagship 4K TV Is Thinner Than an iPhone 6 Plus
No parent likes to see their tyke battle a little sickness, only to have to exacerbate the little one’s discomfort with constant thermometer probes. But what if temperature monitoring could actually be a soothing experience for the baby? Enter Pacifi, a child’s pacifier with a thermometer built into its silicon teat and a Bluetooth chip that sends temperature readings to a paired smartphone. From within the Pacifi app for Android and iOS, you can view a live reading and see previous ones in a timeline graph, allowing you to track improvement or decline in the child’s condition. This data can also be easily shared — with your doctor, for example. And if your child happens to be on a course of treatment already, you can set dosing reminders from within the app, too. Oral temperature readings aren’t as accurate as other, more uncomfortable methods. That’s why Blue Maestro, the makers of Pacifi, have included a calibration feature. You’re advised to initially take two readings — one with the pacifier and one with, say, an ear thermometer — and correct any discrepancy manually. This offset value will then be added to any subsequent results for consistency. But taking a baby’s temperature isn’t the only thing Pacifi does. It also acts as a proximity monitor, sending a notification to the paired smartphone if your child is tries to escape. If the pacifier moves out of the 30-meter range, the Pacifi app with make a note of the last known location using your phone’s GPS, pointing you in the direction of your lost child or hopefully, just a lost pacifier. And if you do misplace the thing, you can trigger a miniature siren that’s built into it to help track it down. For easy washing, the Pacifi is hermetically sealed, which also means you can’t replace its battery. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though, because it’s expected to last between 12 and 18 months before running out of juice (based on a one reading per day estimate). The Pacifi is currently up for preorder at £25/€30/£39, but as it’s technically a medical device (just like the TempTraq Bluetooth thermometer patch ), it won’t launch in earnest until it’s been given the green light by regional regulators. European approval is expected as soon as next month, at which point Blue Maestro will start the same process in the US, with an eye to launch at some point during the first half of this year. Filed under: Misc Comments Source: Blue Maestro
Mercedes-Benz is far from the first automaker to experiment with self-driving cars , but it’s making up for that in style at CES. Meet the F015 Luxury in Motion, a concept car designed from the ground up for robotic transportation. Passengers sit face to face so they can talk more, and anyone can control the car through a remote unit. The vehicle even has a color-coded LED lights on the front and back to let you know what the car is thinking. It can tell you whether or not it’s in autonomous mode or let pedestrians know when it’s safe to cross. Developing… Filed under: Transportation Comments
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Mercedes-Benz unveils its vision of a self-driving car
It turns out there are still some ways to improve a USB flash drive that don’t involve just cramming more storage inside. The iStick Pro , coming sometime in March of this year, features a Lightning connector on one end for attaching to iOS devices, and a wonderful transforming USB/microUSB connector on the other making it also compatible with laptops and Android devices. Read more…
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The Magical USB Port On the iStick Pro Drive Transforms Into microUSB
An anonymous reader writes with news that bad weather caused internet connectivity problems for users in Perth, Western Australia on Monday. But it wasn’t raging storms or lightning that caused this outage — it was extreme heat. Monday was the 6th hottest day on record for Perth, peaking around 44.4 C (111.9 F). Thousands of iiNet customers across Australia found themselves offline for about six and a half hours after the company shut down some of its systems at its Perth data center at about 4.30pm AEDST because of record breaking-temperatures. … “[W]e shut down our servers as a precautionary measure, ” an iiNet spokesman said late Monday night. “Although redundancy plans ensured over 98 per cent of customers remained unaffected, some customers experienced issues reconnecting to the internet.” … Users in Western Australia, NSW, Victoria and South Australia took to Twitter, Facebook and broadband forum Whirlpool to post their frustrations to the country’s second largest DSL internet service provider. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It’s no secret that Sony’s been working on a sort of Google Glass analog, but the fact that the company’s also got a bolt-on display that can (ideally) turn any pair of glasses into a savvy wearable is nothing short of impressive. After Sony wrapped up this year’s CES press conference, we got the chance to yank a pair out of some poor spokesperson’s hands and strap them on for ourselves. Long story short: Sony just might have a winner on its hands. Here’s the thing you have to remember: This isn’t the first time Sony’s tried to dangle a teensy display in front of your eye. Unlike the company’s own SmartGlasses (which exist as a discrete set of frames), the Attach! lives on as a separate unit attaches to any pair of compatible glasses. At least during those early days post-launch, the selection of frames that’ll play nice will be pretty limited as the physical connector on these prototype units are… unique to say the least. It’s a wide, peculiarly shaped gap that the Attach! fits into, and it just seems awfully unlikely that a Luxottica would ever embrace such a peculiar style. A Sony spokesperson said, though, that the final model will support a whole host of mounting methods, including truly mundane solutions like adhesive. Anyway, let’s talk about wearing the thing! Just like Google Glass, a tiny prism sits in front of your right eye and it acts as what Sony calls an OLED microdisplay. Once you get used to it appearing and disappearing from view while your eyes focus on other things, the semi-persistent image is bright, vivd and crisp, even if it isn’t immediately obvious how you’re supposed to interact with what you see. Most of the demo scenarios Sony dreamed up involve sports in one way or another — one visualized a path that wound through a series of Japanese mountains while others highlighted the imaginary route of a golf ball as it hooked down toward the final green at Augusta. Sony’s clearly gunning to imbue the thing with some sports savvy, but surely it wouldn’t be that hard to broaden the Attach’s skillset to cater to we mostly immobile bespectacled types. Still, the prototype frames seemed almost too light and insubstantial — I wouldn’t be surprised if they were 3D printed. It’s a shame that we don’t know how much the SmartGlasses Attach! will cost, nor when it’ll make the leap from show floor trinket to honest-to-goodness product. Sony’s going to court mostly developers for at least a little while after launch though, so maybe we’re looking at more than a smart pair of sport goggles after all. Filed under: Wearables , Sony Comments
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Sony’s head-mounting display will turn spectacles into smart glasses
Starting this Spring, Android users lusting after the Livescribe smartpen will no longer have to envy their iPhone- and iPad-toting peers. The company has finally developed a Livescribe+ app especially for Android, which will make Livescribe 3 compatible with select devices. Yup, it unfortunately won’t work with every Android phone and tablet out there, only those running KitKat or higher with support for Bluetooth Low Energy peripherals. It retains the iOS app’s features, so users can transfer handwritten notes recorded by the pens as digital text to their devices and sync audio recordings with those notes. But LiveScribe Director of Product Management Greg Wong says the app “is much more than a port” of the iOS version. “We’ve approached every aspect of this app, ” he said, “from the color palette to the user interface, to optimize for the Android platform and customer expectations.” Filed under: Peripherals Comments Source: Livescribe
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Livescribe 3 smartpen will work with Android devices this spring
Volkswagen’s wading into the connected car space in a few different ways including more autonomous driving . First up is Golf R Touch hatchback. It’s sporting three displays on the dashboard, with two being touchscreens. A positively massive 12.8-inch main console rests above an 8-inch control center on the dash, while a 12.3-inch instrument cluster — likely trickle-down from subsidiary Audi — resides behind the steering wheel. The screens are all high-res ( Slashgear reports the main screen is running at 2, 560 x 1, 700) and were designed to eliminate distractions and maximize customization. How’s that? The stage demo included camera-based gesture control and drag-and-drop movement of key functions that looked pretty simple. There’s a touch-strip below the main screen that tracks tactile input (and offers haptic feedback) for things like adjusting the radio volume as well. Here’s to hoping the advancements help improve muscle memory and look-free adjustment seeing as all mechanical knobs’ve been killed. Furthering that is the 8-inch control screen’s system for touch feedback for media and climate control systems. Of course, the Golf R is just a concept at this point so it isn’t clear if or when we’ll see these systems make it into production. Next we have the automaker’s coming vision of its assisted parking system. Trained Parking works using cameras to, well, train itself to how you park and your common maneuvers, and the company claims that eventually the car could put itself on an inductive charging plate. The more immediate plan though, is to allow the driver to control parking maneuvers via smartphone, sort of like Tesla’s solution . And speaking of phones, Volkswagen’s new App Connect platform brings in both Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay system’s for in-car control of your smartphone. Unlike the rest of today’s announcements, this lattermost one his a release window: before the end of the year. Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report Filed under: Cellphones , Transportation Comments Via: Slashgear (1) , (2) Source: Volkswagen
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Volkswagen’s connected cars have three displays and park themselves