Technology Nirvana

After the iPhone 3.0 firmware update, we wondered whether the the next gen iPhone would bring a new chip with support for 802.11n. Now a job posting on Apple's website is feeding that theory.

We've already seen that the newest iPod Touch has a Broadcom BCM4329 chip with support for 802.11n and FM transmission—something missing in our most recent iPhone generation—but we've also learned that the hardware is dormant, perhaps to be brought to life by later additions in software support.

A recent Apple job posting teases that such software support might come soon along with some kind of upgrade allowing for 802.11n capabilities in the next gen iPhone, because it's asking for a Wi-Fi software engineer to join the iPhone team and bring experience in:

• Implementation of 802.11 a/b/g/n & related specifications.
• 802.11i/802.1x Security protocols
• Good understanding of wireless RF technologies & co-existence issues of 802.11 PHYs with other Wireless interfaces like Bluetooth.

Ooh la la. Yes, it's just a job posting and pure speculation regarding what we'll see in the next generation of iPhones, but addition of Wireless N capabilities and support are a logical addition and seem rather likely.[Apple—Thanks, A!]

Say hello to "the world's first production model 3D bio-printer." What you're looking at is a machine capable of arranging human cells and artificial scaffolds into complex three-dimensional structures, which result in such wonderful things as replacement liver and kidney tissue, or such simple niceties as artificially grown teeth. All we're told of the internal workings is that the bio-printer utilizes laser-calibrated print heads and that its design is the first to offer sufficiently wide flexibility of use to make the device viable. Organovo will be the company responsible for promoting the new hardware to research institutions, while at the same time trying to convince the world that it's not the fifth sign of the apocalypse. Maybe if the printer didn't have a menacing red button attached to it, we'd all be a little less freaked out by it.

Invetech 3D bio-printer is ready for production, promises 'tissue on demand' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hold on to your hats, folks! It’s a doozy. Wait… I’m being told it’s actually a minor, but significant, change to an Acer Netbook. Sorry.

Well, as long as you’re here: it seems that the popular Acer Aspire One, a perfectly decent netbook if I ever saw one, is going to be sporting the new Atom N450 processor. This is the newest Atom, and it lowers wattage while integrating graphics. So you can expect slightly better battery life and better performance, although the clock speed is still hanging out at the same old 1.66GHz.

Good for Acer, but hold on to your wallets. We expect pretty much every netbook maker have similar specs after the next week or so. That’s not so long to wait, is it? Just chill a bit, watch our CES coverage, and then decide which is the best afterwards. I’m betting Doug is just itching to get hands-on with all these things. He’s like that.

Here are the full specs from the press release. Should go for $300 MSRP, less of course on the strizzle.

Acer Aspire One AO532h
• Intel® Atom(TM) Processor N450 (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache, 667MHz FSB)
• 10.1″ WSVGA Acer CrystalBrite(TM) LED-backlit Display
• Mobile Intel® NM10 Express Chipset
• Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
• 1024MB DDR2 667MHz Memory
• 160GB(2) 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader
• Acer InviLink(TM) Nplify(TM) 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi CERTIFIED®
• 10/100 Fast Ethernet LAN (RJ-45)
• Built-in Webcam
• Two Built-in Stereo Speakers
• Multi-Gesture Touchpad
• 3 – USB 2.0 Ports
• 6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh)
• 2.76 lbs. | 1.25 kg
• 10.17” (W) x7.28” (D) x .99” (H)
• Windows® 7 Starter
• Three stylish colors: Onyx Blue, Garnet Red and Silver Matrix.
• MSRP: $299.99

Get it? Get it?? Yeah, I bet you got it. [tumblr via tumblr via Super Punch]

The Olds -- they're never happy, are they? Just look at this study conducted by the feared and respected Zogby International. According to a poll, those aged 35-54 are most disappointed by how far technology has come by 2010, having grown up with the concept of that Jetsons robot that automatically brushes your teeth and the promise of Sleeper's Orgasmatron. Still, 21 percent of Emperor Zogby's subjects said tech was more advanced than they would have imagined, while another 37 percent claimed we were right on track with our technological achievements. But what about the super old people, you ask? Well go figure, a third of those queried 70 years of age and over said our current tech was basically blowing their collective minds (or, was more advanced than they expected). Said one respondent, "I never know where the next robot attack is coming from."

Study: middle-aged people unimpressed with modern technology originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pardon me, miss? I’d just like to tell you that I think your hat is fly. Dope, even. Too bad you’ll never remember my face. Memorize it now and then lose me forever. Unless, of course, you’ve somehow got a camcorder hidden in that thing! That’s unlikely, as your hat is far too stylish to be a technology product.

The joke’s on me, because this hat DOES have a camcorder hidden inside it. The future! All for $55 from Brando. There’s 4GB of storage, 640×480 resolution recording at 27 (???) frames per second, and a keychain remote control.

You use the remote to start and stop recording, at which point the hat vibrates to let you know it’s working. Yes, it vibrates. Again, this is the future.

Spy Camera Camcorder Cap with Vibration and Remote Control [Brando]

It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “TenYears” list. We already did the biggest losers in the tech industry but why not talk about the biggest product flops? Here are a few of the biggest failures of the decade, starting with one monster release from a fairly well-known company.

It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “TenYears” list.

We already did the biggest losers in the tech industry but why not talk about the biggest product flops? Here are a few of the biggest failures of the decade, starting with one monster release from a fairly well-known company.

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Winner Loser: Windows Vista

Microsoft has had a hard decade. They made billions, sure, but they haven’t led in mindshare since Windows NT. Geeks flocked to Linux in the early aughts and LAMP now rules the roost when it comes to web servers. Their mobile offerings are roundly and regularly panned and their incremental fixes to products have frustrated users.

Speaking of incremental fixes, how about Vista? When the product launched on January 30, 2007 there was quite a bit of fanfare but no substance. I still remember standing in line to hit the launch party and then listening to Angels and Airwaves play their hit that year. Then Bill said something about burning DVDs and the rest was a blank. Vista disappeared, mostly because it wasn’t “Longhorn,” the long-awaited upgrade to Windows that would add a slew of server-side features. Businesses didn’t buy it and consumers didn’t want it.

Fast forward to 2009 and Windows 7 is on everyone’s lips and Vista is just a bad, bad memory. It wasn’t a horrible OS. It was just not enough to be worth users’ time.

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Runners Up

OLPC The One Laptop Per Child project was supposed to change the world. By sending cheap technology into developing nations, you would offer kids a ticket out of ignorance and poverty. Sadly, however, corporate infighting and the glare of reality made the sub-$100 laptop idea a failure. Will we ever see something like the OLPC project come to fruition? Sure, but manufacturers will have to stop with the posturing and pony up some cash for the future.

HD DVD Poor Toshiba. They were so excited about HD DVD a few years ago but then one day – one CES, actually – the entire product just went up in a puff of smoke. Competing high definition DVD standards were were silly and Sony’s deep pockets and connections won the day. But don’t count your laurels too soon, Sony: streaming and downloads will eat your Blu-Ray lunch with a quickness.

N-Gage Admit it: when you first heard of N-Gage you wanted it to work. You wanted engrossing, good games on your cellphone. You wanted to go into a store and buy games like you’d buy Nintendo cartridges. You wanted EA et al. to amaze you. Sadly, Nokia messed things up with garbage hardware then even more garbage service offerings. In the end, the side-talking N-Gage was a joke when it launched in 2003 and then the iPhone took over mobile gaming. End of N-Gage.

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Our take

Devin: How about the AppleTV? It was in a position to really take on other set-top boxes, but Apple just blew it. Not really on the scale of these other flops, but worth mentioning. And although it pains me to say it, the Zune to some extent was a major flop. I love the Zune HD, but the original was poorly marketed… and brown.

Greg: The Cybiko. That thing was supposed to be awesome. I’d be able to talk to chat with all of my friends during class, and my teachers would be none the wiser. We’d crack jokes! We’d play games! It would be a little electronic party, each and every day. And then no one bought it, and I was the weird kid that had a calculator with an antenna on it.

Matt: Let me set the scene: A company previously unknown at the beginning of the decade quietly releases a hit cell phone after a hit cell phone. This company can seemingly do no wrong and constantly reinvents itself to stay one beat ahead of the trend. Then RIM launches the BlackBerry Storm, which will go down in history second only to the N-Gage as the worst cell phone in history.

Nicholas: HD DVD only “flopped” after Warner decided to back Blu-ray. Prior to that it was doing just as well as Blu-ray, which is to say not well at all. Maybe the Dreamcast?

Doug: This is a tough one since there are always plenty of flops compared to good products. I guess the product with the biggest crash and burn factor in my mind would be the Gizmondo portable gaming system. So much hype, so many promises broken. The amazing part was that it actually launched. But it was overpriced, there were no games, and everyone and their mother involved in the project went bankrupt. Even more amazing is that there was supposed to be a Gizmondo 2 launched in 2008. Why launch a successor to a failed product? No matter, as a series of delays, arrests, and a high-profile car crash had doomed the project from the start.

Remember the last time Samsung went more than a few days without launching a new phone? Yeah, neither do we. When we got word that Samsung Mobile was holding their CES press conference at the ungodly hour of 7:30 A.M on the Day 2 of CES (otherwise known as Day 1 of being hungover), my curiosity was piqued. I mean, who the hell launches a new phone at 7:30 in the morning, halfway through a show? Not Samsung, it seems.

There’s no shortage of web-based interactive toolbars to choose from. This week, a new Israeli startup, Wibiya, is publicly launching its compelling web-based, customizable toolbar to publishers.

Wibiya’s toolbar for blogs and publishers integrated services, social media sites, applications and widgets. Everything is customizable, giving publishers the ability to add Facebook Connect, enabling Twitter alerts, and more fairly easily. The toolbar has a fairly in-depth integration with Twitter, Search, latest tweets, Tweets about each page and more. Publishers can also bring their Facebook Fan Page stream to the toolbar. Interestingly, Wibiya has an “app store” of sorts, where publishers can customize their bars with a variety of apps, including Google Translate, YouTube, games and more. Unfortunately the app store is limited with only 25 apps at the moment.

Wibiya also has deep integration with TinyChat, which lets publishers have their own video/text chat feature on their sites. As users login to chat, they can Tweet out the URL to the page they are in, helping publishers build traffic. Of course, Wibiya is still not as feature-rich as some of the other toolbars but it’s certainly off to a good start. But it’s a competitive space with Conduit, Meebo, MySpace, Yahoo, Digg and many others in the game.

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