Otaku Gadgets

News has emerged from China that prolific tablet manufacturer Havnon has just entered a deal with software giant Microsoft. What they intend to do together is of course quite obvious — make space for MSFT in the fast thickening tablet soup that is the consumer tech industry right now.

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Post the Twitter-based revolution in real-time data mining and serving for trending topics and events, Foursquare is now trying to sell it’s own services as something that shows the trending locations, in real-time. Foursquare co-founder David Crowley gave and exclusive interview to The Telegraph and said that they have approached all players in the search market, including the big three — Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (Bing!).

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microsoft kin

The Kin is dead, long live the.. no wait. Microsoft has abandoned its uber-design phone Kin. The reason? Sales were not apparently ground breaking enough to justify the costs of the cell phone. Lets take a look at Microsoft’s official statement:

We have made the decision to focus on our Windows Phone 7 launch and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones

Microsoft confirms that they will not produce any new KIN devices and that the KIN will not launch in Europe. Support will continue for existing KIN devices in the United States.

The main reasons for failure? Price! The KIN was advertised and priced as a smartphone even though it was not really one. Cutting down the price of the device did not improve sales either because of the high monthly services costs at Verizon.

And it probably did not help that lots of faster and more powerful cell phones have been released in the last six months. Apple introduced their iPhone 4, Motorola their Droid X and other developers dozens of Android based phones.

The Kin is dead and barely anyone will miss it, or even notice that it is gone.

Intel is looking into Google’s newly released WebM format and considering adding hardware acceleration for the format on its specialized Atom chip. WebM is a new video format released by Google, which is based on the VP8 codec. Intel is one of the partners who are working with Google to bring about the Google TV platform to the world and the WebM format is meant especially for that platform.

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As if banning Flash on the iPhone was not enough, Apple is now working on a Flash alternative that will allow rich web applications to be built. Apple’s alternative is called Gianduia. The name is from an Italian hazelnut chocolate. The connection? Gianduia is basically a combination of browser-side Cocoa with CoreData along with WebObjects and JavaScript. At least that is is how one developer described it in his tweet.

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So it seems like the Zune HD 64 is real after all! Last time we mentioned it, it was briefly seen on the main Zune website but then it disappeared. It was obviously an untimely mention thanks to a slip up made by someone who was in-charge of updating the site. Now that we are officially in April, Microsoft has made the device official and has released details.

Continue reading “The Zune HD 64 Is Real, Coming Real Soon Too!” »

It’s either that or Amazon is trying to divert our attention with an orchestrated hype generating move so that they can quietly work on their world domination plans in the background. Although not as exciting as an evil corporation bent on world domination, we will go with the Kindle supposition. So Amazon has been beefing up its arsenal in order to better compete with Apple’s threat. I can just imagine their emergency board meeting — “We have to do something. Let’s buy a touch company and get a good Manager with a great track record. Forget the cost, we are sinking here!”.

Continue reading “Amazon Buys Touch Company, Hires Ace Manager, Plans Uber Kindle? [eReaders] [Tablets]” »

That seems to be the question on Microsoft’s marketing department’s mind right now. The previous Zune HD prices were already fairly low. At $220 for the 16GB model and $290 for the 32GB model, things weren’t all that bad. Now, the 16GB mode is lower by $30 at $190 and the 32Gb model is lowerd by $40 at $250. So now, will you buy one or just go for an iPod Touch?

Continue reading “Microsoft Drops Zune HD Prices, Will You Buy One Now? [PMP] [Zune]” »

Asus probably did not have an inkling as to how much their new line of products will affect the industry when they introduced the netbook. Rather, they reintroduced it. The concept was already there and earlier attempts had been made at it. But when Asus introduced it, the time was just right. The technology for it was just emerging and soon it became apparent that the Atom will rule this new segment in the market – netbooks.

Netbooks marked a decisive shift in the market in quite a few significant ways. First of all, computer makers actually started working on smaller and cheaper models instead of bigger and more expensive ones. Besides, the recession had already started making its presence felt, so models like these really made sense. And the greatest impact was where it mattered the most – on the consumers.

Continue reading “The Netbook Conspiracy” »

When it comes to phones, the last few days have been particularly exciting. It seems like all the companies coordinated their leaks and rumors to be in succession or tandem. We have updates in the elusive HTC Dragon/Passion, the Sony Ericsson Kurara and even the Google Phone. Yes, apparently Google is making a phone. Plus, we have two super deals in smarpthones – Palm Pre and BlackBerry Curve on the cheap!

Get over to the other side to get updated on the latest in the phones.

Continue reading “All Phones Thursday: Kurara, HTC Dragon/Passion, Google Phone, Rumors Galore And More” »