All posts from Gadget Lab

When it began taking preorders for the iPad this morning, Apple also published some new details about how the tablet device will function as an e-book reader.
It turns out the iPad will read books out loud to you with audio dictation, a controversial feature that caused some trouble for Amazon’s Kindle last year. Also, Apple indicated that you’ll be able to use the iPad to read EPUB titles from sources  outside of the iBooks store.
The new features are described in the iBooks overview page on Apple’s website. In the section titled “Change your reading habits,” Apple says its VoiceOver functionality — an accessibility tool that works in other parts of the iPad’s interface to help visually-impaired users — will also work to dictate e-books.
“iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page,” Apple’s description reads.
And for ePub titles that are not offered through the iBooks store, you can manually add them to iTunes and then sync them to the iPad:
“The iBooks app uses the ePub format — the most popular open book format in the world,” Apple’s site reads. “That makes it easy for publishers to create iBooks versions of your favorite reads. And you can add free ePub titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.
That’s good news for iPad customers, because that means bookworms won’t be limited to the offerings in the iBook store, which are based on partnerships that Apple inked with publishers.
The new detail about audio dictation should raise more questions. Amazon’s Kindle 2 reader shipped with a function to read e-books out-loud, and the Authors Guild stirred a fuss alleging copyright violations that would cut into sales of audiobooks.
“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”
The guild contended that authors should be awarded audio-licensing fees for e-books. Responding to the criticism, Amazon said “no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.” Nonetheless, Amazon in late February 2009 gave rights-owners the choice to enable or disable the audio function title by title.
There’s no word on whether the Author’s Guild will pursue a similar complaint against Apple.
The National Federation of the Blind has already applauded Apple for including VoiceOver in the iPad.
iBooks description [Apple]
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Plastic Logic, which was set to ship its large screen Que e-reader in April, is now delaying it to “sometime this summer.”
The company sent notifications to pre-order customers late Thursday afternoon announcing the delay and saying it needed the time to “fine-tune features and enhance the overall product.”
Plastic Logic launched the Que at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The Que proReader has an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle a range of documents such as Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers. It can also synchronize with Microsoft Outlook to display e-mails and calendar.
A 4-GB version of the Que with Wi-Fi and storage for about 35,000 documents will cost $650. An $800 8-GB version that can store 75,000 documents and includes both Wi-Fi and 3G capability — powered by AT&T– will be $800.
Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta didn’t reveal the exact reasons for the delay. But if it is to make sure that the company works out all the kinks in the product before it ships, he may have made the right decision. Last year, many e-reader enthusiasts criticized Barnes & Noble for rushing its Nook e-reader to market. Barnes & Noble has since the launch offered firmware updates to fix some of the Nook’s problems.
But the delay is also likely to cost Plastic Logic some ground. Apple’s iPad tablet will be available April 3 and the device starts at $500. Though it doesn’t offer an E Ink screen, the iPad is also targeted at consumers who want to read digital books. Apple will have its own iBook store, similar to iTunes, so consumers can buy digital books directly from the device.
Meanwhile, other companies such as Dell and HP are also planning to launch their own tablets and plan to highlight digital reading as one of the key experiences on the device.
See Also:

Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users
CES 2010: Que Touchcreen E-Reader Packs in Features - Video - Wired
Slim, Large Screen E-Reader Skiff to Debut on Sprint
New Freescale Chip Could Birth a $150 E-Reader

Photo: Que (Priya Ganapati/Wired.com)

As we comb through the updated Apple website for more iPad-related clues, up pops this new picture detailing the physical buttons on the iPad. Now, in addition to the sleep/wake, home and volume buttons familiar to iPhone users, there is a new button named screen rotation lock.
And thank God. One of the most annoying things about the auto-rotating iPhone screen is the way it flips into landscape mode if you lie down whilst reading. Some apps have a preference setting to switch this off, but we’d much rather have a hardware switch. Hopefully this will come to this year’s new iPhones and iPod Touches, too.
We’ll keep looking for any other new tidbits. If you have spotted anything else, let us know in the comments.
iPad Technical Specifications [Apple via the Giz and Loop Insight]

The Apple Store was down for a short spell this morning, and it has popped back up with a pre-order page for the iPad. If you want to get your shiny new Wi-Fi Apple tablet delivered on April 3rd, you can buy it now. If you are holding out for the 3G version, you can still pre-order, but you’ll be kept waiting until the infuriatingly vague “late April”. Despite the international Apple Stores also going offline today, there is still no news of worldwide pricing.
You can also order Apple’s iPad accessories. The book-like case is $40, the iPad Keyboard Dock is $70, the regular dock is $30 and the spare mains charger is $30. In the box with the iPad you get this charger and a dock cable, but no headphones at all. Two-year Applecare for the iPad is another $100.
We wonder, with the ability to pre-order, if there will be anyone to join us in line at the real Apple Store when the Gadget Lab crew goes to buy its iPad on the morning of the 3rd.
iPad Order page [Apple]

There are three* video games I know anything about, and all of them I played obsessively through my college years. One of those games is Streetfighter II, Capcom’s amazingly popular (and awesome) one-on-one beat’em-up. So when Streetfighter IV turned up on the App Store yesterday, I downloaded it to my iPod Touch and pretty much lost the rest of the day. Here’s a quick first look at the iPhone version of the world’s most famous fighting game.
Streetfighter IV is much more similar to the 1991 game than to the 3D SF4 you’ll find on bigger consoles (reviewed by our own Chris Kohler over at Game|Life). If you’re familiar with Guile’s charging attacks or Ryu’s Hadoken (fireball) and Hurricane Kick, you’ll be immediately at home: The moves are pulled off the same way. You also get some new, more powerful tricks, but not so many of the complex pyrotechnics of the Streetfighters between then and now.
If you liked the original, you’ll love this. But how does it play without any real buttons? Surprisingly well. There is an on-screen joystick for moving and jumping, and four on-screen buttons: punch, kick, special move and charge. You can do your special moves the old way, with joystick gestures combined with buttons, or you can wuss-out by just hitting the special move button. This will be annoying for those who had to learn the hard way, but you can switch off the auto-settings in the preferences.
There are two more ways to attack. The “revenge” and “super” meters charge as you get beaten up or as you land hits, respectively, and when they are full you can just touch them to perform some huge special moves. This makes the game sound too easy, but it isn’t: the other fighters have the same access to these moves.
You get the normal story mode, a practice room and a dojo section where you are trained to fight. But the big draw is one-on-one playing against another human. This works over bluetooth, and I couldn’t test it out due to a lack of willing opponents. I do wonder if using faster and slower devices, for instance different generations of iPod Touches, would cause problems between players.
The only problems I had were with the size of the screen. Sometimes my thumbs got in the way of the action, and sometime I got too excited and managed to hit the home button and switch the game off. I swear I was about to win, too.
For our older readers, this will be the quickest $10 they have ever spent. For everyone else, its worth the money for some fast fun. Just don’t buy it until you have finished work for the day.
Streetfighter IV [iTunes]
*The other two games? Super Mario Kart and Super Mario World, of course.

The folks at Geeky Gadgets have got ahold of some screenshots from Sony’s upcoming mirrorless Alpha camera. It appears that the innovation isn’t all on the outside: this camera will have a touch screen and a smart new interface to go with it.
Mirrorless cameras are becoming popular because they put big sensors in small bodies with interchangeable lenses, and Sony’s concept added typical Sony Style. But looks are nothing without a good product, and these screen shots show that Sony has decided to abstract the interface, forgetting about apertures and shutter speeds and instead focussing on their effects.
For instance, we know that opening up the lens shortens depth-of-field and throws the background out of focus, making the subject pop. Sony lets you control this by touching a button and sliding an on-screen control for “Bkground Defocus”. The menu screens are big and colorful, too, instead of the cryptic text lists we’re used to.
In fact, going by these leaked shots it looks as if there won’t be many buttons at all on this camera. Even the mode setting dial is a big on-screen graphic (shaped just like a dial!)
We love where the camera market is going, with relative newcomers forgetting about the old film ways of doing things and instead concentrating on taking better pictures more easily. More shots below, or click over to Geeky Gadgets to see them all.
Sony Ultra Compact DSLR Camera Concept Menu And LCD Screenshots [Geeky Gadgets]

The Cloak Bag is a camera bag that lets you take pictures whilst your camera is still inside. It also doesn’t look anything like a normal camera bag, making it doubly secure if you’re a vulnerable traveler on vacation.
Like all the best niche products, the shoot-through bag was born of specific need. After two near misses in Buenos Aires, co-inventor Robert Merrill was afraid to take his DSLR out for fear of theft, so when he got back to Florida, he went to work. The Cloak Bag is designed to keep the camera protected and out of site, yet you can quickly flip it open and shoot with the camera still inside. A strap replaces your actual camera strap, and then the case itself hooks onto it with Velcro and a screw in the tripod-mount. The bottom of the bag zips open and folds inside when you want to shoot. In this mode, it looks like any other shoulder bag.
To shoot, you flip open the top (held in place with magnets) and your fingers slot inside through a gap to reach the dials and shutter release. If you need to zoom of focus manually, there is another zipper to gain access to the lens from the side.
Even if not fearing pickpockets and scam-artists, I like that you can have the camera ready to go but still protected from bumps (just don’t forget the front is open and put the camera down on wet ground). And at $50, it’s not much more than other day bags. The Cloak Bag is for DSLRs-only, and will fit cameras as big as Canon’s 5D MkII and Nikon’s D700 – in short, anything smaller than a bulky pro camera.
Cloak Bag [Cloak Bags via Photography Bay]
See Also:

Make It: Stealth Camera Bag
Gadget Lab Reader Makes Stealth Camera and Netbook Bag
Hands On With Lowepro's 'Stealth' Camera Bag

Solar power combined with fancy-looking cases? The perfect storm for getting an end-of-the-week mention on the Gadget Lab. Today its the turn of the Novothink Solar Surge, an iPhone and iPad Touch case with a solar panel and a lithium-ion polymer battery. Instead of just gluing some photo-sensitive panels to the back of a case, Novothink has, well, actually thought about the design.
In sunlight, the case can grab enough juice in a half-hour for 30 minutes talk time on 3G and an hour on 2G. That’s enough to make this case useful on its own, especially as outdoors is exactly the place you can’t plug in a charger. The case also has a hole for hooking onto a carabiner and hanging from a backpack — a bad idea in the city, but out in the wilderness and away from pickpockets it is ideal.
For once, the iPod Touch gets some extra love: The Touch version of the case, due to the extra space afforded by the iPod’s slim body, has a 1500mAH battery (the iPhone’s is 1320mAH). Both cases, when fully charged, will double the life of the devices. There’s even a free iPhone app to help you calculate how much sunbathing your case has to do to get you through a day. Other neat touches are the row of LEDs to tell you how much power is left and, on the inevitable cloudy days, the regular USB socket in the case means you can charge (and sync) without Apple’s custom cord.
The Apple-certified cases aren’t cheap, but for such utilitarian devices they certainly look good. The iPod Touch case is $70 (on offer right now at $53) and the iPhone version costs $80.
Surge for iPod Touch [Novothink. Thanks, Matt!]
Surge for iPhone [Novothink]
See Also:

Personal Solar Panel Twenty Time More Powerful Than Rivals …
LG's Solar-Powered E-Book Reader
Solar MacBook Charger Costs More than MacBook Itself
Solar Power
Blue Earth: Samsung's Solar Phone Made from Water Bottles

Apple’s recent purge of sex-tinged iPhone apps, combined with its lesser-known ban of “cookie-cutter” apps, signifies the company’s new focus on quality, rather than quantity, in its App Store.
Last month, Apple removed about 5,000 apps with “overtly sexual content” from its App Store. And this week Apple told Mobile Roadie, a company that provides templates for clients to build iPhone apps, that the App Store would no longer accept “cookie-cutter” apps — apps made with app-generating services that do little more than reproduce websites or pull RSS feeds from the internet.
“This is a hot issue as more focus is being placed on app platforms to ensure they’re providing a quality user experience and content,” said Michael Schneider, CEO of Mobile Roadie. He stressed that his company was not a maker of “cookie-cutter” apps because its templates were highly customizable.
“I’m not going to comment on specific competitors, but I believe as a result of the recent changes at Apple many of them will be out of business,” Schneider later wrote in a blog post. “The ones that are left are going to have to step it up, which is a good thing for the App Store, for our business, and for consumers.”
Since the App Store’s early days, Apple has boasted about the number of apps served through the store and highlighted its rapid growth. The App Store launched with 800 third-party apps in July 2008, and by November 2009 it surpassed 100,000 apps. As of February, Apple’s App Store had accumulated about 150,000 apps.
That number has translated into a huge competitive advantage. In terms of quantity, the App Store has a commanding lead in the mobile space. Android is in a distant second with 19,300 apps. Windows Mobile’s store has 690 apps, Palm has 1,450, Nokia carries 6,120 and BlackBerry serves 4,760. Sure, you may not want to use the majority of the Apple store’s 150,000 apps, but the fact that customers have nearly eight times more selection than they do with Android phones and nearly 200 times more than with the Windows Marketplace is a convincing sales advantage for many.
In recent months, Apple has expedited its App Store approval policy to be much faster than it used to be. Several iPhone developers told Wired.com that the App Store has recently been approving their apps in as little as two days. Last year, an app approval could take between two weeks and two months.
Apple did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment regarding major changes in the App Store. But Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing at Appcelerator, an app-building service, said it was likely that a larger staff as well as new automated tools are helping to speed up Apple’s approval process. As a result, that frees up bandwidth for Apple to institute bigger-picture changes to improve the quality of the App Store, he said.
“Now it’s a quality versus quantity issue,” Schwarzhoff said. “When they first started they wanted tons of apps, but now with 150,000 apps out there, there’s no need for Apple to have bigger numbers on its side as compared to quality applications.”
Without a doubt, those put out of business are chagrined by Apple’s capriciously changing App Store policy. For example, Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls was making thousands of dollars each month earlier. Now, with 50 of his company’s sexy apps banned from the store, his salad days are over.
“It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”
However, all of the developers contacted by Wired.com said they were happy with the change. They said that thanks to Apple’s new (albeit unclear) quality standard, the App Store will be less cluttered with trashy apps, which benefits both developers and consumers.
Eric Kerr, co-founder of AppLoop, shut down his company 10 months ago because of financial and personal reasons. AppLoop’s service, called App Generator, turned any online publication with an RSS feed into an app — something that might have fallen under Apple’s new ban of cookie-cutter apps. But Kerr sided with Apple on its decision to prohibit apps with extremely limited utility made with app generators.
“Apple doing this is really only accelerating the inevitable,” Kerr told Wired.com. “You have all these applications that don’t provide any additional value to users, and in the long run the market will determine they’re useless and people will not download them. Because of the application discovery problem, that might take a while for that to actually happen, and during that time period you have a bunch of low-quality apps clogging the system.”
Obscure Rules
Still, Apple has come under fire because of the lack of clarity regarding policy changes in the App Store. During Apple’s removal of apps containing overtly sexual content, many criticized the company for allowing sex-tinged apps from big companies such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated to remain in the store.
Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller said Apple had removed the sex-tinged iPhone apps in response to complaints from parents and women. However, he said the apps from Playboy and Sports Illustrated would remain because they came from reputable companies.
“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller told NY Times.
But as Apple continues to push its new quality regime, a question arises: Where do you draw the line between raising quality standards and censorship? That’s already stirring some debate. Apple crossed the line with German tabloid Bild, whose iPhone app was pulled because of a feature containing sexual content, an act that the publication has called “a curtailing of press freedoms.”
“Today it is naked breasts, tomorrow it could be editorial content,” said Donata Hopfen, head of Bild’s digital media department, in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel. She said Bild was urging the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers to take action “in the interest of freedom of the press.”
That battle, however, will be a tough one for Bild. Apple is not a government, and thus it is not governed by the First Amendment, said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.
In other words, the company’s rules may be arbitrary and unfair, but Apple has the right to make decisions about what it carries in its App Store.
The fact that it lacks significant competition may be making Apple act more high-handed than it would otherwise, Scheer noted.
“They’re trying to create this aura of respectability and selectivity,” Scheer said. “Apple’s trying to create this censored environment. It’s a little like China. What China does to the whole internet with pornographic content is what Steve Jobs is trying to do in his neighborhood for the iPhone.”
With a big lead in the numbers game Apple’s move toward emphasizing quality might just help it retain its dominance in the mobile market. However, Scheer said if Apple’s moves continue to be construed as acts of censorship, it could drive customers to more open alternatives such as Google’s Android platform.
“Eventually you embitter a lot of people who don’t understand why they’re being denied access to something they’d like to have on a device they have and they own,” he said.
See Also:

Apple Removes Porn Apps From App Store
Apple Explains Semi-Ban of Sex Apps
IPad Apps Could Put Apple in Charge of the News
Rumor: Some iPhone Apps Scrapped From iPad by Steve Jobs
For the iPhone’s App Store, Quantity Really Does Matter

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

JooJoo, the tablet formerly known as CrunchPad, is set to land at the end of this month with several new features that weren’t seen in the early prototype.
Most noticeably, the drab, solid-colored home screen seen in the JooJoo prototype (below) has been replaced with an elegantly polished icon grid laid on top of a customizable wallpaper (above). Engadget, who first reported the story, has some exclusive screenshots posted, in addition to the one above.
Also interesting is the addition of a new text-entry option allowing you to display a smaller keyboard designed for one-handed operation, which can be dragged around to avoid interfering with content. There’s an option for a larger virtual keyboard for two-hand typing as well. The one-handed typing solution is intriguing to me, and it makes me wonder whether Apple will do something similar with its iPad. From my hands-on time with the iPad, I found the larger virtual keyboard to be unpleasant to type with compared to entering text on the iPhone.
Some more factors competing with the iPad: Flash is now fully working on the JooJoo. Videos can also be played from a thumb drive plugged into the JooJoo’s USB port.
Oddly, the hardware has changed color as well. Rather than black, it sports a champagne exterior, JooJoo maker Fusion Garage told Engadget.
The JooJoo looks sweet, and that home screen is quite attractive. But as I’ve said before, I have doubts that a vertically integrated product from this small company will succeed. The JooJoo runs its own custom operating system, and it’ll be difficult for Fusion Garage to persuade developers to code apps for a device with a relatively small user base. We’ll just have to see what happens when the JooJoo goes on sale March 25.

See Also:

Hands On With the JooJoo, Formerly Known as CrunchPad
JooJoo Tablet Faces Uphill Battle Against iPad
JooJoo Tablet Set to Ship Around Same Time as iPad
Startup Disses Arrington, Relaunches CrunchPad Tablet as JooJoo …

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Intel’s first 32-nanometer, six-core processor is ready for prime time. It’s clunky moniker aside, the chip called the Core i7-980X Extreme edition will offer some serious artillery for gamers and heavy multimedia users looking for a faster processor.
The chip is based on Intel’s platform codenamed “Gulftown” and will include features that improve on computing speed and power efficiency.
Intel launched the first of the Core i7 chips in November 2008. The family of Core i7 chips will be almost four to six times faster than the earlier platform, says Intel.
The first of the Core i7 chips were based on the 45-nm circuitry, a step ahead from the previous 65-nm generation. The latest chip takes it to the next level with a 32-nm process so Intel can pack in more computing power and manufacture the CPUs more cheaply.
The new Core i7 chips are based on a newly designed Intel microarchitecture called Nehalem, which includes major design changes in areas such as power management and integrated memory control.
The chips use “hyperthreading” technology, which gives the chips the ability to execute 12 threads simultaneously on six processing cores, greatly increasing their speed.
The Core i7-980X chip will be available at the same price as the i7-975 chip released last year. The i7-975 chip can simultaneously process eight threads on four cores.Intel hasn’t said exactly when we will see the latest chips in high-end gaming desktops though it is expected to be in the next few weeks.
See Also:

Intel Shows 48-Core Processor for Research
Intel Launches New Desktop Processor
A Quick Guide to Intel’s Chips, From Arrandale to Yorkfield
Intel’s New Convertible Classmate PC Doubles as E-Reader

Photo: Core i7 chip/Intel

The Slate PC, from French multi-touch company Stantum, is essentially a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook with the keyboard chopped off and a multi-touch screen grafted on. It runs Windows 7. It is also proof that a desktop OS should never be forced onto a tablet computer.
The Slate PC got things wrong from the moment it left the box. The first thing you notice is the odd section missing from the long edge, just where the hinge would be on a normal netbook. This is in fact the top edge of the battery, and the gap is indeed the gap left by the old flip-open screen. The computer is in fact the base of the donor Dell with the touch-screen fitted where the keyboard would be. Cheap, but inelegant.
Then you fire it up. I handed it off to the Lady, as we were eating breakfast in bed (she has to deal with gadgets before morning coffee. It’s a part of the glamorous gadget lifestyle). First she was flipping it around and around: On boot, if you hold the machine label-up, the boot screen is upside down. Of course, you turn it, but then the display flips again.
Once it was actually on, she asked me “Are you supposed to hold it like this?”, while holding like it a book. “It’s too heavy. Here, take it back.”
And it is heavy, at a touch over 1kg, or 2.2-pounds. By comparison, the heaviest iPad will be 0.73kg, or 1.6-pounds. It is over an inch thick, too, or double the depth of the iPad.
But the real problem comes in use. Windows 7 is a desktop OS, built with small buttons and scrollbars that are designed for the pixel-accurate tip of a mouse pointer, not a fat finger. It is so frustrating to control that I started using the pen of my Wacom tablet instead. I then gave up on that and plugged in a mouse and keyboard, at least for the initial setup of Wi-Fi passwords and the like.
To be fair, this is a proof-of-concept, and the included test applications which are actually designed for multi-touch use work fine. They’re simple games and drawing programs, but they show that the resistive touch-screen actually works and is responsive. The problem is Windows 7 (it would be equally bad with OS X, lest you think I am blaming Microsoft).
How bad is it? The on-screen keyboard, for one, needs to be popped up manually when you need it (usually – sometimes it is automatic) and then it is almost impossible to type on. It’s actually a lot harder to use than the iPhone’s tiny QWERTY. And what if you want to use the browser in full-screen mode, say to use the new Google Reader Play news reader? Good luck with that. You can enter full-screen mode just fine, with the instruction to hit F11 to get back to the normal view. The problem? No F11, and no other way back. You have to either plug in a keyboard or yank the battery to restart.
This might explain why Bill Gates said that the iPad could do with “voice, the pen and a real keyboard.”
The hardware is also rather poor. I’m not sure why, but it runs a lot slower than my hackintoshed MSI Wind, a machine over a year old. The Dell has trouble with video (stuttery in YouTube and crashy in the media player) and even flipping between the one or two open applications is slow. Again, this isn’t the fault of the Stantum mod, but if you’re going to send out a test machine, better to send one that works.
These aren’t yet for sale, although hand-made prototypes can be ordered for around $1,000. As the Dell it is based on costs $300, adding a touch-screen and still making a profit whilst competing with Apple’s $500 iPad seems a little tricky.
The slate market isn’t going to move anywhere without custom designed software. Until we get proper Android netbooks, or Google’s Chrome OS, Apple is about the only company doing that right now, and its doing it cheap enough that nobody will be catching up anytime soon.
To finish, I’ll leave you with a word from the Lady. I told her I was writing this review today. She said “Good. The sooner you review it, the sooner you can send it back.”
Slate PC [Stantum]
Photo: Charlie Sorrel