No matter how much you love your new tablet, it won’t love you back—unless you happen to be in the Roppongi Hills Cafe in Tokyo, that is. That’s where you’ll find Hug-Chan, the robot developed by Samsung and RT Corporation to hand out hugs during the holidays.
In an effort to help out our fellow last-minute shoppers, Matt, Jared, Graeme, Keith and I will each be spotlighting some of our favorite tech products this week. I drew Monday! Here’s a list of some of the gadgets and gear I use on a regular basis that would make good gifts.
The idea of a nationwide, open-access wireless 4G broadband network may be a great thing in theory, but in practice, it turns out that there may be one rather big problem with it–especially for anyone who uses a GPS system.
Following Google’s announcement last week that the Android Market had reached an impressive 10 billion downloads, Apple has clearly decided that it’s time to remind everyone who did this App Store thing first. The company has announced that not only does it have 500,000 different apps available in its App Store, but that it has reached 18 billion downloads since launching three years ago.
The privacy concerns around the tracking of consumers and targeted advertising online may be coming to the physical world. At a Federal Trade Commission workshop about the privacy implications of face recognition on Thursday, all eyes were on the new “Find My Face” feature in Google+, announced at the conference. The event, however, also focused on how face detection is being used offline in “smart sign” technology and other applications.
So you’re a tweaker, and you’d like to do more with the Kindle Touch than Amazon allows, but the previous methods of jailbreaking Amazon’s e-readers don’t work anymore. Fortunately, a new exploit allows you to hack the first-generation Kindle Touch in three easy steps.
Can you believe it? The iPad 3 might become available in March or April, according to recent rumors. The first iPad hit the market on April 3, 2010; the iPad 2 hit the market on March 11, 2011. Apple traditionally follows a yearly product release cycle, so there you have it.
External volume troubles, accidental power-offs, a wonky touchscreen and privacy fit for a peeping Tom—Amazon’s Kindle Fire probably wishes it could dial back the clock to late September, when the device was just announced and everyone was still fawning. That, or it wishes certain media outlets would pay closer attention to what its users are actually saying.
Today only, Woot.com is selling the 8-inch Vizio Android tablet for $160. The tablet doubles as a tricked out universal remote with a built-in IR blaster that can be used to control your home theater devices.
It’s been a busy week for mobile applications that mimic the feel of a magazine, but with content from an array of sources. First, iPad hit Flipboard arrived on the iPhone. Then Google unveiled Currents. Now Zite, another iPad mainstay, is joining Flipboard on the iPhone. The company recently gave me a sneak peek and a bit of hands-on time with the app.
With the introduction of ultrabooks, 2012 will probably be the most disruptive year in portable computing designs since the industry introduced “thin and light” laptops a decade ago.
