Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video, Transportation

Look out Microsoft, Pioneer’s Linc series of in-dash and “on-dash” systems have their sights set on your voice controlled Sync. The first thing you’ll notice is Pioneer’s pixy-dusted UI which easily trumps the Sync’s rather staid presentation. The videos show off Pioneer’s real-time data feeds and natural speech recognition with the help of some smarmy actor-slash-models who’ll probably be serving you lunch this day if you live in LA. But we digress. Videos after the break… which, let’s be honest, is the best we have the ability to do until the DivX-happy, SD-friendly AVIC-F900BT, F700BT, and F500BT (pictured) are released in June.

Continue reading Video: Pioneer’s AVIC-F Series of in-car navigators to take on Sync

Popularity: 1% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Laptops

DeviceVM’s Splashtop — the (almost) instant-on Linux system — has made its way onto an ASUS laptop before, but the company has announced today that stated application is coming to even more of ASUS’ rigs. If you’ll recall, ASUS decided to bring Splashtop to all of its motherboards earlier this month, and now consumers who snap up a M70T, M50V, M51Vr, F8Va or F8Vr series machine can also look forward to having near-instant access to multimedia playback, chat abilities, etc. as soon as they hit the power button. On these lappies, the system will be dubbed Express Gate, but you can rest assured it’s absolutely the same thing. We’d hold off a few days on picking up one of the aforesaid units, however, as the pre-loaded models aren’t slated to ship until next month.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Robots

iRobot’s various military robots are already capable of packing some weaponry, but it looks like Metal Storm is set to give their arsenal a considerable boost, with it recently demonstrating its remotely-operated FireStorm weapons system on one of iRobot’s standard Warrior platforms. That system essentially makes the ammunition the only moving part in the weapon, with it able to fire bullets electronically at a rate of thousands of rounds per minute (or “theoretically” even up to a million), which Metal Storm states makes the system ideal for a whole range of applications including, somewhat ominously, “crowd control.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Cellphones

The countries continue to fall ahead of Apple’s presumed June 9th, 3G iPhone announcement at WWDC. This time it’s Hong Kong and Macau — foothold populations as Apple eyes the huge Japanese, Russian, and Chinese prizes which have thus far avoided Jobs’ charm RDF.

[Thanks, Patrick C and Edmond]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Other hardware, Players, Speakers, LG, Others

Not like the actual products are any surprise, but all of that LG / Mark Levinson kit that was announced at CES has finally been given a proper price tag and release date. The handful of home theater audio systems (or HTIBs, as it were) arrive in a plethora of arrangements for almost any need, and prices on the sets range from $299.95 to $649.95. Check out the read link for the complete rundown of what the LHT888, LHT874, LHT854, LFD850 and LFA840 systems include, and head on down to Best Buy, Circuit City or any other fine retailer to pick one up right now if you find yourself duly impressed.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

It wouldn’t be a decent pointless chip marketing program if you didn’t get minor personal builders supporting the “spec” in an effort to make a name for themselves. AMD GAME! just got its first product announcement from Vigor Gaming, and it’s quite the yawner. Vigor is sticking the required AMD components into its Force Recon SP desktops, with a “mainstream” version running an Athlon X2 5600+ processor, ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics and 2GB of RAM for around $1,845, while an AMD Game! Ultra configuration bumps up to a Phenom X4 9650 chip and Radeon HD 3870 graphics for $2,733. Both systems are naturally based on AMD’s 770 chipset and run Vista. Vigor offers free overclocking for the brave and custom painting for the aesthetically challenged.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Ask Engadget, Digital Cameras

Don’t worry, we’ll get to you mid- and high-enders soon enough, but we’ve got a feeling this week’s Ask Engadget question will appeal to the masses. Granted, we’ve shot this inquiry out before, but a lot has happened in the DSLR realm in 3.5 long years, wouldn’t you concur?

“Summer’s coming up, and that means vacation time. I want to get an entry-level DSLR in order to ideal capture some of my upcoming adventures, and while I’d like to keep the cost low, I’m not against spending a bit of cash to get a really solid setup. What camera (and maybe even what lens) would your readers recommend for a newcomer?”

Go simple on the guy — he even admitted that he’s fresh to the game — but don’t hold back on explaining your answers in order to really give a good idea of why one camera is a better pick versus another. Right after that, send in a question of your own to ask at engadget dawt com — but make it good, alright?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Automotive X-Prize, USA

Hybrid Technologies, the company which offers the (not very popular) electric Mini Cooper and the all electric L1X-7 sports vehicle, has announced plans to enter the Progressive Automotive X Prize. The car that they’ll be entering looks to be an extremely sporty vehicle, and would compete in the mainstream category, meaning that it must offer at least four seats. That’s two more than the Tesla Roadster, for those keeping count of such things. Two versions of the automobile are said to be in the works, one extended-range electric-vehicle which would offer 220 miles per gallon to go along with its 150 to 180 mile range and a fully electric version which would sell for a cheaper price. Considering the cost of HT’s current automobiles, though, we’re not holding our breath for a rock-bottom figure.

We’ve no real details on what would power either vehicle, though Popular Mechanics‘ report indicates that HT’s Ron Cerven is predicting very wild things from the car. Power levels over that of the extraordinary new Corvette ZR1 are being thrown around. With talk like that, we’d love to see a real product roll out of the Hybrid Technologies factory, something that’s planned to take place this September.

[Source: Popular Mechanics, thanks for the tip, Doug!]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video, Transportation

Look out Microsoft, Pioneer’s Linc series of in-dash and “on-dash” systems have their sights set on your voice controlled Sync. The first thing you’ll notice is Pioneer’s pixy-dusted UI which easily trumps the Sync’s rather staid presentation. The videos show off Pioneer’s real-time data feeds and natural speech recognition with the help of some smarmy actor-slash-models who’ll probably be serving you lunch today if you live in LA. But we digress. Videos after the break… which, let’s be honest, is the ideal we can do until the DivX-happy, SD-friendly AVIC-F900BT, F700BT, and F500BT (pictured) are released in June.

Continue reading Video: Pioneer’s AVIC-F Series of in-car navigators to take on Sync

Popularity: 1% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

iPhone homebrew developer Skrew recently updated the nifty video wallpaper app for the iPhone and iPod touch, vWallpaper. What’s new in this latest release? The latest version, vWallpaper v0.9, now adds Video repository to the application. This will enable users to add their own repo.

Here’s the changelog for vWallpaper’s most recent update. We also added the changes in previous versions in case you missed out on them:

• 0.9 :
• You can now add your own repository for videos download. Get http://i.danstaface.net/site/listvideos.plist for structure example. Put your repository on forum(s).
• 0.8 :
• - You can now delete videos.
• 0.7 :
• - Download videos.
• - Less glitch… near perfect?
• 0.6 :
• - Video loop glitch fixed (i hope for all videos :p).
• - It don’t mess with ringtone call anymore (i have tested 30 times!)
• - new method to detect video playing. need feedback!
• - You can change video without need to restart springboard.
• 0.5 :
• - Videos are now stored in : /private/var/mobile/Media/Skrew/Videos/
  You’ve to copy your videos here and delete old directory.
• - Applications like Camera, iPod, MxTube (…) should work now (please feedback). Autolock still don’t work ATM.

  Popularity: 1% [?]

  Popularity: 26% [?]