Posts in Gadgets
Barnes & Noble acquires e-book seller
Dawn Kawamoto | Mar 09, 2009
Barnes & Noble makes another attempt at the e-book business with the acquisition of e-book seller Fictionwise.com.
The cash deal, announced Thursday, is part of Barnes & Noble's plans to launch its own e-book store later this year, despite its lack of success with a previous attempt years ago.
Back in 2000, Barnes & Noble teamed up with Microsoft to launch an e-book store with the help of Microsoft Reader software. But three years after its launch and investing at least US$20 million into the project, Barnes & Noble discontinued sales of e-books.
Although the company did not disclose the reasons for halting its e-book store efforts, a Nielsen/NetRatings analyst speculated at the time that sales had been minimal.
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Making faces could be hip in two to three years
Darius Chang | Mar 09, 2009
(Credit: Physorg)
Do you find it rude to make faces at people? Well, you better start rethinking that stereotype if you intend to use the Mimi switch.
Forget fingers. Created by Osaka University researcher Kazuhiro Taniguchi, the Mimi switch (a.k.a. ear switch) is a set of unassuming earphones containing infrared sensors. This allows the earpiece to sense movements within the ears and transmit the readings to an attached micro-computer which then translates them into commands for a music device. In fact, this gadget is not limited to just audio pleasure as it can be programmed to control other electronic devices. Hence, sticking out your tongue, winking or almost any facial expression can be mapped to any particular function
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Tech brings hope to kidney transplant seekers
Daniel Terdiman | Mar 08, 2009
Silverstone Solutions' software is designed to find suitable matches between kidney donors and those suffering from kidney disease. Already, the software has been used by a San Francisco hospital to save nearly two dozen lives, the company said. (Credit: Silverstone Solutions)
Designed by software engineer David Jacobs--whose own brother died of kidney failure--Silverstone's Kidney Paired Donation technology is built around the idea of radically improving the process through which those in need of kidney transplants must go to get what they need. If they are able to at all.
Today, Jacobs said, there are 83,000 Americans waiting for kidney transplants, each of whom has to wait between seven and eleven years for a new organ, much or all of that on dialysis. Many of those people don't survive the wait. Silverstone's technology (listen to a podcast about the software) aims to capitalize on a concept that has existed since the 1990s in which multiple pairs of incompatible donors and recipients are mined to uncover a suitable pair.
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Avaak launches home video monitoring system
Rafe Needleman | Mar 07, 2009
The Vue is a unique, battery-powered Webcam. (Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)
Avaak is launching its very attractive Vue Webcam system at the Demo 09 conference Monday. It's designed for home monitoring, like cameras from Panasonic and DLink. The kicker: The Vue cameras are tiny, light, and battery-powered. You don't have to screw them into a wall or run power cables to them. That changes a lot.
The mount for a Vue camera is a small metallic dome that you can screw or tape onto a surface. The cameras themselves have a curved base with a magnet inside so you can just stick them to the domes. You get two domes with each camera, which is supposed to encourage you to move the cams around as your monitoring needs change.
The internal battery (a standard lithium CR123 cell) in each camera is said to provide enough power for 1 million images, or about 10 minutes of video a day for a year.
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O2 Joggler: Digital calendar for the school-run set
Flora Graham | Mar 06, 2009
(Credit: CNET UK)
A joggler is a welding tool, known in the US as a "panel flanger". We looked it up. We love a good flange. It's also the name of O2's new attempt to drag people-carrier-driving, welly-boot-wearing parents into the digital age.
O2 is hoping to replace the tried-and-tested family kitchen calendar with a device that looks like a souped-up digital photo frame with a 7-inch touchscreen and a suite of family-oriented applications.
We let our fingers do the walking with the panel flanger--sorry, Joggler--and found it easy to use. O2 wants to recapture its romance with the mums-and-dads market from when it was BT Cellnet, so it's keeping things so simple even a sleep-deprived parent with a full-time job can use it. There's no battery, stylus or keyboard, just a touchscreen with an iPhone-like home screen and a limited number of applications.
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