Despite the fact that Brother’s new, top-of-the-line all-in-one inkjet printer looks like a swarthy behemoth, Brother says the MFC-J6920dw is actually 35 percent smaller than comparable competitor’s models.
Brother achieves this through something they call “Landscape Print Technology,” a feature it introduced last year that lets the printers output to large pages from printers with relatively small footprints.
At an event in Berlin in just under two hours time, Sony will announce two attachable lenses that you’ll be able to stick onto the back of your smartphone to take better photos. They’re called the QX100 and the QX10, and you can see exactly what they’ll look like in the leaked press images above — and exactly how they’ll work in the leaked TV ad below.
Google’s head of Android and Chrome, Sundar Pichai, has just confirmed that the next delicious version of Android won’t be just any old generic desert, but will instead be called Android 4.4 KitKat.
Along with the announcement of the new name Pichai told his Google+ followers that he just got back from a trip to Asia to visit device partners, and that Android has now passed over 1 Billion device activations:
Dreams of an Android-powered Nokia were well and truly quashed today when Microsoft announced that it has reached a deal to acquire Nokia’s Devices and Services unit for $7.2 billion. The move will see Microsoft take ownership of the Finnish firm’s entire smartphone lineup, giving it complete control over both hardware and software.
Verizon has today announced that it has reached a deal to acquire Vodafone’s 45% stake in the company for £130 billion. The buyout consists primarily of cash and stock, and was unanimously approved by the board of directors of both Verizon and Vodafone. It’s expected to be completed in 2014 following regulatory approvals.
Between now and Christmas, we’re going to see a flood of new smartwatches hitting the market, and I have the feeling that Google’s rumored smartwatch will be one of them.
Google is working on a smartwatch. But what kind of watch?
In the wake of revelations that Google bought WiMM Labs, it’s looking like Google’s smartwatch may be more than just a watch. Much more.
AT&T has received a lot of gruff over the past few months from T-Mobile and its prepaid wireless service plans, so to strike back, AT&T is launching its Aio Wireless prepaid brand nationwide next month.
The new service offers AT&T customers the option to sign up for prepaid data plans starting as cheap as $40 a month for 250MB, to $70 a month for 7GB with a bunch of other options in between. After being tested in markets in Flordia, Texas, and Atlanta, Aio wireless will be available online to all U.S. customers starting mid-September.
Skype has confirmed that it is working to deliver 3D video calling for compatible televisions and computer displays. But according to Mark Gillett, Skype’s corporate vice president, it could be a number of years before the technology comes to fruition due to a lack of suitable capture devices.
Last night, EE officially announced that it has now successfully brought 4G LTE coverage to more than 100 markets across the U.K. Accrington in Lancashire was named the hundredth town to have its EE’s LTE service activated, on the eve of both O2 and Vodafone’s 4G switch-ons.
Imo Messenger, the messaging service that now boasts over 10 million users worldwide, has today received a nice new update on Android and iOS. In addition to free video calling on both platforms, the new release adds the ability to share broadcasts to your favorite social networks on iOS, and makes the app a universal release with support for both iPhone and iPad.
Like bicycle streamers or rum, adding a wifi hotspot to pretty much anything will make it exponentially better. The tiny new Hyper iUSBPort Mini is a great example of this: It’s a $90 USB drive with a built-in WiFi hotspot that can be used to share files or stream movies or songs to an iOS or Android device.
One tip for the device’s marketing team though: Please come up with a better name.
While the iPhone 5C will certainly be cheaper than Apple’s high-end iPhone 5S, it’s likely to be too expensive still for many in emerging markets. But smartphone clone specialists Goophone already have an Android-powered alternative in the pipeline that will sell for just $100 in China.
Called the “i5C,” the device looks almost identical to the real iPhone 5C based on the leaks we’ve seen. Just don’t expect a Retina display.
Anyone dismissing the Sony MDR-X10 headphones as simply yet another bombastic, over-the-top, celebrity-designed fashion statement for teenage bass junkies would be wrong. Easily forgiven, but wrong.
While most of those descriptive terms ring true — the big, lurid cans apparently received design input from none other than big, lurid entertainment personality Simon Cowell, and they’re definitely aimed toward the bass-obsessed — the X10s differ significantly from their brethren, and actually stand out prominently against an ocean of boom.
In other words, if you’re looking for bass-heavy headphones, this is your first stop; but even if you’re not, the X10s are so good they might win you over anyway.
I love the Google Glass interface and I think it should be everywhere.
This interface is similar to a blog in that the basic organizing principle is time. When you tap the side of the Glass headset or tilt your head up, you’re greeted with the “right now” screen, which literally shows the time right now.
Scrolling to the left takes you into the future (today’s weather, directions to places Google Now thinks you might want to go, today’s birthdays, today’s weather highs and lows, your calendar and at the very end, Settings for Glass).
Scrolling to the right takes you into the past. The first item you encounter is the last thing you did — the last picture or video you took, the last message that came in, that sort of thing. The second card is the next-to-the-last thing that happened, and so on into the past.
Each of these items, of course, is a “card,” which has its own behavior when you tap and drill down. For example, if you’re looking at a photo you took, taping the touchpad offers up the options to Share or Delete. If you choose share, you’re given people and Google+ circles, again in reverse chronological order from the most recently used.
The interface is wonderful because it’s highly compatible with human psychology. We tend to organize discreet events in our lives in terms of time, both future and past. The human mind loves linearity based on time. That’s why blogs and social networks are popular.
This, combined with voice, through which we can conjure up anything out of time sequence and thereby insert it into the timeline, is a truly great user interface, and should be on many devices.
Microsoft has today announced that chief executive officer Steve Ballmer will retire “within the next 12 months.” Ballmer will continue to carry out his role while the company seeks a successor, aiding its transformation into a devices and services company — but he will depart once a suitable replacement is found.
I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded an app that comes with an instruction manual, but it seems BlackBerry felt the need to create one for its upcoming BBM releases for Android and iOS. We’re expecting the apps themselves to arrive any day now, but the user guides have been leaked and they are already available for reading online.
Google clearly has high hopes for Google Glass, and it’s confident that in the future, we’ll all be wearing one. In fact, you may be able to pick one up in your local Best Buy when you pop in for that new Justin Bieber CD. Rumor has it Google is renting 6,000 square feet of floor space inside every Best Buy store next year just to sell its new wearable tech.
Thieves in San Francisco are reportedly forming teams and developing new ways to steal your smartphone. The various schemes they’ve devised usually employ one person to create a distraction while another nabs your device and takes off with it. But a more recent trend uses a phony good Samaritan who will actually return your device in the hope of receiving a reward.
Dragon Age and its sequel (cleverly named Dragon Age 2) have provided PC and console gamers with deep, solid role playing set in an original fantasy world with engaging characters and a wide array of choices to make in storytelling and combat.
While the overarching story is what makes these games work so very well, the combat system, especially in the first game, is unique and compelling to play.
That makes the announcement of a new spinoff of the well-reviewed series, coming to Google Play and iTunes this fall, pretty darn spiffy, as Heroes of Dragon Age seems to focus solely on combat.
Google has updated its Google Maps apps for Android and iOS to add real-time incident reports from the Waze community. This means that when Waze users — or “Wazers” as they like to be called — report accidents, construction, road closures, and other delays, the alerts will be displayed inside Google Maps as well as Waze.
Dungeons and Dragons, the venerable tabletop role playing game that arguably started it all, is changing. Currently owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast, the entire game universe is transitioning from the 4th Edition rule sets to what they’re calling D&D Next, a holy grail of streamlined gameplay rules and mechanics that the publisher hopes to spread to all current media, including video games.
It’s with that bit of background that DeNA/Mobage announced the first teaser trailer for a mobile version of Dungeons and Dragons called “Arena of War.” Check it out.
The good people at Motorola will probably clock me in the head with a Droid Maxx battery for saying this, but shouldn’t Google open-source Moto X technology?
We first heard that Samsung may be planning to announce its new “Galaxy Gear” smartwatch at its September 4 Galaxy Note III event earlier this month, but the rumor just got even stronger after it was confirmed by Bloomberg’s reliable sources.
They claim that the South Korean electronics giant will unveil a “wristwatch-like smartphone” powered by Android that will go head-to-head with the new Sony SmartWatch 2, and a potentially competing product from Apple, one of Samsung’s biggest rivals.
Almost half of the top 50 apps on iPad are unavailable or have not been optimized for competing devices that run Google’s Android operating system. That’s according to a new report from Canalys, which believes Google should be doing more to encourage top developers to build high-quality tablet apps for its platform.
Now that EE is already providing 4G LTE services in the U.K., and Vodafone and O2 are scheduled to launch their own 4G networks at the end of this month, Three was the only major carrier yet to announce its rollout plans.
But the company has today confirmed that it is on track to launch 4G during the fourth quarter of this year, and that it will come at no extra cost to consumers.
