Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:
The Zen Table Practices Mindfulness So You Don’t Have To
The Wheel: What Is The Foxconn Debate Really About?
iModela Adds CNC Milling To Your Home 3D Printing Arsenal
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You may remember the Peek, a device that showed up back in 2008 (so long ago, now!) offering nothing but email. That’s right, nothing but email in an age when smartphones were already becoming popular, and the iPhone was changing the way people thought about interacting with their data.
In a way, it was genius: limiting the service and the device made it easy to explain and simple to use. It does email, period. An interesting tack, and one that kept them rolling for a few years, but alas, Peek is finally going to take the big sleep.
Despite revising the hardware and switching up the pricing, the Peek couldn’t maintain relevance in the face of smartphones and tablets. There was always the question of whether it was a legitimate market at all, but I object to that objection. I think it’s a brilliant proposition, and one many people found useful. But you just can’t fight progress, and while phones and tablets got more capable, they also got easier to use.
Ironically, it might have been trying to compete that made the Peek at last irrelevant. The people who liked it didn’t think of it as a less-capable smartphone, but as a single-purpose device, like a fork or a measuring tape. That value proposition, focus, is something we’re seeing in practice in single-purpose sites like Imgur and so on. But the philosophy of the mobile phone as Swiss army knife has taken over in the hardware field, so devices like the Peek got left behind.
The Verge talked to the CEO, and he said that there are a few thousand devices lying around in warehouses, and he’d like to put them into the hands of interested hackers. The Peek 9 was a perfectly workable piece of hardware, though not particularly powerful, but perhaps it could be made into something interesting or useful by a little creative coding. Head over there for more info.
Update: It should be noted that this isn’t the end for Peek the company, only Peek the service and line of devices. Peek Inc actually just closed a big funding round to fuel its work bringing smartphone-type software to low-cost mobile devices. We’ll report more on that as the story develops.
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For months we’ve been waiting on Razer’s Blade notebook, a $2800, 17-inch beast that we weren’t sure whether to laud or mock. It’s just that it’s kind of a strange thing to see making a big debut when people are more cautious than usual with their money, and PC gaming (as ever) is being declared dead. But after our hands-on at CES, we were convinced that it was at the very least impressive and well-built, and apparently enough other people thought so that Razer sold out almost immediately.
Now, the actual number sold isn’t mentioned, but Razer isn’t a small company and they were going all-out with this thing at CES. But we’ve seen devices launch to sales of dozens, so a strong response to a launch like this is definitely good news.
The company shared the news on their Facebook page, and urges prospective buyers to sign up for a notification email list. Hopefully that $2800 won’t burn a hole in your pocket in the meantime.
Personally, I’m more excited about their plans to disconnect the touchscreen and LCD keys from the laptop, making a customizable piece of hardware you can use with your existing PC. I’m not really down with the small-screen gaming and I like my keyboards a little meatier, so the Blade isn’t for me — but I do have gear envy when I see all those future toys on the side.
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Barnes & Noble may be challenging Amazon’s dominance of the e-book world, but Kindle sales are still growing faster than the Nook’s — at least if you connect the dots between some of the numbers included in a recently-published article by The New York Times.
The article doesn’t hide the fact that Amazon has the vast majority of marketshare, with Barnes & Noble saying it has 27 percent of the market, compared to Amazon’s share of “at least 60 percent.” At the same time, the article writes that “to the delight of publishers” (who see Amazon as a competitor), Barnes & Noble has “grabbed a lot of market share from Amazon.” In response, Amazon told The Times that Kindle sales (a number that includes both the Kindle Fire tablet and Kindle e-readers) grew 177 percent during the nine-week holiday period, compared to the same period in 2010.
How does that stack up against the Nook? The article doesn’t say, but earlier this month, Barnes & Noble actually reported its own holiday growth numbers. During the same period of time, the company’s device sales grew 70 percent — not bad, perhaps, but a sign that Amazon still has greater momentum.
The Times also reports that Barnes & Noble engineers are “putting the finishing touches” on the next version of the company’s e-reader, due for release sometime in the spring.
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The Windows release of Kinect is coming up in a couple days, but for most people that won’t be a major event: the Kinect they have is sitting on their TV or in a drawer, waiting to be taken out for an impromptu Dance Central 2 party. Of the 10 million Kinects out there, the only ones connected to computers are the ones being fiddled with by the various hackers and students making science projects out the things.
But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle a pair of prototypes, which were confirmed to be official, not just one of the many experiments that hide within Microsoft’s various lairs.
Unfortunately the laptops were not ready for their debut and no pictures seem to have been permitted. But they are described as netbook-like, with a number of smaller sensors instead of a webcam, and what could be an IR LED at the bottom of the screen.
The inclusion of depth-sensing cameras on a laptop is an interesting idea, and if they can drive the price of the sensor array down, it might become a standard feature. Microsoft has clearly also been focusing on miniaturizing the Kinect hardware, as the bulky original would seem somewhat out of place on a petite netbook. Whether this smaller sensor set has the same capabilities as the larger isn’t clear and wasn’t discussed.
A smaller Kinect would also suggest that Microsoft’s next console, rumored to have Kinect built in, is nearing readiness. While many gaming industry insiders have discounted the idea that the next generation of consoles will be announced this year, the rumor mill says otherwise.
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I read with great interest Vinod Khosla’s column two weeks ago that discussed the role of tech in healthcare. But as much as tech has to offer the healthcare institution, its effects are perhaps more reliably trackable in the actual medical devices field. A functioning “Dr. Algorithm” would be great – but a “tricorder” device, like that being chased by this X-Prize? That would be something else.
Until these pie-in-the-sky projects come to fruition, though, more modest advances, but which nonetheless save lives, will be made. Medtronic, a major med-tech company, is hoping that the next big thing will actually be small and cheap: a pacemaker for developing countries.
It’s a little different from the “innovation” we’re used to seeing in startups and software, because improving on a medical technology requires significantly more resources and cash than, say, improving on social photography. Such big-money industries aren’t invulnerable — SuVolta is going right up against the likes of Intel — but generally there is pressure from within to keep things fresh, and that suffices to advance the industry.
Medtronic isn’t one of the little guys, but they are taking a fresh tack. They recognize that the development of cheaper versions of existing devices (hearing aids, pacemakers, dialysis machines) no longer means producing a lower-quality component. Consider a mobile phone being given away for free at a store. It’s the budget option now, but it’s ten times as powerful and versatile as phones from five years ago. That same improvement comes about in other industries, and while often the result is better, more expensive versions of the same thing (fMRI versus single-MRI, for instance), it can also mean that the original can be made for significantly less money. Medtronic is hoping ~90% less.
CEO Omar Ishrak has been touting these plans at the World Economic Forum, and with luck he is just one of many who have dedicated themselves to the spread of technology downwards as well as upwards. Siemens and GE (Ishrak’s former employer) call it “frugal innovation,” and it’s things like basic amenities like light and clean water that are created through cutting-edge techniques but made available for microscopic prices — the only prices impoverished communities in rural Somalia or India can afford.
Ishrak hopes to double sales in developing countries over the next few years, and plans to produce a new generation of cheap and modern pacemakers as the first big hardware push. It’s something that can be developed and produce now, as opposed to Dr. Algorithm, who must navigate through a morass of regulations, public distrust, and beta versions. Both will eventually be important, but the devices are definitely coming first. They may not revolutionize the industry, but bringing the industry to the rest of the world in the first place is a necessary first step.
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A couple years back, I got to take part in the production of a music video being shot locally on a RED and filmed partially on board a custom helicopter build. It was interesting watching the operator and director work using the rig, but I was struck by how very specialized the copter was. Built from scratch by AerialPan Imaging, it was far from a personalized or affordable solution.
A new Kickstarter project called eye3 intends to make just that: an affordable aerial platform that can be automated and controlled from afar, yet is robust and customizable enough to meet the demands of serious photographers.
There are plenty of rigs out there, but they tend to be extremely expensive, often only available for rent, and not all are built with certain requirements or limits in mind. The six-rotor eye3 is designed for stable, user- or computer-controlled flight, on-board processing and location management, with up to ~12 pounds of camera and lens on board.
Some assembly will be required: it’s shipped as a kit and you’ll need to do a little soldering, but the electronics and main components are all ready to go. The hard part — designing and testing the rig and flight software — has been done.
It also runs in tandem with APM2, a high-quality (they say, and I’m sure they are right) and open-source flight planning and tracking platform built for this sort of thing. They aim to sell the basic kit for $999, with another $2500 package that includes a bunch of the accessories you might need or want.
[via ExtremeTech]
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Click.
We all had them: times you reached for a camera to stop life for a second, to grab a memory. For decades, Kodak was the rock solid standard in photography and as the 131-year old company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, “Kodak moments” may be all that’s left of what was once one of the most powerful companies in the world. Kodak can’t compete let alone survive in this new world. The only thing keeping them alive is a trove of 11,000 patents, and even those don’t seem to be piquing anyone’s interest.
Click.
From household name to also-ran in a few years. This isn’t a story of a stubborn buggy-whip manufacturer going out of business for refusing to change. This is a carriage maker making a seemingly successful transition to the automobile and then, just as quickly, failing catastrophically.
So what happened?
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Digital photography took off and Kodak wasn’t ready for it. From the late 90s until about 2008 (which is also when camera phones became mainstream), the digital still camera market in the U.S. grew from 4.5 million units shipped in 2000 to 28.3 million units in 2007, according to PMA.
What’s interesting is that Kodak actually invented the first digital camera in 1975, but it was Sony who first introduced a digital camera to the people in the form of the Sony Mavica in 1981. Kodak, on the other hand, focused its digital technology on high-end, niche markets. They came to bat with a hybrid approach of sorts — offering sensors to other companies rather than building their own consumer products (Leica used their sensors for years and don’t even ask how that turned out) — because many of them couldn’t imagine a world in which selling one digital camera to a few power users would be more profitable than selling one-time-use film cameras to the masses… over and over again. A classic case of a disruptive technology coming in right under the incumbent’s nose.
Under CEO George Fisher, Kodak had been planning its digital strategy for most of the 90s. The problem was that the estimates for growth in the digital imaging sector were rather low anywhere outside of Japan during the late 90s. According to a study out of the University of Michigan business school, “the total volume of digital cameras sold outside Japan in 1997 was estimated to be only 400,000 units,” and many of them were believed to be for power users, not the general public.
Plus, Kodak’s presence in Japan was weak, at best, with Fuji absolutely dominating the Japanese film and camera market during the 90s.
That left Kodak leadership with a big decision. Should Kodak make a huge push into digital and risk cannibalizing its still-strong core business? That was the question, and the answers varied.
Here are two quotes from Kodak corporate literature from the UM study:
The keys to Eastman’s success in making photography a popular leisure-time activity for the masses were his development of roll film and the inexpensive box camera. Although film and cameras are far more sophisticated and versatile today, the fundamental principles behind his inventions have not changed.
Four years ago, when we talked about the possibilities of digital photography, people laughed. Today, the high-tech world is stampeding to get a piece of the action, calling digital imaging perhaps the greatest growth opportunity in the computer world. And, it may be.
Obviously, there was not a consensus and why would there be? Fuji dominated in Japan, and right at the moment that Kodak should have been pushing hard into the digital realm, estimates for anywhere outside of Japan remained low.
Clearly those estimates were wrong and Kodak was inevitably late to the game. Their first digital imaging offering was not a camera, but what they were calling the “Photo CD” in 1991. In 1996, Kodak made another small push with its pocket-sized DC20. At the time, digital was in its infancy and Kodak failed to see the possibilities, instead focusing on other digital products like scanners. In fact, Reuters reports that Kodak spent $5 billion on digital imaging research in 1993, only to delegate it to 23 separate scanner projects.
Five years after the DC20, however, Kodak made its biggest push into digital cameras with its EasyShare line. Dan Carp had taken control of the company and knew to a degree that if they didn’t at least try in digital, it would be a mistake. But by 2001, the market was crowded. Canon and Sony had already made huge leaps in the sector, and Kodak had some major ground to cover.
Fear of change is understandable, to an extent, but it’s also the kind of backwards, old-fashioned thinking we’re seeing today out of the RIM playbook (pun intended).
A big part of the issue there was talent. The same employees that may be geniuses in film and film cameras aren’t necessarily as advanced in electronics. This, of course, did nothing for company solidarity as Kodak’s digital and film branches were at odds. Kodak had plenty of great people and great photographers, but they couldn’t keep them on the payroll as other major players dropped into the digital game after 2000.
The company spread itself too thin in the mid-90s and on into the next millennium, spending millions on research only to release incrementally updated products in a number of different fields. Already behind, this only made matters worse.
Then in 2007, the company made a huge mistake in selling off its health imaging business for $2.35 billion, which was meant to go toward its consumer camera business. Unfortunately, health imaging had been good to Kodak and the firm sold off the business just in time to miss out on baby boomer retirement. Reuters recounts that Kodak didn’t want to spend the money required to migrate the health industry from analog to digital.
By 2008, the digital camera market was already starting its decline. A new technology had emerged: 120 million camera phones were in use in 2008, just in the U.S. alone, according to PMA. Also in the U.S., 2008 brought about the first drop in digital still camera sales, down from 28.3 million in 2007 to 27.7 million. The sector would experience a slow but steady decline from then on.
But what slowed Kodak down so much between the 90′s and now?
To start, the retail landscape here in the U.S. changed dramatically over the 80s and 90s. Walmart, for one, saw a huge growth spurt in the 80s and opened its first superstore in 1988. And while Kodak was happy to be sold in big box chains, others were just as pleased to put their products in stores like Walmart.
You see, in the 70s and 80s, every little town had a tiny film store. Kodak owned the market wholesale, with between 80 and 90 percent share. Then Walmart, along with Sears, Costco, and other big box retailers, swallowed these little mom and pop stores up. Retailers learned that diversity, scrambled marketing, and one-stop shopping were important to consumers, and the only way to keep costs low was to squeeze the manufacturers into providing high-quality products at lower prices.
That’s where Fuji comes into play, and it seemed as though Kodak never saw it coming.
Kodak held between 7 and 10 percent of the Japanese market in the mid-90s, while Fuji had a dominant position. In fact, each of the companies held a rather dominant market share on their home turf, with Fuji representing 17 percent of the U.S. market. But distribution channels in the two countries were very different. While Kodak and Fuji were selling their products directly to retailers here in the States, distributors played middle-man over in Japan. Fuji, not surprisingly, had strong ties with the four major distributors in Japan, and Kodak… well, they didn’t like it.
In 1995, Kodak filed with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) for an investigation under Section 301 over whether or not the Japanese government had allowed anti-competitive practices. After two and a half years of litigation, the World Trade Organization in Geneva issued a “sweeping rejection of Kodak’s complaints” regarding Japan’s film market.
By dominating their own market and steadily making inroads in the U.S., Fuji had quite a bit of cash lying around to buy itself into new markets. And that’s exactly what it did. According to a case study [PDF] out of Pace University, “while the U.S. based Eastman Kodak Company was sleeping, the Japanese firm Fuji Photo Film opened its first film-production plant in the U.S., cut prices, marketed aggressively and stole valuable market share.”
This was between 1996 and 1997, when Kodak still held approximately 80 percent of the U.S. market and was focused primarily on roll film and film cameras. But Fuji was now prepared to duke it out in price wars, and though both companies denied actively engaging in such a thing, Kodak fired back hard each time Fuji cut prices. But it was too little, too late. In the years leading up to this, Kodak refused to cut prices for fear of profit erosion.
In 1996, however, Kodak signed an exclusive agreement with Costco that left Fuji with 2.5 million rolls of excess film. To avoid expiration, the company offered a 10 to 15 percent price cut. Kodak resisted engaging, and rightfully so (perhaps), as Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jonathan Rosenzweig figured that “for every 1 percent cut in Kodak film prices, a 1 percent drop in earnings per share results.”
Meanwhile, the American consumer was changing. While people still felt pride when they were “buying American,” imports became more and more attractive. A few years later, in January of 1999, the United States would record its single largest trade deficit month to date at $17 billion. To put it bluntly imports outweighed exports, and Fuji with its low-priced film fit into the U.S. market swimmingly.
By 1998, however, the competition between Fuji and Kodak seemed to slow down. Most of the price wars happened in the form of promotional deals rather than every day prices, but something even more fatal than Fuji was creeping up on Kodak: the digital revolution.
Kodak’s market share had already been eroded by Fuji, but the company, over a century old, had too much pride to change. When all is said and done, pride and nostalgia brought Kodak to its knees. But today there is (or was, rather) one saving grace.
Kodak holds 11,000 patents which analysts value around $1 billion. Since Kodak invented the first digital camera, and research was one of the four pillars of Kodak’s business strategy, it only makes sense that where digital imaging is concerned they own the technology.
But it’s too late to act like the technology in those patents is groundbreaking. It’s everywhere, and thus Kodak is suing everyone: RIM, Apple, HTC, Fujifilm, and Samsung. The company knows that its patents are its only solid source of revenue, whether it’s by selling them or licensing them.
Unfortunately, litigation takes years, and no one seems all that interested in buying Kodak’s patents. Which brings us to today.
After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 19, 2012, Bloomberg is reporting that the company intends to shift its business toward printers and its ink. Selling off its camera unit and perhaps its patents should allow for more cash which can be invested in further patent litigation and licensing.
But this is a far cry from the Kodak of yesteryear. Once dominant, the 131-year old company is now fighting for survival and without a massive leap forward in terms of innovation, this may be the end.
There will still be kodak moments, but there may no longer be a Kodak.
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In a lot of the Paneldome demos I have done, I (flailingly) play guitar, but I am actually a bass player. That’s why I am excited to hear about the ZOOM B3 Effect Pedal/Amp Simulator released today at NAMM.
The promise of “a stompbox pedalboard with the power of a multi-effects pedal and USB audio interface” for bass guitar is tempting. This all-in-one design would definitely be convenient to throw into your gear bag on the way to a gig, without requiring a bunch of extra cables and dongles — you know, kind of like a regular old pedal effect. Sounds interesting.
That being said, I would have to try one out to see if I really like the tones. Typically, I prefer to have core tones derived from the amp itself, but I am definitely not a purist in that way. In any event, I have yet to find a bass distortion effect I really like. Who knows, maybe this could do the trick?
This pedal is not yet available in the US market. Check here for more updates about pricing and availability.
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The Surface has been around since 2007, but the new and improved SUR40 is a much more usable device. Microsoft and Samsung were showing off the new touch-capable table in NYC today, and I was lucky enough to get up close and personal with it.
The specs in and of themselves are impressive: 40-inch 50-point multitouch screen with a 1080×1920 resolution, AMD processors, 1GB of memory dedicated entirely to graphics, a 4-inch profile, and a host of USB/HDMI ports. It’s the computer you always wanted, save for the fact that it looks like a kitchen table and costs about $9,000.
But chances are this won’t end up in your living room. Instead, it’ll show up in your favorite retail store, at a hotel, or at the mall. That’s because this device has been specially engineered for that environment, and the needs presented within it.
That is where PixelSense comes into play. It’s an engineering technique that basically replaces the original five cameras on the Surface with hundreds and possibly thousands of tiny sensors embedded straight into the LCD panel. That means it’s no longer the conductivity of your finger directing the screen, but the screen reading your movements.
In fact, the screen sees you even as your hand hovers over the table; Microsoft has simply told it not to recognize that.
Another cool feature of this PixelSense-equipped screen is that it can detect the orientation of your finger. That means that if I want to drag an image of some shoes I’m interested in over to my corner of the Surface, the screen immediately recognizes the direction of my finger (and thus, which direction I happen to be facing) and can realign the image to face me.
But that’s just a tiny piece of what makes this thing awesome. Since the screen reads everything (and not just conductive energy), it can also handle real world objects. Oh, and it can tell which way they’re facing thanks to a small optical tag located on the bottom of the object.
Before I delve into it, just think about the retail implementations of this. Here’s one I didn’t see in action but thought would be cool:
You walk into a Foot Locker and see a pair of Nikes that are calling out to you. The only problem is that they only have them in all white and you know you’ll scuff them up. You’d prefer something a bit louder. Perhaps a royal blue?
Plop the shoe down on the Surface where a unique optical tag on the sole of the shoe can be read. Instantly you’re in Nike ID, customizing that same pair of shoes into what you want them to be.
As it does with just about any product, the Surface will generate a Microsoft tag for your shoes that can be read by your smartphone, which can then take you to a purchasing site or be saved for girlfriend’s input.
The new SUR40 is made with Gorilla Glass and is also spill resistant, using drains around the bezel to keep any spilled liquids out of the internals. Again, perfect for retail. What’s interesting is even a few drops of water are read by the Surface thanks to PixelSense.
In short, it’s all about interacting in a new way with the brands you enjoy. I saw a few different implementations of it and found myself wishing that all shopping was done this way.
For example, FujiFilm has a deal in place in Australia (but was too shy to name the retailer just yet) where the Surface can be used to make picture books. Just plug in your USB, SD card, or the like, and your pictures are then uploaded to the device (no worries, they’re never saved to the hard drive). From there, you can drag, drop, customize, add text, and finally print out a receipt to be taken to the front counter.
Absolut Vodka also has a Surface-friendly app, though no one was that clear on whether or not it’ll be live in any venues anytime soon. Still, the app lets you be the DJ, and offers different mixed drinks based on the music you’re playing. Again, you can whip out your phone to read the tag matching this or that drink and save the recipe straight to your phone.
Kia has an app that works in a very similar way to my imagined Foot Locker/Nike app, which will let you customize the vehicle (paint job, interior colors, rims, entertainment system, etc.) while you’re in a dealership.
If high-end makeup is your thing, you’ll also be excited to learn that Neiman Marcus’ luxury beauty brand Le Métier de Beauté is using the SUR40 as a consultation table in the coming months. You can customize shades of certain eye shadow or blushes which appear on-screen as soon as the actual product is placed on the table, save the “recipe” of your end-result to your phone, along with a picture of yourself post-makeover. That way you can go back home, apply the makeup yourself, and still look like you walked out of the salon.
Two of my favorites mostly concern information, and the transference of information.
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), for example, created an app that lets you work out your finances, savings, and any other special offers from the bank right on the Surface. That way you aren’t relying on the employee to give you information that is in your best interest, but can actually see the effects of whatever change you might be making to your account right in front of you. Full transparency is something the banking industry could use a hearty helping of, and also something that would probably lead more bank users to participate in programs and special offers.
Microsoft also showed me an app that will map out the inside of an airport and show you various retailers and food vendors in your terminal. The app not only shows special deals and offers from said vendors, but gives you the time it takes to walk there so you don’t miss your flight.
Of course, the possibilities are endless. If you have a loyalty or member card at a certain retailer, you can use that on the Surface to bring up your information and see if you have any rewards points to go towards a purchase, or take a look at which products are on sale. Companies can also choose to use the SUR40 for product comparisons, removing the employees and all of their “sell-more” mentalities from the purchasing decision.
Performance-wise I didn’t see any hiccups or issues at all, and I’d honestly love to have one of these in my living room as a coffee table. Sadly, I’m about $8,400 short. (The SUR40 costs $8,400.) Luckily, it’s available and shipping now so if you’ve got the dough it can be yours for the buying. If not, it’ll still be a lovely new technology to have in stores, train stations, and the like, and I can’t wait to see this thing roll out big time.
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