Page 80 of 258

      Zibra Open It looks like a fantastic tool for nerds

      November 10, 2010 /

      Open It!I get piles of emails every day from various PR folks and promoters, hawking this new toy and that new gadget. A lot of the stuff is very niche, but the Zibra Open It is something everyone can use.

      If you’ve ever tried opening a pair of headphones or a console controller or anything in that infuriating plastic packaging, you know you need something more substantial than scissors to get the job. My own solution has been a Gerber knife, which is undeniably dangerous.

      I think the thing I liked best about the Open It is that the jaws are offset from the handle, so your hands are clear of the plastic spikes of doom you’re about to create. The Open It also has a mini screwdriver built in (great for opening battery packs on kids toys) and a bottle opener (not sure that drinking and opening electronics always mix but hey, everyone loves a multi-tool). You can get the Open It at nationwide retailers, but it’s probably easier to just head to the company website.

      accessories, News

      Samsung Galaxy S reaches 3 million shipped

      November 9, 2010 /

      Samsung Galaxy S.There’s one thing I can gather from news that the Samsung Galaxy S has shipped three million units to the US: Americans love big things. That’s really no surprise, and it’s sort of a joke, because the Galaxy S is a pretty badass litt…er…gigantic phone.

      “We’re in a situation where we wish we had more supply,” Chief Marketing Officer Paul Golden told Reuters. That’s a good place to be, but also a bit of a scary place, too. Supply shortages often get extended over a period of months, months during which the company could be moving more handsets.

      The tech that’s holding up production is, as with most phones these days, the screen. Samsung’s AMOLED is super-bright, but also takes a while to fabricate. In the end, though, I say good on Samsung for pushing a cool product to market with enough supply to last us a little while. Once the iPhone is on the major American carriers, I’d bet Samsung will find itself with plenty of handsets.

      Image: Reuters

      Mobile, News

      Amazon buys Diapers.com for $540 million

      November 7, 2010 /

      Diapers.comAmazon got set to announce another acquisition this weekend. The target this time is a company that uses complex algorithms to deal with baby poop. Amazon is looking to buy Quidsi, the company that owns Diapers.com, for $540 million.

      I don’t have any children, but I still know that diapers are about as hot a topic among new parents as the impending Call of Duty launch is among fifteen year-old boys. Quidsi is of particular interest to Amazon because of its technical approach to problems like stocking shelves. One of the company’s founders told Inc. last year:

      So before we launched, we built proprietary software from scratch. We built software with computational algorithms to determine what the optimal number of boxes to have in the warehouse is and what the sizes of those boxes should be. Should we stock five different kinds of boxes to ship product in? Twenty kinds? Fifty kinds? And what size should those boxes be? Right now, it’s 23 box sizes, given what we sell, in order to minimize the cost of dunnage (those little plastic air-filled bags or peanuts), the cost of corrugated boxes, and the cost of shipping. We rerun the simulation every quarter. Using the right box probably adds close to 1 margin point.

      Sound familiar? That’s exactly the kind of thing that helped Bezos make a name for himself. It’s also how Zappos, which Amazon also acquired not so long ago, ran their online shoe store.

      The crazy part of the deal, though, is that Amazon paid $200 million over the company’s most recent venture valuation. I’m not sure why, unless they really wanted to be sure they were the ones to get it. Apparently Wal-Mart had also been sniffing around Quidsi.

      Source: CNN Fortune

      News, Websites

      Browser update rate is surprisingly high

      November 6, 2010 /

      Browser update rate.

      It’s no secret that internet technology advances much faster than most people can keep up. If you asked your average internet user, you can bet they would have no idea what HTML5 is, why it’s important, or what it means for the mobile web. Hell, they might not know what mobile web means.

      That’s why this chart from Pingdom.com is so crazy. Look how many people are running the current versions of their browsers. Even though Chrome is a notoriously geeky browser, the 90 percent current version stat is impressive. I’m not willing to give credit to the users for most of this. I think we can all admit that the numbers would be much lower if users were totally responsible for the updates. Developers, on the other hand, have done a great job of encouraging updates or even background updating.

      For some people, that’s a problem, but as technology gets more advanced, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the general population will understand it. Until we hit some sort of soft wall, where the next great leap will be like that of the silicon chip, we won’t likely see a general population of users who actually understand what the machine they’re using does. Why do you think your parents call you all the time about pop-ups? It’s because they click things without thinking and don’t understand that the “Whack the Fly!” game is actually an advertisement or a wormbait.

      Computers, News

      T-Mobile sells an iPhone cable

      November 5, 2010 /

      T-Mobile iPhone cable.

      What’s this? Oh hello iPhone cable with T-Mobile branding. A tipster sent this to Engadget, but, as Engadget points out, T-Mobile did just make an ad that digs at FaceTime and AT&T’s network, all in the same breath. It’s a weird set of circumstances, but you’d have to think T-Mobile would be happy if it got to sell the iPhone.

      accessories, iPhone, Mobile

      « Older posts Newer posts »

      © 2026 Gadget Teaser

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑