Seamless and GrubHub, two of the biggest food delivery services in the US, have just announced they'll be merging into a combined company, with the name of the new operation to be decided at a later date. (SeamHub? Grubless?) Unlike some other transactions we cover around here, this does seem to be a merger in the truest sense of the word, with GrubHub founder Matt Maloney stepping up to the role of chief executive officer and Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky staying on as president. Though we don't yet know what the new service will be called, the companies are already saying it will serve 500-plus US cities, with more than 20,000 restaurants taking orders. Also, as hinted in that press release below, the merger will give the new mega-company more financial flexibility when it comes to further growth opportunities. Next up: Delivery.com?

Filed under: Internet

Comments

Via: The Next Web

For a while, it looked like ASUS' Transformer Book would turn out to be vaporware: after debuting to much fanfare a year ago, it encountered numerous delays, and even missed the crucial holiday shopping season. Now it's finally here, priced at $1,499 with a Core i7 processor, a 13.3-inch (1080p) screen and a detachable keyboard dock housing both a spare battery and a 500GB hard drive. The problem is the timing: Intel is about to launch its new Haswell chips, and here's the Transformer Book, arriving on the scene with a lofty price and a year-old CPU.

It'd be easy enough to tell you just wait for a refresh, which is how we've been ending all of our PC reviews in the weeks leading up to this year's Computex. But it's still worth investigating whether the Transformer Book (aka the TX300) is a compelling idea. Though we've seen many tablet hybrids (the Surface Pro, etc.), they've mostly had smaller 11-inch screens. So what happens when you take that form factor and stretch it to accommodate a bigger screen -- and a more spacious keyboard? And how does it compare to all those convertible options out there, like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 or the Dell XPS 12? Let's have a look.

Gallery: ASUS Transformer Book review

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, ASUS

Comments

It's not like Toshiba is new to laptops -- it's been making them for decades -- but for whatever reason, US consumers don't seem to trust the company with top-shelf products. Four-hundred-dollar machines, maybe, but a designer laptop? An Ultrabook, no less? Toshiba has an image problem, to be sure, and the executives in Tokyo know it. The answer, they hope, is to start fresh with a clean slate. The company recently announced a new family of premium devices, called Kira, with the 13-inch Kirabook being the inaugural product.

At first blush, it has all the trappings of a flagship machine, with an all-metal chassis, backlit keyboard, 8GB of RAM, a two-year warranty and a 2,560 x 1,440 display, one sharp enough to rival the Chromebook Pixel and Retina display MacBook Pro. In fact, this is the first Windows laptop to offer such a high-resolution panel, which gives Toshiba a big opportunity indeed: to lure people who still haven't found their perfect Ultrabook. The problem with "perfect," of course, is that it comes at a price: $1,600 and up, in this case, and the touchscreen isn't even standard. That leaves just one question, then: is it worth it?

Gallery: Toshiba Kirabook review

Filed under: Laptops

Comments

Hot on the heels of folding photo storage in with Gmail and Google+, Google is showing off two photo-editing tools for G+ called Auto Enhance and Highlights. Starting with Auto Enhance, this is clearly the fruit of Google's eight-month-old Snapseed acquisition: with this feature you can do things like adjust for exposure, soften skin, minimize wrinkles, remove red-eye and reduce noise in low-light shots. Additionally, there's a bunch of so-called auto-awesome tools: collage, HDR, panorama and smile. A fifth auto-awesome feature, 'Motion,' creates GIFs when it detects a series of shots taken at the same place and time. And don't worry: you can easily switch back to the untouched original, so there's no need to worry about giving Google too much control.

Highlights, meanwhile, takes the sting out of album creation by automatically selecting your best photos and setting aside your not-so-good ones. This means pruning for duplicates and blurry shots, while favoring ones with smiling faces and accurate exposure. You'll find some samples in the gallery below, but why settle for examples when you can play around using your own photos? Both features are rolling out to Google+ today, so fire up your browser if you feel like giving them a try. Oh, and while you can upload up to 15GB of full-size photos (per that new storage policy), downsized pics don't count toward that storage limit, so long as they're smaller than 2,048 pixels.

Update: Google's posted a video overview of the new photo features, which we've embedded just past the break.

Gallery: Google I/O 2013: Auto Enhance and Highlights for Google+

Filed under: Software, Google

Comments

Source: Google

What would a Google liveblog be without some updates on Android activations? Well, in case you're curious, the newest figure is 900 million -- a big jump from the 400 million activations reported last year. What's more, Google says there have been 48 billion app installations to date, including 2.8 billion in the last month alone, with revenue per user 2.5 times what it was a year ago. To put that in context, that's not far off Apple's latest numbers: the company has logged just under 50 billion downloads of its own.

Moving on to Chrome, meanwhile, Google is touting 750 million active users, and that includes not just the desktop, but phones and tablets too. That's up from 450 million users at this time last year, with 300 million switching over in the past 12 months. Finally, if you want to get really granular, Google also gave an update on its Google Cloud Messaging service, which was announced last year. Apparently, 60 percent of apps are now using GCM, and 17 billion messages are pushed through the service per day. We'll let you chew on that for a moment while you follow the liveblog, but it seems to us now would be a good time to start placing bets on when we hit the 1-billion-activations mark.

Gallery: Google I/O 2013: Update on Android activations, app installs

Filed under: Mobile

Comments

We've still got about an hour and 20 minutes until the Google I/O keynote begins, but we're already starting to get hints of what's to come. The company just revealed, in an indirect sort of way, that the next-gen version of Android will be Android 4.3 (as opposed to, say, 5.0). The name popped up on one of Google's developer pages, which ended up being cached despite the fact that it wasn't live for very long. Unfortunately, that page didn't reveal much in the way of actual features, so it's unclear whether the jump from 4.2 to 4.3 will be a minor one. In any case, we'll find out in 78 minutes and counting.

Filed under: Software, Google

Comments

Via: The Verge

We suppose even if you did buy a custom Jambox speaker done up in Red Sox colors, you wouldn't necessarily cop to it in the comments. As it turns out, though, you wouldn't be alone: more than 70 percent of the people who purchase a Jambox on Jawbone.com choose their own colors for the cap and speaker grille. Given that, Jawbone's decided to do the same thing with the Big Jambox, which you could previously only buy in the stock colors. As with the smaller model, there are over 100 possible combinations, including some permutations only a sports fan could love. As always, too, the personalization has absolutely no bearing on the price: the MSRP for the Big Jambox is still $300.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video

Comments

Source: Jawbone

The Envy x2 has never been our favorite Windows 8 tablet, but that hasn't stopped HP from selling loads of them. The device has been such a success, in fact, that the company is expanding the x2 series to make room for two follow-on products: the Split x2 (a Windows 8 hybrid) and the SlateBook x2 (an Android tablet). Starting with the Split (pictured above), this is the first time HP's made a laptop / tablet hybrid with a laptop processor inside, though Microsoft and others have of course done this already. In brief, it's a 13-inch slate with a 1,366 x 768 display and your choice of Core i3 or i5 CPU (these are Intel's Y-series Ivy Bridge chips we're talking about). As you'd expect, the keyboard dock packs a second battery, though it also makes room for an optional 500GB hard drive to complement the SSD inside the actual tablet. Other specs include two USB ports (one 2.0, one 3.0), HDMI, Beats Audio, WiDi and expansion slots for both microSD and full SD cards.

The SlateBook (shown below) is a 10-inch tablet with a Tegra 4 chip -- one of the first to be announced by any company, in fact. Though it's a companion to the $169 Slate 7, it packs considerably higher-end specs. There's that Tegra 4 SoC, for one, as well as a 1,920 x 1,200, 400-nit IPS display and the latest version of Jelly Bean (4.2.2). As with other dockable tablets, its keyboard has a battery built in. Here, though, the keyboard also includes a shortcut for Google voice search. There's even a laptop-style trackpad supporting multitouch gestures -- a rarity on products like this. The hardware itself weighs about 2.8 pounds in total, with a spec list that includes two one USB socket, stereo speakers and SD / microSD readers. Both products will be available in August, with the Split x2 priced at $800 and the SlateBook x2 going for $480 (docks included). Now all we need are some battery life claims. In the meantime, check out our hands-on photos below. (Pssst: the Split unit we photographed was just a mockup.)

Filed under: Tablets, HP

Comments

Make no mistake, we don't just like Outlook.com; we love it. The problem with Microsoft's revamped email service, though, is that ditching Gmail can be a tough sell, as it's meant giving up features like built-in Gchat. At last, however, Microsoft is adding support for Google Talk, which means you can keep sending your friends dancing-parrot videos even after you make the switch. (Outlook.com still does Facebook and Skype chatting too.) What's more, you'll find Gchat baked into SkyDrive.com -- a handy tool if you happen to be collaborating with Google users. To clarify, this feature is only coming to the Outlook and SkyDrive websites for now -- Dharmesh Mehta, Sr. Director of Outlook.com, told us Microsoft is still considering how GTalk might fit into its mobile apps. In the meantime, though, you can load up Outlook in your browser if you want a peek. And don't worry if nothing shows up right away: the company is warning users that the roll-out could take several days.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, Google

Comments

Source: Microsoft

HP's business PCs have always been surprisingly pretty. Not that good looks are high on our list of criteria, mind you, but at the very least they make a strong impression. Now that companies have gotten more comfortable with tablets (and Windows 8 in particular) HP is selling the ElitePad 900, its first Win 8 tablet built for the enterprise. Like all those EliteBook laptops that came before it, it has a metal chassis that's not only sleek, but meets the military's MIL-Spec standards too. Otherwise, it has everything you'd expect from a business tablet: support for pen input, mobile broadband and security features like TPM. It's also being sold alongside various accessories, including some cases that add further functionality besides just protection from scratches. With a starting price of $699 for the 32GB model, though, it's a little more expensive than its competitors. Does that mean it's a little bit better too?

Gallery: HP ElitePad 900 review

Filed under: Tablets, HP

Comments

And it begins: back-to-school season. Even though some students are still embroiled in finals, and even though Intel has yet to formally launch Haswell, the next few weeks will see multiple PC makers unveiling their summer lineups. First up: Sony. The company just introduced some new mainstream notebooks, dubbed the "Fit" family. These laptops, which replace the current E series and most of the T line, include the lower-end Fit 14E / Fit 15E, which are made of plastic, and the Fit 14 / Fit 15, which step up to a thinner aluminum chassis and optional SSDs. Either way, Sony is standardizing on certain specs across its entire summer lineup, including 1080p displays, backlit keyboards, NFC and Exmor R webcams for better low-light images. We've just spent a week testing the Fit 15, which will be available later this month for $700 and up. (The rest of the Fit line starts as low as $550.) Head past the break to see if it's worth a closer look once it hits store shelves.

Gallery: Sony VAIO Fit 15 review

Filed under: Laptops, Sony

Comments

At some point -- we're not sure when -- Sony's naming scheme for laptops got confusing. There was the C series and the E series. The S, T, Z and even the F (RIP). Fortunately, Sony's been working to clear things up: its first Windows 8 products all had descriptive names like "Duo" or "Tap." Now, it's streamlining its mainstream notebooks too. The company just unveiled some redesigned models for back-to-school season, and they're all named 'Fit.' As the replacement to the entry-level E series and most of the T line, the Fit family includes both lower-end models (the Fit 14E / Fit 15E) and premium ones (the Fit 14 / Fit 15). They'll be available this month, starting at $550 and going all the way up to $2,210, depending on how many upgrades you check off during the configuration process.

Regardless, there are certain specs you'll find across the board - not just on the Fit machines, mind you, but on every Sony PC announced this season. These include NFC, backlit keyboards and webcams with Sony's Exmor R imaging tech for better low-light performance. They'll all have 1080p screens, too, with the exception of the 14-inch Fits, which start at 1,600 x 900. Both the Fit and Fit E will be offered with optional NVIDIA GT 740M GPUs (1GB or 2GB), touchscreens, optical drives and a choice of Core i3, i5 and i7 processors (Ivy Bridge for now). Ultimately, then, the difference between the two comes down to build quality: the Fit E is made of plastic, whereas the Fit has a thinner aluminum chassis, with the fans hidden above the keyboard, and a lid that covers the hinge. Also, the Fit will be offered with SSDs, with hybrid drives being the base option; the Fit E comes standard with a regular HDD and can be upgraded to a hybrid drive. And in any event, all of these laptops will be available later this month. For now, check out the press shots below for a closer look.

Gallery: Sony 'Fit' mainstream laptops

Filed under: Laptops, Sony

Comments

Last fall, HP took a small step toward refreshing its ProBook business notebooks when it started offering some of them with AMD Trinity chips. Eight months later, it's time for a real makeover: the company just announced a handful of new models with a thinner, lighter design and a fresh look. The ProBook 430, 440, 455 and 470 range in size from 13.3 inches to 17.3, and are made of aluminum, with spill-resistant keyboards and a soft-touch paint job. With the exception of the 430, which ships in July with Haswell, they'll arrive this month with a mix of Ivy Bridge CPUs and AMD Richland chips. (Specifically, only the 14- and 15-inch models will be offered with AMD.)

Other particulars: they all have 1,366 x 768 matte displays, with the 17-inch model stepping up to 1,600 x 900. All but the 430 can be had with an optional optical drive; if you skip it, there's a weighted placeholder sitting where the DVD burner would be. Additionally, the 440, 450 and 470 can be used with a six- or nine-cell user-replaceable battery. Everything comes standard with a hybrid hard drive, but the 430 also has an SSD option. Again, all but the 13-incher will be available this month, for $499 and up. So, you can bide your time until then, or you can tide yourself over with that handful of photos below.

Gallery: HP ProBook 430, 440, 450 and 470

Filed under: Laptops, HP

Comments

Source: HP

And the news just keeps on coming. Acer just made yet a third product announcement here at its New York City press event. That would be the Acer Iconia A1 tablet, the same Android tablet leaked by a French retailer a few weeks back. Well, it's official now, and it's going on sale in the US later this month for $169. Spec-wise, it measures 11.1mm thick, runs a 1.2GHz quad-core processor from MediaTek, and is topped off by a 7.9-inch IPS display with 1,024 x 768 resolution (hey, what'd you expect on a budget tablet?). It also has 8 or 16GB of internal storage, as well as built-in 3G, similar to the comparably priced FonePad from ASUS. As for software customizations, you'll find Acer's WakeApp feature which lets you launch into a designated app when you wake the tablet from sleep.

In our brief hands-on, the device felt like you'd expect a $169 tablet to feel: it's made of plastic, and lacks any sort of visual flare, but the back cover at least feels durable, and doesn't seem to pick up many fingerprints (especially in white). The display, too, might be the best part about the device, its low pixel count be damned: the viewing angles are wide enough that you can read the screen with the tablet lying face-up on a table. That's all for now, but we've got some hands-on shots below.

Update: We've amended the post with full (and correct!) specs.

Update #2: Acer's confirmed the 16GB version of the tablet should sell for about $199 in the US. It's expected to ht shelves by the end of the month.

Gallery: Acer Iconia A1 hands-on

Filed under: Tablets, Acer

Comments

When Acer plans a global press event, asking journalists to fly in from twelve time zones away, you know it's going to announce more than just some back-to-school PCs. The company just announced the Aspire R7, a 15-inch laptop whose display sits on a flexible "Ezel" hinge, allowing it to be pushed up and back so that it lies nearly flat -- yep, just like an all-in-one desktop. Similar to the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga line, too, you can flip the screen all the way back so that it faces away from the keyboard, a feature that seems especially well-suited for giving presentations.

In terms of specs, Acer is being a little cagey, but we have learned the R7 has a 15.6-inch, 1080p display with a choice of Core i5 and i7 processors. Pen input is possible, too. The whole thing weighs in the neighborhood of five and a half pounds. Also confirmed: it's up for pre-order now for $999, available exclusively at Best Buy in the US. We're told it will ship May 17th. In the meantime, we've got hands-on photos below, and we'll very shortly be adding some first impressions after the break.

Filed under: Laptops, Acer

Comments

Did your vibrating fitness bracelet wake you up on time? Good, because Jawbone has not one, but two pieces of news to share this morning. First off, getting the corporate news out of the way, the company's buying BodyMedia, perhaps best known for its wearable fitness trackers (yep, similar to what Jawbone's already making). In fact, though, BodyMedia's been in the health-data business since 1999, with a particularly strong foothold in the medical industry -- a market Jawbone hasn't reached yet, but would like to. As you can imagine, once the deal is finalized and Jawbone brings on BodyMedia's 60-odd employees, the plan will be to improve Jawbone's existing apps, and maybe even break into healthcare. In the meantime, we're told Jawbone will continue to sell BodyMedia's fitness monitors, but the company hasn't said either way if it plans to keep them around indefinitely.

Speaking of improving the current Jawbone apps, the company is also opening up its API to developers so that they can use Jawbone stats in their applications, as well as share their own data back with Jawbone. For now, the Up platform is open only for iOS, though a company rep told us an Android version is in the works too. (No exact ETA there, sorry.) At launch, there will be 10 apps on board, including notables like RunKeeper, Withings and MapMyFitness. What's neat is that users can manually disable a connection with these apps anytime they want, and when they do, these third-party developers are required to delete user data from their servers. Again, no word on when this will be available for Android, but for now, at least, the iOS platform is open to developers worldwide. Hit the break for more info, along with a full list of the apps you can sync with your Up band right away.

Gallery: Jawbone Up platform for iOS

Filed under: Wearables

Comments

By all metrics, Kingston's wireless Wi-Drive has been a successful product: the company is still selling it two years later, and has since refreshed it with beefier storage and Android compatibility. If there's one thing customers complained about, though, it was the lack of expandable memory -- a problem if you used all the space on the drive, or if you already had stuff stored on an SD card. With that in mind, the company's coming out with the MobileLite Wireless, which ditches internal storage in favor of an SD slot and USB 2.0 port. (It will also ship with a microSD adapter.) At the same time, it packs a modest five-hour battery you can use to recharge USB-powered gadgets; Kingston says there's enough juice in there to fully charge a phone, but probably not a tablet.

Technically speaking, you can access everything stored on the device by typing the MobileLite's IP address into a browser. But for all intents and purposes, this is currently an iOS exclusive, as that's the only platform for which you can download an app. As with the Wi-Drive, though, Kingston plans to add an Android app, as well as one for WP8. In the beginning, at least, it will be available through just a couple sellers (Amazon and Staples), with street prices expected to fall somewhere between $50 and $70. Any questions? We hope not: this thing's aimed squarely at mainstream users, so if Engadget readers don't get it, we're going to be seriously concerned about all the regular folk.

Gallery: Kingston MobileLite Wireless hands-on

Filed under: Storage, Mobile

Comments

Normally, when a company releases two laptops in different sizes (the MacBook Air, anyone?) we review just one: we assume you'll get the gist about the design and trackpad the first time, ya know? So it's funny, then, that we're taking a look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 after we've already tested the Yoga 13 and named it one of our favorite Windows 8 convertibles. They look alike, with an inventive hinge allowing you to fold the screen back like a book cover. The keyboards are the same too, though the 11-incher's is understandably a tad more crowded. They even have the same oddly shaped power port.

Except, of course, they're totally different products. Whereas the Yoga 13 is a proper laptop, with a Core i5 processor and full Windows 8, the Yoga 11 runs Windows RT, and is powered by a Tegra 3 chip (yes, the same one you're used to seeing in Android tablets). That means a big dip in performance, but exponentially longer battery life. Legacy x86 apps are off-limits too, given that this is Windows RT and all. Now that we've set up that equation for you (weaker performance plus longer battery life minus standard Windows apps equals what?) let's meet up after the break to see if this is just as good a deal as its big brother.

Gallery: Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 review

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, Lenovo

Comments

You asked; you got it. When we ran our first-ever laptop buyer's guide earlier this year, many of you wrote in, requesting that we include more affordable picks (not just, you know, twelve-hundred-dollar Ultrabooks). So with this latest seasonal guide, we've added budget and mid-range options, some with touchscreens, some without. The only unfortunate thing? We're expecting Intel to drop its new Haswell chips sometime this summer, so it should go without saying that it might be worth waiting for the various PC giants to refresh their lineups before committing to anything. If you absolutely can't wait, though, we've picked our favorites, with a particular emphasis on models we don't think will be going anywhere anytime soon.

Filed under: Laptops, Samsung, Sony, ASUS, HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo

Comments

Now that it's finally got an Android tablet app to speak of, DirecTV is returning its attention to phones: the company announced today that both its iOS and Android applications will be receiving voice search starting this summer. As the company describes it, the app is meant to address the age-old problem of there being "nothing on TV." (And also, the fact that searching for things on your television is damn tedious.) In particular, you can use the app to search by person, title, channel show time or genre, using commands such as "find comedy movies," etc. Like other voice-control services, too, you can give follow-up instructions like, "with Bill Hader" and it'll narrow down your results instead of starting a new search. Considering DirecTV whipped up its own search algorithm from scratch, it seems to work intuitively. Still, the fact that the landing page is filled with sample queries suggests there's very much a right and wrong way to ask for what you want.

If you're using the app away from home, you can set your DVR to record different shows. When you're on your home network, though, you can have the search results show up on your television, at which point your phone transforms into a remote you can use to scroll through menus and the like. With the TV, too, you can wade through various programs, as well as search for sports content or ask the app to switch to a certain channel (saying either the channel name or number will work). You can even tell the app to go back through menus, but you can't use your voice to access features like the settings menu. No word on when the beta will roll out, except that it'll happen sometime this summer.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD

Comments