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The Engadget Podcast Ep 11: Everybody Hurts
Managing editor Dana Wollman and senior editor Mona Lalwani join host Terrence O'Brien to talk Macbook rumors, Amazon ISP ambitions and Julian Assange. Then they'll talk about all the work that went into Engadget's five part series covering the world's first cyborg games, Superhumans and look at VR's ability generate empathy.
The Calendar Watch previews your schedule at a glance
Last year, What Watch introduced its Stop the Time watch, which offered a minimalistic flourish of smart technology on top of a classic wrist-worn timepiece. The idea was to purposely limit the feature set, freeing users from data overload through a conceptual design. With the press of a single-use button, you could mark up to five "moments" each month, which lit up elements on the watch's e-ink display. This month, the company is back with another technologically restrained wearable, the Calendar Watch. It still avoids data overload by keeping things simple: You can look at the time and also see your schedule at a glance. The product just launched on Kickstarter, but we got a chance to speak with What Watch co-founder Igor Basargin and take a look at the first batch of prototypes. They won't help you track steps or control a playlist, but the pie-wedge schedule view seems a useful addition to a pretty decent-looking watch.
ICYMI: E-paper kicks, robot directions via thought and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-978000{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-978000, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-978000{width:570px;display:block;}try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-978000").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Shiftwear wants to change your shoe game with color e-paper screens that can move and shift into beautiful pictures on the sneakers you're wearing. It's too early to tell whether they will fund; or look as good as they do in the online video. There's also a nail-art printer if you're in the mood to spend a lot of money on something temporary.
Waterstones stops selling Amazon Kindles over 'pitiful' sales
Waterstones, the UK's largest book retailer, surprised many when it put plans for its own e-reader on ice to start selling Amazon's range of Kindle readers. It's been more than three years since it began making extra space in stores for one of its biggest rivals, but it won't for much longer. The Bookseller reports that the company will remove Amazon's e-ink Kindles from most of its locations as sales "continue to be pitiful."
Microsoft's prototype keyboard cover has an e-ink touchscreen
Tablets are becoming more useful for getting real work done. Looking to further bridge the gap between slate and laptop, Microsoft Applied Sciences built a prototype device it calls the DisplayCover: a keyboard cover that houses an e-ink touchscreen display. The 1,280 x 305 resolution panel not only provides access to app shortcuts, but it can also handle touch gestures for navigation and accept stylus input. The stylus feature seems to make things like signing documents and scribbling notes a breeze, based on the demo video. In the case of an app like Photoshop where you need constant access to tool palettes, those items can be parked at the top of the keyboard so they don't take up valuable space on the tablet's display (in this case a Surface).
YotaPhone 2's US launch canceled after crowdfunding success
We sort of loved the dual-screened YotaPhone 2, and we weren't alone -- nearly 450 people ordered devices from the company's Indiegogo campaign earlier this month, and a few of them are going to be very disappointed. In an email (obtained by The Verge) fired off to backers earlier this morning, Yota Devices cancelled the phone's US launch entirely thanks to "unforeseen delays including both production and delivery of the North American variant of YotaPhone 2 from our manufacturer."
Sydney gets world's first e-ink traffic signs
Sydney is now using the world's first outdoor e-ink traffic signs to guide motorists during special events. The city's Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) agency was apparently fed up with the constant chore of changing signs, and developed the tech with a company called Visionect. Like your Kindle, the signs are easy to read in Sydney's bright sunshine, which also powers it via solar panels. There's a light for nighttime usage, and the messages can be updated remotely via a cell connection to an "internet of things" network.
Sainsbury's swaps pricing labels for e-ink displays in one London store
Considering their main role is supplying the everyday essentials, Britain's supermarkets are strangely into their tech. When they're not running streaming services (or offloading them), making tablets, dabbling in prototype wearable apps and trying to improve the customer experience, they're looking at ways to work more efficiently. Sainsbury's latest tech trial falls into that latter category, and sees pricing labels at the Shoreditch Old Street Local store in the trendy part of London swapped out for miniature, colour e-ink displays. This saves on paper, of course, but more importantly, some poor new starter no longer needs to spend Sunday afternoon trudging the aisles updating the two-for-one deals. Instead, prices are changed automatically and wirelessly.
Lenovo's E Ink fitness band is amazingly affordable for its looks
Yes, 'tis yet another fitness band featuring a curved E Ink screen, but Lenovo's Vibe Band VB10 is a much better looker than Sony's offering from four months ago. First of all, the main body here is actually wrapped in metal -- either black, gold or white -- to give it a more premium feel, but together with the rubberized strap, the VB10 weighs just around 30 grams, so you may easily forget that you're wearing it. And since it's an E Ink screen, Lenovo claims that you can get up to seven days of battery on a single charge, while the device continuously monitors your steps, calories, travel distance and sleep quality. Oh, and you also get notifications from your phone -- via Bluetooth LE -- on that handy always-on screen. Want one? Too bad, as this $89 waterproof smartband won't be coming to the US when it launches this April. Still, you might get lucky with an e-tailer that ships globally.
Sony was hiding its e-paper watch in plain sight all along
You know those cartoons where the culprit was revealed to be Old Mr. Jones, the Caretaker, all along? It turns out that Sony's been pulling the same trick concerning Fashion Entertainments' e-paper watch. The story goes that the company wanted to create innovative new products, but without the weight of expectation (or, possibly, dread) that goes with the Sony name. According to the Wall Street Journal, FES' plan is to combine the company's e-paper know-how with fashionable accessories, including the watch and customizable bow ties. Admittedly, the idea of an e-paper bow tie that you can somehow alter with a digital device sounds like the sort of thing you'd buy from Brookstone, so we hope Kaz Hirai knows how to make it cool.
This e-ink watch can change its design at the touch of a button
It's not like we haven't seen e-ink watches before, but we've never seen one quite like this. FES Watch uses e-paper not only for its face, but its entire strap, allowing the wearer to change its design with a simple button press. By combining different upper- and lower-strap choices with a variety of face designs, you'll have a total of 24 designs to choose from. This isn't a smartwatch (it won't do anything other than tell you the time and date), but thanks to that fact, it'll last around two months on a single charge.
60 seconds with Hemingwrite, an E Ink typewriter
Between social networks, video games and the endless void of procrastination we call "the internet," computers can make pretty poor writing devices. Isn't there something better? Insert Coin contenders Adam Leeb and Patrick Paul think so -- they've created the Hemingwrite: an E Ink typewriter that does almost nothing, save text entry. It's a minimalist writing machine that features a machine-tooled aluminum chassis, a satisfying mechanical keyboard and a six-week battery life. It's not completely devoid of modern faculties, however: it also automatically uploads your prose to a cloud storage system as you type it.
Sony's latest target market for its $1,100 'Digital Paper': legal researchers
Sony's still searching high and low for the kind of folks that need a replacement for regular paper and aren't too worried about the cost ($1,100). The latest potential buyers (after lawyers and HR departments) of its 13.3-inch E Ink Digital Paper? Legal researchers. Sony's teamed up with William S. Hein & Co. (which runs the LexisNexis-like HeinOnline database that gives access to documents from legal libraries) so anyone who uses the device can pull from its more than 100 million pages and see them just as they were originally laid out, without zooming or scrolling. It's still a pretty pricey upgrade from tech that's worked effectively for around 2,000 years, but legal librarians and law students can probably do without the reams of paper they've been printing out until now.
E Ink's working on a smartwatch with a full wraparound display
E Ink's perhaps best known for its e-reader displays, such as the Pearl used in Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite, but the company's black-and-white panels can also be found in a variety of smartwatches, from manufacturers such as Archos, Phosphor and Seiko. Most of these are simply traditional wristwatches with small, low-power screens, but an upcoming model could have a much larger curved display that covers the majority of the wearable's footprint, according to company representatives we spoke with at Computex. Such a device would have a panel that stretches from one end to the other, letting you change the entire watch's design just as you would the face on devices available today.
Paperfold is a foldable, transformable smartphone prototype
If Kyrocera's folding smartphone Echo didn't have enough screens for you, try this on for size. The Human Media Lab at Canada's Queen's University has created a fully functional smartphone that uses not two, but three different snap-together e-ink displays. The result is a gigantic device called PaperFold, that can do some pretty awesome stuff, especially with maps. You can display driving directions over all of the screens for easy planning, or fold the displays together to create a Google Earth globe of sorts. The phone can even be used to print a model of your office. Just connect the panels together into a building-like shape, and send the specs along to your local 3D printer. A pretty cool trick if you ask us.
Sony's found the perfect use for its $1,100 Digital Paper: HR forms
In case you were wondering who would splurge for Sony's $1,100 Digital Paper, it looks like the company has found another suitor: movie and television studios' HR departments. Sony has already targeted lawyers with the 13.3-inch E Ink Mobius-toting device, but now it's teaming up with Ease Entertainment to make short work of the hiring process for the motion picture and TV industries. According to the press release, "Digital Paper enables crew members to quickly and easily read, fill out and submit all required paperwork, complete with legal signatures" -- all while using less of the thin white stuff, we'd surmise. Ease's part of the workflow is storing and securing the collected documents from wandering peepers. With all of those NDAs and so forth, the duo is sure to save some trees -- so long as they remember to recharge every three weeks, and the set has a WiFi connection for passing along the signed forms.
Gadget Rewind 2006: Sony Reader PRS-500
Sony may not have been at the forefront of the digital music revolution, but when it came to e-books and e-readers, the company was certainly a pioneer. It all started in the '90s with Sony's first chunky, flip-topped Data Discman. This two-pound, paperback-sized player came bundled with a selection of reference books on disc, each capable of storing up to 100,000 pages of digital text. When that cumbersome early e-book solution failed to gain traction, Sony went right back to the drawing board and returned in 2004 with the Japan-only LIBRIé e-reader. This particular device used an innovative E Ink display and relied on an e-book loan program -- a distribution model that proved unpopular with consumers at the time.
Sony's 13-inch 'Digital Paper' is just like paper, except it costs $1,100
Despite years of development, E Ink's displays haven't yet replaced traditional paper everywhere. Sony's trying to change that with this 13.3-inch Digital Paper device intended for legal, educational and business environments and after we got a brief demo last year it's finally ready to go on sale in May. The only downside? Its pricetag, currently set at a cool $1,100. To answer the question of who could possibly afford or want such an expensive piece of paper that displays PDFs and accepts handwriting input, Sony is introducing Digital Paper at the American Bar Association Tech Show (which is apparently a thing) in Chicago. The draw for Digital Paper is that it's very light at 12.6 oz and has a high resolution (1,200 x 1,600) / 16-level grayscale display with touch controls, stylus input and no backlight. That helps out easy reading in the daytime and no need to scroll or zoom around documents like on smaller tablets. Sony also claims a three week battery life with recharging via AC or USB, while documents can be loaded over WiFi and stored on its 4GB of internal memory or an SD card. It's still way out of our price range for note taking, but if Mark Zuckerberg comes knocking with a billion dollar deal in hand, it might be good to have around.
Dual-display YotaPhone now shipping to the UK for £419
We're not entirely convinced that this is the right time to hop aboard the YotaPhone express, especially when a greatly improved second-gen handset has been promised before the end of this year. Nevertheless, if you're in the UK and you're willing to drop £419 in order to experiment with a genuinely unique e-reader / smartphone hybrid (as opposed to a phone that is e-ink only), then the Yota Devices web store will now ship to you via the source link below.
Dual-screen YotaPhone has a second shot at greatness
If you caught our review of the YotaPhone at the end of last year, you'll know we were cautious about recommending it -- in fact, we said it was probably safer to hold out for a second-gen device. Well, here's a surprise: that replacement is already at the prototype stage and it brings some big improvements that could undo many of the criticisms we leveled at the original. Most importantly, the rear E-Ink panel is now fully touch sensitive, which means you'll be able to do a lot more with this phone without ever needing to engage the traditional, power-hungry display on the other side. Calls, texts, emails, browsing, tweeting and more can be handled using the "always-on" 4.7-inch E-Ink display, with the only sacrifice being predictably slower refresh rates.
