Acer Iconia Tab, ASUS Eee Pad and LG Optimus Pad priced in Europe

European pricing details for a number of new Android tablets have emerged, courtesy of retailer PhoneHouse (the Europeean arm of Carphone Warehouse). The Acer Iconia Tab 100, Motorola XOOM, ASUS Eee Pad and LG Optimus Pad were all spotted by Androidgeek in the retailer’s online catalog.

The Acer will be €349 ($493) with its 7-inch display, while the ASUS Eee Pad – exact model unspecified, and the image is one of the Windows 7 Embedded versions – will be €399 ($564). The XOOM will be €699 ($987) and the Optimus Pad a whopping €849 ($1,199).
No exact release dates, but they’re all listed as “coming soon” by the retailer.

• [via NotebookItalia]

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Sony-Ericsson’s Xperia Arc and Neo seen in action

Here’s a video of the Sony Xperia Arc and Xperia Neo being taken through their thumb paces at a Press Conference in Copenhagen. Looking at the video, it’s pretty clear just how snappy the interface is in both handsets. The phones are comfortable to hold thanks to their curved in design and the menus flip by at lightning pace. The video also shows a size comparison of both cameras along side the LG Optimus X2.

What’s really cool is that according to the video post, the camera on the Xperia Neo has a continuous shooting speed of about one image per second with a 5 image burst. A nice benefit when shooting some action. I mean, you won’t be taking a shot by shot of a game winning goal from Junior or anything, but a little bit of continuous action is better than none at all.
For those of you with a Sony-Ericsson X10 and wanting to see how it works yourself, we have a few links to an Xperia System Dump from our good friends at XDA. There’s a the slick Sony-Ericsson system launcher which also gives a rather nice set of widgets including a scrollable image gallery widget. The dump also includes ringtones, apps, wallpapers and more. What a great way to breathe new life in your phone while you’re waiting for the clock to run out on that two year contract!

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Xobni Is Coming To Gmail, Android, And iPhone (100 Beta Invites)

Ever since Xobni launched at the first TechCrunch 40, it’s been about Outlook and then Blackberry. But those of us who use Gmail also want to make our inboxes smarter. Today, Xobni is launching aprivate beta for Gmail, and will soon also launch iPhone and Android apps. The first 100 readers to sign up for the Gmail beta will get in (use the code XOBNI-TC100).
The Gmail app comes in the form of a browser extension for either Chrome or Firefox (Safari and IE will come later). Once you install it, a Xobni sidebar appears in your Gmail Inbox. Once you allow it to index your contacts and hook it up to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, it starts to show you all sorts of relationship data. Contact search in the Xobni box is hella fast, much faster than searching in the Gmail search box (but only for contacts, it does not index the entire text of your messages).
When you open up an email, the Xobni sidebar shows you a graph plotting your relationship history (how many messages you’ve exchanged) as well as other contacts frequently CCed on messages to or from that person. You can also tab through to a list of recent emails with that person, summary info from their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles (along with recent status updates and Tweets).
Soon, the Xobni extension will work inline in the regular Gmail search box as well, creating smart autosuggestions every time you search. Other additional features the company is working on include contact suggestions in the To: field based on related contacts in the past, phone number extraction and attachment search . It will also pull Tweets and Facebook updates from your closest email contacts in a dashboard view, whether or not you follow them on those social networks.

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OTA updates for Samsung Epic 4G, Transform and Galaxy Tab coming

A pretty strong indication of an over the air (OTA) update to the Samsung Epic 4G, Transform, and even the Galaxy Tab popped up on the interwebs today in the form of a screen shot from Sprint’s website. The intended upgrades includes the Epic 4G moving up to Android 2.2.1 (Froyo) as well as some 2.2 yogurty goodness for the Samsung Transform. Even the Samsung Galaxy Tab joins the Epic 4G and Transform with a little nip and tuck courtesy of a Sprint ID update that will provide for a package of wallpapers, ringtones and apps to bring it up to where the current state of the art is for Sprint and Samsung.

The Spring ID concept, unveiled at CES last January, is ideal for users wanting to change the theme of their handset on the fly without having to do it piecemeal. In addition to the Sprint ID package, other additions include Flash 10.1 on the Epic 4G, and Swype on the Transform. These updates will be over the air (OTA) and will look to be scheduled for a March 21st roll out. Sprint recently suspended Android 2.2 (Froyo) updates to their Epic 4G phones after consumer complaints. It looks as if they’ve ironed out all those issues and are moving forward.
The Epic 4G has a brilliant Super AMOLED display to go with it’s slide out QWERTY, and 1GHz Hummingbird processor. Check out SlashGear’s Epic Review here. The Transform features a 3.5-inch HVGA touch-screen display, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, dual front and rear facing cameras and is powered by an 800 MHz processor. And the Samsung Galaxy Tab has recently enjoyed a nifty price cut to $199 along with free activation.

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HTC Incredible S blushes on Danish site

There’s a listing of a sexy HTC Incredible S in Red trim on the site of a Danish electronics retailer. Aside from it’s Fire Engine red paint scheme, there’s nothing different from it’s official variant. That also means it will have to be purchased unsubsidized, although there’s no mention of price or availability on the site listing. The unsubsidized price hovers around $550 here in the US. And chances are, though, that users in Europe will be using the Euro-friendly GSM version we reported on last month.

The hallmark feature of the Incredible is is it’s four-inch screen which seems to really pop in the red trim. It has a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8225 chip under the hood which runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), although HTC promises an update to Gingerbread sometime soon. There’s also an eight-megapixel camera for some snappy 720 HD video and hi-res stills, along with what looks like 2 LED flash bulbs for bright coverage in low light. And there’s a a front-facing webcam as well.
The Incredible S represents a “dot upgrade” over the previous Incredible, but it still runs on 3G via HSPA instead of taking the leap to 4G/LTE. And with it’s larger size screen, we’re betting users will look more towards other phone options that provide faster performance via LTE. But then again, they won’t have that red trim, will they? Check out SlashGear’s Hands On here.

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Gorilla Glass “A Day Made of Glass”

Behold what our pals at Corning have whipped up, a lovely video showing a world where glass is our main working material, showing us everything from the sun to our statistics – but wait, isn’t that what it is already today? Sort of! This is the sort of video that reminds us that the movie Minority Report only came out a few years ago and already things like NFC are making its future-looking world very much a reality. This video also includes items inside the handset world, so Androids rejoice!

Lots of touchscreen stuff as well, from touching the TV and adjusting it in the morning to speaking to friends via your bathroom mirror. Then there’s a tabletop TV whilst creating what appears to be a very colorful lunch, working with tabletop stoves via touchscreen blippers, Then there’s some refrigerator-front glass that the child of the parents we’ve been following in this video interact with once they get home from school – enlarging and moving photos in a very similar manner to that which we’ve been seeing on larger touchscreen devices for some time now – and the photos are moving too (maybe they’re movies!) thusly reminding us very much of a Harry Potter existence, one we would not mind.
Then comes the handsets. See-through phones that can instantly transfer picture display to the tabletop display. Kind of like the Atrix 4G? Yessir. The car of course is also touchschreen all the way, showing the woman a map and allowing her to add a sticky note to her dash. Above her is an auto-darkening piece of glass, and above the car as she drives is large format glass working instantly to show traffic delays and such (this is already a reality with lights that can display similar warnings, but this is so much COOLER.) Then upon passing a bud stop, you can see that this too is of course a touchscreen display, helping pedestrians find their way around to different busses and transport, collecting direction on their again transparent display handsets. Then you see inside an office with another gigantic display for meetings, again with the tabletop display, all of this for sweet fashion work.
Instant transportation to walls in malls, gigantic planes of glass for the greatest interaction and instant movement between the office and the store with ads just created. Then there’s flexible display glass that can be rolled up and display onto. Amazing! Then of COURSE there’s perfectly amazing 3D display glass, transportable paper-sized glass (like a transparent tablet) for night reading of a book, and there you have it! A day of glass! We’re very excited, Corning, let’s make this reality a reality!

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Arctic Spas shows off hot tub-controlling iPhone app, waterproof ccase sold separately

Frankly, a few things in life are just too hard. Taxes being one of them, and moving from one’s spot in a hot tub to adjust the temperature and / or jet pressure being another. In a bid to solve issue number two, Arctic Spas has shoved out an iOS app (Android and BlackBerry are inbound) that interfaces with a WiFi module on some of the company’s hot tubs. Once loaded up, owners can control temperature and jets with a simple touch, though we hear that loads of steam and moist fingers aren’t exactly great for consumer electronics. Either way, you’ve got a video to entice you down below.

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Keen On… Bruce Sterling: What Comes After the Future? (TCTV)

So what comes after the future? I asked Bruce Sterling at SXSW.
But, for Bruce, the future is really the past. “I like narratives,” he told me, while explaining why the most “effective” futurists are good historians. So perhaps, using this logic, what comes after the future is history.
And Bruce is certainly an effective futurist as well as a good historian. Which is why when I asked him about today’s Internet obsession with “the social,” he riffed with dark euphoria about the history of socialism as well as what it’s like to be a 15-year-old kid with no knowledge of the past.
Check out yesterday’s interview with Bruce when he explains why hactivism isn’t compatible with democracy and what the difference is between gothic high tech and favela chic.
What Comes After the Future

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RSA hacked, data exposed that could ‘reduce the effectiveness’ of SecurID tokens

If you’ve ever wondered whether two-factor authentication systems actually boost security, things that spit out random numbers you have to enter in addition to a password, the answer is yes, yes they do. But, their effectiveness is of course dependent on the security of the systems that actually generate those funny numbers, and as of this morning those are looking a little less reliable. RSA, the security division of EMC and producer of the SecurID systems used by countless corporations (and the Department of Defense), has been hacked. Yesterday it sent out messages to its clients and posted an open letter stating that it’s been the victim of an “advanced” attack that “resulted in certain information being extracted from RSA’s systems” — information “specifically related to RSA’s SecurID two-factor authentication products.”
Yeah, yikes. The company assures that the system hasn’t been totally compromised, but the information retrieved “could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack.” RSA is recommending its customers beef up security in other ways, including a suggestion that TSA’s customers “enforce strong password and pin policies.” Of course, if security admins wanted to rely on those they wouldn’t have made everyone carry around SecurID tokens in the first place.

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Bell’s Motorola Atrix also has HSUPA disabled, Canadians frown upon 400kbps uploads

If you happen to reside just north of the American border, you might have heard that Canadian carrier Bell is now offering the Motorola Atrix from $169.95 on a three year commitment, all the way up to $599.95 sans contract. While this groovy smartphone is a welcomed addition for local Android fanatics, the early adopters have learned that — much like its AT&T counterpart — it lacks HSUPA. This is confirmed by xda-developers members who see a mere 400kpbs upload speed on their maple syrup-flavored Atrix, which is bad news for YouTube celebrities and the likes on Bell Mobility. Alas, we’ve yet to hear from the carrier regarding this issue, but let’s just hope that the Atrix will be set free before Bell’s headquarters gets taken over by furious green robots.

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Ericsson delivers HD voice on CDMA, crystal clear calling coming to a network near you

Smartphones continue to improve in the ‘smart’ areas: better screens, faster processors, more memory, etc., but there’s not been a lot of innovation in the phone aspect of those devices. HD voice technology can change that, but since its introduction in 2009 hi-fi calling was only available on GSM networks… until now. Ericsson has just made the first HD voice call via CDMA — made possible by a new Enhanced Variable Rate Codec Narrowband-Wideband (EVRC-NW for the awkward acronym-loving crowd). The codec delivers sound in the 50Hz – 7000Hz range, which makes traditional calls limited to the 300Hz – 3400Hz spectrum sound like they’re coming from a drive-thru attendant at your local Mickey D’s. So far, the tech’s limited to the lab, but here’s hoping Ericsson lets it roam free to deliver the dulcet tones of our friends and family sooner rather than later.

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T-Mobile G-Slate and G2X dual-core smartphone coming on April 20th?

LG, you big tease! T-Mobile must be feeling a tinge of regret for hooking up with the Korean hardware manufacturer lately, as TmoNews reports both the G-Slate tablet and a freshly rumored G2X smartphone (believed to be the US moniker for the Optimus 2X) won’t be coming Stateside for at least another month. Neither will be exactly late, since both feature dual-core Tegra 2 chips and the G-Slate runs Google’s freshest Honeycomb software, however a launch date of April 20th does put LG a step behind its direct competitors. Motorola has already rolled out its own Xoom and Atrix alternatives, while Samsung is making noise about its new Galaxy devices, which might well beat LG’s wares to the market. Rumor is we’ll get an official date out of T-Mobile at CTIA next week, so keep your eyes peeled for that one.

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Technology Help Soldiers Know Where the Bullet was Fired From ?

The soldiers in the near future will be able to identify correctly the bullets were fired from any direction in the case was ambushed or fired, thanks to an acoustic wave sensing device weighs less than 0.9 kg that they wear on their bodies.

This compact device called Individual Gunshot Detector (IGD), including 4 children ultrasonic sensors, which function “listen” and analyze sound waves emitted from the bullets fired at, so that informed soldiers shot the direction and distance of the bullet through a small screen, helping them determine the location of its guys are shooting.
We are conducting military machine equipped with IGD to 13,000 troops in Afghanistan and in the next 12 months will be regularly distributed additional 1,500 machines per month for them. Have this equipment, the soldiers would easily take the initiative on the battlefield than the rest of their problems when the gun is a gun that distinguish us from the camp or the enemy camp alone.

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