Gadgets

By Marc Chacksfield Samsung has made something of a shift in its design ethos with its Alpha and A range of smartphones. Instead of the plastic chassis of the Samsung Galaxy S5, an all-metal unibody design has been used. This design is a major hint at what to expect when the Samsung Galaxy S6 eventually…

By Marc Chacksfield Samsung has made something of a shift in its design ethos with its Alpha and A range of smartphones. Instead of the plastic chassis of the Samsung Galaxy S5, an all-metal unibody design has been used. This design is a major hint at what to expect when the Samsung Galaxy S6 eventually…

By Darrell Etherington The best tech for 2014 is getting its just desserts at the 8th Annual Crunchies right now, and Best Technology Achievement is one of the categories that reflects true excellence in a field where it’s easy to identify standouts. This year’s winner is Stella, whose four-seat, solar-powered car won the World Solar…

By Darrell Etherington Apple launched its dedicated Photos app for OS X as a developer preview today, and the app marks a clean break from iPhoto in almost every way, with the new software representing a completely new experience from basic code all the way to the user interface. But while it owes a lot…

By Kyle Russell StartX, the Stanford-funded and affiliated incubator, just held its demo day for the Fall 2014 batch of startups at its headquarters in Palo Alto. The companies presenting ran the gamut from bitcoin and cybersecurity to open source machine learning. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By John Biggs The Swatch Group dropped a bombshell – in its staid way – announcing plans to release a smartwatch in the next three months, potentially to coincide with the April launch of the Apple Watch. First, understand that watch companies don’t know how to market to tech consumers. As I wrote here, Swatch…

By Matt Burns “What a piece of junk!” said Luke Skywalker. “She’ll make point five past lightspeed (30km/h.),” Han replied. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself including a 1800mAh battery, a GoPro 3 and a handmade Styrofoam body shaped…

By Steve O'Hear Investors are wont to follow. It therefore shouldn’t be a surprise to see Airtame pick up a VC round of funding. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Kyle Russell FiftyThree, maker of the Paper app and the accompanying Pencil stylus for the iPad, is shaking up its strategy by dropping the price of every feature in its app to absolutely nothing. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington Are we hurtling towards technological dystopia, or a futuristic fantasy world in which our hardware and software innovations provide a human experience that excels in almost every way compared to that which we know today? That’s the basic question at the heart of Peter Nowak’s [em]Humans 3.0[/em], a survey of our technical…

By Jon Russell In a PR stunt reminiscent of Amazon’s Black Friday drone revelation in 2013, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is dabbling with drones with a teeny, tiny pilot program. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington Disney says that it’s looking at other ways to work with services like Dish’s Sling TV, which offers unbundled content to broadband subscribers independent of a cable or satellite TV subscription. That’s not the best part, though: Disney’s planning around this possibility includes Marvel and/or Star Wars-specific offerings, which could mean that…

By Darrell Etherington The *New* Nintendo 3DS XL doesn’t exactly have a name that rolls off the tongue, but it does reflect that what you’re getting is hardware that’s very similar to its predecessor, albeit with some fresh paint and new features that really do help make a big difference in very specific areas. The…

By Darrell Etherington If you’ve been hanging on to those paper books because the idea of having to repurchase them all as Kindle titles is daunting, Amazon has a new option for you: Kindle Convert, a program for Windows that turns print books into digital versions fully compatible with Amazon’s Kindle software, including adjustable font,…

By Kyle Russell Razer is once again proving it’s capable of squeezing a lot of power into a tiny space with the debut of the 2015 Razer Blade, the latest in the company’s series of flagship laptops that put an Apple-like spin on the gaming segment. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets