Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Transportation

We’ve been hearing about vehicle-to-grid (V2G) for quite a while, and now a team at the University of Michigan is conducting an extensive study on the technology as part of a national sustainable energy solution. While current electric plants are good at generating power, they often fall short when it comes to storage — which can be a problem when there’s a power surge or when demand increases. V2G will let hybrid-electric owners sell the power their car generates to the electrical power grid whenever the car is not in use. The research team envisions a time when millions of hybrid vehicle owners will come together to create one large battery, allowing us all to play a small part in building our nation’s energy independence. And sure, this all sounds good in theory. But wouldn’t that mean relying on the neighbors to provide a key piece of the nation’s infrastructure? Have you met the neighbors? Doesn’t that seem a little… iffy?

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Original post by Joseph L. Flatley

Filed under: Transportation

What else can we say? Chrysler’s new electric vehicles that were introduced yesterday just got a lot more real thanks to a stable of videos showing ‘em off. To be honest, we’re not too jazzed about the whisper quiet Chrysler minivan or the otherwise plain Jeep Wrangler, but that Dodge EV — mmm, now that’s a fine piece of engineering. Tap the read link and mash play if you’re thirsty for more.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Transportation

Seeing that General Motors left a gaping hole of opportunity for other automakers to produce a new EV by 2010 that isn’t uglier than sin itself, it’s no real shock to see Chrysler champing at the bit. Just this week, the company has introduced a trio of advanced electric-drive vehicle prototypes (simply coined Chrysler EV, Jeep EV and Dodge EV for now), one of which will mysteriously surface in 2010 for consumers in North America. Feel free to hit the read link for the entire hope-filled press release and the gallery of images, but if we’ve learned anything of late about those succulent concept shots, it’s to not believe them (at all).

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Handhelds

Last week we got a few tid-bits of information on where Nokia is heading with its next round of Internet Tablets and now we’re learning a little bit more courtesy of a spy shot taken at the company’s Maemo Summit (held over the weekend in fabulous Berlin). The 3G HSPA connectivity and a TI OMAP3 processor mentioned earlier are confirmed, the latter of which will open the door to OpenGL ES 2.0 compatibility for graphics acceleration and, hopefully, alleviate the occasionally stuttery video playback that made the N810 a somewhat less than ideal PMP. Beyond that all we know so far is that it will utilize the company’s Maemo 5 OS (Windows 3.1 is right out), will support USB 2.0 (surprise!), and that use of hair-care products at the Summit was apparently optional.

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Original post by Tim Stevens

Filed under: Laptops

AT&T has freely supported Panasonic’s WWAN-enabled Toughbook 19 / 30 on its mobile broadband network for nearly a year now, and for those worried that the two may break things off when Gobi entered the picture can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Qualcomm’s hybrid-3G technology (which goes from EV-DO to HSPA with the flip of a software switch), has just been certified for use on the carrier’s nationwide network, and sure enough, Panny has decided to offer it on “all” new Toughbook machines. Gobified Toughbooks should be on store shelves this October, though we’re not sure just how costly the option will be.

Read - AT&T certifies Gobi technology
Read - Panasonic offers Gobi on Toughbooks

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Transportation

It’s official public debut may still only be coming next week, but it looks like GM has finally decided to give up on the carefully-chosen teaser shots and let the hotly-anticipated Volt out in the open for all the internet to see. No doubt to the dismay of some, the would-be next Prius sure looks a good deal different than the far more angular prototype we’ve all come to know over the past little while, although we can’t say we’re exactly surprised given GM’s mass-market hopes for the car. Still, it is quite the milestone for the auto industry, and hopefully only the start of things to come. Be sure to hit up Autoblog for a gallery full of more pics of your favorite GM execs — and the Volt, too.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

So the good news here is that Best Buy’s getting ready to open its arms to yet another HTC product that’s impossible to find by wandering into the brick-and-mortar store of the US wireless carrier of your choice; the bad news, though, is that it doesn’t seem to be the version we wanted. The Touch Diamond now has a Coming Soon page all its own on Best Buy’s site, which is just fantastic considering that neither AT&T nor T-Mobile have yet bothered to pick it up — but the problem is that the specifications make no mention of US 3G despite the fact that we know there’s just such a version floating around. Our hope is that we’ve just caught the big box with its pants down (wouldn’t be the first time) and they’ll look into carrying the real deal by the time “coming soon” switches to “in stock,” especially since they’ve given the Touch Dual the same courtesy.

[Thanks, Mark]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Before a single AT&T-subscribing soul dreams of jumping ship for Sprint just to pick up the Touch Pro in a few weeks, hold up: we can pretty much confirm that it’s coming to your neck of the woods, too. We’ve already seen some totally legit-looking shots of HTC’s hottest QWERTY WinMo piece in AT&T trim, but now we have some more damning evidence in the form of a Google cached page detailing the so-called Fuze on the carrier’s own site. As expected, we’ve got tri-band HSDPA, GPS, WiFi, and BlackBerry Connect waiting for us when AT&T finally decides to pull the plug on the Tilt and make this thing happen. Follow the break for AT&T’s poetic Fuze verbiage — and take your time, since there’s no indication that we’ll have this in stores in the next few days.

[Thanks, Fred]

Continue reading AT&T page confirms HTC Touch Pro as “Fuze”

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Now that Uncle Walt has gone and opened the floodgates, details are starting to pour in on Sprint’s imminent release of the Touch Diamond, a device that should actually manage to get the carrier damn close to the top of the Windows Mobile pile (for a short while, anyway). PC Magazine is now reporting that it’ll be available on September 14 for $249.99 on a two-year contract after $100 rebate, a sum that would put it squarely in the “average” category for on-contract smartphone pricing in these parts. Of course, with the Touch Pro allegedly just around the corner, it remains to be seen just how much love this thing is going to get; nothing like a good, old-fashioned QWERTY-versus-touchscreen fight, is there?

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones

It was only a matter of time before the WSJ (Katherine Boehret, in this case) got their hands around Sprint’s still-not-official Touch Diamond, and we can’t say that the conclusion she drew is at all shocking. As Mossberg and his partners so often do, Katherine mentions Apple’s darling just as much as the topic of the review itself, and while she seemed impressed with the hardware, it was the software that suffered the brunt of her attacks. She proclaimed that “despite its handsome TouchFLO 3D software and animated icons, the device failed to disguise the frustrating interface of Windows Mobile often enough for [her] taste.” Beyond that, she also found room to gripe about the “cramped” keyboard, which she felt was “next to impossible” to use with just her fingertips. On the plus side, she did give the browser a decent amount of praise, but if you were looking for support from this critic before picking up the forthcoming handset, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

[Via phonescoop]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

While Apple’s App Store was far from being the first of its kind, we’re now seeing a job posting over in the Redmond area that suggests that Microsoft is looking to produce something similar for its Windows Mobile platform. The news comes hot on the heels of Google’s own Android Market announcement, and if the Product Manager position writeup is to be believed, said platform will be christened Skymarket. Described as a “marketplace service for Windows Mobile,” Skymarket could seemingly be a critical part of WinMo 7. But don’t take our word for it, the proof is the pudding — or in the read link, in this instance.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC is keeping the S740 under wraps at IFA, but the crafty folks at newmobile managed to score some time with the new QWERTY slider, and it looks pretty decent. Thinner than the Touch Pro, the keyboard is basically the same, with the same sort of stealth-look backplate as the Diamond. No motion sensor, so the display only rotates when the slide is open, but that’s really all we know — the unit wasn’t running a production-ready verision of Windows Mobile, so impressions are a little up in the air. Hit the read link for more shots.

[Via Coolsmartphone]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Looking for the Touch Pro in a slightly less conspicuous package? HTC (who else?) thinks it has the answer in the S740, a pretty thorough revamp of the S710 of old. The basic concept is the same — wrap Windows Mobile Standard into a candybar package with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard — but the S740 takes design cues from the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro for a thoroughly 2008-ish look. The feature list has naturally been refreshed, too, with 7.2Mbps HSDPA on the 900 and 2100MHz bands (read: screw you, North Americans), quadband EDGE, a 3.2-megapixel fixed focus cam, WiFi, GPS, and a 2.4-inch QVGA display. And, you know, if all that isn’t enough to impress your snobby friends, just slide open that keyboard, say “boom,” and watch the jaws drop. Look for it to filter across Europe starting next month.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It won’t be the first launch in North America — those honors go to Telus at this point — but Sprint won’t be far behind. A pretty believable new slide deck suggests that big ol’ Number Three will take delivery of its Touch Diamonds in September and start hawking them for the princely sum of $299.99 on contract after rebates, netting customers a 3.2 megapixel cam, 4GB of internal storage, and EV-DO Rev. A, among all the other spoils that only Windows Mobile 6.1 can offer. Is the back end of it red? Can’t really tell from this angle, but if the goal is to offer up a high-end business tool, we’ve gotta believe black will be available either way.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

In case there was any lingering doubt that the Treo Pro (alias Treo 850) was real — and there probably shouldn’t be, considering it got snapped all the way back in May — this round of non-blurry (dare we say artistic?) shots should pretty much seal the deal. The glossy shell, promise of a 320 x 320 display, and a general acknowledgment of circa-2008 industrial design definitely have us feeling just a little less pessimistic about Palm’s prospects right now; if anything, it makes us wish they had some Android kit up their sleeves rather than slaving away on the thus-far vaporware Palm OS 2. As WinMo goodies go, though, this thing looks like it’s ready to hang with the best of the best — so bring it on, Palm. A legion of fans with well-worn 750s awaits you. In the meanwhile, check another shot after the break.

[Via WMExperts]

Continue reading Palm’s Treo Pro in the wild, probably not fake

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Original post by Chris Ziegler