Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

While folks ‘round these parts are only just now getting their first real taste of WiMAX, Motorola is already looking towards a WiMAX-filled future, where it hopes devices like its X24 concept module will let even your car tap into all that bandwidth floating through the air. Apparently, the device is designed specifically with advanced automotive telemetry in mind, although, as Motorola’s Manash Goswami mentions in the interview available at the read link below, the company also isn’t ignoring the possibilities for in-car entertainment and other applications. It also sees the chipset at the heart of the X24, the WT򼎸, being used in an even broader range of consumer devices, and not just ones made by Motorola. Look for more word on that to come out of the WiMAX World conference next week.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Looks like the HD video-capable Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D90 had quite an impact at RED headquarters — company president Jim Jannard just posted a note saying that the upcoming Scarlet 3K camera is “all different now″ because “the market has changed.” That’s particularly interesting because Jannard’s also mentioned that RED’s working on a video-capable DSLR and recently pointed out that the D90’s CMOS sensor tech leads to “jelly movement” when shooting video — a problem RED solved long ago with the RED ONE’s proprietary CMOS sensor, so we′re guessing a few of these threads are coming together. We′ll see when we see — if RED produces anything within the price spectrum of the D90 and 5D Mark II, it’ll shake things up pretty significantly.

Read - “Wipe your minds of the past announced Scarlet”
Read - Jannard points out the D90’s “jelly” video

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Transportation

While many around the globe have their eyes fixated on the events going down in Las Vegas this week, the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi, India is managing to steal at least a hint of the limelight. Announced today, Tata Motors’ $2,500 “1-Lakh” car will actually see production in India later this year, and it has affectionately been dubbed the NANO. For those not keen on such a title, it can also be recognized as “The People’s Car,” but it seems “The Person’s Car” may have been more appropriate. Nevertheless, this little bundle of automotive joy will feature an all-aluminum, two-cylinder engine that can deliver around 54 US miles per gallon, and while stripped down would be a gross understatement, it does promise to “exceed current regulatory (read: safety) requirements.” Hit the read link for Tata’s official release along with a plethora of photos.

[Image courtesy of Manan Vatsyayana/Raveendran for Getty]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Microsoft announced last week that it plans to test Windows XP on the One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop in January, and possibly bring an XP derivative for the laptop to market in the second half of next year.

What’s interesting to me is that Microsoft has finally acknowledged that there is a class of machines that people are interested in manufacturing that are ultra-low-cost, and yet use flash as a storage medium. Solid-state disks are several times more expensive than a conventional magnetic disk drive (for example, this $2,000 64-Gbyte laptop drive)

but as any camera buff knows, low-end flash card prices seem to be perpetually heading downhill.

There’s a caveat here, of course: even a gigabyte of flash costing $20 or so still is a significant percentage of a $399 machine (or, more precisely, pair of machines). And, of course, there’s the added value in the ruggedness solid-state memory entails.

For Microsoft, there’s also a technical consideration, as explained on the Unlimited Potential blog:

“As part of this engineering effort, we have to design a new BIOS - the layer of software that runs between the hardware and an operating system — to have Windows boot and run off the SD card. For us this is new work and requires a design and processes for supporting the XO’s custom SD interface and for the installation of Windows on the SD card, both at the Quanta factory that manufactures the XO hardware and also in the field.”

Fujitsu’s Tablet PCs already include flash memory as a standard feature. Wonder how many low-cost PCs, as well as tablets, flash will intersect in the future?

Original post by Mark Hachman