Takeoka Jidosha Kogei’s electric minicar gets slightly more macro, even more cute

Japanese minicar manufacturer Takeoka Jidosha Kogei's Milieu R is the perfect car for anti-social folks, featuring only one seat and a range of 50km that's just enough to make your commute while being limited enough to get you out of going to the bar afterward. Thus far those who socialize only with (very) small animals have been left out of the company's offerings, but that all changes with this new prototype, the T10. It's ever so slightly larger, gaining 90mm in length and 40mm in width, making room for a shelf to the left of the driver's seat intended for some sort of pet (we're guessing hamster, possibly a petite guinea pig). The other specs, including that 50 km range and top speed of 55 km/h, stay the same, meaning there'd still be no concerns about getting to work early or having to socialize afterward, but we're not sure its charming looks make up for a price tag set to be somewhere north of ¥856,000 (about $9,520); awfully close to that of a "real" car. At least it looks a little safer than the HUVO.

Filed under: Transportation

Takeoka Jidosha Kogei's electric minicar gets slightly more macro, even more cute originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple teams up with Adobe for iPhone Flash at long last

With Android getting all Flash-ey, Apple's "Goldilocks" position on Flash -- the full Flash player is too hefty, Flash Lite is too weak -- seemed pretty untenable. Now Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has revealed that Apple and Adobe are "collaborating" on making Flash a reality on the iPhone, citing the technical challenge it presents. What's clear is that with all this work to do, it doesn't seem they're going the watered-down Flash Lite route, but we're trying not to hold our breath for a full-on, Hulu-friendly version that will finally help us get that Doogie Howser fix on the go. Naturally, there's no word on when this will hit.

[Via AppleInsider]

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Video

Apple teams up with Adobe for iPhone Flash at long last originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Switched On: With Pre, Palm breaks from the Storm

Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

In a recent interview with Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee, the Palm investor explained that Palm knew it had to step up its game after RIM launched the BlackBerry Pearl, which he described as "the first real consumer electronics product in the smartphone category." The Pearl launch served as the coming out party for the BlackBerry brand among consumers as RIM began stepping up its advertising, and the product's narrower hardware design was a noticeable break with the staid stylings of previous BlackBerry devices.

Indeed, back in November of 2006 as Palm rolled out the somewhat consumer-focused Treo 680, I wrote a Switched On column noting that the Pearl broke with the evolutionary path that RIM had been on and served as an example for the kind of hardware shift Palm needed to make.

Palm finally answered the Pearl with the Centro, a compact, inexpensive, and successful smartphone that has apparently served as the final resting place of the original Palm OS architecture. However, between the release of those two devices, the entry and subsequent SDK of Apple's iPhone proved a far more significant turning point in the evolution of consumer smartphones. The iPhone's resonance and popularity have provoked responses from many competitors, but there is a particular contrast in the flagship CDMA touchscreen handsets released by RIM and Palm --- the other two smartphone developers that grow their own operating systems -- since then.

Continue reading Switched On: With Pre, Palm breaks from the Storm

Filed under: Cellphones

Switched On: With Pre, Palm breaks from the Storm originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Krave ZN4’s successor named Inferno, now moving to field trials?

That Motorola Inferno is looking more real than ever for a couple reasons: first, we've been able to confirm it with a trusted source of ours, and two, Boy Genius Report has it on good authority that it's about to start field trials this coming week. In keeping with the pyrotechnic theme pioneered by the Krave ZN4's "Blaze" codename, it seems the production device may now be called "Torch" -- and, somewhere along the course of its R&D evolution, may have lost the translucent cover. Ironically, we really liked the cover on the ZN4 -- the touch sensitivity is one of the more trick features we've seen on a handset in recent memory -- but, you know, we wouldn't want to question Moto's infinite wisdom.

Filed under: Cellphones

Motorola Krave ZN4's successor named Inferno, now moving to field trials? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netbook in a suitcase: all the shortcomings of a subnote in a large, inconvenient package

This is true art, friend. The amazing "brotato" (rhymes with potato, in a perfect world) has hacked together netbook components, an ancient keyboard and a 14.2-inch LCD into this classy case, dubbing the project "The Poor Man's Netbook." The box is running Windows XP, but he tested it out with Windows 7 and Mac OS X and it performed beautifully, except for the Bluetooth 2.1 module. The box is based on a Mini-ITX Intel D945GCLF2 Dual Core 1.6Ghz Atom motherboard, with 2GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD and 802.11n WiFi -- though you'll have to hunt down an outlet, there's no battery power here. The best news is that he's selling the whole conglomeration on eBay, perfect for completing that piece of horrible cyberpunk fiction you've been slaving over on your boringtop.

[Thanks, Ryan]

Filed under: Desktops

Netbook in a suitcase: all the shortcomings of a subnote in a large, inconvenient package originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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