YouTube user lamgngo created this ball machine for his dog Jerry. It took him about two years of off and on work. The ball throwing gadget contains safety features such as IR proximity sensors. The expression of the dog when he runs back and forth is just priceless.
HTC G2, the new edition to the family of Android-powered phones expected in May has been spotted by Engadget China. The G2 appears to have a 3.2 megapixel camera, lacks a physical keyboard, and is dressed in glossy white paint. Those are all the specs I can tell by the above screeenshot.
[via Engadget China]
Are you the type that likes to listen to your iPod or MP3 player while sitting at your desk, but would rather not use those pesky headphones? The TuneLight MP3 Speaker System holds your pencils, powers your lighting, carries your paperclips, and plays your iPod or other MP3 player for you. The folks at Gracious Home were selling it at $39.99, but is now making it available for $19.99. The TuneLight MP3 Speaker System is able to play the iPod or MP3 music with a headphone jack.
[Available here]
[Brian Dunn]
Brian Dunn, the current President and COO of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) will be promoted to CEO this summer. This is because the current CEO, Brad Anderson will be set to retire this summer. Anderson has been CEO of Best Buy for about seven years. Even though Anderson will be retiring from the CEO position, he will be retaining his position as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors in order to help with the transition.
Brian Dunn started at Best Buy as a store associate 23 years ago. He climbed the corporate ladder to become President and COO in 2006. Since then, Dunn was responsible for Best Buy’s 1,000 retail outlets and the Geek Squad. Dunn takes the reins from Anderson at a time where Circuit City, one of Best Buy’s biggest competitors is liquidating all of their stores. However Best Buy has also been hit by the recession as their revenue dropped by 77%.
Best Buy has about 150,000 employees across the globe. Many of the corporate employees at Best Buy work on a result-only environment where they can choose whether to work from home or go to the office as long as deadlines are met. This has worked well for the company as productivity has gone up by 41% and accounts have been reconciled from 120 accounts a year to over 600.
According to a company filing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, IBM has acquired stake in Changhong Electric worth $15.8 million. Changhong is China’s largest TV production company. The investment was made through IBM’s Global Services China unit. Through the investment, IBM acquired 1.56% stake in Sichuan Changhong Electric from their parent company, Changhong Group. Changhong transferred 29.76 million shares to IBM based on a stock value of 3.64 yuan (U.S. $0.53) per share.
Changhong also manufactures air conditioners, MP3 players, DVD players, batteries, packaging materials, and mold processors. Changhong is an IBM customer through the use of the American company’s Product Innovation Management model.
[via PC World]
[Sony Bravia V1]
In order to preserve energy, a new line of Sony Bravia televisions will automatically turn off when no one is in the room. The Bravia V5 line of TVs will have a small sensor under the display screen that is able to tell whether there are people in the room. If someone leaves, then the LCD screen will cut off power. When someone returns, the TV will turn back on. This will reduce energy consumption by 50% during the time that display switches off.
Sound and other circuits will remain turned on for roughly thirty minutes. After that, the TV will go into standby mode.
Aside from standby and automatic detection, the Sony V5 Bravia lines will use less power than the V1 sets released last year. The 40 inch V5 will consume 129 watts and the 46 inch V5 models will consume 153 watts. The 40 inch Sony V1 Bravia TV uses 217 watts and the 46 inch V1 uses 263 watts. The V5 models were able to match and exceed the EnergyStar 3.0 specification by this reduction in energy.
These TVs will arrive in the U.S. within the first half of the year. Prices are not yet known for the U.S. market. But the TVs will be available in Japan starting February 20th. The 40 inch will cost ¥210,000 (US$2,323) and the 46 inch will cost ¥280,000 ($3,098).
[via PC World]
If you and a friend, spouse, or significant other like to travel together with your Apple products, then this might be the right gadget for you to buy. This USB power adapter offers two ports to plugin your iPhone or iPod to charge in a wall. The USB Travel Mate Adapter has foldable plugs, a blue LED indicator, comes with a travel bag, and has a removable car cigarette plg that can be rotated 180°. This USH device is also compatible with other brands such as certain phones for Nokia, Motorola, BlackBerry, HTC, Dopod, and the Sony Ericsson.
The price is only $25 and it comes with a user manual, connector tips x 5, a USB retractable cable, a USB charger, the car cigarette plug, and a carrying pouch.
Available at USB Geek
Research In Motion is attempting to match the success made by the Apple iTunes App Store. As you may know, over half a billion applications have been downloaded on the iTunes App Store already. Now Research In Motion is accepting applicants for their application store. Research In Motion’s store will be called the BlackBerry Storefront. Applications have to be downloaded wirelessly to a BlackBerry smartphone and must be usable without requiring customization.
There is also a BlackBerry Fund that exists to promote companies to make applications for Research In Motion. Supposedly the fund is about $150 million and was set up by Research In Motion, RBC, and Thomson Reuters.
More information about the application submissions can be found at: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/application_storefront.jsp.
[via GigaOm and VentureBeat]
Circuit City Stores, Inc. (OTC:CCTYQ) announced today that they are asking a bankruptcy court to allow them to close all their stores and sell off all their assets. What cause Circuit City to go downhill? Circuit City staff struggled to provide technical advice to customers. They stopped investing in hiring and training programs.
Meanwhile competition like Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart stepped up their technology offerings and trained their employees to properly explain specifications of their products. About 34,000 people will be out of jobs as a result of the bankruptcy.
InterTAN Canada Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Circuit City will remain open and will not be part of the liquidation. InterTan has about 765 stores in Canada. Circuit City attempted to find a buyer including Golden Gate Capital and Mexican billionaire and major shareholder Ricardo Salinas Pliego. But it did not work out.
The Motorola Tundra is the next addition to the company’s Push to Talk line of phones. The phone has Built to Military Standard (MIL-STD) 810F specs that can take a beating. The Tundra has aGPS navigation built-in and works with the AT&T Navigator and TeleNav Track and Xora. The resolution of the camera is 2 megapixels. The zoom is 4x.
Supported music file types are MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+, and AMR. Pictures and sounds can be added into text messages. The phone works on a 3G network and has a talk time of 5 hours.
The price of the phone is $199.99 after a $50 rebate and is available on the AT&T website.
[via Engadget Mobile]