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

The announcement of the Acer Aspire R7 was the best example of the company’s assertion that it was moving from computers designed with touch to computers designed for touch. But if having a fancy, even unprecedented, hinge is what defines a touch-optimized notebook, Acer is a bit late to the party.

Last October, Switched On discussed the role that laptop-tablet hybrids — namely convertibles and detachables — would play in the differentiation of Windows 8 devices. Both types have seen their share of support. Detachables have included HP’s Envy x2, ASUS’ Transformer-inspired VivoTab and Microsoft’s Surface. (Dell’s XPS 10 is available only with Windows RT.)

Filed under: Apple, Microsoft

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Switched On: Hinging on success

There’s a new kid on the Arduino block, and it’s called the Arduino Robot. Launched yesterday at Maker Faire Bay Area, it’s the company’s first product that extends beyond single microcontroller boards. The Roomba-like design, which we first saw in November 2011, is the result of a collaboration with Complubot. It consists of two circular boards, each equipped with Atmel‘s ubiquitous ATmega32u4 and connected via ribbon cable.

The bottom board is home to four AA batteries (NiMH), a pair of motors and wheels, a power connector and switch plus some infrared sensors. By default it’s programmed to drive the motors and manage power. The top board faetures a color LCD, a microSD card slot, an EEPROM, a speaker, a compass, a knob plus some buttons and LEDs. It’s programmed to control the display and handle I/O. Everything fits inside a space that’s about 10cm high and 19cm in diameter.

Pre-soldered connectors and prototyping areas on each board make it easier to customize the robot platform with additional sensors and electronics. It even comes with eleven step-by-step projects and a helpful GUI right out of the box. The Arduino Robot is now on sale at the Maker Faire for $275 and will be available online in July. Take a look at our gallery below and watch our video interview with Arduino founder Massimo Banzi after the break.

Filed under: Misc, Robots

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Via: Make

Source: Arduino

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Arduino Robot launches at Maker Faire, we go hands-on (video)

When Valve‘s first hardware hire, Jeri Ellsworth, tweeted back in February that she was fired from the company, we were disappointed but also intrigued by what she meant by “time for new exciting projects.” Well we finally saw what she’s been up to here at at Maker Faire 2013. It’s called Cast AR, and it’s a pair of 3D augmented-reality glasses that she and former Valve programmer Rick Johnson were working on at Valve before they left.

The model we saw is still in the early prototype stages, but the concepts are already in place. Perched atop a pair of active shutter glasses are a couple of miniature LCD projectors, which bounce images from a connected computer onto a special reflective surface at a 120Hz refresh rate. A camera module sits on the eyewear’s bridge and monitors an array of infrared LEDs embedded in the reflective surface. This allows for quick and accurate head tracking. Join us after the break for our impressions and our video interview with Jeri Ellsworth.

Filed under: Gaming, Wearables

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Cast AR hands-on with Jeri Ellsworth at Maker Faire 2013 (update: video interview)

In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

It’s been a slow couple of weeks here through the beginning of May. Everyone, it seems, was saving up to pile all of their announcements at once, leaving us scrambling and our RSS feed spinning. Over the past few days, new phones were announced by BlackBerry, Nokia, Sony and Samsung while Google has been dropping all sorts of stuff in our laps at I/O and even Microsoft got in on the game by confirming Windows 8.1 will be shown next month. Surely someone could have made a few phone calls and maybe pushed their bit of news up or back a week or two.

As I write this, late at night in a hotel in San Francisco, it’s Google I/O that’s dominating the headlines. New Android boss Sundar Pichai promised a very dev-focused event, moving away from the consumer-heavy fireworks of years past, and that’s exactly what we got, with Google spending far more time talking APIs and IDEs than tablets and smartphones.

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Editor’s Letter: When it rains, it pours

It has been widely reported that Apple will debut a new streaming radio service at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month. The company was said to be close to striking a deal with Warner Music and Sony Music to launch its iRadio service, however recent reports suggest negotiations may have hit a roadblock that could prevent Apple from debuting the service at next month’s event. The Verge reports that BMG Rights Management, the fourth largest music publisher, is  not satisfied with the company’s deal and is holding out, therefore leaving Apple with only one major label onboard at this point. Apple’s streaming music service is said to be a hybrid Web and radio service with features similar to both Pandora and Spotify,

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Apple’s ‘iRadio’ hits another roadblock, WWDC launch might be delayed