We’re happy to introduce The Week in Green , a new item from our friends at Inhabitat . Each week they’ll recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us. Welcome! Sure, the iPad happened this week, but we also caught sight of several hot green gadgets and clean tech innovations this week that stand to shape the future of green consumer technology. First off, design star Philippe Starck brought haute design to clean tech with two novel designs for home wind turbines . Starck’s high-profile products have made him a household name, so we’re interested to see if his latest creations kick off a trend towards “designer” wind power. We were also impressed by researchers at Princeton University who recently found a way to integrate piezoelectric chips into flexible, durable rubber-based circuits . We’ve seen piezo power sources before, but applications for the new chips are sure to put bounce in your step: energy generating shoes, movement-powered microsurgical devices, and self-charging pacemakers are right around the corner. Interest in green transportation is building as Florida rides high on the government’s recently announced grants for high speed rail — the sunshine state is set to blaze a trail with $1.25 billion in funding. And for those with a soda habit, Takara Tomy’s cola-powered RC car is one sweet ride. The biobattery-powered car can convert any sugary liquid to energy, so pour in some Jolt and you’re good to go. Finally, love it or hate it — the launch of Apple’s iPad has dominated the newswires all week. While we appreciate the device’s e-book reading, toxin-free, recyclable construction and impressive battery life, but we have to ask: is it really green ? Inhabitat’s Week in Green: turbines, rubber circuits, and cola-powered cars originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | | Email this | Comments
A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that it will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers’ books for their desired prices. Macmillan is trying to price their e-books at $15, while Amazon prices e-books at $9.99. Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent said that unless Amazon sets the price of new e-books to $15, the publisher will not distribute new books to Amazon when they are released. On Friday, Amazon basically banned titles, both paper and digital, published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. And Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing. Amazon is now giving into Macmillan’s demands because of the publisher’s monopoly over its titles. In a passive aggressive manner, Amazon says that readers will decide whether it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for e-books. And that other publishers will compete by offering their books and lower prices. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week that publishers were unhappy with Amazon’s pricing mode, foreshadowing this disagreement with Macmillan. Jobs revealed that publishers are withholding their titles from Amazon because of Amazon’s pricing model. Jobs also said that prices for books on Apple’s new tablet device, the iPad, will be the same as Amazon’s pricing. Here is Amazon’s announcement: Dear Customers: Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases. We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative. Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy! Thank you for being a customer.
Calvin Chin is an American entrepreneur who lives in Shanghai. He founded Qifang , a P2P lending site for Chinese student loans. You can read more about Qifang here . He attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this last week, where China was the center of attention. We asked him to write this guest post and share his unique perspective as an American building a startup in the heart of China. Here at Davos it seems China keeps coming up in two ways – neither of them positive. One, with the worst of the crisis behind us, people are turning from last year’s hopes of China as economic savior to China as free-rider keeping its currency cheap, bullying its minorities and shirking its responsibilities in Copenhagen. Two, in the tech community, seems everyone is talking about Google, Chinese government hackers and censorship. My view, and I think it’s one that many in China would probably share, is that while free access to information and the rest of the world is inherently a good thing, so is political stability. The Chinese government has earned a lot of slack for raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and if things did go out of control a heck of a lot of people would get hurt. So even if they want China to be plugged in to the rest of the world to encourage innovation and Chinese tech entrepreneurship (which I think they do), they’d put that priority after getting most Chinese people better lives. It’s kind of the same deal that Chinese startups all make, to try to do build cool stuff but while working within the system. So Tudou and Youku screen their videos and the fastest growing microblogging service is run by a portal that has the infrastructure from screening blogs to be able to screen tweets. All these companies are making the same decision that Google made to enter China in 2004 too (and stay for now), but for Chinese entrepreneurs they don’t have the option of not being in the China market. It’s what they know and where they have their best shot at success. And I’m sure if you’d ask them, they’d sincerely agree that eliminating poverty and keeping things stable comes way before access to a few articles in a foreign language about events that don’t mean much to them. I don’t think many non-Chinese would like the aggressively patriotic and self-important China that would probably be the outcome of democracy there today anyways. The Chinese market for startups is growing so fast, is so competitive and is characterized by so many unfair advantages for the big players, that local entrepreneurs just keep their heads down and roll with the political and market changes. Take Digu for instance, they launched as a pretty simple copy of Twitter that focused on celebrity accounts, then pivoted to a social game model when all the startup microblogging platforms got shutdown and Sina (with a lock on celebrity blogs) launched Weibo , and are now back to straight microblogging with a better ability to keep the tweet streams “ harmonized .” Digu didn’t whine, they just sucked it up and forged ahead. This is typical for Chinese startups. Whether they are localizing an international hit , copy-2-china style, at a much cheaper price and a better UI like Kuukie . Or they’re a fit for Chinese net culture with a product that you don’t see elsewhere like Douban’s social network for talking about books (and now other media). The thing is while the majority of Chinese netizens really don’t care that much about what’s going on outside of China, the ones who do care, people who would start companies, people who want international news, all know workarounds to use services they like or read about sensitive topics from other perspectives. They use Twitter clients like Bage or free (http://hotspotshield.com/) or paid VPNs . So much so that Twitter won in the grassroots Chinamode awards. So actually, the Chinese government kinda gets the best of all worlds: most Chinese netizens are sufficiently inconvenienced so they’ll never stumble into places they shouldn’t, motivated innovators still find out about, get to, and can track any going on globally, and international companies that would otherwise compete for local market share get locked out.
Panasonic is nothing like shy about pushing out a plethora of compacts , but while it was talking up specs for the new Lumix F-series of compact cameras back at CES, we’ve just now got some prices and a release date to chew on. The FH1 (12 megapixel, 720p video) goes for $160, FH3 (14.1 megapixel, 720p) is $180, and the FH20 (14.1 megapixel, 720p) is $200. In slim land, the FP1 (12 megapixel) hits at $150 and the FP3 (14.1 megapixel, 720p) is $230. Finally, some killer value can be found in the bulkier F3, which does 12.1 megapixels and 720p video for a mere $130, and the barebones 10.1 megapixel F2. All of the cameras should be out in mid-February. Panasonic clamps down prices, release window for latest F-series line of compact cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | About.com | Email this | Comments
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 — some 250 million units ago, as Steve Jobs noted — it began with a laser-like focus on digital music. Swap out a hard drive and FireWire port for a cassette collection, and the product was clearly the reinvention of the Walkman. The first Switched On in 2004 pondered the iPod photo as a stepping stone to video. And by 2007, the iPhone and iPod touch had become capable of playing a broad array of content and would soon be able to extend their capabilities dramatically via apps. Nonetheless, while the iPhone and iPod touch were nearly as close cousins as the 3G and non-3G flavors of the iPad, they were each rooted firmly in the existing categories of smartphones and MP3 players and positioned against products in that space. Despite its limited app support, nobody thinks of the Zune HD as a handheld tablet; it’s a digital media player that competes against the iPod touch. Continue reading Switched On: Tabula rasa Switched On: Tabula rasa originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | | Email this | Comments
