Items tagged with door
What Nest did for the thermostat, August will do for the conventional door lock. The door lock is one of those things that has largely gone untouched over the years. Sure, there are very expensive editions out there that support wireless home automation and remote unlock systems, but the vast majority of people are using a typical key-lock that was designed many decades ago. Yves Behar, a famed designer who prefers to put his touches on consumer electronics, has helped to engineer August -- it's a smart lock that doesn't rely on Wi-Fi. The Smart Lock is the first product from August, a company building products that make life simpler, allowing physical environments to seamlessly respond to user...
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We had to do a double take when we saw that a company called Cyberdyne recently demonstrated a "cyborg-type" "robot suit." Our double take was quickly followed by yet another double take (would that be a quadruple take?) when we saw that Cyberdyne was calling the robot suit, "HAL." (For those who are missing the Sci-Fi cultural references: Cyberdyne was the name of the fictional company from the Terminator movies that eventually gives rise to the artificial intelligence and cyborgs that nearly wipe out humanity; and the HAL 9000 was the fictional, artificial-intelligence-based computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey that commits murder in order to preserve the integrity of its mission. We're guessing...
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Of course you'd love to know what that Google engineer makes. But the idea behind Glassdoor, a startup which launched in public beta on Wednesday at 12:01 AM EDT, is more than just that. In addition, the site wants you to review your company, and let people know just what you really think about your CEO, your workplace atmosphere, its politics - and your salary. Anonymously, and free, of course.Founded by veterans of Microsoft and Expedia (Rich Barton, the CEO of real estate site Zillow, is non-executive chairman) Glassdoor has a fairly simple goal: Make salary and workplace-quality information (the kind of stuff you'd love to have when you're interviewing for a new job) as public as possible.It's...
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It's no secret that Zune sales are a fraction of those of the iPod, and apparently GameStop has seen enough. In its earnings call on Thursday, GameStop indicated it has exited the Zune marketplace.The move is unlikely to affect GameStop, whose sales come almost completely from video games but it puts up another hurdle in Microsoft's attempt to grow Zune sales."We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated," said a GameStop spokesperson. "It (also) did not fit with our product mix." GameStop made the decision about a month ago. GameStop said it will sell Zune players online until it clears out its inventory.GameStop has hundreds of stores...
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Blizzard Entertainment announced yesterday that their MMORPG game World of Warcraft passed the ten million subscriber mark. Interestingly, 5.5 million of those users are in Asia, with 2 million in Europe and 2.5 million in North America. Since debuting in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most popular MMORPG around the world. It was the bestselling PC game of 2005 and 2006 worldwide, and finished behind only World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade®, the first expansion pack for the game, in 2007.* In addition to being the bestselling PC game of 2007 in both North America and Europe, The Burning Crusade holds the record for fastest-selling PC game of...
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Intuit, maker of Quicken products, started using a "strong encryption" method in 2003, but apparently a backdoor has been found that might compromise passwords: "A Russian firm that provides password-recovery services says it has found a backdoor in the encryption mechanism that Quicken uses to secure password-protected files, a feature that makes millions of users of the personal finance program more vulnerable to government spooks or other highly determined snoops." Luckily the security hole is one that requires a lot of resources to compromise, so it's unlikely that a common script kiddie would be able to exploit it....
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Toshiba's entering the desktop external hard drive market with a bang, offering a 200 GB unit for $229.99 MSRP. Sweet. Toshiba's USB 2.0 portable external hard drives come bundled with the NTI Shadow software. The click-free, switch-free and button-free backup solution enables users to simply connect the drive, set the backup parameters and enjoy peace of mind in knowing critical and cherished digital information is protected. This easy-to-use solution is ideal for any home or small business. 200 GB holds 23 high-definition videos. Sheesh. I'm going to start buying bad Hi-Def movies just to get the...
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We hardware fanbois at HotHardware observe which processor is chosen by computer manufacturers like an old man at a racetrack watches the horses. Hewlett-Packard surprised us a bit by skipping right past Intel and AMD and using chipset maker Via Technologies of Taiwan for the processor in their new desktop, aimed at the mainland Chinese market. Via brings some novel characteristics to HP. The processor consumes only 20 watts of power, relatively low for a desktop chip. IT managers around the world are trying to curb power consumption by buying more energy-efficient servers and desktops. Reducing energy consumption has been a particularly acute issue in China where much of the electricity...
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I look forward to the future, when laptop computers are so cheap they aren't worth stealing. As bad as having to buy a new one is, it's all the sensitive information on your machine that keeps you up nights if yours is stolen. Business Week uses Seagate's new drive encryption capability as a jumping off point to examine the ways currently available to keep bad people from doing bad things with your 411, and maybe even get the hardware back for you: By the reckoning of IT research firm Gartner Group, the loss of a single laptop to theft averages $6,285 when you include replacement of not only hardware and software but also the loss...
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