Japanese company Takara Tomy launches the xiao digital camera with an integrated printer using the novel ZINK (Zero Ink) printing Technology from ZINK Imaging. Polaroid has plans for a similar product to be available next year. The xiao features a “retro” design and innovative built-in software to enable a variety …

Original post by TecheBlog Staff

When Mark Hurd took by as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in 2005 and started looking at the company’s businesses, he found a neglected little unit called ProCurve that made networking gear, which is used to connect computing systems on corporate campuses.

ProCurve had been stifled under Carleton Fiorina, his predecessor as chief executive, who simultaneously served on the board of Cisco Systems, the dominant player in the industry. Fiorina supported the longstanding alliance amidst HP and Cisco, in which HP sold computers and Cisco sold network equipment to the same customers.

Hurd decided on a different approach. He championed the ProCurve business, helping nurture it from a few hundred million dollars in annual sales to about $1 billion. It has become HP’s second most profitable business and one of its fastest growing.

Now HP is directly attacking Cisco in a bid to capture a larger chunk of the $20 billion market for local area network and wireless switches. “HP has declared war,” said Mark Fabbi, a networking analyst at the research firm Gartner. “HP has the potential to completely change the dynamics of the networking industry.”

Hewlett-Packard’s strategy with ProCurve — expand revenue and profit by biting into a leader’s lucrative franchise — is vintage Hurd. And it offers some insights into how the company has outperformed its peers financially, even as the technology industry has faced a global slowdown.

On Monday, HP, the largest maker of computers and printers, formally reported net income of $2.11 billion, or 84 cents a share, for its fiscal fourth quarter, about the same as for the same period the previous year. Revenue rose 19 percent to $33.6 billion. Laptops, compact servers and software were strong, as HP continued to put pressure on rivals like Dell and IBM.

Although the company did not break out figures for ProCurve, which…

Original post by dhiram

Looking to save money on a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes that holiday season? Try searching for Manolo Blahnicks.

A handful of new Web sites with names like Typo Bay and Typo Buddy are out to help shoppers save money by searching eBay for misspelled type names. Such items often have fewer bidders considering they do not seem in search results for humans who spell the items correctly, and therefore they can be bought at a lower price.

It’s a well-known strategy among longtime eBay shoppers, but one that owners of these sites are hoping will translate into big business — relatively speaking — as shoppers look to save money that holiday season.

Typo Buddy started about six months ago and has as many as 80,000 visitors on its top days, said its president, Jonathan Lieberman, an Net entrepreneur in San Diego. “I expect in that market, where humans are ever more vigilant for deals, that we’ll do really well that holiday season,” he said.

Joseph Mantha, the co-creator of Typo Bay, which started in 2007, said October had been the site’s busiest month. (A big month for Typo Bay means about 4,000 visitors — and about $500.) He said he expected traffic to grow in the weeks before the holidays.

Apparently there are deals to be found. Heather Guinther, a customer service representative from Newport Beach, California, recently used Typo Buddy to find an $850 pair of “Manolo Blahnick” shoes for about $350.

“I knew I could find some Manolos on there considering it’s not an easy name to spell,” she said.

Abercrombie & Fitch, Louis Vuitton and Banana Republic are among the most misspelled qualitys, Lieberman said. (It’s the word “banana” that gets them.) There are misspelled categories, as well: eBay is host to a thriving marketplace for “jewlry.”

Visitors to these sites enter the…

Original post by dhiram

In the heat of battle, their minds clouded by fear, anger or vengefulness, even the best-trained soldiers can act in ways that violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement. Now some researchers propose that robots could do better.

“My research speculation is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can,” said Ronald Arkin, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who is designing software for battlefield robots under contract with the U.S. Army. “That’s the case I assemble.”

Robot drones, mine detectors and sensing devices are already common on the battlefield but are controlled by humans. Many of the drones in Iraq and Afghanistan are operated from a command post in Nevada. Arkin is talking about robots operating truly autonomously, on their own.

He and others say that the technology to assemble deadly autonomous robots is inexpensive and proliferating and that the advent of these robots on the battlefield is only a matter of day.

That means, they say, that it is moment for citizens to start talking about whether that technology is something they want to embrace.

“The fundamental thing is not to be blind to it,” Arkin said.

Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield in England wrote last year in the journal Innovative Technology for Computer Professionals that “this is not a ‘Terminator’-style science fiction but grim reality.”

Sharkey said that South Korea and Israel were among countries already deploying armed robot border guards. In an interview, he said there was “a headlong rush” to develop battlefield robots that construct their own decisions about when to attack.

“We don’t want to get to the point where we should have had that discussion 20 years ago,” said Colin Allen, a philosopher at Indiana University and a co-author of “Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From…

Original post by dhiram

In the age of YouTube, online video has opened a world of possibilities for artists like James and Tyler McFadden. by the last two years, the duo has produced a collection of quirky, short, animated films with their Web-based production studio, GoPotato TV. But all the technology in the world hasn’t changed one thing for the McFadden brothers. “Making money is not an easy thing to do with online video,” says Tyler McFadden, 27, who heads up business development for the company.

certain, Big Media is starting to see the Web as a source of high-quality video talent; on Nov. 24, Fox Interactive Media unit IGN.com said it reached production and distribution deals with a dozen independent Web producers, including Black 20 Digital Studios, CollegeHumor, and ScrewAttack.com. But for every indie producer that lands a deal, scores are struggling to get noticed.

Online Talent Scout

That’s where Plentitube comes in. An online talent scout, Plentitube is trying to become a middleman of the new media, a matchmaker for the YouTube generation. In the 1950s, a leggy blonde would get discovered while waiting tables at Chasen’s restaurant in Los Angeles. But in the Digital Age, Plentitube founders Jon Labes and Talia Pulver believe the future of talent discovery will happen increasingly in online venues like the one they are building. “We are creating new types of matchmaking services,” says Labes, 25, who is additionally Plentitube’s CEO.

Before they signed on with Plentitube, the McFadden brothers managed to license a few shorts with Viacom’s Comedy Central and with Web players such as Atom.com. They’ve pulled in some revenue from advertisements shown on their videos on Google’s YouTube. And they have been trying to break into the big leagues by working on an casual basis with UTA Online, the division of Hollywood agency United Talent that represents…

Original post by dhiram

Against the backdrop of an economy that grows more precarious by the day, the outlook for holiday gift spending is bleak. Even so, consumers will be buying gifts, and consumer electronics will be high on their shopping lists, even whether spending will be lower that year.

Amid the diminished expectations, some product categories will hold their own that season, industry and retail analysts say. An early November survey of consumer intentions by the Consumer Electronics Assn. found that U.S. shoppers expect to spend an average of $1,437 on gifts that year, less than the $1,671 they spent in 2007. Still, consumers say they’ll allocate a larger percentage of their spending — 28 percent vs. 22 percent last year — to consumer electronics. The view is that families will opt for at-home entertainment rather than travel and dining out.

And despite what you may have heard about video entertainment migrating to the Web, the TV set is still the king of the home entertainment universe. Prices are coming down quickly. In September, the average price on a 32-inch LCD TV was $858, a drop of about $100 from the same period in 2007. Now, it’s possible to buy a 32-inch LCD set for as little as $399.

No Competition for Blu-ray

One reason, says iSuppli analyst Riddy Patel, is that there is an oversupply of LCD panels, so manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, and Sharp can pass favorable component pricing on to consumers. “The prices are suddenly very appealing on these sets,” Patel says. “The only question is how consumers will react.” Her firm recently slashed its 2008 forecast for LCD TVs by 5 million units, to 94 million. It additionally trimmed its 2009 forecast to 112.5 million units, from 124 million units, meaning the market is growing, though more slowly than before.

Consumers may additionally be…

Original post by dhiram

Kodak is promoting its s1220 Photo Scanning system, an out of the box solution for converting prints to digital images to preserve the memories from your (and your whole family’s) film based photos. The s1220 virtually eliminates labor intensive manual feeding as you can place even a disorganized stack of …

Original post by TecheBlog Staff