Got big pockets? Samsung’s Galaxy Note headed to AT&T on Feb. 19 for $300

Skinny jeans wearers need not apply. AT&T announced Tuesday that Samsung’s massive 5.3-inch Galaxy Note — which was one of the most intriguing devices at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show — will be available in the U.S. on February 19 for $300 with contract.

The Galaxy Note occupies a weird space between a smartphones and a tablets, but for some it may just be the perfect balance of the two form factors. Pre-orders for the … Continue Reading

Barnes & Noble working on a new Nook, finally going international

Barnes & Noble is reportedly working on a new e-reader device that could help the book publisher take on both Amazon and the international market.

Barnes & Noble’s line of Nook e-reader devices, which first debuted in 2009, are helping the company boost its digital sales of e-books. The Nook also helps Barnes & Noble compete against online retail giant Amazon, which has its own line of Kindle e-readers, as well as a healthy lead … Continue Reading

Tablet ownership doubled over the 2011 holiday season

Between Kindlemania and the usual gift-giving glut of gadgets, the number of e-reader- and tablet-owning U.S. consumers doubled between mid-December 2011 and early January 2012.

According to research just published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 29 percent of adults own at least one tablet or e-reader. Over the winter holidays, ownership numbers rose for both device types from 10 percent to 19 percent.

The Pew project conducted three surveys, one in mid-December … Continue Reading

Chegg’s new e-book reader is practical, comfortable, boring

Chegg’s digital textbook reader is the “nice guy:” comfortable, treats you right, but doesn’t come with many exciting twists.

“[E-readers] are built for reading purposes, not studying purposes,” said Brent Tworetzky, product leader for Chegg, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We wanted to create an environment that works where students need it.”

Digital textbooks are quickly replacing the traditional, heavy, and cumbersome books of semesters past. This is especially the case as laptops replace notebooks … Continue Reading

Hands-on with the One Laptop per Child XO 3.0 tablet (video)

Of the major products unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, one of the most promising was the new  education tablet from One Laptop per Child. The nonprofit group, which has teamed up on the tablet design with Marvell, showed off its OLPC XO 3.0 tablet and said it was ready to start negotiations with governments or other bodies to purchase large numbers of the devices.

Is this the design that will finally get … Continue Reading

Board of Awesomeness uses Kinect to power a skateboard

In what can only be termed awesome, the folks at Chaotic Moon Labs decided to prove how much smarter they are than the rest of us by connecting a Kinect–Microsoft Xbox 360′s motion sensitive gaming controller camera–to a specialized skateboard body. In what looks to be a cross between a itty bitty dune buggy and a Segway, the Board of Awesomeness appeals to young skater in all of us.

Says Ben Lamm, CEO of Chaotic … Continue Reading

Toshiba shows off its 10-inch Excite X10 Android tablet

A new generation of tablets will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, including a 10-inch Android model from Toshiba.

The new Excite X10 tablet from Toshiba is one of the thinnest and lightest of the bunch, at just 0.3 inches thick and 1.2 pounds. The device joins other Toshiba Thrive models that are already on the market, realizing a tablet trend that started with the Apple iPad and is now gaining … Continue Reading

Amazon creating digital media technology, hiring developers

Digital media is on Amazon‘s mind. The company is building out a team for an “existing product” in the Amazon Web Services division.

Amazon was born out of e-commerce and has stretched its arms into the computer technology field with its Kindle e-reader and new Kindle Fire tablet. Now that it has a tablet to fill with media other than e-books, the company has to think on a broader digital media scale. Prior to Apple’s … Continue Reading

iPad sales slip as Kindle Fire sales surge

We’ve been hearing for weeks that the Kindle Fire is selling like hash browns at the Waffle House at the end of the universe, but now, one analyst says those sales have put a sizable dent in Apple’s iPad sales for the final quarter of 2011.

Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt estimates that Apple may have sold as few as 13 million iPads during the recent holiday shopping season — that’s about 2 million less … Continue Reading

Asus’ Transformer Prime tablet to run Ice Cream Sandwich on 1/12

For all those Android lovers on the edges of their seats, Asus‘ Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet will officially run Google’s Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system on January 12.

The company announced today that it will be issuing a firmware update to all its Transformer Prime owners worldwide. The update will be completed over the air. The tablet was rumored to be the first mainstream tablet to run on Google’s latest operating system, which … Continue Reading

Review: OnLive Mobilized: How cloud gaming works on cell carriers

This holiday season, mobile gamers will get a chance to do something they’ve never been able to do: play console games on smartphones and tablets.

Last week OnLive – the cloud-gaming company which streams games rather than playing them natively – released an app for Android (the iOS update is still pending approval from Apple) for use with smartphones and tablets. The mobile service functions much like how OnLive streams high-quality games-on-demand to desktop computers … Continue Reading

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Kindlemania! Amazon is selling 1M e-readers each week

Amazon’s Kindle lineup is en fuego and selling at a rate of more than one million units per week.

For three weeks in a row, the Kindle maker has seen this astounding statistic repeat itself.

The Kindle Fire is also the site’s top best seller, its most popular gift and the product that appears on the most wishlists for all of Amazon.com.

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched -– it’s the … Continue Reading

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 no longer banned in Australia

Samsung executives’ moods are no longer down under. Australia’s High Court removed its country-wide ban on the company’s tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, today.

Australia’s court prohibited the sale of the tablet when Apple filed an infringement suit against the Galaxy Tab, a decision Samsung called “grossly unjust.” Apple’s iPad launched in Australia after releasing in the United States. The Galaxy tab shares similarities with the iPad, and can be counted among its biggest competitors. … Continue Reading

Here’s a $99 Android tablet you can buy right now, & it’s running Ice Cream Sandwich

Today, two little-known companies are releasing the very first publicly available Android tablet to run Ice Cream Sandwich, the highly anticipated mobile operating system from Google.

While larger companies like Asus and Lenovo are still working to get their own “Ice Cream tablet” offerings to market, you can buy this tablet, the Novo7, online right now, and for a shockingly low $99, at that.

The tablet, which comes from processor maker MIPS Technologies and CPU … Continue Reading

Check out Samsung’s transparent and flexible concept tablet (video)

Samsung has posted a video demonstrating a rather mind-blowing new concept tablet featuring a fully flexible AMOLED display.

You can see through it, bend it, fold it and roll it up — and of course, you can use it to read books, browse the web, take pictures and watch videos.

Granted, the video above is replete with special effects to show off as-yet unavailable-to-consumers technology. However, we’ve seen Samsung making big investments in flexible screens, … Continue Reading

Best Buy sells out of PlayBook, cancels Black Friday orders (updated)

Best Buy sold out of Research in Motion’s PlayBook tablets this Black Friday, leading to speculation that the company was canning the tablet altogether.

Best Buy confirmed to VentureBeat that it is not canceling the PlayBook; it’s just temporarily sold out.

After purchasing PlayBooks for the sale price of $199 on Best Buy’s website, customers reported having credit cards charged, with e-mails following soon after stating Best Buy was not going to deliver the tablet. … Continue Reading

Asus Transformer Prime is the first Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime might end up being the first tablet to feature Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich.

Although Lenovo was reportedly rolling out an Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tablet by the end of 2011, Asus is saying its newest offering will be the first to feature Ice Cream Sandwich. While the tablet will ship with Android 3.2 (a.k.a. Honeycomb), the manufacturers say it will be upgradable to Android 4.0 immediately.

The Transformer … Continue Reading

Lenovo reportedly rolling out Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet

Lenovo might be getting ready to pop out a new Android tablet, this time running Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest (and best designed) version of Google’s mobile OS, by the end of 2011.

According to “the little birdie” Engadget cited as a source, the tablet will feature a 10.1-inch touchscreen and should be ready in time for the holiday shopping season.

The blog also reports the new tablet will bring users a fingerprint scanner, a … Continue Reading

Kobo acquired: Japanese web retailer Rakuten paid $315M cash

Rakuten, the largest online shopping mall operator in Japan, has acquired e-reader manufacturer Kobo for $315 million in cash.

In the deal, Rakuten has bought 100 percent of all issued and outstanding shares of Kobo, which makes products that compete with Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle product lines.

Around fifty-eight percent of Kobo was owned by Indigo Books & Music, a Canadian retail bookstore chain. Indigo chief executive Heather Reisman said today that … Continue Reading

Video: A deeper look at the $35 Android tablet shows that it’s usable, mostly

An Android tablet that sells for just $35 seems like an irresistible bargain. At that price, you might even be willing to put up with some serious tradeoffs. But does the Aakash tablet work well enough to be useful?

We were able to get on our hands on this device twice. The first day we had limited time with it, and wrote an overview, India’s $35 Aakash Android tablet lands in America, based on our … Continue Reading