Not all of us want to be locked into a long term contract with a wireless carrier. Especially when it comes to data-only devices that might not get used on a regular basis. For those that want to grab a 4G dongle or a mobile hotspot and go, without the need sign their life over, T-Mobile is launching four new pre-paid data options. The 4G passes start at $15 for 300MB over the course of a week, all the way up to 5GB for $50 over the course of a month. The plans are available on the Sonic 4G and plain ol' T-Mobile 4G mobile hotspots as well as the Rocket 3.0 laptop stick, but tablet users can also hop on the bandwagon. The Galaxy Tab 10.1, 7,0 Plus and SpringBoard are all eligible for the No Annual Contract mobile broadband passes. You can start topping off your megabytes instead of your minutes on May 20th. For more details check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading T-Mobile launches new contract-free, data-only plans

T-Mobile launches new contract-free, data-only plans originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 12:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� �|�Email this�|�Comments

As the software-as-a-service market continues to mature, there are companies emerging that are targeting specific sectors within the enterprise with solutions especially tailored and priced for them: the latest of these is InsightSquared, which has announced a Series A round of $4.5 million for its a business intelligence platform aimed specifically at small and medium-sized businesses.

The round was led by Atlas Venture, with participation also from NextView Ventures and new investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce.com. This brings total funding in the company since February 2011 to $5.5 million.

As part of the news, InsightSquared is also announcing that it is integrating with Salesforce for the latter company’s visualization services to be integrated into the service.

Other services included in InsightSquared fall firmly in the category of data analysis — typically the kind used by large enterprises and now becoming more affordable and accessible to smaller businesses, by way of the SaaS business model. They include activity tracking (dashboards to track activity from employees and clients in real-time, with trending options); sales forecasts; data quality monitoring (identifying, ranking and fixing data errors); ratios and KPIs; nightly emails; employee scorecards ranking each worker against his peers; tagging and filtering and integration with other data sources (eg voice tracking with M5 Networks); financial tracking and web tracking (with Google Analytics).

These services are offered in packages that begin at $99 per month, says the company.

The basic premise of InsightSquared is that data intelligence requirements for SMBs are different to those from larger enterprises — not just in terms of the kind of data that is covered, but in how the service is priced — because, as those who work with the SMB sector know, it is one of the most price-sensitive segments of all in the enterprise market.

“The requirements for making data intelligence useful to small and mid-sized businesses are much different than that of large enterprises,” Fred Shilmover, co-founder and CEO of InsightSquared, said in a statement.  “Our product is built with usability, data integrity and simple workflow as the central focuses.  Consequently, our cost-benefit proposition for the SMB market is compelling.”

Like its investor and partner Salesforce, InsightSquared is geared mainly at productivity and services around sales teams and those that are customer-facing in their businesses. Up to now, judging from the company’s publicly-disclosed customer list, it has made some inroads, through an integration with Bullhorn, into working with companies in the recruitment sector, with companies like Hireminds, Vertek, I-Technology and Hiregy among their customers.

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

The end of last week's Switched On left doubt for the future of dedicated devices that tread on the turf of smartphones. After all, funding is key to every major new product initiative and, despite the vast fortunes of many Silicon Valley engineers that have been accumulated via IPOs and acquisitions, few wish to take on the risk of fronting a new consumer device themselves.(In 2007, the handheld FlipStart PC was hatched from FlipStart Labs, funded by Vulcan Ventures, the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.)

Most venture capitalists abhor the device business; it is a rare device that makes it to the spotlight of startup debutante balls such as DEMO, TechCrunch Disrupt, or Launch. Even most of the 94 companies at CES' Eureka Park were not developing end-user devices Where, then, can a device entrepreneur go for funding and pick up some publicity in the process?

Continue reading Switched On: Big kicks, not all for starters

Switched On: Big kicks, not all for starters originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� �|�Email this�|�Comments

Arcade fan (and genius) Le Chuck got up one morning and thought "Why not build a perfect replica of Atari's Star Wars Arcade, at 1:6 scale?" The result is this amazing 12-inch cabinet with a fully working Atari-yoke, handmade from aluminum and a pair of potentiometers. Tucked inside the box is a modded Caanoo running MAME4all, which has been tweaked to boot straight into the game when activated. The whole project took him over 80 hours to put together, but we think it was time very well spent. If you want to see the thing in action (and sing along to the 8-bit version of the theme) then head on past the break.

Continue reading Star Wars Arcade gets fan-made mini-me, weeps tears of joy (video)

Star Wars Arcade gets fan-made mini-me, weeps tears of joy (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� Arcade Controls �|�Email this�|�Comments

Larry Page's tenure as Googler-in-chief has heralded the death of many ambitious experiments, but even he refuses to kill the self-driving car. His project head, Anthony Levandowski, has now asked the car makers of Detroit to sign up with Mountain View for hardware testing, saying that if driverless cars are not ready by the next decade, then it's "shame on us as engineers." There's still some way to go before the tech is road-worthy, but Google is already working with insurers to work out how your car is going to handle making that call to Geico when things go wrong.

Continue reading Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?'

Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� WSJ �|�Email this�|�Comments

Yep, we went way out for April's Engadget Show, taking our film crew to Asia this time out, to check out the markets of Taipei, Hong Kong and Shenzhen with our very own Richard Lai. We also scored interviews with Huawei's Chief of Design, Hagen Fendler and Michelle Hsiao of the ASUS Design Center. We'll be checking out the month's latest and greatest gadgets, including the HTC One X, S and V, Nokia Lumia 900 and the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, as well as a big ole pile of KIRFs -- some more convincing than others. We've also got a couple of performances by Brooklyn indie rockers Suckers and a whole bunch more.

Gallery: The Engadget Show 32: ASUS, Huawei and a trip to China's gadget markets

Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater
Guests: Hagen Fendler (Huawei), Michelle Hsiao (ASUS), Richard Lai, Guy Streit
Producer: Guy Streit
Director: Michelle Stahl
Executive Producers: Brian Heater, Joshua Fruhlinger and Michael Rubens
Music by: Suckers

Download the Show: The Engadget Show - 032 (HD) / The Engadget Show - 032 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show - 032 (Small)

Subscribe to the Show:

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (MP4).
[Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (MP4).
[RSS MP4] Add the Engadget Show feed (MP4) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
[HD RSS] Get the Engadget Show delivered automatically in HD.
[iPad RSS] Get the Engadget Show in iPad-friendly adaptive format.

The Engadget Show 32: ASUS, Huawei and a trip to Asia's gadget markets originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� �|�Email this�|�Comments

Microsoft has Clippy the Office Assistant to help confused users make their way around Word, and a startup from Israel called WalkMe earlier this month launched a service that offers the equivalent for the web: an interactive, on-screen guide that helps users get around complicated web pages. And two weeks out in the market, WalkMe has announced its first round of funding, from Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners.

The exact value of the Series A investment was not disclosed but TechCrunch understands it is over $1 million.

Since going live earlier this month, WalkMe’s CEO Dan Adika says it has signed up over 1,000 sites to incorporate it into its user interface (much to the delight of the designers who toiled over the original plans).

WalkMe is aiming the product at the kinds of companies that you may have grumbled about yourself when trying to figure out where to go and what to do on a web site: target clients are those working in the realm of business software, online shopping, banking and really anything that requires web input to work. WalkMe says its service works as an overlay on top of existing designs, making implementation relatively quick and painless. That means potentially cost reductions in two areas: serving customers and site operations.

WalkMe says that it will use the funding to market the service to more sites, and well as increase the functionality of the product.

Mangrove has focused a lot of its activity in early stage investments like this one, and WalkMe is also part of the VC’s bigger strategy of investing in the SaaS space.

In this case, partner Michael Jackson, who once been the COO of Skype, says that this investment might have more immediate, cross-pollinating benefits: “We invested in WalkMe’s technology after seeing the benefits that their initial implementations already deliver to our portfolio companies.”

Tired of reaching for the stylus, then your pen, oh, and then the stylus again? Wacom saw that, and updated the Bamboo Stylus with the new "Duo." Half pen, half stylus, and all yours for �34 (about $50) next month.

Continue reading Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo lets you draw something on tablets and paper

Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo lets you draw something on tablets and paper originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� �|�Email this�|�Comments

Long-running hacker magazine 2600 has been digging into its archives quite a bit as of late (it began releasing videos of the early HOPE conferences in December), and it's now gone back right to the beginning for its latest offering. It's just released 2600: The Hacker Digest - Volume 1, a DRM-free ebook that collects its first year of newsletters -- reformatted in book form for easier reading, but with every last detail intact (including typos). That's available in both the Kindle and Nook stores, as well as through 2600's own site in plain old PDF form, each of which set you back just under $4. What's more, while there's no firm word on any additional volumes just yet, 2600 says it'll keep them coming if there's enough support for the first one.

2600 Volume 1 released as a DRM-free ebook: phreak like it's 1984 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� 2600 �|�Email this�|�Comments

It's been less than a year since our first opportunity to get up close and personal with BMW's i8 plug-in electric car, and now the German automaker is back to tease a whole new beast. The Concept Spyder made a static appearance over the weekend, but today the sportier i8 has returned to the spotlight, with video footage in tow. BimmerPost managed to share some clips via YouTube, including a straight-cut-gear-fueled drive around a parking lot and across a lamp-lit bridge, somewhere in the Eastern U.S., believe it or not (take note of the I-95 sign in the first few seconds). You can also gawk at some side-to-side pans of the Spyder's exterior, with a few HD interior close-ups to boot. And where can you find said stimulating simulations? Buckle up and click past the break.

Continue reading BMW i8 Concept Spyder takes to the road, sounds almost as gorgeous as it looks (video)

BMW i8 Concept Spyder takes to the road, sounds almost as gorgeous as it looks (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink� �|� BimmerPost �|�Email this�|�Comments