Miscellaneous

When product designers at Martian Watches began development of their Martian Passport smartwatch, they made a risky decision to give the watch a traditional, stylish, and very analog look.

It's a design decision that, not surprisingly, has led the consumer-electronics crowd to ding Martian Watches and prompted the fashion-focused crowd to applaud the Irvine, Calif.-based company. It also captures the inherent challenge facing the "next big thing" some believe is coming to your wrist: Unlike a laptop computer or even a phone, a watch is a fashion statement. And for the tech crowd, a smartwatch -- … Read more

With Apple reportedly trying to reduce its reliance on Samsung, things just got a bit harder with the Korean company investing $111 million for a 3 percent stake in another big Apple supplier: Sharp.

While Samsung says it won't get involved with Sharp's business management in "any way or form," it will be getting a "steady" supply of LCD (liquid crystal display) panels used for smartphone and tablet displays. And it probably will get a line of sight into Sharp's future products and customers, as … Read more

Is it all getting too much?

Is your thinking crooked, your logic frazzled, and your every wire crossed?

Perhaps it's time to go and cut yourself off from your phone and Internet. No, not metaphorically, but literally.

That was allegedly the slightly illegal thought-process of Raymond Bischoff of Hastings, Minn.

As CBS Minnesota wires it, Bischoff, 65, allegedly thought it best to cut the wires and cables that happened to connect a local business to the Internet, the phone service, and even the satellite TV because he wanted to "relieve the pressure on his brain."

Some might … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--For those who want to take their music with them, a more convenient option than lugging loudspeakers is now available: fist-sized, battery-powered devices called vibration speakers.

These chunky widgets transform a table, floor, car roof, or even window into a large speaker. One one end is a tweeter for playing higher-frequency pitches, and on the other a driver that moves the surface to which it's attached, converting it into a giant woofer.

The devices were thumping loudly on the CeBIT tech show floor here as manufacturers tried to drum up customers, distributors, retailers, and business partners. … Read more

Sharp said it will issue 35.8 million shares to give Samsung's Japanese electronics unit an approximate 3 percent stake in the company. Sharp noted in a press release that the investment "is to build up mutual trust" in the liquid crystal display business and at the same time boost Sharp's capital position.

There's little love in the air for Windows 8 on at least two fronts, as Asus warns of poor uptake for the operating system.

Yesterday, Asus reported a boost in revenue during 2012's fourth quarter, growing by 14 percent year-on-year to around $4 billion, with net profit up by 21 percent to $202 million.

As one of the champions to Windows 8 in recent quarters, the company has invested millions into developing new devices to take full advantage of the array of features in the next-generation software. But the company said while its Windows 8-powered notebooks have been … Read more

Math. The very word can conjure painful memories: long division, square roots, the quadratic equation.

Not only do many of us not like math; we're also not very good at it. In an international test of 15-year-olds, the U.S. placed 24th out of 64 countries.

"We don't currently, in this country, have a cultural expectation that yeah, you're going to learn math just like you're going to learn reading," said Glen Whitney. "It's OK to not be good at math."

Glen Whitney is good at math. He's got a Ph.D. in it, and is trying to change the way we think about one of our least favorite subjects. … Read more

Samsung apologized yesterday for the January acid leak at one of its semiconductor plants that killed one worker and injured four others. The event occurred at one of the plants in the Hwaseong area of South Korea.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Oh-Hyun Kwon said that as part of the apology, the company plans to revoke its bid to have all of its Hwaseong plants certified as green for another five years, the Yonhap News Agency reported today.

Kwon also promised that the company would take measures to prevent future accidents, saying that "we plan to overhaul the system in … Read more

A sweaty confession: I use my cell phone in the gym.

No, of course I don't talk into it. Who does that with a cell phone? But it's useful to have around, just in case someone needs you to urgently think about something -- or if you need to know what's happening out there somewhere. Texting and e-mailing are silent.

Some gyms, it seems, are very cell phone-averse. At Planet Fitness in Boston, for example, there is a very strict anti-cell phone policy.

You can only use your gadget in the lobby. Once you're on the … Read more