The Review Blog

As you probably know, bistable or passive displays like the E-Ink ones in e-readers focus on battery life and readability rather than color and interactivity. The latest devices have been optimized for fast page refreshes and touch operation, but generally you’re still waiting a half a second or so for the screen to flip over to the next page, menu, or what have you.

But that’s not all they’re capable of. We’ve seen hacks before, but this one definitely takes the cake. Check out this video of a Nook Touch from XDA hacker marspeople:

Bear in mind this is strictly a hack and not a full-on release or commercially developed product. Most people wouldn’t want to use the device in this state: it’s not consistent in how fast it responds, there are graphical glitches, and it probably drains the battery like crazy. But the fact is they’ve got a passive display refreshing ~15-20 times per second and responding to touches instantly like a normal tablet.

The possibilities for this generation of readers are limited: few people are going to install a hack like this, and even if they did, not much content is really designed to be consumed this way. Pages are a natural way to read books, and scrolling constantly is kind of a pain. But it’s amazing to see these displays, usually so slow and static, being used so actively. Here’s hoping the next displays from E-Ink (or Bridgestone, or whoever) are capable of even more. Despite what people might say, the passive display still has a lot of potential to grow and evolve.

[via The Digital Reader]

HP just reported mixed first quarter earnings. The company posted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.92, down 32 percent from the prior-year period (GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.73, down 38 percent from the prior-year period). First quarter net revenue came in at $30 billion, down 7 percent from the previous year. Analysts expected earnings of $0.87 cents a share on revenue of $30.7 billion. GAAP Net Income was down 44 percent to $1.5 billion.

“In the first quarter, we delivered on our Q1 outlook and remained focused on the fundamentals to drive long-term sustainable returns,” Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We are taking the necessary steps to improve execution, increase effectiveness and capitalize on emerging opportunities to reassert HP’s technology leadership.”

In the Americas, first quarter revenue was $13.2 billion, down 9 percent year over year. Europe, the Middle East and Africa revenue of $11.7 billion was down 4 percent year over year, and revenue in Asia Pacific was $5.2 billion, representing a 10 percent decrease year over year.

Revenue from outside of the United States in the first quarter accounted for 66 percent of total HP revenue. BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) generated revenue of $3.1 billion, down 13 percent from the year-ago period, and representing 10 percent of total HP revenue. Revenue in HP’s commercial businesses declined 4 percent year over year. Revenue in HP’s consumer businesses, within PSG and IPG, was collectively down 23 percent year over year.

In terms of specific product lines, the Personal Systems Group (PSG) revenue declined 15 percent year over year, and services revenue of $8.6 billion grew 1 percent year over year with a 10.5 percent operating margin. Imaging and Printing Group revenue declined 7 percent year over year. Consumer hardware revenue was down 15 percent year over year.Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN) revenue declined 10 percent year over year.

On the bright side, software revenue grew 30 percent year over year with a 17.1 percent. HP says software revenue was driven by 12 percent license growth, 22 percent support growth and 108 percent growth in services.

Aiming to become one of the giants of online advertising, ad retargeting startup AdRoll has hired Googler Suresh Khanna as its vice president of sales.

In nearly six years at Google, Khanna held a number of roles. Most recently, he was director of new advertiser sales, where he says he led the North American team for acquiring mid-market and larger advertisers. Until now, Khanna says AdRoll hasn’t had anyone focused on building out the sales team, so one of his big goals is to “attract rock stars.” He also says that he wants to help AdRoll build relationships with larger advertisers and ad agencies.

“I think it’s very early days on retargeting,” Khanna says. “We’ve got 3,500 customers but, again, I think the opportunity is in the millions of advertisers.”

Retargeting, where ads are delivered based on your past online behavior, sometimes get a bad rap. Khanna himself admits that he had a similar “knee jerk” reaction when he heard about AdRoll, thinking of it as a system where, say, someone abandons an e-commerce shopping cart with kitchen knives, then suddenly finds that they’re bombarded with kitchen knife ads wherever they go online. The key, he says, is to expand the definition of retargeting from that narrow use case to thinking “more strategically” about taking advantage of “all the data you have on all your customers.”

“I think that’s classic early days,” he says. “When you’re on the bleeding edge, that’s what the first round of people in the space might have done, but we need to push beyond that.”

AdRoll recently announced that it quadrupled revenue last year and was profitable for the first time.

(I also see, via LinkedIn, that Khanna is the co-founder and co-owner of Kasa Indian Eatery, one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco.)

Tabber is an upcoming Kickstarter project that essentially adds an LED light show to your guitar and, more importantly, allows you to learn to play chords and solos by following the lights on the fretboard.

The idea is definitely not new. The Fretlight guitar beat these guys to the punch and I wonder what patent issues they will have to deal with. However, as an idea, it’s pretty ingenious. The Tabber is a “sleeve” that fits over the neck of your guitar and it should work, as the folks at Tabber reiterate, on any git-fiddle in your possession.

The project uses an open source Arduino board and open source software to drive the lights and/or create an active light show for guitarists who don’t need TAB help and are instead interested in looking like Peter Frampton in the year 2020.

The project is launching soon on Kickstarter and should be an interesting addition to the gigger’s bag of tricks.

Project Page

Tabber is an upcoming Kickstarter project that essentially adds an LED light show to your guitar and, more importantly, allows you to learn to play chords and solos by following the lights on the fretboard.

The idea is definitely not new. The Fretlight guitar beat these guys to the punch and I wonder what patent issues they will have to deal with. However, as an idea, it’s pretty ingenious. The Tabber is a “sleeve” that fits over the neck of your guitar and it should work, as the folks at Tabber reiterate, on any git-fiddle in your possession.

The project uses an open source Arduino board and open source software to drive the lights and/or create an active light show for guitarists who don’t need TAB help and are instead interested in looking like Peter Frampton in the year 2020.

The project is launching soon on Kickstarter and should be an interesting addition to the gigger’s bag of tricks.

Project Page