Category: Gadgets

Tablet commerce war begins over iPad sales

| October 30, 2013

Walmart and Best Buy are already pulling out all the stops when it comes to selling the latest Apple device.

The Apple iPad Air will officially be available for purchase as of Friday, November 1, 2013, and many companies are already getting ready for the tablet commerce battle of the year to make sure that they will be the ones that will make the most sales from these highly coveted devices.

In fact, many retailers have been preparing themselves for a sales war unlike any that they have ever experienced.

In the spotlight, at the moment, are the tablet commerce efforts being made by Walmart and Best Buy, which have aggressively stepped up their games in order to secure their hold on the iPad sales market. They are both seeking to draw the largest number of buyers for the first wave of sales of these devices.

This includes tablet commerce efforts to offer these gadgets at a lower price than the competition.

Tablet Commerce - iPad sales warFor instance, Walmart has announced that for the product launch, it will be offering one of its “roll back” promotions so that the iPad Air will be available for $479. However, this hardly suggests that the retail giant will be the only place that a deal can be found to purchase this device. Other retailers – particularly Best Buy – are well aware of that company’s tactics and are making moves to ensure that their own offers are more appealing to consumers.

In this light, it has been rumored – though not yet confirmed (that is expected very soon) – that in the effort to lead the way in tablet commerce, Best Buy will agree to match the price of any competitor that is selling the iPad Air.

When all is said and done, that first weekend will clearly be offering consumers a range of different tablet commerce savings opportunities while they comparison shop to be able to purchase the latest gadgets from Apple. Even Apple, itself, has announced its own effort, saying that its shops will open their doors an hour earlier than usual in order to help to accommodate the rush of shoppers.

Gadgets could one day be charged using the microwave oven

| October 25, 2013

Smartphones and tablets might be able to be recharged simply by nuking them.

A recent development from tech scientists has revealed that the microwave oven may soon be used for charging the batteries of electronic and mobile gadgets, instead of just for popping popcorn and nuking leftovers.

In a joint project between two educational institutions, this technology may one day be available.

The researchers were from the Institute of Technology in Georgia, as well as from the University of Tokyo. Together, they have come up with the initial form of a device that can gather and store microwave energy from the standard kitchen appliance, so that it can be used to charge the batteries in mobile gadgets.

This could make it very fast and easy to charge gadgets and is very promising for new technologies.

Microwave Energy and Mobile GadgetsAccording to a statement in a paper by Yoshihiro Kawahara, the leader of the team, “The energy accumulated over two minutes was found to be sufficient for the operation of some of low-power kitchen tools for a few minutes and operate wireless sensor node for 2.5 hours.”

That said, the team did acknowledge that the charging gadget still requires some work in order to perfect it, as the energy that was stored within the capacitor after the two minutes had passed “was only 15 percent of the ideal case.” The team explained that it may also be able to better the energy accumulation from the leakage that escapes microwave ovens “by using more sophisticated impedance matching and power management methods.”

In another report on the technology, it was revealed that the machine that was built by the team is able to collect the wasted microwave oven energy for charging electronic gadgets. It snatches up the escaped energy that is produced while the device is running for heating up food. It functions by picking up the excess energy through an antenna in the harvester, so that it can then be channeled into other devices such as smartphones or MP3 players. The technology still requires perfection or the microwave would need to run for a very long amount of time to be able to collect any worthwhile amount of charge for the device batteries.