It must be Christmas, as the guys at Elevation Partners are feeling generous enough to invest another $100 million into beleaguered smartphone maker Palm, which has been slip-sliding away for a very long time. Elevation Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based private equity firm headed by Roger McNamee, previously invested $325 million in Palm (for about […]

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Apple’s 3G iPhone was the best-selling handset in the U.S. during the third quarter of 2008, according to data compiled by The NPD Group. Apple had previously reported that it sold about 6.89 million iPhones (3G) in the quarter. The research group identifies Apple’s new device “as the leading handset purchased by adult consumers in the U.S.”

It beat out Motorola’s RZR V3 (all models), RIM’s Blackberry Curve, the LG Rumor and the LG enV2, the Port Washington, N.Y.-based research group said. RAZR was ranked as the top seller for past 12 quarters. That is bad news for Motorola, which is already on the mat after being pummeled with losses and declining market share. Funnily enough, phones with a QWERTY keyboard were in high demand — 30 percent of the handsets sold in this quarter had keyboards, versus just 11 percent the year prior. According to NPD Group, the domestic handset purchases by adult consumers declined 15 percent year over year in third quarter to 32 million units. Consumer handset sales revenue fell 10 percent to $2.9 billion.

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The power of ultrasonic waves has been harnessed to produce “virtual” objects in mid-air.

The field of haptics — integrating computing and the sense of touch — has been around for some time, but has required gloves or mechanical devices to impart a sense of feeling.

Now, a team of Japanese researchers has developed a system that uses focused ultrasound to do the job, and its inventors may soon commercialize the approach.

With the expansion in multimedia on the web, our eyes and ears are flooded with sensory information, but the sense of touch has been largely left behind.
The popularity of vibrating gaming handsets has proven that it is a rich but untapped way to increase interaction. 

Read more about the future of gaming — and beyond — at the BBC here.

Tags: bbc, handsets, haptics, ultrasound, virtual objects

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Many venture firms shy away from investing in chip startups because of the inordinately high cost and risk involved relative to other sectors. But some firms are still determinedly pursuing silicon by backing wireless chips containing radios that can work on multiple types of networks.

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