Gadgets Base

PC Pro reviews the Apple iPhone and writes, “Elsewhere, the 2-megapixel camera is another annoyance. Image quality is good, but there’s no way to send a multimedia message: you’re forced to resort to email. There’s also no way to record video irking given the 8GB of storage. And, unlike standard iPods, you can’t drag individual songs or albums from your iTunes library to the iPhone only playlists. It’s particularly annoying when first loading songs, but remains irritating each time you want to add more, especially if you’re only adding one song. Then there’s the headphone socket, which is so deeply recessed there’s already a market for bulky headphone adapters if your headphones have the connector at right-angles to the cable, they almost certainly won’t fit.”

Read more about the Apple iPhone.

Posted Jan 25th 2008 12:05PM by Evan Blass
Filed under: HDTV, Laptops, Peripherals, Portable VideoSony has announced the development of a new Blu-ray reader / writer module that is not only smaller than previous components, but promises to be cheaper as well due to a simplified manufacturing process. The new laser housing is less than three millimeters thick, according to the Japanese manufacturer and co-developer Nichia Corporation, enabling it to be incorporated into smaller devices such as portable players. Sony predicts that we’ll first start seeing 9.5-millimeter laptop BD drives which employ the module later this year.

[Via Tech.co.uk, thanks Kiwi616]

Posted Jan 25th 2008 7:37AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Displays
While we love the low power consumption and ultra-high contrast achieved by OLEDs, there’s one thing we hate: OLED’s short lifespan. Toshiba and Panasonic are looking to change the game by announcing a new technology today that doubles the life of OLED displays. We’re talking a bump from the stated 30,000-hour lifespan of Sony’s XEL-1 TV to somewhere beyond that of your typical 50,000-hour LCD panel. Tosh and Panny’s trick is to use a new metal membrane inside a prototype 20.8-inch panel to move light more efficiently. Let’s see if this new development brings forth Toshiba’s timeline for an OLED TV any. Please Toshiba, with sugar?

[Via techradar]

Read [Warning: subscription req’d]

When I think of fiber optic lighting, all that comes to mind are those awful 1970s starburst lamps. So I was so thrilled when I came across these beautiful organic designs which use the same basic lighting technology that begat such ugliness in the first place.

Created by Torbjörn Lundell of Sweden’s GloFab, these unusual fixtures radiate an ethereal glow as light courses through their fibrous veins.

I like to think of GloFab like an illuminated textile. By weaving intricate patterns of fiber optic cable, then connecting them to a bright light source, these wondrous glowing sculptures come to life.

GloFab lighting is available as either a woven fabric or in a spherical design, and are available only on a custom-quoted basis at this point.

[via designboom]

read more about:

fiber optic, halogen, lamp, light, organic, plastic, sweden, textile

Posted Jan 25th 2008 3:02AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Household
Admirers of Macs and Z-Wave have longed for the day in which they could finally use their two dearest loves simultaneously, and thanks to Wayne-Dalton, that day is upon us. The WDUSB-10MAC is hailed as the world’s first Z-Wave-enabled home control system “designed specifically for the Mac OS X operating system.” Mac users simply plug in the USB dongle, install the bundled Houseport software and go wild creating and managing their home network. When all is said and done, OS X users will be able to “control light switches, appliances, electronics, thermostats and other Z-Wave-enabled devices from their computers or through the internet” — a feat previously only achievable by booting into Windows. Not too shabby for $87, eh?

[Via CEPro]

Posted Jan 25th 2008 3:05AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Desktops
The whole consumer motivation for (PRODUCT) RED is that a donation is made to those in need at no (obvious) additional expense to you. It’s The Man who makes the donation, you’re just pulling the trigger with the purchase of something presumably wanted anyway. But the (PRODUCT) RED XPS One confuses this whole system, at best. The RED XPS One costs an extra $300 over the regular XPS One’s base configuration. For that, you do get a bump — but it’s software only. More specifically, your $300 premium upgrades you to Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (found online for ~$100 or less) and Vista Ultimate (~$300 or less), instead of stock Microsoft Works 8.5 (~$15) and Vista Home Premium (~$200 or less).

Based on those retail prices, you’re locked into almost $200 in add-ons that Dell and Microsoft will happily mark-up to $300 — $80 of which is donated to the Global Fund. Never you mind that the full-featured Vista Ultimate (even with RED-themed desktops, screensaver, and widgets) adds very little value to the vast majority of home users when compared to Vista Home Premium. Or that Microsoft says that “Vista Home Premium is the preferred edition for home desktops.” So why bother with Ultimate on the XPS One in the first place, except to up the perception of greater value? It’s not like this all-in-one desktop will ever step foot inside of an enterprise cubicle. Our advice: save your $300 and just give some cash directly, it might work out better for your taxes anyway.

[Thanks, Justin M.]

Apple has introduced the world’s slimmest laptop, MacBook Air small enough to fit inside an office mailing envelope. With the invent of this slimmest lappy, it is expected that there will be a raise in the standard of mobile computing.

Even though being the most slender, MacBook Air embeds itself with a full-size notebook in 0.16 to 0.76 inch of soft and smooth but robust anodized aluminum. And as it so sleek it can be with you anywhere and everywhere!

The new notebook features an LED-backlit glossy 13.3-inch display. With its powerful resolution of 1280 by 800 it gives the most astounding and stunning images with their max luminance.

Now moving on to keyboard which is mounted with brittle but firm keys. The advanced feature of Macbook Air in comparison to that of MacBook is its backlight illumination technique which makes one comfortable in dim lights. This is done by a built in light sensor made for getting acquainted automatically and throwing appropriate light for proper visibility. There is multi-touch trackpad, which offers betterment for fingers.

FEATURES

· LED Display helps in providing a stylish look along with powerful efficiency.

· Microchip: - 1.8GHz or 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

· Multitouch with the help of which one can swipe, rotate to zoom or pinch on image or text.

· Thin plus Expansive: - this thinnest book comprise of 80GB hard drive and thence providing plenty of storage space.

· Sleek Battery: - along with the thinnest notebook it’s battery is also the slimmest one.

· Camera: - built-in iSight camera making chatting with video convenient.

Price: $1799

Source: Apple

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As cell phones become more sophisticated, we’re more often free to leave behind our laptops when we’re on the go, while still being able to do many of the most common tasks we do on a computer, like email, minor editing of documents and presentations, and Web browsing. One problem, though, is that as screens get smaller, our eyes don’t change to accommodate our ever-growing need to miniaturize. There are physical limitations.

A Dutch company, Polymer VIsion, will be releasing the Readius, a 3G cell phone with a 5-inch, foldout screen, so you don’t have to strain your eyes to read emails and documents. While the phone itself is no bigger than the average cell phone, the screen turns it into an electronic reader (with a black and white screen, much like Amazon’s Kindle).

No word yet on pricing or availability.

Via textually.org and InventorSpot.

Why dig through stacks and stacks of individual comic books when you can quickly find the exact one you’re looking for using a wall-sized über-cool Minority Report-like user interface?

A project developed by Daniel Stødle and a team of PhD students from Norway’s University of Tromsø, this huge display wall can detect gestures to navigate through a catalog of over 3 years worth of comic strips, quickly jumping to any individual strip in seconds.

click to view this video clip

The enormous display is comprised of a grid of 28 synchronized video projectors, forming a whopping 7168 x 3072 display resolution (that’s over 22 megapixels). A system of 16 cameras and 9 computers detect and process user movements. Using hand gestures like those used on the iPhone, you can scale, rotate, pan and tilt across the collection almost instantaneously. A simple double-snap of your fingers makes the display zoom in an extra level of depth to the location where you snapped, while a single snap zooms back out.

Of course, the interface isn’t just designed for navigating comic strips, but is a proof of concept for using large scale displays and gesture recognition to navigate huge numbers of visual assets quickly. Very cool stuff indeed.

read more about:

comic, display, gesture, huge, interface, projector, video

Everyone either made a whirlybird out of paper or had a wood/plastic toy version when they were a kid. The concept was pretty simple. Rub the stick body of the whirlybird between one’s hands and toss it up into the air (the paper version was merely dropped from on high). Using auto-rotation, the whirlybird would land under its own control anywhere from a few feet to several yards away. It was a fun toy for the helicopter pilot in all of us. Now, (thanks to our friends at Yankoo Design) one designer has taken that whirlybird concept and created a camera platform out of it.

Dubbed the “Flying Stick Camera,” it uses kinetic energy built up by rubbing the stick together between one’s hands like it’s smaller toy variant. The difference is that the Flying Stick Camera stores that energy and actually flies up into the air like a helicopter. When the energy is dissipated, it auto-rotates back down to the ground. Meanwhile, while it’s soaring high above one’s head, the Flying Stick will snap off an array of digital shots at a preset interval. And with face detection built into the digital design, the subject is always in focus.

No word on resolution, price, or when we all can get one, but this is certainly a design that’s more toy than functional camera platform, but there’s nothing wrong that. It keeps the fun in digital photography.

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