Archive for September, 2006
Symbol Technologies WT4000 series wearable computer. ‘Worn on the hip or wrist, the device brings an IP-54 sealing rating and can survive drops to concrete from as high as 4-feet (1.2-meter). The device itself runs WinCE 5.0 Pro on a 520MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and packs-in 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 1.2, and 2.8-inch QVGA display with backlight. Fortunately, it weighs a relatively light 11.2-ounces (320.3-grams) with battery to keep fatigue to a minimum.’
Engadget
VistaQuest Keychain Camera. ‘Big cameras take great pictures but there’s an opportunity cost: one of the obvious secrets to digital photography is to actually have your camera with you. That’ll be easy with this improbably small 2.5-inch-wide VistaQuest keychain camera which takes 3-megapixel stills and 640×480 video.’
Gizmodo
Absurdly Small Cellphone from Xun Chi. ‘Too small to even dial, it requires you to use a stylus on a touchscreen and plug in a headset to talk and listen.’
Gizmodo
Tire pressure monitoring sensors for the aftermarket. ‘The Tire Pressure Monitoring System Sensors detect changes in tire pressure and alert the driver. Each wheel rim is fitted with a pressure sensor, which constantly transmits tire pressure data by a radio signal to a control unit.’
gizmag
Pluggd to make podcasts chunkier, searchable. ‘When users decide they only want to hear a part of a file concerning a given topic, they enter a search term. Pluggd then searches for instances of that term and related terms being used in the file. Relevance is displayed on the file timeline with a heat map, sections of the file most related to your term appear in red, less related in green and unrelated in blue. Hover over any relevant point on the timeline and you’ll see the terms used there that Pluggd determined were related to your search term.’
Techcrunch
More universities banning Skype. ‘In a move that has sparked protest from both students and professors, San Jose State University has become the latest California school to ban Skype from most of its campus. Citing concerns regarding security and consumption of bandwidth, school administrators feel that the service is an unnecessary and potentially illegal waste of resources.’
Ars Technica
Order me a mojito with your table’s touch screen, please. ‘Students who want to grab a postlecture pint of beer will be treated to six new tables, where pop-up screens let thirsty academics place an order directly from their seats. Using the screens, students can scroll through the list of beverages and choose what they want. Orders are transmitted to the bar using Ethernet over power line, with the drinks brought directly to their tables.’
CNET News.com
Dapper puts weather.com (and Matisyahu) on your calendar. ‘This week, though, the folks at Dapper added iCal as one of the formats available for data export. Now in addition to adding data gleaned from any site on the web to your own applications via 11 different formats – you can also sync data from many sites with iCal, Google Calendar, Outlook or anything else that supports the iCal format. That means I’ve got the weather.com forecast for my zip code for the next ten days automatically appearing at the top of my iCal display. Very nice.’
Techcrunch
Non-Retiring ‘Retirees’ Fastest-Growing Job Market Sector. ‘Despite fierce competition by Baby Boomers, the number of Americans working into their 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s is at a record high, according to news analysis of federal employment data released by New York-based global outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Sept. 20. The surge in percentage of employed “retirees” will only continue, according to predictions, as the Baby Boomer generation heads towards retirement age, but doesn’t plan to retire.’
EWeek
Weblo. ‘Weblo is a cyber replica of the real world � a game filled with limitless opportunity and unique possibilities for success. In this virtual reality, based off of the real world, players earn real money and amass unspeakable fortunes. Buy the Eiffel Tower, own your own city, become Mayor, Governor or President and get paid to play.
‘
Weblo
Fujitsu’s drive-in pictures. ‘Fujitsu Laboratories has developed image compression technology for automotive use to support digital image transmission over an in-vehicle LAN.’
The Engineer Online
Motorola Bluetooth Hat For Snowboarders. ‘This goofy looking cap from Motorola has a Bluetooth headset built in so snowboarders can carry on a conversation using their cellphones or listen to music while sliding down the mountain to their death. The cap comes in two versions, white and black.’
Gizmodo
Slime-riding strategy developed for intestinal robot. ‘A robot that glides along a layer of mucus inside the human intestine could make medical examinations like colonoscopies less painful for patients, say Dutch scientists. They are working on a snail-inspired robot that should be far gentler on the gut’s delicate lining.’
New Scientist Tech
New fitness center targets teens with games. ‘In addition to the standard array of cardio equipment and weights, Overtime Fitness has several gaming-oriented machines. Perhaps most familiar is In The Groove 2, a Dance Dance Revolution knockoff. The center features a few In The Groove 2 arcade machines, along with a few Cybex Trazers. The Trazer is a “virtual reality” fitness machine that “puts you in the game,” as Neale-May describes it. The kids put on an infrared belt which then maps their movements to the action onscreen. They play games that involve lunging, jumping, and other vigorous movements, which show up on the monitor as the user reacts to virtual dodgeballs and other stimuli. “We had kids try out the Trazer. They’d have a blast and come out completely drenched in sweat after ten minutes,” said Ferrell.’
Ars Technica
Researchers create a 1,000 page-per-minute printer. ‘Moshe Einat, one of the engineers involved, described his invention as being “like an ‘ink-emitting screen,’” in the sense that ink would flow point by point — and all at once — instead of waiting for the cartridge to fully scan line by line — theoretically reaching a speed of 1,000 pages in a single minute.’
Engadget
Intelligent wheelchair helps you avoid hazards. ‘Recently developed with the collaboration of the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities in Japan, the new “intelligent wheelchair” has a set of cameras pointed in all directions mounted above the head of the rider to provide a complete 360-degree field of view. If the cameras detect potential hazards nearby, the wheelchair will slow down or come to a complete stop. Beyond that, the new ‘chair also is decked out with WiFi, eventually being able to transmit the amalgam of video feeds to a cell phone, while also providing a means of remote control.’
Engadget
The Scanning of the Fittest. ‘Move over diamonds, body scanners are soon to be a girl’s new best friend. A crop of the 3-D, body-measuring devices are replacing outdated sizing paradigms, and they’re making shopping for clothes that are inconsistently sized and unrealistically fitted a little less painful.’
Wired News
Spanish internet users. ‘According to market research firm InSites Consulting, Spain is the country that is most open to advancements in internet technology. 29 per cent of Spanish internet users download RSS feeds, 27 per cent create or read a weblog and 19 per cent download vodcasts.’
Smart Mobs
Visualize size differences with Sizeasy. ‘To compare your own item to one of Sizeasy’s many frame of reference common objects, select one or more common objects for comparison and then enter the dimensions of the item you’d like to visualize.’
Lifehacker
Umbrella photo browser. ‘When the user takes photos with the camera on the top of the umbrella, the pictures are uploaded and shared on Flickr with some context tags immediately via the Pileus WebService. The grip module has a web connection and ID for a social contents sharing for the WebService. Snapping action is used for a browsing operation with an accelerometer installed on the grip.’
We Make Money Not Art
Handheld printer. ‘Internet content, SMS, pictures and other information is downloaded to the PrintBrush from PDAs, mobile phones and laptop computers via a Bluetooth wireless link. Then, by following the RMPT principle the device is hand operated by sweeping it across any type of print media, no matter what its shape, size or thickness. The printout will then start to appear right behind the sweeps.’
pasta and vinegar
Freestyle SoundKit. ‘Freestyle SoundKit generates and broadcasts electronic video game-like beats as you move around. You fix a yellow sticker with sensors under the sole of your shoes and each step you take is broadcast as a single beat. Each SoundKit contains a different beat to enable you to collaborate with other users to create a collaborative performance.’
We Make Money Not Art
Hand gesture interface for Google Earth. ‘Atlas Gloves is a DIY physical interface for controlling 3D mapping applications like Google Earth. The user interface is a pair of illuminating gloves that can be used to track intuitive hand gestures like grabbing, pulling, reaching and rotating. The Open Source Atlas Gloves application can be downloaded here and operated from home using a webcam and two self-made illuminating gloves (or flashlights).’
pasta and vinegar
Oshare Majo Love and Berry. ‘A phenomenon among Japanese tweens, Oshare Majo Love and Berry, is a makeover arcade game that’s lured girls into the gaming world. Players choose an avatar—Love is the “cute” one while Berry is the “cool” one—that they ultimately must dress appropriately for style and dance competitions.’
Trendcentral
Remember Ring Gives You a Burning Reminder. ‘The Remember Ring has a special nagging feature, using its “Hot Spot” technology that warms up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 seconds, every hour, on the hour, beginning 24 hours before that “special day,” apparently honoring the anniversary of your voluntary servitude.’
Gizmodo
safariu. ‘Select just the right content from more than 2800 books and 5,000 articles from leading technology publishers and experts. Mix in your own materials. Arrange everything just as you want, and have your custom textbooks professionally printed—all at no cost to you.’
safariu
Roll-up screens ‘moving closer’. ‘A Cambridge team have developed metal structures that can morph from flat screens into tubes and other shapes. They say in the future the structures could form the basis for electronic displays that could be rolled-up and placed in a bag or pocket.’
BBC NEWS
Dutch TV hounds Google Earth topless sunbather. ‘Here’s a cautionary tale for those of you who like to indulge in a bit of light sunbathing in the privacy of your own patio: make sure you ring Google to see if they’re planning a satellite pass-over before whipping off your top’
The Register
A look inside the Monitor110 research suite. ‘It’s a real time research suite tracking RSS, deep web, static web changes and many other sources with multiform alerts, semantic analysis, extensive domain knowledge concerning financial markets and high profile VC backing.’
Techcrunch
Skin for people with a high EQ – fashion of the future. ‘The marvellously intricate wearable prototypes include ‘Bubelle’, a dress surrounded by a delicate ‘bubble’ illuminated by patterns that changed dependent on skin contact- and ‘Frison’, a body suit that reacts to being blown on by igniting a private constellation of tiny LEDs.’
gizmag
Give ‘em a (Working) Hand. ‘Founded last year, the nonprofit Open Prosthetics Project applies the ethical and intellectual property foundation of open-source software to the task of building better artificial limbs. The project releases its experimental designs to its website in the public domain, free for anyone to use, forever. Anyone can download the STL files, tinker with them in CAD software, and submit them to a rapid manufacturer, such as a prototyping 3-D printing company. This lets anyone turn out a customized prosthetic device without incurring tens of thousands of dollars in production costs. A user with a few hundred dollars to spend can be holding the physical reality within a week, though the post processing would still require some expertise.’
Wired News
A MySpace That Speaks Your Language. ‘You might not have heard of social networking company Community Connect. It’s a small, rapidly growing outfit that has built three MySpace-like sites, MiGente.com, AsianAvenue.com, and BlackPlanet.com, that target Latinos, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans, respectively. The sites are successful, with a total of some 16 million registered users.’
Business Week
Another Way to Screen Calls: Color ID. ‘Available for $30 from www.brookstone.com and other online retailers, the Color-Call system works with the existing Caller ID service from your telephone company. Once the device is connected to your phone line, you can assign colors to a specific phone number or group of numbers — those of family or friends, for instance — by pressing a button on its top. It stores up to 100 numbers.’
New York Times
More S-XGen details emerge. ‘Full-fledged UMPC it ain’t, but now that we’ve got some more info on this flip-and-fold S-XGen handheld from Seamless WiFi, we’re liking where this one is headed.’
Engadget
Implantable wireless biosensors. ‘Ultimately, cells specific to the patient can be engineered to live on and function as part of the miniature electronic chip. The wireless biosensor is placed within and around blood vessels and nerves to provide detection and stimulation of the surrounding tissues or organ systems, with the ability to detect changes. A change triggers a message to a wireless device to alert the patient early on about a problem. The patient can then contact their physician.’
Primidi
Futuristic Food. ‘Perhaps Cantu’s greatest innovation at Moto is a modified Canon i560 inkjet printer (which he calls the “food replicator” in homage to Star Trek) that prints flavoured images onto edible paper. The print cartridges are filled with food-based “inks”, including juiced carrots, tomatoes and purple potatoes, and the paper tray contains sheets of soybean and potato starch. The printouts are flavoured by dipping them in a powder of dehydrated soy sauce, squash, sugar, vegetables or sour cream, and then they are frozen, baked or fried.’
First Science
Neuros OSD hardware out in beta, let the hacking begin!. ‘See Neuros is willing to pay you cash-money “bounties” to code new features into the open source firmware: YouTube or Google video ($1000), Flickr photo browsing ($600), wireless remote capabilities from a WiFi handheld device such as a PDA ($500), TiVo-style radio recording when connected to an FM/AM or satellite receiver ($700), and VoIP capabilities when a USB phone is connected ($500). Not bad for something you’ll likely do for the fun of it anyway right?’
Engadget
Firm fits standard rechargeable batteries with USB. ‘No, they’re not the latest USB Flash drives in a fancy casing – Moixa’s USB Cell products are real batteries, charged using a spare USB port. Which, if you think about it, is genius: no cables, no special adaptor just plug ‘em into your computer every so often.’
Reg Hardware
SMS VCR Remote. ‘Mark sent in this SMS VCR remote control. I guess it’s an alternative to a TiVo, or handy for those one man sting operations.’
Hack A Day
3D TV ‘could be three years away’. ‘Professor Onural said: “With stereoscopic cinema, we think that there will be huge interest from the movie-goers, and we think it will be available in regular movie houses in three years. “We think that some people might want to purchase 3D television sets for home viewing. ” However, he admitted that he did not “yet know how the consumers will behave and what the commercial success of that project will be”.’
BBC NEWS
Moo Cards: Stunning kid-sized custom biz-cards with Flickr pix. ‘They’ve got an engine to make cards from your Flickr stream, and for $20 they’ll send you 100 custom cards — Flickr Pro users can get 10 cards for free, just as a try-out. We got a box to 100 here this week and when I took them out of the box, it was like Christmas — so bright and colorful and fun. So many different designs, and all of them from our most beloved Flickr snaps.’
Boing Boing
Online postage service launched. ‘Customers pay for postage by credit card over the internet for first-class, second-class, recorded, special and international deliveries. Each item of mail is given a barcode, printed off at home, and regular mail can then be posted in a post box.’
BBC NEWS
Laks Fertility Tracking Wristwatch. ‘The Laks Baby Boom watch track fertile days, week of pregnancy you’re in when you are pregnant and has features like a name finder for your new baby. ‘
I4U News
video projector the size of a sugar cube. ‘Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena have developed an alternative to micro mirror arrays and the result is a projector the size of a sugar cube.’
gizmag
Grazr 1.0 blasts off into the future of RSS. ‘Grazr is a service that displays OPML files (outlines most commonly made of bundled RSS feeds) in an easily read format that you can interact with inside the Grazr box. It’s a joy to use; flip through the embedded Grazr display on this page by clicking on title links and using the left sidebar or arrow keys to go back up a level in the outline. It’s literally a way to graze dyanmic information nested in outline form.’
Techcrunch
Two-way OLED displays to provide solar power. ‘some research types at Cornell University have developed a new version of Organic LED that not only emits light, but can take in solar energy to produce electricity.’
Engadget
Deaf to ‘hear’ PA system on phone. ‘A group of research students at IBM has developed a system to make public announcements available to people on a mobile phone. Called LAMA, the service was originally conceived to improve communications for deaf people. Its designers hope that it will soon be in use in busy public places like airports, railway stations and hospitals.’
BBC NEWS
Swarmteams: communicate like animals by SMS. ‘Swarmteams is a service for group communication that integrates multi-recipient SMS, IM, RSS and VOIP. While there are many companies launching that focus entirely on group SMS alone, Swarmteams is the most ambitious system I’ve seen yet for rapid multi-person communication. The company says it’s tried to mirror the natural swarming behavior of animals in designing the system’
Techcrunch
Download of the Day: Webaroo. ‘With Webaroo, you can choose to download a local copy of any web site, however many link levels deep you choose; but what’s more unique about Webaroo are the web packs, which offer, for example, the ability to download and search the entirety of Wikipedia offline. After you’ve downloaded a web pack or web page, you can set Webaroo to update them automatically when you are online so things are always up-to-date. If you rarely find yourself without internet access, the 10GB of space required by the Wikipedia pack may not be worth it, but if you spend a lot of time traveling or otherwise away from the internet, access to Wikipedia or any of the other pre-defined web packs or user-defined web sites could be invaluable.’
Lifehacker
MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach. ‘This week, MTV will introduce Virtual Laguna Beach, an online service in which fans of the program can immerse themselves — or at least can immerse digitized, three-dimensional characters, called avatars, that they control — in virtual versions of the show’s familiar seaside hangouts. “You can not only watch TV, but now you can actually live it,” Van Toffler, the president of the MTV Networks Music, Film and Logo Group, said in an interview.’
networked_performance
Panasonic’s EU3002 computerized mattress. ‘To protect your nightly crash, the EU3002 delivers eight programable airbags which change in size and shape as you snooze through the different phases of sleep. The airbags around your waist and shoulders begin to inflate when it’s time to awake, hopefully before you slide out the other end like a flacid burrito expulsion.’
Engadget
33 Ways RFID Has Invaded Your Life. ‘Imagine this… robbing a bank is no longer a lucrative option, because every dollar in the bank has an embedded RFID chip that can be tracked anywhere on the globe… or, the RFID chip embedded in your hand interacts with and leads you to the right smart shelves in the supermarket that have your size jeans and clothes (the chip in your hand records your weight and waist-size in real time)… Sound like science fiction to you? Maybe not; RFID has already settled comfortably in our midst, and is creeping onward every day…’
RFID Lowdown
Smart Napk Detects Viruses. ‘The napkin would contain nanofibers bound to specific antibodies. The antibodies would latch onto any desired substance, be it a bacteria, virus, or other compound. One would simply wipe the biodegradable napkin over a surface of interest, and the napkin should change a specific color if it “finds” anything.’
Smart Mobs
Warner to license music in YouTube videos. ‘YouTube and Warner Music Group Corp. will announce a deal Monday that will put thousands of Warner music videos on the video sharing site and allow user created videos to legally use Warner owned music. YouTube is reported to have created technology that will automatically detect when copyrighted music is used in videos, give Warner the right to accept or reject those videos and will calculate the royalty fees Warner is owed.’
Techcrunch
A Chip That Can Transfer Data Using Laser Light. ‘Researchers plan to announce on Monday that they have created a silicon-based chip that can produce laser beams. The advance will make it possible to use laser light rather than wires to send data between chips, removing the most significant bottleneck in computer design.’
New York Times
The Carbonite Solution to Online Backups. ‘It requires a simple installation, and users choose to back up their entire hard drive or just parts of it. Carbonite then begins the backup process, uploading 2 GB per day over broadband until finished. Files are encrypted, and there is no limit on total storage. If you delete a file, Carbonite keeps it stored for 30 days in case you change your mind. Carbonite monitors files that are changed and backs them up right away.’
Techcrunch
Like Shopping? Social Networking? Try Social Shopping. ‘Sites like ThisNext and a handful of services like Kaboodle.com, Wists.com and StyleHive.com are spearheading a new category of e-commerce called “social shopping,” that tries to combine two favorite online activities: shopping and social networking. These sites are hoping to ride the MySpace wave by gathering people in one place to swap shopping ideas. And like MySpace, the sites are designed for both browsing and blogging, with some shopping-related technology twists included.’
New York Times
Solar-powered wristwatch, necklace for the blind. ‘The necklace and watch each share the same readout, which is composed of simple “dots, lines, and planes,” all basic factors of creating braille numbers. So if you’ve got a visually impaired pal who hasn’t picked up a talking cellphone to keep him / her on schedule, these fashionable timepieces could be just the thing to keep things on track.’
Engadget
Waymarkr. ‘WayMark gives users an alternative perspective on their daily interactions by documenting continuously and effortlessly their life. All you have to do is install the Waymarkr software on your Internet enabled Series 60 mobile phone. Once the software is enabled, your phone will continously take photographs of your events and perspectives. All photographs are sent to a remote server so your phone never runs out of space. You can then login to the Waymarkr web site, annotate and share your photos, see stop motion movies of your captured event and map out where your images were taken. You can also see other user’s photos that were taken at the same time and place as yours.’
We Make Money Not Art
Insectopia: context-aware gaming. ‘Players roam the cityscape searching for and catching a multitude of different insects. Each insects in the game world is generated by using the available bluetooth devices available in the player’s vicinity. By catching insects and trading them with other players, players build their own collection bigger and better.’
pasta and vinegar
iLoad add-on brings video loading to the iLoad. ‘The iLoad hooks up to your cable or satellite box for a bit of DVR action, and you can hook up your TV via S-Video to see what’s going on. From there it’s fairly straight-forward to schedule recordings from the iLoad ‘s built-in interface and then pop them over to your 5/5.5G iPod or any compatible USB drive, without encountering a full-fledged PC once.’
Engadget
Connexions and other free textbook projects. ‘Most textbooks are a mass of information in linear format: one topic follows after another. However, our brains are not linear – we learn by making connections between new concepts and things we already know. Connexions mimics this by breaking down content into smaller chunks, which we call modules, that can be linked together and arranged in different ways. This lets students see the relationships both within and between topics and helps demonstrate that knowledge is naturally interconnected, not isolated into separate classes or books.’
Smart Mobs
Dark Room. ‘Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.’
they.misled.us
FX channel tries commercial to combat ad-skipping. ‘The advert for its new drama “Brotherhood” will show a single image on the screen for the entire 30-second slot, and therefore retain its “sales message” when viewed even at the 12-times speeds enabled by Sky and other digital recorders, also known as personal video recorders, or PVRs.’
Reuters.com
Fujitsu FPcodes, like QR without the mess. ‘Like QR codes, Fine Picture codes allow you to photograph the code with your trusty cameraphone and then be redirected to a URL for the product. However, instead of looking like a greasy black smudge, the pale yellow FPcode is printed directly onto the image of the product, just snap the product and off you go.’
Engadget
Electric Skin. ‘The responsive garment turns the breath of the wearer into pulses of light. The wearer’s inhalation and exhalation activate a breath sensor that dims and brightens the printed LED of the garment.’
We Make Money Not Art
Mix and mash audio online with Splice. ‘Web site Splice lets users mix and mashup Creative Commons-licensed audio, offering a place for music lovers to collaborate on music from the freedom (emphasis on free) from their web browser.’
Lifehacker
Sonos and Rhapsody skip the PC with System Software 2.0. ‘You can of course do things on the regular with a clunky old beige box serving up your music collection and Rhapsody tunes, but now you’ve got the option to plug your Sonos system straight into the internets and browse Rhapsody from your Sonos Controller, without any messy peecees getting in the way. Sonos is hoping this’ll be a hit with technophobic or overly busy baby boomers, who don’t have the time and/or know-how to manage a music library on a normal PC.’
Engadget
First woman gets bionic arm. ’26-year old Claudia Mitchell has become the fourth person and first woman to get outfitted with a bionic arm (well, besides Lindsay Wagner), with which she’s able to perform functions simply by thinking about them.’
Engadget
Move by Andrew Hieronymi. ‘Move by Andrew Hieronymi is an interactive installation divided into six distinct modules. Each module offers single-user interaction based on a verb corresponding to the action the participant is invited to perform. JUMP, AVOID, CHASE, THROW, HIDE and COLLECT comprise the six modules.’
networked_performance
Windows HS: Microsoft designs a school system. ‘After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corp.-designed “School of the Future” opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building — students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive “smart boards” — but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft’s management techniques.’
CNN.com
The iPod suit, for slacking off at work. ‘What make this suit so special are the soft, integrated buttons from Eleksen (creators of those fabric keyboards), which allow you to stealthily control your ‘Pod from the inner lining — because, you know, actually pulling out your DAP to change tracks during a board meeting is like totally gauche.’
Engadget
Toyota’s monopedal robot leg will jump, jump!. ‘We can imagine few things more frightening than a monopedal robot with a white plastic bulge as a head, but that’s precisely what Toyota has created: a monopedal 3.3-foot tall robot that can jump 1.6 inches off the ground.’
Engadget
Experimental AI Powers Robot Army. ‘The software is a type of neural network with two special features. One introduces perturbations, or “noise,” into the network so that existing ideas get jumbled into new forms. The second is a filter that assesses the new ideas against existing knowledge and discards those that are unsuitable. Current applications range from detecting intruders in computer networks to developing new types of concrete and optimizing missile warheads. Recently, Thaler has been working for the AFRL on what he calls Creative Robots, which joins his brand of AI to robotic hardware.’
Wired News
Pentax Optio T20 is tiny, and tangibly sweet. ‘Sporting most of the niceties found on the Optio T10 — including that ultrathin 0.77-inch enclosure and expansive 3-inch touchscreen LCD — the Optio T20 also packs a 7 megapixel sensor, 3x optical zoom, 640 x 480 movie mode at 30fps, and a nifty stylus used to decorate your images in-camera via the “Drawing Function.”‘
Engadget
Motionbox tags sections of video clips. ‘Highlight the moment when a certain person or place appears in the video, or mark a specific event captured in your video, so your viewers can skip right to the stuff they really want to see. You can even use deep tags to divide your video into chapters.’
Lifehacker
Smarter Shelf. ‘The shelf monitors RFID-tagged sales items on the shelf and collects information such as: – how many people stopped in front of a sales item – how many people did not stop in front of a sales item – how many times / how long a sales item was picked up by a customer – how much time was spent by a consumer before coming to a decision whether or not to buy it’
RFID in Japan
LonelyGirl15: Jessica Rose is the fake Hollywood videoblogger.. ‘Last week, we learned that the very popular online video diaries of LonelyGirl15 were not authentic, but a publicity stunt product of entertainment creatorcritters linked to Hollywood talent agency CAA. Today, the identity of LonelyGirl15 has also been revealed — and appropriately, by an 18-year-old.’
Boing Boing
Wiki your photo posters with Tabblo. ‘Tabblo isn’t a traditional photo sharing site; instead of competing with sites you’re probably familiar with, Tabblo makes it easy to import your photos from places like Flickr (and iPhoto or Picasa) and then lets you arrange those photos with text to make large collage-like posters, called Tabblos, to print.’
Techcrunch
Belkin Releases Lap-Friendly CushTop, PocketTop Laptop Accessories. ‘Belkin has released two products that will make your lap a little more comfortable when trying to work with a scorching hot notebook without a table or desk. The CushTop is a block-style device that can prop up the laptop, keep it’s hot underside from your body and store any and all other laptop accessories.’
Gizmodo
Thermoesthesia. ‘Is it possible to feel the temperature of a virtual object? Thermoesthesia, which i saw at the ars electronica center, is a table that lets visitors feel the different temperatures of a wide array of graphics (from snow flakes to heat waves) through the sense of touch. The surface of the monitor screen displaying the images is warmed and cooled by 80 Peltier modules. A PC controls the electrical circuits feeding current to the modules.’
We Make Money Not Art
Hybrio Rechargable Batteries: Last Four Times Longer?. ‘Hybrio batteries by Everlast are said to last four times longer than everyday alkaline batteries and can be recharged 500 times.’
Gizmodo
Generate sitemaps easily with XML-Sitemaps.com. ‘ll you need is your URL and XML-Sitemaps will generate a sitemap for up to 500 pages of your site (more than that, and you’ll need to explore the paid options). Different types of sitemaps are available: HTML, XML (Google Sitemaps compliant), ROR, and plain text.’
Lifehacker
3D Displays To Make Their Way To Portable Devices?. ‘Developed by Innertech, these displays are outfitted with a module that, according to reports, can deliver 3D images on a 4.3-inch PMP display.’
Gizmodo
Scientists walk on tech pavement. ‘Scientists are using the computer-controlled surface to recreate all sorts of pedestrian nightmares. They hope that their hi-tech sidewalk will help to identify what makes for user-friendly surfaces and streets.’
BBC NEWS
Gadget about light for kids. ‘This is the digital light machine that allows children to create light sculptures by using seven freehand control knobs to manipulate 32 LEDs mounted on a spinning post under a 360 dome. In demonstration mode, the LEDs light up in different patterns, speeds, and directions to display any one of over 50 pre-programmed images, including a fountain, UFO, elephant, and pirate.’
pasta and vinegar
Loopt to make mobile presence usable. ‘Loopt uses GPS and related data to display the location of a user’s friends along with their presence status (available, away, etc) on maps and lists. Users will be able to request alerts when friends are within a certain distance, send messages to groups of friends within a certain distance and soon will be able to tag and blog physical locations in a way that’s accesible to friends through Loopt.’
Techcrunch
Bang & Olufsen’s Helping Hand reminds you to take meds. ‘The aptly named “Helping Hand,” which looks like a slightly curved handset, stores a blister pack of medication and then will send a signal to a computer or cell phone (via Bluetooth or USB) to remind you to take your meds. The Helping Hand’s red, yellow or green lights will go off to give a visual cues as to how many instances have been missed, and can upload that info to your doctor (or medical assistant robot), so the next time you see her, she can give you a stern reprimand.’
Engadget
Ronsonic Teleface Phone Dials a Person By Their Face. ‘Useful for seniors, children, and anyone with a bad memory, this Ronsonic Teleface phone is like speed dial but with actual pictures. You assign a number to one of five slots, insert in the right picture to correspond with each slot, and presto, instant face-dialing.’
Gizmodo
Insurers starting to reimburse for digital content. ‘One of the main problems with the gradual transfer of content from physical media (CDs, DVDs, books) over to digital media (MP3s, movie downloads, e-books) is that when something happens to the devices storing your swag, you’re basically out of luck — most insurance companies will tell you to go take a hike. Well that’s all about to change, according to a recent article in British newspaper The Independent, as insurers like Nationwide will now reimburse you for digital content stored on stolen or destroyed electronics as long as you can provide proof of purchase.’
Engadget
Amazon Kindle: meet Amazon’s e-book reader. ‘Say hello to the Amazon Kindle, their take on a book reader device that comes equipped with a 6-inch 800 x 600 display (which we can only assume is e-ink), 256MB internal storage, smallish two-thumb keyboard cursor bar, scroll wheel, standard mini USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, SD slot, and get this: EV-DO data!’
Engadget
Europe gets glimpse of HD future. ‘The system has 16 times the resolution of current HDTV. However, it is unlikely to be available to the public for at least 25 years.’
BBC NEWS
Tomy Life Box is a Tamagotchi Piggy Bank. ‘Every 500 yen coin deposited gives the little man on the LCD more funding to turn shoe-box apartment from ikea-slum into a pixelated palace.’
Gizmodo
Broadband over Gas: fill ‘er up?. ‘Enter Nethercomm. The complain claims to have the chops to deliver what it calls Broadband-in-Gas (BIG), a set of technologies that the company says can deliver a “a Terabit wireless link to the last mile of today’s broadband networks without interfering with FCC regulated spectrums.” The pitch sounds interesting, even if it goes on to promise dubious benefits, such as the fact that it won’t explode: “and due to the isolated, contained environment, the natural gas flow and radio signals co-exist uninterrupted and cannot blow up!” Sign me up!’
Ars Technica
VJ’ing Remotely with the Go Dance Glove. ‘This somewhat simple glove allows a VJ to control their video mixing remotely with the help of some RFID. The wrist brace prototype has eight buttons. The buttons control basic features of video mixing, and the wrist brace can also activate mixing features with arm and body movements.’
Gizmodo
Warehouse workers of the future. ‘Muratec and NEC codeveloped a system that uses blinking light and head-mount displays to detect warehouse workers’ locations and guide them to RFID-tagged stock items.’
RFID in Japan
Zigview S2 Digital Angle Finder: Eye On the Finder, 30 Feet Away. ‘The Zigview S2 Digital Angle Finder is a detachable high-rez 2.5-inch viewfinder that clamps onto your digital SLR’s eyepiece, and you can either use it as a waist-level finder or take it off the camera and still get a good view of your shot even if your camera is in one of those high- or low-angle situations.’
Gizmodo
Toshiba Creates Three-Layered Disc. ‘Toshiba has been tinkering with the HD DVD and DVD disc formats, putting together a hybrid format with three layers that contain both formats. The DVD section will be playable on conventional DVD players, and with a firmware update, standard HD DVD players can play both formats. So it looks like we’ll be seeing either a single-layer 4.7GB DVD along with a dual layer 30GB HD DVD, or conversely, a dual-layer 8.5GB DVD and a single-layer 15GB HD DVD, all together on one disc. One more layer, lots more content.’
Gizmodo
Samsung Introduces PRAM – The Perfect RAM. ‘PRAM features the fast processing speed of RAM for its operating functions combined with the non-volatile features of flash memory for storage, giving it the nickname: perfect RAM.’
I4U News
Jangl Lets You Share Phone Numbers Without Sharing Phone Numbers. ‘Jangl allows you to exchange IDs to strangers to allow them to call you without actually revealing your phone number. The recipient of your Jangl ID plugs the ID into Jangl, which generates a phone number that routes to your regular phone. You can then call this same number to reach the other party. All this goes on without either side exchanging real phone numbers. Simple and effective.’
Gizmodo
