It's now hip to be square. After the customary
rumor onslaught, Motorola has finally got round to making its quadratic
new mobile phone official. Hiding behind its 2.8-inch display is a full
QWERTY keyboard that slides out on a pivot, hence the chosen name for
the device - the Flipout. The Android smartphone allows users
customizable views of social network feeds, photos snapped with its
camera can be uploaded to sharing sites with the touch of a button and
conversations benefit from audio enhancement technology. Read More
U.S. forces deployed just 13 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
at the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, but although the
potential of surveillance and combat aircraft that don't put pilots in
the line of fire has always been clear, few would have predicted just
how quickly this technology would transform modern warfare. The proof?
The U.S. Army has recently surpassed one million unmanned flight hours
and is now using 333 different types of unmanned aerial systems in Iraq
and Afghanistan... and the growth curve isn't about to level out. Read More
Researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing,
China have created a device that traps and absorbs electromagnetic waves
coming from all directions, spiraling them inwards without any
reflections, essentially creating an electromagnetic black hole. Qiang
Cheng and Tie Jun Cui’s “omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber” draws
in microwaves coming from any direction by spiraling radiation inwards,
and converting its energy into heat. They plan on developing a device
that can absorb visible light next. Read More
A collaboration between Fujitsu and the
University of Tokyo achieved a record 25Gbps data communication link
using quantum dot laser, a low-cost technology that can reliably handle
high-speed data transmissions while consuming minimal power. With good
performance and wide margins for further improvement, this development
paves the way to the next generation of high-speed Ethernet data
communications, which will see a tenfold increase in transfer speed.
Read More
With the flood of ebook
readers hitting the market over the past year, not to mention the
success of Apple’s iPad, any new offering needs to differentiate itself
if it is going to survive. That’s exactly what Aiptek’s Story Book
inColor has done because, instead of aiming at the overcrowded adult
market, it has focused on the children’s book market and in doing so,
has the entire market to itself. Read More
More and more cars are integrating driver assistance features that help do things like avoid collisions, keep a safe distance from other vehicles, or even parallel park. There are also Lane Departure Warning systems that use onboard cameras to keep the driver from drifting out of their lane.
But what happens if the roadside markings are worn away, or covered
with snow or mud? Norwegian research organization SINTEF has come up
with a solution called WayPilot – a system which uses sensors embedded
in the asphalt and a shaking steering wheel to alert drivers before they
stray too far off course. Read More
Overheating in laptops and electronic gadgets
isn't just an annoyance to the end user — it's a major technological
hurdle that puts a hard limit to the speed and energy efficiency of
electronics. In a paper recently published on the journal Nature Materials, a team of scientists from the University of California found that multiple layers of graphene show strong heat conducting properties that can be harnessed in removing dissipated heat from electronic devices. Read More
If a terrorist attack has left an area
contaminated with nerve gas, chances are no one wants to add any other
noxious substances to it. Using conventional chlorine- and lye-based
decontamination agents, however, that’s exactly what’s happening. Not
only can these substances run off and harm people or the environment,
they can also react with the very materials they’re cleaning up, forming
new toxic substances. It is for reasons such as these that the US
military has developed Decon Green - a non-toxic set of ultra-strength
cleaners. Read More
So how do you stand out from the e-Reader crowd at Computex?
You pop up with the only color A4 sized e-paper device, that's how.
Rather than using e-Ink or LCD technology, the 13 inch color display of
the e-Magazine from Delta Electronics benefits from e-paper technology
developed in partnership with Japan's Bridgestone Corporation. Read More
Trains might be a reasonably cheap transport
option - but rail infrastructure is very costly to build. Monorail,
maglev systems and high speed rail are more expensive again - and prices
really skyrocket when you have to build bridges, tunnels and winding
mountain routes, or cover difficult terrain. Which is why Anatoly
Unitsky's String Transport Systems look like they've got so much
potential. The system uses solid steel/concrete rails, reinforced with
extremely high tension steel wires, to provide an efficient and smooth
rail system anywhere between 3 to 30 meters above the ground. It's
earthquake, hurricane and terrorist-proof, and capable of supporting
vehicle speeds over 500 kmh, too, making it a genuine high-speed rail
alternative, for a fraction of the price of road or ground rail
alternatives. Fascinating stuff! Read More
If you own an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV),
here’s piece of advice: don’t fly it near San Nicholas Island,
California, or it could be blasted out of the sky – by a laser. Two such
vehicles were successfully shot down there on May 24th by a US Navy
laser weapon. According to the official press release, this marks "the
first detect-thru-engage laser shoot-down of a threat representative
target in an over-the-water, combat representative scenario.” Read More
In the week before Computex, ASUS gave a little teaser preview
of the kind of tech to expect from the Taiwan giant. As promised, here
we take a quick look at what all the self-generated fuss was about. Read More
I've been a registered owner of Sonic Charge's µTonic
(pronounced MicroTonic) drum/percussion synthesizer for years - but a
new online tool from Sonic Charge called Patternarium is likely to make
it one of my most used plugins when I'm looking for some inspiration in
the studio. They're calling it a "giant collaborative patch randomizer,"
and my explanation of that won't fit in this summary. Read More
For over ten years, NASA engineers have been
kicking around the idea of a tumbleweed-inspired Mars rover. This
“tumbleweed rover” would be a rugged but lightweight ball, with sensors
and other electronics securely suspended inside. It would move about
simply at the mercy of the Martian wind, much like its botanical
namesake. Until now, the only way of testing such rovers has been to
build a prototype, then set it loose here on Earth and watch the fun.
That could be about to change, however. Researchers at North Carolina
State University have developed a computer model that can test
tumbleweed rover designs before they’re ever built. Read More
You’ve had a hard day at the office, your spouse
is currently over 2,000 miles away and now your boss says he wants you
to work late. It’s all you can do to contain your anger until you get
into the bathroom, whereupon you let loose with a string of red-faced,
high-cardio profanity. At that point, your spouse talks to you via your
shirt. “Take it easy, it’s all right,” they coo from your collar, as
they play your favorite song, and photos of them scroll across your
chest. Hey, it could happen. No, really, it could happen,
thanks to the Wearable Absence project. Researchers involved in the
program are working on developing intelligent textiles, that comfort the
wearer by evoking memories of absent loved ones. Read More
What will they think of next? I came across the
Ample Star Massaging Bicycle Seat by accident in the penny booth section
of Asia's largest computer fair, Computex.
It's akin to those massagers sold in department stores that are not
there to soothe aching muscles so much as facilitate orgasm for females
who don't want to have a sex store come up on the credit card statement.
The major difference is that this one also serves as a giant flashing
taillight, broadcasting your favorite dance rhythms to fellow road
users. Read More
Giving us yet another reason to get behind electric, the Japan Electric Vehicle Club
recently exceeded its own Guinness record for longest distance driven
without recharging, achieving a staggering 1,003.184 km (or about 623
miles). Read More
What goes around, comes around - so goes the
saying. Many moons ago a certain computer-in-a-keyboard affectionately
coined the C64 took over the world and gave a whole generation a taste
of things to come. Now Commodore USA has given the keyboard computer a
modern facelift, resulting in an all-in-one solution powered by an Intel
Atom processor and sporting a 5 inch touchscreen display. Read More
The dates for 2011’s PMA International Convention
and Trade Show have been confirmed. In an unexpected twist, rather than
being held in its traditional first quarter slot, the convention has
been moved from February to September. The event will now be taking
place September 8-10, 2011, in the South Hall of the Las Vegas
Convention Center. The shift in dates has been attributed to changes in
“industry buying cycles and technology developments." More significant,
though, is the announcement that the convention will be open to the
public on September 10, with photo enthusiasts welcome throughout the
day. Read More
Cyclists are already doing their bit to help the
environment by eschewing a fossil-fuel guzzling transport option. Now
they can do a little bit more using Nokia’s newly unveiled Bicycle
Charger Kit which lets cyclists charge their mobile phone using pedal
power. The kit employs a bottle dynamo that is driven when in contact
with the front wheel like those found on ye olde time bicycle lights.
Read More
There would be few scarier places to be in the
event of a fire than in a high-rise building with no means of escape.
Tragedies such as the World Trade Center disaster have highlighted the
vulnerability of the building’s core and emergency stairwell as the only
venue for evacuation. We've seen some last resort options that cater
for those individuals brave enough to rappel or even parachute
from the building, but that's still only part of the equation. When
escape routes are compromised it not only prevents evacuation, but also
prevents emergency personnel reaching the trouble spots. Escape Rescue
Systems' solution is to use collapsible cabins which can be lowered over
the side of the building to transport rescue personnel up... and
evacuate building occupants down. Read More
One the many hidden gems we stumbled over at Computex 2010,
the Panvista Borescope Package consists of a tiny fiber optic video
camera, joined via a long flexible tube to a 3.5 inch hand-held color
LCD monitor. The camera head is equipped with four Infrared LEDs,
allowing it to see in the dark. Besides other useful applications, the
camera can be used to peek inside a car’s engine via the spark plug
hole. Read More
You might, at first, wonder why anyone would want
a combination mouse and phone. Well, if you’re working on the go from a
laptop, or have limited desk space, it saves you the hassle of managing
both devices separately. That, at least, is the thinking behind Koegler
Electronics’ AudioMouse, recently spied by Gizmag at Computex 2010. Read More
We’re told that we should replace our bike
helmets every couple of years or so, because minuscule cracks can
develop over time, rendering them structurally unsound. For the same
reason, we’re supposed to replace a helmet that has withstood a direct
impact immediately, no questions asked. The problem is... it’s so hard
to get yourself to throw away what looks like a perfectly good helmet, just because it might
no longer be effective. New technology developed at the Fraunhofer
Institute for Mechanics of Materials should eliminate this situation.
When your helmet is getting past its prime, it will start to smell. If
it develops any large cracks... well, you’d better plug your nose. Read More
As expected, Apple today pulled the wraps off the
fourth generation iPhone at the WWDC conference in San Jose. While the
phone didn't receive its expected iPhone HD monicker, it's certainly as
HD as a phone is likely to get any time soon, with a 960 x 640
resolution equalling a whopping pixel density of 326 pixels per inch.
Read on for the rest of the new features. Read More
In case you hadn’t heard, 3D is the big news in entertainment this year with all the big players releasing 3D capable sets
designed to tempt the eyeballs and loosen the purse strings.
Unfortunately, there’s still a bit of a shortage of native 3D content
and the opportunities to create your own are largely limited to the
world of deep-pocketed professionals. That looks set to change with a
couple of less well-known players, Aiptek and DXG, staking an early
claim on the 3D consumer camera market. We checked out their offerings
at Computex 2010. Read More
Rather than make do with an iPad
or wait for other manufacturers to create the desired "Windows 7
touchscreen tablet with a large screen that could handle HD video and
wasn't too thick or power hungry," Justin Campana decided to try and
create his own. The process involved breaking open an MSI X320 notebook,
overlaying a touchscreen interface and creating custom carbon fiber
casing to house the new 13.4 inch high definition LED backlit
touchscreen tablet with accelerometer and SSD storage. Read More
The Orochi sports car first appeared as a concept
vehicle based on the Honda NSX platform at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2001
before undergoing some updates and revisions
and finally being put into production and offered for sale in late
2006. The company now unveiled the Orochi Gold Premium model. Read More
Are you one of those people who like to have the
TV on just for a bit of background noise? Or perhaps you'll leave it on
while you're surfing the net or reading a book, in the hope that
whatever comes on next will be a bit more interesting. If this sounds
like you, then you might stand to save a few dollars on your power bills
should you decide to get one of the new Sony Bravia TVs with Face
Detection and Presence Sensor technology. These new features, which will
dim or turn off the screen if you look away or leave the room, are
included in the new Sony LX900 3D TVs
due out any day now. Whilst Hitachi also appears to be researching
facial recognition technologies for televisions, it looks like Sony is
going to be the first to release a product with these capabilities. Read More
Compressed tablets are the most popular dosage
form in use today. About two-thirds of all prescriptions are dispensed
as solid dosage forms and half of these are compressed tablets. What may
surprise many people is that nearly 99.9 percent of most prescription
tablets are actually filler. The active ingredient is usually just one
thousandth of a pill, so it has to be mixed with other ingredients to
make the medicine big enough to pick up and swallow. The second thing
that may surprise you is that the underlying production process has
remained largely unchanged for over a thousand years ... though quality
assurance is a lot better these days. Now researchers are looking at a
fundamental shift in methodology which promises to create safer and
faster-acting medicines – "printing" pills to order. Read More
If there’s one job on CSI that doesn’t
look like much fun (besides boiling the flesh off human heads), it’s
having to watch hours upon hours of surveillance camera footage in the
hopes of seeing some kind of clue. In real life, footage sometimes ends
up going unwatched because there are simply not enough man-hours in
which to do it. Even when there is, studies have shown that viewers’
attention starts to decline within 20 minutes when watching such videos.
Fortunately, new software developed at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem can help with this problem. Read More
You’ve gotta hand it to Industrial Design
students. They have the youth and imagination to come up with some
really intriguing ideas, along with the skills and tools to give us
tantalizing glimpses of what those ideas might actually look like. Case
in point: The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design’s recent graduate
Carl Archambeault, and his Scarab concept. Read More
Last August, we told you about the
wonderfully-named Joby Gorillatorch. It’s an LED lamp mounted on a
Gorillapod tripod, the bendy, knobby, magnet-tipped legs of which allow
it to be mounted almost anywhere - it can wrap around branches, cling to
a car’s fender, or hang from the inside of a tent. Now, Joby has
announced that the Gorillatorch is being joined by a souped-up big
brother... the Gorillatorch Flare. Read More
A team of Iowa State University students are busy
putting the finishing touches to a solar-powered vehicle before setting
off on a thousand mile race. Using computer-aided design and some novel
engineering techniques, the students' three wheel craft weighs half
that of previous creations and sports over 500 solar cells. Hopes are
high for a winning result in the forthcoming American Solar Challenge.
Read More
From RIKEN Research in Japan comes news today
that 45 new radioisotopes have been discovered in just four days, more
than the world's scientists typically find in an average year. Read More
Traffic lights are an essential part of keeping
chaos at bay on our city streets, but the idea didn't exactly get off to
a flying start. The first gas-lit traffic light appeared outside the
British Houses of Parliament in London in December 1868 but exploded two
months later (which was bad news for the policeman operating it) and
when the first electric lights appeared in the U.S. in 1912, apparently
no-one wanted to stop for a “flashing bird house.” Gradually the
technology improved and interconnected lights that could be
automatically rather than manually controlled appeared in the 1920s. Now
we could be seeing another great leap forward - traffic lights that
talk to cars. That's the basis of Audi's travolution project which sets
up a dialogue between vehicles and traffic lights in order to keep
traffic flowing, save fuel, reduce emissions and possibly help keep
drivers saner in the process. Read More
European Telco Orange is showing off an
interesting phone charging prototype – a set of Wellington Boots with a
‘power generating sole’ that converts heat from your feet into
electrical power to charge your battery-powered handhelds. You'll need
to walk for twelve hours in your “Orange Power Wellies” to get an hour
of battery life but we still think it's remarkable that such significant
amounts of energy can be harvested from normal human activity. In order
to decrease the length of time you need to charge your phone, try
dancing or running, because the hotter your feet get, the more energy
you produce. Read More
The new iPhone 4 finally has an LED flash but that hasn't stopped a bunch of manufacturers such as Quirky and Snapturelabs creating accessories for prior models. We saw another ripping contender at Computex last week in the form of the Holomagic
which puts out an intense light from an LED from a battery case with
plenty (285 mAh) of battery life and a choice of leather or plastic
protective cases too. Read More
If you’re a fan of Adobe’s indispensable digital
darkroom software, Lightroom then chances are you might have already had
a nose around some of its new features and improvements in the beta.
Although most of the major updates were introduced during this public
pre-release we’re pleased to say a few more features have come to light
in the final version announced today. Read More
It might be a sad indictment on today’s society
but surveillance cameras are an increasingly common sight on city
streets around the world. Most of these systems employ a fish-eye lens
to capture a wide field of view, but such lenses distort the image and
can only provide limited resolution. A new video surveillance system
currently being developed by the Department of Homeland Security’s
Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) overcomes these shortfalls
to provide perfectly detailed, edge-to-edge images that could prove to
be of great assistance to law enforcement. Read More
Traditionally, the goal of high power conversion efficiency in thin film solar cells
has been compromised by opposing optical and electrical constraints –
while a cell needs to be thick enough to absorb adequate amounts of
light, it must also be thin enough for the extraction of current. Rising
to this “thick and thin” challenge, researchers at Boston College have
designed a nanoscale
solar cell based on the age-old technology that created the coaxial
cable, promising a higher conversion efficiency than any thin film solar
cell yet seen. Read More
The Michelin Challenge Bibendum
has just finished its tenth staging in Brazil, and thanks to
championing what was an unfashionable cause when it started, has become
the major annual sustainable mobility event as environmental concerns
have grown. One of the highlights of the event this year was Michelin's
release of a 145 page book entitled “Driving in the future – towards
sustainable road mobility” and it's a great resource for understanding
the challenges we face collectively, and the ways in which are likely to
overcome them. Even better news is that you can download the entire book for free in PDF format and that it's available in English, French and Portuguese. Read More
With its T3 Series electric standup vehicle
(ESV), California-based company T3 Motion took aim at the police,
security and site management markets with a no-noise, no-pollution,
fast-response, one-person vehicle that delivers long battery run time,
short recharge time and operating costs of around 10 cents per day. It
expanded its line up with the four-wheel CT Micro Car that is designed
to service similar markets to the T3 Series ESV. Now the company is
adding to its fleet with the GT3, a two-passenger, plug-in consumer
electric vehicle that features a single, wide-stance, rear wheel with
two tires sharing one rim. Read More
A competition in London has designers vying for
the attentions of a type of lodger not usually considered when drawing
up the plans for a hotel: insects. British Land and the City of London
Corporation chose to celebrate the year of biodiversity by holding a
competition to see who could design the best "hotel" for insects. It's
narrowed the list of entrants down to five finalists, with one winner to
be selected by public vote and another to be selected by a panel of
experts. Read More
If you find yourself going to meetings,
presentations or trade shows a lot then DocExpress from Taiwan's New
Image could just help ease the burden of carrying away reams of paper
handouts. Instead of lugging all that paper around, pop the document,
photograph or even real object under the high speed, portable document
camera solution and zap a digitized version instead. The solution can
even be used to project, copy, fax, email or record images or video.
Read More
Two years ago we reported that London’s iconic black cabs would be getting a green makeover
with a fleet to be fitted out with zero local emissions hydrogen fuel
cell power systems in time for the Olympics in 2012. Now the first
prototype fuel cell black cab has been unveiled. It is powered by
hydrogen fuel system hybridized with lithium polymer batteries that
allow the vehicle to operate for a full day without the need for
refueling. Read More
A study by Australian scientists has resulted in
the development of a test for blood type that can be performed using
antibody impregnated paper manufacturable for a few cents per test,
which is significantly cheaper than existing tests of a similar nature.
This could make all the difference in the developing world, considering
it's essential to test for blood type before performing a blood
transfusion on a patient whose blood type is unknown. The test
essentially allows blood type to be determined based on the distance the
blood travels along the channels in the paper from the point where it
is dropped. Read More
Head-up displays (HUDs) first appeared on
production vehicles way back in the late 1980’s, and add-on HUDs have
been around for quite a while too - and not just for cars but also for motorbike helmets.
But Taiwan-based Springteq says its WeGo HUD Navigator is the first
product to integrate GPS satellite navigation and a HUD in an all-in-one
design. The device projects navigation information onto the windshield
to provide a virtual readout out that appears roughly one meter
(3.3-feet) in front of the driver. Read More
You can’t not like an invention called the Baby
Bubbler. Even if it were called the Pontiac Aztek, you’d still have to
like it, as it’s doubtless going to save many young lives. A team of
five seniors from Houston’s Rice University developed the Bubbler,
officially known as the Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP)
device, for use on infants with respiratory infections in developing
nations. Given that around 20 percent of deaths in children under five
are caused by lower respiratory infections, that could make for a whole
lot of saved babies. Read More
With the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil well
continuing to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico there’s no shortage of
suggestions coming from those concerned about the environmental
disaster. We’ve already looked at a number of clean-up options,
and now a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor has developed a
technique that looks very promising. His filter for separating oil from
water not only cleans the water, but also allows the oil to be
recovered and stored for the use BP originally intended and the filter
to be reused. Read More
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