Fragments of Phobos Grunt crash into the Pacific Ocean
By David Szondy
January 15, 2012
Russia's 13-ton (11.8-tonne) unmanned
Phobos-Grunt interplanetary space probe that was launched from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 9, 2011 has reportedly
burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. According to Russian Air and Space
Defence Forces, the spacecraft was destroyed on Sunday, January 15th,
2012 at 1745 GMT as it made an uncontrolled re-entry and broke up 775
miles (1,250 km) west of Chile in the South Pacific. Read More
Even without taking into account Japan's recent
natural disasters, Honda has struggled of late, seemingly having lost
its prominence as a technology innovator. With much riding on next
year's models, there was a lot of interest when Honda took the covers of
the new Accord Coupe Concept at the 2012 North American International Auto Show
(NAIAS) recently, revealing the first official glimpse of a new styling
direction, as well as revealing a host of claimed new technologies for
the all-new, ninth-generation 2013 model, set to go on-sale this fall in
America. Read More
We've all experienced that moment of panic when
we open the back door to let the dog inside only to find that he's not
there. Technology has provided a solution to this dilemma with GPS tracking devices
designed specifically for our four-legged friends entering the market
in recent years, but this offering from GEODOG claims to improve on
those that have gone before with a new slimline design that's
shockproof, waterproof, user-friendly and unobtrusive. Read More
Despite the fact that it's getting more and more
difficult to find someone who doesn't carry a smartphone with them at
all times, the notion of the Dick Tracy style watch phone isn't dead yet. In the past few years, we've seen examples from companies such as LG, Samsung, Hyundai and Orange,
just to name a few. This week at CES, watchmaker Burg officially added
its Neon line of watch phones to that list by announcing two models that
will be coming to the U.S. market. Read More
As someone who spends a good deal of time taking photographs of new consumer technology, only to subsequently enjoy
hours of tedium touching up my snaps in image manipulation software, I
have to admit to being pretty excited by the new 3D PhotoBench 260 from
Ortery Technologies. Shown at CES 2012
this week, the desktop photography studio is claimed to be the first
system in the world to take product shots or create 360 degree
Flash/HTML 5 animations with a pure white background. Read More
Some day, you may have a microscope on your
smartphone camera that's as powerful as a scanning electron microscope.
If you do, it will likely be thanks to research presently being
conducted by Durdu Guney, an assistant professor of electrical and
computer engineering at Michigan Technological University. He is working
on creating a metamaterial-based "superlens" - a long sought-after
optically-perfect lens, that could use visible light to image objects as
small as 100 nanometers across. Read More
About eighteen months ago, SanDisk revealed the world's fastest 32GB SDHC media card,
pushing the format's data transfer speeds up to a rather lively 30
megabytes per second (MB/s). Since then, the SDXC standard has been let
loose on the world, with the promise of theoretical capacities of
anything up to 2TB and file transfer rates up to 104 MB/s for the UHS-I
flavor and 312MB/s for UHS-II. While we're not quite there yet, SanDisk
is again claiming the "world's fastest" crown with its new 128GB Extreme
SDXC UHS-I card, which boasts read/write speeds of up to 45 MB/s. Read More
Open-source project intends to advance robotic surgery
By Ben Coxworth
January 13, 2012
A couple of years ago, the Willow Garage robotics company gave ten of its PR2 robots away
to deserving research groups. The idea behind the project was that
these groups would use the PR2s for robotics research, then share their
discoveries with each other, thus advancing the field farther than would
be possible if they each had to build their own unique robots from
scratch. Now, a similar but unrelated project is underway, and this time
the robots are designed specifically to perform surgery. Read More
If you’re impressed with how much data can be
stored on your portable hard drive, well ... that’s nothing. Scientists
have now created a functioning magnetic data storage unit that measures
just 4 by 16 nanometers, uses 12 atoms per bit, and can store an entire
byte (8 bits) on as little as 96 atoms – by contrast, a regular hard
drive requires half a billion atoms for each byte. It was created by a
team of scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron
Laser Science (CFEL), which is a joint venture of the Deutsches
Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY research center in Hamburg, the
Max-Planck-Society and the University of Hamburg. Read More
More from CES 2012,
Sin City, where we've briefly had a chance to get familiar with the
Nokia Lumia 900, the Finnish corporation's sacrificial offering at the
increasingly cluttered LTE altar to the gods of 4G. The Windows
smartphone features a large 4.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 8-megapixel
camera with a wide-angle Carl Zeiss lens and seven hours of talk time,
according to Nokia. First impressions? Really rather good, actually.
Read More
Solar panels keep greenhouses cooler in summer, let the sun through in winter
January 13, 2012
Spain's ULMA AgrÃcola consortium and Tecnalia
research center have developed a new type of photovoltaic solar panel
for greenhouses that can generate electricity without an adverse effect
on the crops grown within, while additionally providing cooling in
summer. The system is designed to exploit the annual oscillation - the
variation in the height of the sun's path across the sky over the course
of the year. In theory, no solar radiation is compromised over winter,
but surplus radiation can be diverted to electricity-generation during
summer. Read More
Honda's new N Box platform was purpose built for
Japanese domestic market Kei car regulations - the idea was to create a
comfortable, spacious passenger environment for four adults using the
available real estate of a minicar platform. The whole N Box package is
designed to be customised and the Wa Concept, which took a bow today in
Tokyo, has patent leather seats and a traditional Japanese lacquerware
exterior. It's gorgeous! Read More
We all know that water and mobile electronic
devices aren’t a good mix. But living on a world whose surface is around
70 percent water can sometimes make it hard to keep the two separate.
While wrapping your device in a waterproof case will provide protection,
they add bulk and can sometimes affect usability. California-based
company Liquipel claims to have developed a hydrophobic nanocoating one
thousand times thinner than a human hair that can be applied to a
smartphone to protect it from accidental spills without affecting its
functionality. Read More
MakerBot unveils its new 3D printer, the Replicator
By Paul Ridden
January 12, 2012
The folks at MakerBot Industries have not exactly
been resting on their laurels since causing a stir at CES last year
with the Thing-o-Matic
3D printer. Even though the original small object creation device would
still see the jaws of most people dropping in wonder, the company has
now unveiled a new model at CES 2012
called the Replicator that is not only capable of fabricating much
bigger objects than its predecessor, but can also do so in two colors at
the same time. Read More
Toyota's NS4 advanced plug-in hybrid concept that was unveiled this week at the 2012 North American International Auto Show
(NAIAS) in Detroit is the brainchild of Toyota engineers who were given
the task of designing a new mid-size concept for potential launch in
markets worldwide by 2015. While the NS4 concept is a dedicated plug-in
hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), Toyota says it isn’t part of its Prius
family, with a next-generation Hybrid Synergy Drive plug-in system that
is not only smaller and lighter, but is also more fuel efficient,
boasts better acceleration and a longer all-electric range than the
current system. Read More
Two feet, two snowboards: Dual Snowboards split your width
By C.C. Weiss
January 12, 2012
Dual Snowboards delivers a unique twist to the
world of snowboarding by cutting the traditional snowboard in half along
the waist, giving you a board for each foot. With this simple move that
effectively sees a lunch-tray-like board strapped to each foot, the
company says riders get more freedom to move and conceptualize new
tricks like ninja-like flip-n-kicks, but they'll also be able to pull
off Gore-Tex-ripping splits, nut-demolishing pole wraps and devastating
banana-peel falls. Proceed with care. Read More
Drawing styluses are, for the most part, simply
glorified sticks. They do what your finger would do, but have a finer
point. The new jaja stylus developed by Australia’s Jon Atherton,
however, has a few tricks up its sleeve – the big one is, it is capable
of registering 1,024 levels of user-applied pressure, which it transmits
to the tablet or smartphone’s microphone using sound. The resulting lines drawn on the screen will be of varying thicknesses, depending on the amount of pressure applied. Read More
With most people happy to make do with camera phones
for their digital image snapping needs in the majority of situations
and the quality of such devices improving markedly in recent years,
makers of dedicated consumer-level cameras face an increasingly tough
row to hoe. At CES 2012,
Polaroid has announced its SC1630 Smart Camera that attempts to blur
the lines between a camera phone and dedicated camera with its
smartphone-like form factor and being one of the first dedicated cameras
to run on Android. Read More
New e-book system promises a more paper-like reading experience
By Ben Coxworth
January 12, 2012
There may indeed come a day when printed books
and magazines have been gone for so long, that nobody cares how little
reading a digital document resembles reading one printed on paper. That
day is not yet here, however – most of us still like our e-reading
experience to be as close as possible to that of reading a book. To that
end, this week a team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology (KAIST) announced the development of new e-reading system,
that brings several book-like capabilities to tablets and smartphones.
Read More
Altec Lansing announces the LIVE 5000 Wi-Fi speaker at CES
By Ben Coxworth
January 12, 2012
One of the nice things about having a WiFi
network in your home is the fact that you can enjoy online music
anywhere in the house ... through a computer or mobile device. Now,
however, you have the choice of instead placing Altec Lansing’s new LIVE
5000 Wi-Fi speaker wherever you wish, and listening to that same music
through it. You can also wirelessly link together a string of
the speakers in different rooms, and use them to either distribute the
same music throughout the house, or play different music in different
rooms. Read More
Particle-free silver ink developed for printable electronics
By Ben Coxworth
January 16, 2012
There’s no doubt that we will soon be seeing a
lot more in the way of low-cost electronic circuits that have been
printed onto common, flexible materials such as plastic, paper or
fabric. One of the key technological innovations making this possible is
silver ink,
which is used to print these circuits’ conductors. While such ink
usually incorporates particles of silver suspended in a carrier liquid, a
new type of ink created at the University of Illinois forgoes the
particle approach, and is said to offer some distinct advantages as a
result. Read More
Often viewed as works of art, violins and other
string instruments are not uncommonly displayed in the home. One Chinese
company is turning a number of violins and other string instruments
into speakers, so the display is functional. Instruments used to make
the speakers, which also include bass and other string selections, are
made by Hua Xing String Instruments in Guangzhou, China. A driver is
inserted into the instrument, and the resonance within the resulting
ViolinSpeaker is used to produce and project sound. Read More
Emporia bringing simplified mobile phones to North America
By Ben Coxworth
January 16, 2012
Although it can't be denied that smartphones are
... well, that they're really smart, the fact is that not everyone wants
to play games, shoot and watch videos, surf the web or use apps every
time they step out their door. For many people, the ability to make and
receive phone calls is all that really matters. It was for minimalists
like these that Austrian electronics company emporia designed its very basic, large-keyed mobile phones.
While they were previously not available to North American consumers,
that changed with an announcement last week at CES. Read More
A bio-feedback armband called BodyWave is the
first of its kind to measure brainwave activity through the body, not
the scalp. Instead of an EEG headset recording a user's concentration
level, the Bodywave reads brainwaves at the arm by measuring the
electric current given off by neurons firing in the brain. Bundled with
an interactive software package called Play Attention, it
reportedly enables interactive feedback and training towards peak mental
performance. Apart from the obvious potential in sport, its ability to
train attention and teach stress-control in mobile situations (much less
obtrusively than wearing a headset) opens up wider potential. It has
already found applications in education, industry and the military as
well as in improving the lives of people with disabilities like
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Read More
Danish Mirror House reflects its enviornment
January 16, 2012
Danish architectural firm MLRP has come up with a
novel way to prevent graffiti and vandalism of a local town hall. By
turning the outside walls into mirrors, the team successfully
transformed a "drab" building into a local attraction that is hopefully
resistant to future graffiti attempts. Read More
New names dominated the Dakar Rally from
start-to-finish this year - MINI being the most obvious with a 1-2, but
also Iveco broke the Eastern Block stranglehold on the truck section.
Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel won his tenth Dakar (six on motorcycles,
four in cars) ahead of MINI teammate Nani Roma (a prior motorcycle
winner). MINI's new owner BMW must be delighted to add the world's
toughest race to its illustrious heritage, even if that MINI looks a tad
bigger than your average Countryman. Read More
Be it on increasingly powerful dedicated camcorders or via a smartphone,
capturing hours (and hours and hours …) of video has never been easier
or cheaper. That’s both a blessing and a curse, as even though you’re
more likely to capture something worthwhile at some point, at the
editing stage you’ll also have to wade through more crap to get to the
good stuff. This can be time consuming to say the least and many just
don’t bother, preferring to upload the whole kit and caboodle to their
video-sharing site of choice. Now there’s an iPhone app called Magisto
that is designed to take care of the editing for you and increase the
chances of someone actually sitting through the video of Aunt Maude’s
birthday dinner. Read More
Every CES puts the most prominent tech trends on
show, and this year was no exception, though some were a bit more
visible than others. After the unveiling of arcade-style attachments for smartphones and tablets, a no-glasses 3D tablet with an attachable controller, and a tablet aimed at the hardcore gaming crowd,
it became pretty clear that one of these trends is to bridge the gap
between high-quality console games and smart devices. However, none of
these new devices have appeared quite as portable as the Ion Controller
from SteelSeries, which connects through Bluetooth and is about the size
of a deck of cards. Read More
While once a standard, you'd be hard-pressed to
find an 8mm film camera today outside of a second-hand shop or eBay. If
still want the look of the vintage camera in your video, however, one
company Fuuvi has created an alternative: the Fuuvi Bee. Modeled after a
traditional 8 mm movie camera, the pint-sized Bee captures video at 640
x 480 pixels and 30fps, with the ability to capture 100 minutes of
video on a single charge. Read More
Insurgents are commonly taught to aim just below a
soldier's body armor, which is where the abdominal area meets the legs.
When a bullet hits this area it causes massive internal bleeding which
often proves fatal in a matter of minutes. Two physicians specializing
in emergency medicine have now developed a tool designed to treat rapid
lethal war injuries. The device, which is known as the abdominal aortic
tourniquet effectively slows bleeding and gives much needed time to stop
the flow of blood which could save a soldier's life. Read More
Nissan's e-NV200 electric minivan concept debuts in Detroit
By Ben Coxworth
January 17, 2012
Five years ago at the Tokyo Motor Show, Nissan unveiled its clever NV200 minivan concept that incorporated a mobile office and a slide-out cargo compartment. It has since gone into production,
losing the office and slide-out, but boasting what Nissan claims is the
largest load space in its class. Last year, the automaker announced
that it would begin testing of an electric version
of the van. Now, the public can get a feel for what a consumer electric
NV200 might be like, up close and in person, as the e-NV200 concept
makes its world debut at the North American International Auto Show in
Detroit. Read More
Personal Rover - personal EV for under US$1000
By Mike Hanlon
January 17, 2012
It is no secret that personal transportation form
factors are beginning to diverge and a new one caught our attention
this week that is almost certain to carve itself a niche in this
intensely interesting and competitive space. It's not as sexy as a Yikebike, Honda U3-X or Toyota Winglet,
but it is easy to use, has a range of 12 miles (20 km), a top speed of
15 mph and a price under US$1000. At 90 pounds, the Personal Rover is
not exactly small, but it folds up so it can be rolled on castor wheels
inside a building, and will easily fit inside a car boot to fulfill
secondary transport duties. Read More
The bloggers among you will be aware of that
ongoing, nagging, internal monologue as to whether our chosen blogging
platform offers the optimal combination of features, cost and
reliability for our particular blend of needs. Depending on where that
silent debate presently rests, you may be either pleased or frustrated
to hear that another contender - scriptogr.am - has entered the fray,
though it's one with a markedly different take on the very process
blogging, using text files from a user's Dropbox account to generate a
simple, elegant weblog. Read More
At a whopping 234-diagonal-inches, the touchscreen display created by Microsoft and Stereolize
for last year's CeBIT may well be the biggest we've seen but it's
hardly practical (or cheap) enough for everyday use. If you're looking
for something that won't require museum visitors or business customers
to reach up way above their heads to even touch the screen, New Mexico's
interactive exhibit veteran Ideum has announced the release of a new
65-inch wall-mounted multitouch display called the MT65 Presenter. Read More
Tamaggo 360-Imager captures all round action with a single click
By Paul Ridden
January 17, 2012
Canada's Tamaggo Inc. previewed an egg-shaped
photographic device at this year's CES that's claimed to capture
navigable high resolution 360-degree panoramas of its surroundings with a
single click. Rather than stitch together lots of different photos
taken one after the other in quick succession, the Tamaggo 360-Imager
would appear to do for photography what lens attachments like the GoPano micro did for iPhone video. I say appear to do
because the device on show in Las Vegas was a non-functioning
prototype, so we've yet to see what the technology can actually do. Read More
Home video game consoles can provide endless
entertainment, but sadly aren't the most portable of devices and can be
fairly fragile to boot. Traveling gamers know what a pain it can be to
try and haul gaming equipment around for long trips, and that's without
trying to find a TV to use wherever they go. GAEMS, Inc. may have a
solution, though, with its rugged G155 case that can secure an Xbox 360
or PS3 along with the provided HD LED screen in one tidy, portable
package. Read More
WiSPr acoustic termite detector works by "hearing" termites eat
By Darren Quick
January 16, 2012
Thanks to their habit of remaining concealed, the
first indication people get that termites have invaded their home is
after they’ve already wreaked their particular brand of wood-eating
havoc. According to Associate Professor Adam Osseiran of Western
Australia’s Edith Cowan University, the yearly damage bill in the U.S.
for termite damage tops US$12 billion, while in Australia they cause an
estimated $1 to $3 billion damage each year. In attempt to reduce such
damage, Osseiran and his team have developed an acoustic sensor that is
so sensitive it can detect termite infestation by “hearing” them chew
through timber. Read More
Nissan announces world's first self-healing iPhone case
By Darren Quick
January 16, 2012
Just over six years ago, we reported that Nissan had developed a "Scratch Guard Coat"
paint designed to repair scratches on not only cars, but on painted
surfaces in general. The company has already applied its paint
technology to a number of Nissan and Infiniti models, and in 2009 it
announced that it would license it for use on mobile phones.
It appears there weren't many takers as Nissan has now announced that
it has produced the world's first self-healing iPhone case that makes
use of the Scratch Shield paint. Read More
Researchers claim a newly discovered molecule
found in the Earth’s atmosphere holds the potential to help offset
global warming by actually cooling the planet. The molecule is a Criegee
biradical or Criegee intermediate, which are chemical intermediaries
that are powerful oxidizers of pollutants produced by combustion, such
as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. They have the ability to
naturally clean up the atmosphere by helping break down nitrogen dioxide
and sulfur dioxide to form sulfate and nitrate, which ultimately leads
to cloud formation that could help cool the planet. Read More
New wheelchair seat gets users to regularly change their position
By Ben Coxworth
January 16, 2012
As anyone who spends a lot of time seated at a
desk will know, it's important to change your position every now and
then. For wheelchair users, who spend almost every waking moment seated,
it is crucial that they do so - if they don't, they can develop
deformities or bedsores, or at least end up in considerable pain. Now,
the Swiss research group Empa is working with the ergonomics company r
going, to develop a new type of wheelchair seat that periodically causes
users to change the way they're sitting. Read More
A number of high profile websites are going dark
today to protest the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT
IP Act (PIPA). The bills are designed to protect intellectual property
holders by toughening measures against copyright infringers. Opponents
say that aspects of the bill pose grave threats to free speech and
internet entrepreneurship, with some high profile webmasters claiming
that the bill, if passed, would threaten the very existence of their
sites despite not hosting copyright-infringing material directly.
Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing are among the sites effectively
shutting down today. Read More
It's a lot easier to keep a customer than to get a
new one, at least that's how the sales force maxim goes. So what then
does the newly released J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Customer
Retention Study say about the automotive brands and their ability to
sell the same customer another car. For starters, something incredibly
positive is happening at Hyundai - just two years ago, Hyundai was below
the industry average in customer retention - now the Korean brand has
flown past Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Lexus, Infiniti and Acura to become
the stickiest brand in the business. Which isn't hard - one in two
motorists defects to another brand with their next purchase. Read More
Death is a subject that comes with a lot of open
questions: How and when will I go? How will my loved ones cope? What
will happen to my Facebook page? Okay, that last one might not be high
on your "To Do" list, but it is the easiest one to take care of with the
"If I Die" Facebook app, which lets you record a video or text message
that is posted to your wall once you've passed on. Read More
Sensics SmartGoggles - The VR headset with the works
By Jan Belezina
January 17, 2012
There certainly wasn't a shortage of smart eyewear at CES this year. Shortly after our encounter with Vuzix SMART Glasses
we ran across these formidable looking SmartGoggles from Sensics. The
Natalia Immersive SmartGoggles provide an ideal platform from which to
deliver a powerful immersive gaming experience and as a result, they
take up a considerable amount of space - "SmartHelmet" might be a more
accurate description. But the bulkiness is quickly forgotten when you
look at the hardware that's packed under the shell of this 360-degree 3D
gaming and entertainment video rig. Read More
Design consultancy and BMW Group subsidiary
DesignworksUSA has been collaborating on projects with PC case and
components manufacturer Thermaltake on various projects, such as the Level 10 concept PC,
since 2009. Now the two have teamed up again with Thermaltake asking
DesignworksUSA to develop a series of design concepts for its upcoming
range of Level 10 gaming accessories that will be created for its
e-sports division. The first product out of the blocks is the Level 10 M
Mouse that gamers will be able to get their palms on later this year.
Read More
Last mineral thought to be unique to the Moon found in Australia
By Darren Quick
January 17, 2012
When the moon-walking Apollo 11 astronauts
returned to Earth in 1969, amongst the 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar
rocks they brought with them were three minerals from Tranquility Base
that were thought to be unique to the Moon or lunar and possibly Martian
meteorites. They were armalcolite (named after Neil Armstrong, Edwin
‘Buzz' Aldrin and Michael Collins), pyroxferroite and tranquillityite.
Both armalcolite and pyroxferrite were later found on Earth, leaving
tranquillityite as the last mineral believed to have no terrestrial
counterpart. Now tranquillityite has also been struck off the list with
its discovery in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. Read More
Prototype GHOST military watercraft claims a world's first
By Ben Coxworth
January 17, 2012
If you combined a stealth jet fighter and an
attack helicopter and stuck them in the water, what would you get? Well,
according to the folks at New Hampshire’s Juliet Marine Systems (JMS),
you’d get their GHOST marine platform. Privately developed for possible
use by the U.S. Navy, the boat would reportedly be invisible to enemy
ships’ radar, while also being faster and more economical than existing
military vessels. The company’s big claim, however, is that GHOST is the world’s first super-cavitating watercraft. Read More
Microfluidic silicon probe could improve disease diagnostics
By Ben Coxworth
January 17, 2012
IBM scientists in Zurich have created a
proof-of-concept device, that could change the way that human tissue
samples are analyzed. Presently, samples must be stained with a
biomarker solution in order to detect the presence of a disease. The
staining process can be quite involved, however, plus it is subject to
error – too much of the solution can cause inaccurate results, for
instance. Additionally, it can sometimes be difficult to perform enough
tests using the small amount of tissue extracted in most biopsies. The
IBM technology, though it still involves staining, is said to offer a
potential solution to these shortcomings. Read More
The SpareOne mobile phone runs on a single AA battery
By Emily Price
January 17, 2012
What if you could power your phone on a single AA
battery? The SpareOne is a mobile phone that can to do just that.
Designed as a back-up that you keep in a glovebox or emergency kit
rather than a phone you keep in your pocket everyday, the SpareOne
claims to deliver you up to 10 hours of talk time on one AA battery and
(depending on the shelf-life of the battery you're using) it can hold
charge while unused for up to a whopping 15 years. Read More
Victorinox packs a 1 TB SSD into a pocket-knife
By Gizmag Team
January 17, 2012
Not all that long ago the availability of a 1TB solid state drive (SSD) was big news, now you can fit them in your pocket … or in this case, your pocket-knife. Shown last week at CES,
the Victorinox SSD features two interchangeable bodies - one with
traditional Swiss Army Knife blade, scissors and nail file/screw driver
combo, plus a second flight-friendly casing without any pointy bits.
When the 1 TB model hits the market later this year Victorinox says it
will be the world’s smallest high-capacity SSD drive available … but it
won't come cheap. Read More
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