Archive for October, 2008
When we humans finally destroy the earth and its forests with our greedy ways, it looks like there will be robotic trees around to keep the oxygen flowing. Chonam National University developed the robotic plant in Korea, which stands over four feet tall and consists of your regular plant parts, a pot, stem, and five meat eating buds. The robot interacts with humans by bending toward an approaching person and blooming and shaking. If only real plants could do that! It also responds to music and light by dancing in what looks like some weird, robotic mating dance. If these things do replace plants, you’ll have the satisfaction of telling your kids, “I remember when plants didn’t dance!”
For those of you who are still running XP because you’re waiting out your trust issues with Vista, you may not have to wait much longer… or you’ll have to come up with a new excuse. According to ZDNet, a beta build of Service Pack 2 is in the hands of some software partners. Apparently, it’s also Microsoft’s intention to deliver the Service Pack before Windows 7 hits the shelves on June 3rd of next year. A new OS coming out only two years after Vista is a little foreboding, but hopefully SP2 will fix some of the remaining issues with Vista, namely,compatibility issues. There’s very little known about the features of SP2, but we’ll be sure and keep you updated.
After Steve Jobs called the Blu-Ray format a “bag of hurt”, it’s sort of surprising to find a company which is already producing Blu-Ray players for MacBook and MacBook Pro owners. The unit is external, so if you’re fine with hauling around an extra piece of hardware, not to mention the discs, you’ll have portable Blu-Ray access where ever you go. The drives come in a glossy black or white finish and they’ll burn BD-RE and -R discs at 2x. The cost isn’t too painful at $289, but we’re still hoping to see internal Blu-Ray support. So c’mon Steve! Open up that bag of hurt!
It’s no surprise than a follower of Ben Heck would release this device. A few months after the release of Ben’s portable Nintendo 64, he’s done it again by creating a portable DreamCast, which has been dubbed the DarthCast. The DarthCast uses the same shell belonging to a Lazer Doodle that the portable Nintendo 64 used. Once the shell was acquired, a Dreamcast, controller a PSOne LCD, and a power supply come together to make this inspiring piece of indie hardware. The DarthCast has around a three hour battery life before it will start to hum, letting you know its about to go over to the dark side.
It looks like touchscreen technology isn’t reserved to cellphones anymore. Apparently, HP is looking to reinvent it’s portfolio over the next 16 months and one of the improvements to be made is touchscreen for their laptops. They’ve already debuted the TouchSmart PC, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting that HP plans to have a touchscreen laptop out by the end of the year. It seems Frog Design will be helping HP get the model ready by developing the new software and hardware. Not to miss out on the cellphone bandwagon, it’s reported that HP will also release a touch screen cellphone in Europe, but currently there’s no word about a release in the US.
No, you’re not being paranoid if you’re in public and surfing the internet. Computer screens are like a magnet for human eyes, whether you want people looking at what you’re looking at or not. Traditional privacy filters tend to leave your view a bit murky as well, so LG has announced the solution for the privacy vs. clarity problem. It’s new Viewing Angle Image Control display has the ability to have its viewable area cropped from just 175 down to 60, via a push of a small button. This change is not supposed to impact the brightness of the screen in any way. It’s not really the first screen which we’ve seen this ability from, but it’salready in mass production and will be showing up in laptops every where, very soon.
With the advent of Twitter and Pownce into the social networking world, SMS texting has skyrocketed. Serious texters need a serious phone, so AT&T has answered that call with four QWERTY equipped “dumbphones”, one of which is supposedly the thinnest device which supports a full QWERTY keyboard.
The Pantech Matrix is a dual slider which will be available in blue and green. Up next is the Samsung Propel and though it doesn’t have Windows Mobile, it does offer 3G access. The Pantech Slate is the next addition, which lays its claim to being the thinnest device with a QWERTY keyboard. Last but not least is the Quickfire, which will bear AT&T branding. Think of it like AT&T’s version of the sidekick. Now you can text in style to, idk your bff Jill?
There has been a lot of talk about merging a Blu Ray player into an HDTV, similar to what some have done with standard DVD players. Mitsubishi and Funai were the first to announce the intention, but in the end, it’s Sharp’s Aquos DX LCD TV which reigns supreme in the battle for Blu Ray. The TVs are scheduled to appear in several sizes ranging from 26″ all the way up to 52″. The tv comes equipped with an integrated HDTV tuner and the ability to play BluRay movies. Perhaps the only other item worth mentioning is only the 37″ and the 52″ models will be offer 1080p resolution. The Aquos is scheduled to ship in late November for a whopping $1,963, depending on the size, of course.
Samsung has all eyes focused on them after announcing plans to enter the US laptop market with five different branded models. The laptops will be available in both online and traditional retail shops and the models featured will be the NC10, Q310, X360, X460, P460, and the P560. The N10 starts with a screen size of just 10 inches, while the P560 sports a nice 15.4 screen. The prices for these babies range from just $499 for the small NC10, all the way up to $1,49 for the P560. It looks like Samsung has thought this through and is hoping to target the entire laptop market by offering a wide range of laptops for a wide range of budgets.
Over the years there have been a few cellphone concepts developed with wood in mind. LG most recently teased the public with faux wood concepts, and Hulger has actually built a wooden phone… but only about four people in the world could afford it. However, Nokia’s got the answer it seems. Their eco-team has designed and created the phone which you see here. The phone boasts an 8 megapixel camera in the handset, and appears to function just as any normal handset would. The thing probably isn’t coming to market, but it’s always nice to see off the wall concepts.