Monday, July 30, 2007
Our Plan For Landing On An Asteroid
11:54PM Seamus Byrne | FACT: An asteroid will one day kill us all. That’s why NASA asked a 3D imaging company named DigitalSpace Commons to simulate a landing on an asteroid with modified spacecraft, pictured here. I’m partial to the production levels of Armageddon, but we’re guessing this simulation is a bit more accurate. We still recommend NASA brings along Bruce Willis because, as we all know, someone will need to stay to detonate the bomb. It’s just the way these things work out. [DigitalSpace Commons via cnet] More »
The Apple Store Can Get You Your iPhone Fix in 24 Hours
11:31PM Seamus Byrne | After being down for maintenance, the Apple Store is back up and running, and saying that it can now ship your iPhone within a day. So sing Hallelujah, as the jesusPhone can now be in your grubby little paws just that little bit sooner. [Apple Store] More »
Google Streetview Cars Rocking Ladybug2 Spherical Camera
11:28PM Seamus Byrne | We’ve noticed small red cameras up on the top of those Chevy Cobalt camera cars gathering pictures from coast to coast for Google Streetview, and now an astute tipster has shown us which cameras those are: the Ladybug2 by Point Grey Research. It’s a spherical digital camera, and a tantalizing tidbit of information is that the thing shoots video at 30 frames per second, and with nice, big 1024×768 frames, too. Does this mean that Google is shooting video, not just stills of every street of the United States? Well, it would make sense, because those cars are already roaming the streets—might as well go ahead and get relatively high-resolution video and not just still photographs. This camera grabs its video with five CCDs facing in all directions as well is one pointing straight up, letting it snag 75% of the full sphere. Then it sends its video via 1394 to a compressor unit that’s able to stream those images at 30 frames per second. [Point Grey Research] (Thanks, Clem Taylor!) More »
Apple TV Extra USB Storage Hack Effort Needs Some Polishing Help
10:56PM Seamus Byrne | In case you missed it, you can now hack your Apple TV to use an external USB 2.0 drive for movies, songs and photos storage. The people at Apple TV Hacks want your help now to wrap their voo-doo into a simple GUI application which, ideally, could run in all platforms. [Apple TV Hacks] More »
Mr Lee Gives Cat’s-Eye View of the World via NeckCam
10:22PM Seamus Byrne | Let’s have a round of applaws (oh dear) and some stroky-stroky for Mr Lee, the world’s foremost cat photographer. His owner, South Carolina resident Jurgen Perthold, was curious as to what Mr Lee got up to during the day. So he rigged up a shock-, scratch-, water- and theft-resistant camera, slung it round Mr Lee’s neck and sent him off to hunt voles. Turns out he’s pretty good at taking pics – as the gallery shows, after the jump. More »
Samsung i85 Camera is Personal Media Player Too
10:00PM Seamus Byrne | Samsung today announced its new i85 camera too, which includes a personal media player to really make use of its big 3″ touchscreen LCD. The camera itself is an 8 megapixel with a 5x optical zoom lens and face recognition technology which automatically focuses on any faces that are in shot. The i85 will retail at $349 and should be appearing at the end of August. [Photography Blog] More »
Samsung Unveil 3 New Smart Touch NV Cameras
9:59PM Seamus Byrne | Samsung has unveiled three new models in their NV range today; the NV8 8-megapixel, the NV15 10-megapixel and the NV20 12-megapixel. They all feature the company’s Smart Touch system, which wouldn’t be out of place in a fighter plane. Or judging by its sleek looks, in a TIE Interceptor. More details after the jump. galleryPost('samsungNV', 4, 'Samsung NV Range'); More »
Tote Boom Bag is iPod-Friendly, Too Small for the Beach
9:40PM Seamus Byrne | iPod-compatible boombox bags are two-a-penny these days, but Fred Flare’s tote is less hideous than a lot of the current speaker-bag combos that are around at the moment. Paying hommage to the vinyl ‘n’ crappy plastic turntable age, (no doubt you get an authentic tinny sound from the speakers) the bag runs on four AA batteries, and is compatible with MP3 players and mobiles. The only drawback is that, at just 12 inches wide, you’d be hard pressed to fit all your beach gear into it without a serious tussle. [Fred Flare via 7Gadgets] More »
Tell Your Car What to Play, Read With Ford Sync
8:17PM Seamus Byrne | Ford Sync is a new system developed by Ford and Microsoft that aims to fully integrate your MP3 player, cell phone and car computer with a speech recognition system. You will be able to climb into your SUV and say, ‘Play artist Cliff Richards’, and the annoying old timer will start blaring out of your speakers. It can even read out your text messages for you in an old-skool synthesised voice, which even understands lazy abbreviations like GR8. Jump to see it in action on a video featuring the action movie guy voice over. More »
