Wednesday, September 5, 2007
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Hype Bubbling Back Up for EEStor’s State-of-the-Art-Defying Battery Killer
11:45PM Matt Buchanan | The hype for EEStor’s mythical battery-killing, capacitor-based technology that we’ve been hearing about for a while keeps coming, re-ringing promises of, for instance, a five-minute plug-in time for a car to make a 500-mile trip. Naturally, details on how EEStor has managed to accomplish a feat academics have been taking whacks at for years—sufficient insulation to create ultracapacitors that don’t take up ultra-amounts of space—are scant, descriptions liberally laced with the word “proprietary.” Forgive the lack of cheerleading, but we’ve witnessed similarly paradigm-breaking promises of so-good-it’s-like-magic energy generation fall short literally moments before they were supposed to change the world. The situations aren’t so dissimilar—small company claims to miraculously surpass all past and current efforts (by “400-fold,” based on the numbers they’re giving, according to one scientist) but offers no hard details to back it up. This is partially understandable—trade secrets and whatnot—but where’s the beef? True, EEStor has serious backing and asserts real results on the ground by year’s end in the form of one of ZENN Motor’s cars. But until we hop a ride and peek under the hood, we won’t be letting going of our AAs or Li-ions just yet. Engineers in the audience, what’s your take? Are we in for a ride or being taken for one? [AP, Ars] More »
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The New Stinger, Joystick PC/DVD Player
11:26PM Mark Wilson | Game Cabinets makes some excellent retro gaming systems, but their newest Stinger is not just intended for classic MAME fun. Instead, it wants to be an integral part of your home theater. Essentially a PC with TV-out and joystick controls, the Stinger can do anything a PC can do—including running Windows Media Center Edition and becoming a DVR. At a hefty 28.5×13.75×5 inches, the Stinger won’t exactly fit into the palm of your hand. But neither did the arcade games of yesteryear. We think it’s ironic that a a company looking to reinvent the classic experience of gaming is doing the same thing Sony and Microsoft are attempting with their latest consoles: to become an integral part of your all around entertainment experience. We’ll get Charlie to try the product out when it debuts at CEDIA, hopefully along with some more specs. And then we’ll make fun of it while secretly wishing we had one of our own. $499 [cepro via electronic house] More »
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Sony LocationFree, Now in HD
10:33PM Mark Wilson | Sony is stepping up their LocationFree game, now supporting HD transmission through this new transmitter/receiver pair, the LF-W1HD kit. The catch? Well there are two, actually. First, the HD signal is not your source signal but an MPEG4 compressed product. Sony claims the picture has somewhere near 96% fidelity, which is still pretty good in our book. Second, the transmitter doesn’t have HDMI input. The receiving unit supports the format, but apparently Sony can’t deal with transcoding and transmitting the HDMI data—or finds the prospect too expensive. Ugh. Deal breaker? I think so. The LF-W1HD kit is slated for a December 1st release at about $430. Japan only. [press release via impress] More »
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LG Intros $999 BH200 Super Blu Combo HD Player
10:26PM Wilson Rothman | Realizing that Samsung’s BD-UP5000 was going to give the original hybrid BH100 a run for its money, LG announced the more competitive BH200 Super Blu Player for watching both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. It’ll cost $999 when it ships in October, and will include support and features its predecessor sorely lacked. According to reports, the BH200 will have HDi support, 1080p output at 60Hz and 1080p upscaling of standard DVDs. It will be able to play audio CDs, and go online for bonus HD DVD content. It can also access a full complement of Blu-ray interactive features—where available—such as BD-Live, Blu-View or Picture-in-Picture. It’s not clear whether the BH200 will bear both the Blu-ray and HD DVD logos, like Samsung’s BD-UP5000 Duo HD, but at similar prices and feature sets, we’ll be watching both of these mofos when they are available. Now tell me, why would you want a disc player that only plays one kind of HD disc? [Electronic House] More »
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World’s First Spaceport Designed, Construction Starts 2008
8:11PM Gizmodo US Edition | You may remember that Virgin Galactic planned to build a Spaceport in New Mexico? Well, a winning design has now been chosen, and construction on the 100,000 square-foot facility is set to start in 2008. Is it just me, or does “spaceport” sound a little bit too Sci-Fi? More »
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USB Hub Man from Kikkerland
7:34PM Gizmodo US Edition | Kikkerland has designed this cute USB hub called Hub Man, who has USB sockets for arms and legs, and an LED for a heart. Most of his limbs run at USB 1.0, with only one bionic limb running at the faster USB 2.0. It costs $19, which is more than some other, faster hubs, but can they feature in an impromptu desktop puppet theatre? Yeah, we thought so. [Technabob] More »
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Mobile Steers You With Heat and Cold
7:25PM Gizmodo US Edition | When you’re in a strange city it’s easy to get lost, but you don’t want to miss the sights because you’re glued to a map or GPS device. German and Swedish researchers may have created a solution – cell phone that can give you GPS directions simply by heating up or cooling down the handset. More »
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Pirates vs. Ninjas Batteries (Verdict: Pointless)
7:00PM Matt Buchanan | Why pointless? Because ninjas totally own pirates. End of story. The AA 4-packs run $3 (plus shipping), which is a great deal for the ninja batteries since they’ll assassinate rival portable electronics and power your Walkman for approximately 100 years. [Think Geek via Shiny Shiny] More »
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Steampunkish Stormtrooper, Boba Fett and Alien Look Almost Scarier Than the Originals
5:11PM Addy Dugdale | Just what you want to see when you’re doing the shopping at the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai &mdash three bad-ass Steampunk nasties in the Al Jabber art gallery. Gallery below. More »
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