If you are planning on showing Gizmodo no love this morning, we shall excuse you if you ditch us for the awesome DARPA Urban Challenge. The DARPA Urban Challenge hopes to pursue technologies that may replace humans on the battlefield. Teams enter an unmanned, robotic and autonomous vehicle, which is released in a mock city environment and must complete certain tasks to succeed. The main objective is for the robotic vehicle to carry out simulated military supply missions, whilst simultaneously negotiating their way through traffic and past obstacles. More »
We’ve had our share of cool water bottles make their way through the site. Now we get BevyTech’s Gadget Bottle, which is just sad. Not only does this seem like a broken cellphone/MP3 player/pill bottle(!?) waiting to happen, but what practical reason is there for affixing a gadget to a water bottle? Granted the knife-bottle option does look extra grimy, but it’d be cooler if they built it into the bottle. I’ll spend my $8.25 elsewhere, thanks. [Gadget Bottle] More »
Microsoft’s HD Photo standard is now officially tapped to become JPEG’s successor by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, but it’ll be known as JPEG XR. XR stands for extended range, given the wider colour palette and finer gradations it can show. Other benefits include in-camera imaging processing support and, supposedly, better compression. Besides losing its Windows-y name (in a former life, it was Windows Media Photo) it’s dropping proprietary control by Microsoft to become as neutral as JPEG is now. Though support’s already built-in to Windows Vista, it’ll take a year to get standardized, at which point large-scale adoption will probably start picking up steam. [Cnet via Electronista] More »
They say that the best way to develop a great product is to find a need and fill it. Perhaps the design team at DigitalTech didn’t look hard enough when they came up with their Touchstone portable gadget charger / hand warmer hybrid. It’s not that the two functions of the device aren’t useful —it can charge just about anything and my hands could stand to be a little toastier in the winter months —I’m just not sure that these functions make a lot of sense together. Still, if you would prefer a compact charger with some added yet unrelated functionality, you will be happy to know that the Touchstone can provide up to 9 hours of continuous cell phone charging and up to 6 hours of hand warming. Available for around $44. [Product Page via TFTS] More »
Patton would’ve killed for a battalion of these babies. The British Army’s testing an “invisible” tank that works like the invisibility jacket Susumu Tachi put out a couple of years ago. Basically a camera/projector setup throws images of the surroundings onto the tank, letting you see through it, so it’s not quite the kind of future-y awesomeness DARPA’s working on. Yet, anyway, according to the project head: “The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them – which is intricate and complicated, but possible.” Add a couple of legs and a rail gun, and we’ll see Metal Gears walking around in no time. [Daily Mail via Geekologie] More »
Samsung has officially announced the SGH-i780 and its QWERTY keyboard, 2.55″ TFT touch screen with 320×320 resolution, optical joystick, Windows Mobile PPC, A-GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and support for triband GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 900/1800/1900 MHz and singleband UMTS/HSDPA. No word on pricing information, or where this phone might end up, but availability is expected to begin in January 2008. [Pocket PC Thougts via The Unwired] More »
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google will be announcing its phone plans on Monday, hopefully putting a stop to the endless rumours floating out there regarding the GPhone. The announcement is expected to reveal a series of alliances with multiple handset makers and cellphone operators that are open to the idea of pushing Google phone applications. WSJ notes that the timing of the announcement could always change, but at this point Monday is looking good. [WSJ] More »
In case you didn’t want to rip through the pages upon pages of the EAC’s Voluntary Voting System Guidlines or the 600-page monster version before firing off your two cents on e-voting, Ars Technica nicely overviews them for us. For one, paper trails are now a de facto requirement, since “independent, voter-verifiable records” are required for certification, meaning we no longer have to pray that the machine’s software is up to snuff.
More to the nitty-gritty, what emerges from the guidelines is something along the lines of an actual technical standard with “revised and clarified language.” And they actually have to be tested, not just rubber-stamped by third-parties hand-picked by vendors. Best of all, while technically the guidelines are voluntary, a bunch of state legislatures are voting to make them mandatory, giving them the force of law. Must be a glum day over at Diebold Premier Election Systems‘ HQ, lamenting the days of a total lack of oversight. [Ars, Flickr] More »
Using traditional photovoltaics and a very non-traditional inflatable concentrator and tensegrity truss rigging structure, the folks at Cool Earth Solar have developed a system that could be far cheaper than polished aluminium mirrors. In fact, the inflatable versions are up to 400 times cheaper than regular mirrors and they are so lightweight that they can be suspended on cable lines as opposed to individual base systems —thereby using far less steel in construction. That means faster installation and minimal land use disruption.
Unfortunately, the design does have its drawbacks. For one, the inflatable mirrors would be fragile and less efficient than traditional methods due to the unique shape and the effects of wind on the non-rigid frame. So, in reality, the true cost effectiveness of such a set up is still unknown. Still, Cool Earth hopes to make solar power as cheap as non-renewable power within the next three years. [Cool Earth via Eco-Geek] More »
