We suspected this, but now it’s clear that NVIDIA’s end game when it picked up PhysX-maker AGEIA was to integrate physics processors into graphics cards. Right now, they’re porting the PhysX engine over to run on GeForce 8s, and it’ll be a simple software download, bringing some additional physics-crunching juice to current cards. The next step is a GPU with an onboard specialised physics processor.
Most of us would never need an electrocardiogram embedded into our mobile phones to monitor our hearts, but most of us aren’t recovering from a heart attack. For those people that are, this Swedish invention that turns any old mobile into a monitor that can automatically call a doctor or the hospital if your heart explodes is something they’d pay loads and loads of Swedish kronas for. Or meatballs. We think they’re pretty much interchangeable. [The Inquirer]
The high end (read: super expensive) Niveus Storage Server and Storage Server Pro doesn’t just act as a file dump for your movies—any network attached storage can do that—it interfaces with much of your networked media equipment as well.
newVideoPlayer("dinoegg_giz.flv", 475, 376,"");I’m in awe with Kota The Triceratops Dinosaur, a US$300 fully articulated 40-inch-long robot in the shape of a real-sized baby triceratops that, according to Playskool, any kid can ride. Yes. Full size. Baby. Triceratops. Riding. Robot. Really, this thing looks so cool that makes the Pleo look like a bag of bricks.
Those of you excited about that cheap, small Everex Cloudbook Wal-mart laptop as an alternative to an Eee PC might be slightly disappointed. Laptopmag just unboxed theirs, and found many things wrong with it. The pointing device is above the keyboard on the right, but the left and right mouse keys are on the left side, also above the keyboard. What the? Update: They’ve got a mini-review up.
Japanese rice cookers are so much better than the crappy American knockoffs I’ve dealt with that also purport to perform other, multiple feats of kitchen magic, but do so miserably. So I’m pretty stoked that Zojirushi is prepping a Western rice cooker invasion with a designed-for-whitey model, the Rizo. (I love rice.)
You know, if your grandma is old and senile enough that you need a twice-daily email letting you know when she last used which appliances and for how long, it might be time to stick her in a home. But Zojirushi has developed a new system that does just that, so you have the peace of mind she hasn’t burned down the house you stand to inherit by leaving the toaster on for too long. ‘Cause if you really cared, you’d just call. [Trends in Japan]
If you liked the burger phone from Juno but don’t want to be seen as the type of person who just buys something because it was featured in a trendy movie, despite clearly being that type of person, don’t sweat it. Here’s a sandwich phone. It’s equally stupid/ironic, but it’ll make you look at least a little bit like a true original. Just don’t get your 16-year-old friend pregnant; she’s much less cute and funny than Ellen Page, and let’s face it, you’re no Michael Cera. Also, you’re probably over 18 and that’s gross and illegal. Just stick to the phone. [Product Page via Textually]
newVideoPlayer("tunnelvision_giz.flv", 475, 376,"");Paul Klotz is a Dutch applied art engineer and lighting designer who makes crazy light installations under the name of LED-Art. Tunnel Vision is a tribute to Tesla and is a 15-foot-long sound-and light sculpture that changes when you put your hands in the opening—sort of like an audio-visual theremin. Tunnel Vision’s shape is, apparently, based on an abstraction of the 100Hz tone made by electrical generators and is known as Magnetostriction. [LED-Art]
What would happen if you converted the downtown of a small or mid-sized city to an eco-friendly wonderland, with open waterways and no cars to be seen? Well, you’d have an impractical fantasy on your hands, for one thing. That didn’t stop Ecocity Builders from doing some pretty sweet concept designs for how they would convert the above suburban hellscape into a tree-stuffed utopia.
