In an era of DLPs, it is easy to forget the glory days of super 8s. To be honest, that is probably a good thing if you had relatives that made a lot of home movies or teachers that liked to show boring arse educational videos while they sipped on “coffee” in the back of the room. However, the retro enthusiast will be able to get a hold of a new super 8 projector kit from Gakken that features some modern LED technology—although the film itself is spooled using a hand crank. If only they made a super 8 camera to go along with it. Available for 8,000 yen or US$80 (Japan only) starting on April 24th. [Gakken via Wired via Retro Thing via Filmshooting]
NASA is sending a $200 million, Canadian-built robot named Dextre (Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator) up to the International Space Station to help carryout spacewalk missions too dangerous for humans to attempt. The currently disassembled robot is being flown up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour and will be built up on the Space Station. Once constructed, Dextre will be 10 feet high, 5 feet wide and have two arms comprised of seven joints apiece. [ABC News]
We had to read this twice to be certain, but Verizon is teaming up with researchers at Yale and a P4P Working group in order to speed up peer to peer file sharing. How is this beneficial to Verizon, which as a telco has the burden of carrying P2P traffic, which measures at about 1/3 of the internet’s throughput already? Because when you’re sharing files with others, only about 6.3% of the traffic comes from users in the same city as you, which is cheap traffic for Verizon to deliver. In a new optimised scheme, up to 58% of the traffic can come from nearby users, which speeds up your downloads and makes it much more cost effective for the ISP.
Oh Japan! Why must you take something so pleasurable—massaging breasts—and devise a mechanical substitute for doing it yourself? And not only that, paint it gold, call it “Lucky Palm”, and plaster a Buddha on the side? That’s right, it’s a Lucky Palm Breast Massager, straight from Japan, powered by AA batteries. As someone who studied a bit of Buddhism, I can say that Siddhartha would probably approve (he was real letch). When he was around, no lady’s middle road was safe. [e-nls - Thanks Captain Japan!]
Joel Escalona, the same dude that brought us the Seven alarm clock concept is back with a design for a USB bomb-shaped storage device. I can definitely see where he came up with the design—bombs are cool, the cord makes for a great fuse and the size of the device itself would mean that it could potentially hold a massive amount of data. But what would keep this sucker from rolling off your desk? Since it is only a concept, we will probably never know. [Joel Escalona via Pan-Dan via Techabob]
When does a cordless phone not look like a cordless phone? When it looks like this Thomson Symbio DECT VoIP phone, which allows you to hang up the receiver like a “old time phone,” but picks up and works like a cordless one. There’s a small LCD screen in the body in order to view contacts and other VoIP network info, and the phone even has internet radio and RSS capabilities—as if you’d want to do either on a phone for an extended amount of time (maybe on the toilet). It’s unclear whether this works with Skype, or how it’s VoIP, but it sure does look nice. [Thomson via Nexux404]
We popped this feature last night, but wanted to remind you so you didn’t miss some key explanations: • Why there won’t be a US$199 Blu-ray player this year • Why BD-Live online won’t take off quickly • Why Paramount and Universal’s biggest blockbusters will suffer most this year due to the studios’ HD DVD alliance For that and more, read: Whole Blu World: The Format War’s Bloody Aftermath
newVideoPlayer("catjump_giz.flv", 463, 387,""); We gonna die. We gonna die. We gonna die. We gonna die. DIE. I can has wings? Or more vodka? I hates Crazy Russians and their crazy parachutes! (Editor’s note: really, what’s the deal with this? No kitty cam? The cat should have a cam to see his point of view, especially for when he rips his owner’s face to pieces after touching down.) [English Russia]
How much contrast does one man need? Meridian’s MF10 1080p projector is said to deliver 30,000:1, and for the low-end-automobile sticker price of US$15,000. (Too bad it’s not scalable: I’ll settle for 10,000:1 for US$5,000—or hell, a 30:1 for US$15.) This projector doesn’t use the more common lower-end engine based on TI’s DLP chip, but a three-chip system based, like Sony’s SXRD, on an LCD derivative called “liquid crystal on silicon.” In this case, it’s JVC’s D-ILA technology. Each chip has the 1920×1080 resolution, and manages red, green or blue. There’s a motorised lens with 2X zoom capability for smaller rooms, but who are we kidding? If you can afford this, you’re gonna have a room big enough to do it justice. [Meridian]
Ph.D student Leah Buechley has designed several items of electronic clothing, but her signal jacket for cyclists is, I reckon, something that should be picked up by clothing manufacturers at soon as possible. LEDs embedded in an arrow formation flash to indicate the cyclist is about to turn left or right, warning motorists, and so, hopefully, preventing any unnecessary squishing. The LEDs are powered by that cute flower-like thing in the centre of the jacket. It’s the LilyPad Arduino, a small, sewable computer chip that was designed by Leah herself. [Leah Buechley via DVICE] galleryPost("bikejacket", 8, "Bike Jacket");
