Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Design
X-Ray Bulb Lamps X-Ray Themselves Only
11:45PM Mark Wilson | When we originally spotted the X-ray bulb lamp, we imagined an awesome Halloween party scattered with black light and some amazing bulb that showed our skeletons. Alas, the X-ray lamp only shows its own guts, in a sense, displaying the X-ray of an incandescent or CFL bulb. Intended for exhibition at the moment, we hope that X-ray bulbs hit that market one day—whether it be these pieces of art or some neato bulb that lets us examine the contents of a beloved’s stomach. [Samulnoli via technabob] More »
Games
PSP-3000 Screen Suffering From Terrible Interlacing and Jaggies
11:30PM Matt Buchanan | Sure, the PSP-3000 has a new, brighter-than-the-sun screen that gets rid of a lot of the older PSP’s ghosting (AU: or does it?), but that kind of blazing glory apparently comes at a cost: PSP owners are reporting at the official PlayStation forums that it suffers from horrible interlacing defects during video playback and gaming, with terribly visible jagged edges and scanlines on anything that’s moving. Joystiq notes that turning off the Wide Colour Space option seems to help while we wait for Sony to get its “investigating” hat on. Any of you guys notice this? Update: Hokay, it’s apparently a feature. Riiiiiiiiiiiight. [PlayStation Forums via Joystiq via Crunchgear] More »
Phones
Iridium 9555 Moves Satphone Form Factors Two Years Into The Future–To 1999
11:00PM John Mahoney | Satellite phones are still struggling to make it into this decade, design wise, but Iridium’s new 9555 is a solid leap forward, with its internalised antenna, speakerphone, improved SMS and email and 30% volume reduction in comparison to its predecessor, the 9505a. It’s still a piece Gordon Gekko would feel at home with, but I think we can definitely look the other way on clunkiness when we’re uplinking to one of Iridium’s 66 low-earth birds to call Mum from the barren Mongol steppe while sipping on yak tea–that’s persistence that will never go out of style. Out in November for an as-yet undisclosed price. [Electronista] More »
Computers
Pomera Digital Memo DM10 Goes Way Back to the Future
10:48PM Mark Wilson | The Pomera DM10 will not go on the internet or send you emails. It can’t grab RSS from a Wi-Fi connection or even display in colour. But the Pomera Digital Memo does take notes, and it takes them hard. Booting in just two seconds off two AA batteries, the Digital Memo features a fold-out keyboard and monochrome TFT LCD, storing up to 8000 characters per file on a MicroSD card. The Digital Memo will be pulled from its nuclear fallout shelter following 10 years of quarantined development this November when it hits the Japan market for $US270. [Impress via OhGizmo!] More »
Gadgets
Calamente Fork Good For Twirling Spaghetti, Unspeakable Torture
10:01PM John Herrman | In the pursuit of a great idea, inventors can sometimes lose sight of the big picture. I don’t doubt that the Calamente Noodle fork is fantastic at spinning up a nice, big fork full of pasta, but I also don’t doubt that before the end of a meal with this medieval war museum display piece I would have at least three gruesome lip piercings that I hadn’t really planned for. I’ll stick with a fork and spoon for now. Or my hands. Or, honestly, anything but this. [Trends in Japan via BBG] More »
Toys
LED Rubiks Cube is Unnecessary Digitisation of a Classic
9:39PM Kit Eaton | So I can totally see the point of the new Mirror Rubiks cube, since it’s a harder, weirder, even more tactile version of the classic…but this LED Magic Cube 2.0 version just leaves me scratching my head. Why make a physical digital pushbutton version of an absolute classic puzzle? More »
Phones
HP Shows Off Two New iPaq Phones: One Touch, One Not
9:26PM John Herrman | HP’s rumoured touchscreen handset has showed up in the for of the iPaq Data Communicator, a pop-out QWERTY Windows Mobile handset, with a solid but predictable spec sheet. You’ll find a full range of 3G capabilities, Wi-Fi, a-GPS, a 3.1MP camera with autofocus and flash all behind a 2.8in, 320 x 240 screen, controlled with a 5-way “optical navigation” key. It measures in at the same respectable 1.7cm thickness as the T-Mobile G1 — a little thinner than its clear competitor, the HTC Touch Pro. For the old-fashioned types, you can find most of the same guts in the Voice Communicator, a sleek, half-QWERTY candybar phone More »
Gadgets
Tiny Imovio iKit Handtop Computer is a Decade Too Late
8:57PM Kit Eaton | At first glance, the iMe (sorry!) iKit handtop computer sounds pretty fandabbydozy: it’s a tiny, folding, 2.8-inch screen, QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi-enabled, webcam and Bluetooth-packing, multimedia-playing computer. But then you learn that it’s got just a 3-hour battery life in operation, doesn’t have 3G connectivity and if you even want to connect a mobile broadband dongle you’ll have to get one with an “optional” internal USB connection. It’s basically the tiny portable PDA computer we all fancied back in the 90s. More »
Phones
Microsoft Proposes Phones That Tap and Rub to Get Your Attention
8:00PM John Herrman | Microsoft Research is set to present a paper this week outlining an entirely new set of notification tools for mobile phones, including communicative tapping and rubbing mechanisms, complementing the blunt, simple, and often not-so-silent ‘vibrate’ function with a set of truly quiet ‘rub’ and ‘tap’ notifiers. They argue that user notification is a communications bottleneck for current cell phones, and that rubbing or tapping motions could notify users as well as communicate common messages, to which there could be assigned simple patterns of movement. More »
Peripherals
