We’ve talked a lot about hydrogen and fuel cells here on Giz, mainly because it’s the wonder fuel of the near future, but storing dangerous H2 is tricky: something a team at the University of Crete thinks it’s solved. The US Department of Energy reckons a tank should store 6% H2 by mass, and current tech can only do about 2%. The Greek team’s tank is amazing: it’s constructed of two wondermaterials. Carbon Buckytubes connect layers of graphene to make a huge matrix—so far they’ve built a tank with Buckyballs instead of tubes, but they’ll have that finished by Christmas. And theoretically it can store 6.1% H2. [NewScientist]
Cityscope is a new sculpture by Marco Hemmerling, designed to deal “with the fragmented perception of urban spaces” or something: To me, it’s better to imagine it as a meteor that just managed to soft-land in a city square. Or, better still than artistic mumbojumbo: perhaps as a particularly odd-looking alien spacecraft. This works even better when you learn its partially-mirrored surfaces disappear at night as it is dynamically multicolor-illuminated from inside. That said, there was a lot of design thought put into this to make it “fit” its space, and the whole thing was CAD-CAM’d into existence. Pretty. [Dezeen] galleryPost('cityscope', 3, '');
TechCrunch reports that the previously spied Kindle 2, or Kindle II, or Second-le, or whatever it’s going to be, isn’t really going to be anything before Q1 of 2009. Apparently, the device was on track for a pre-holiday release until Jeff Bezos himself demanded last-minute software changes. Although it’s impossible to know if TechCrunch’s source is solid—it could be anyone from a know-nothing bottom-rung employee to Bezos himself—the rumour would explain the lack of any announcements or marketing as we approach December. [TechCrunch]
Porsche has kicked out mobile phones before: but none so capable as the upcoming P’9522. It’s a butch but sweetly-minimal design flip phone, with a rotating screen, and it’s just got its FCC pass so it should be on the way here soon. Among its many features, it sadly lacks 3G connectivity, but the rest—including on-board GPS—almost make up for that.
In the next couple months Lenovo will be rolling out a BIOS update for its Montevina laptop users which enables remote shutdown and subsequent encryption via text message. The tech relies on the laptop having a WWAN connection and activates when a custom string, defined by the user and sent from a single, paired phone, is received. In other words, you can choose whatever you want as the shutdown signal, from a cool “Kill” or “Self-Destruct” to a long, patronising multi-part message about the thieving youth of today.
Not so long a go a couple of pictures leaked out of Nokia’s upcoming E75 (alongside its E72 cousin) and now there’s a little more to show you. Someone’s got hold of one, and taken photos which demonstrate its screen in action for the first time: it’s a 2.4-inch job. The camera with flash is also shown (there’s no view of its megapixel count: the guess is 3.2) alongside a good view of that keyboard, which some are commenting may be tricky to use with those cramped, very flat keys. We’re also told it’ll have Wi-fi, but apart from that it’s still a mystery. [Dailymobile and BGR] galleryPost('nokiae75', 3, '');
Oh Tokyoflash, how you challenge our perceptions of what a watch should be. The company’s newest item, the Kisai Denshoku, looks more like some kind of sound meter, with orange neon bars on an aluminium faceplate. Denshoku is actually one of the easier Tokyoflash watches to read, not that anyone who actually buys these things would use them to tell time in the first place.
People who logged into Youtube today have probably noticed that everybody’s favourite internet video site has undergone a slight change–everything has gone widescreen! That’s right, now you can watch a dog humping a baby in 16:9, rather than the original boring ol’ 4:3. Though, if you’d rather stick to boring ol’ 4:3, that’s not going away either. [Youtube]
In case black just isn’t your gadget spirit colour, T-Mobile has now released a white version of its Googlephone, the G1. The white G1 will cost the same $US180 with a two-year contract as its black (and bronze) counterpart(s), and is available both online and in stores. I might be in a minority opinion here, but I like it! I’ll admit that one of the reasons I was hemming and hawing on getting the G1 to begin with was because I thought it looked like a big clunky brick. Now that it’s received a more pearly polish, which incidentally matches half the other gadgets I have, I might consider picking one up. [Cnet]
The Gadget: The Sumo Omni Beanbag, which they claim is “the ultimate solution for all your relaxing needs”. More »
