German artist Christian Weber has put together a series of photographs entitled Unintended Fusion that focuses on connecting unrelated gadgets.
What’s that CES magic word we hear? Convergence? Yes, indeed: Sharp’s all-new BD series, as the name suggests, features a built-in side-loading Blu-ray player in all fives sets ranging from 32-52 inches.
Adding to the already impressive pile of Vista-deflating features we’re expecting to see in Windows 7 is WARP, a tech which will allow your PC’s CPU to act as a graphics accelerator, possibly doing away with the need for integrated graphics hardware to render user interfaces and low-end games. Not-so-seductively described as a ‘fully conformant software rasterizer’, WARP requires nothing more than an 800MHz processor for complete—if comically slow—DX10 compliance.
The sparkly, diamond-esque Philips Luxe mp3 player is a tale of contradictions. On the one hand, it’s an MP3 player with a mere 2GB of memory, a scant 10 hours of battery life, a one-line LCD screen, and an expected price of around $US90. On the other hand, it’s a feature-packed Bluetooth 2.1 headset, providing 100 hours of standby time, an FM radio, and excellent sound quality.
While The Veda concept is a fairly new idea out of Microsoft’s R&D labs, the design itself looks as though it was picked out of a time capsule sealed in the mid 90′s. Apparently, the Veda can be used as a phone when the screen is closed, as a multimedia player when the screen is open, and as a normal portable PC by opening the screen and extracting the keyboard. It also looks about the same size as a library dictionary.
Hong Kong based WinWin Industry has just recently unveiled a product that combines a digital picture frame, webcam, and an alarm clock with temperature and calendar functions in a single, semi-portable device. It also features 8MB of memory, a built-in rechargeable battery, a 1.44-inch screen and a 300K pixel camera resolution.
When it comes to convergence, the trend these days is to cram all sorts of functionality into a single device—even if those functions seem to be massively impractical given the limitations of current technology. However, a UK based design firm named Alloy has taken a more practical approach with their Couple-IT concept. The unit consists of a handset and a pocket-sized “laptop” that share information over a network.
It’s been a long summer day tending the garden and you need to sit down, but there is no chair in sight. If only you were using the S(tool), then you wouldn’t have to worry about finding one. Designed by Langton Stead, the S(tool) is a bent wood handle with two garden forks on either side. All you have to do is shove them into your lawn, and BAM!, instant chair. The perfect gift for the laziest green thumb you know, it’s available directly from the designer, though no word on price. [Langton Stead via productdose]
Evergreen’s new Genius Navigator 365 is described by the English translation of Impress as “a USB gamepad deformed laser mouse”, and we couldn’t agree more. The mouse is 1600dpi, the gamepad has eight buttons and a D-pad, and it sells for $36 (¥3,499). Be warned, of course, that you get what you pay for. [Impress]
Ford Sync is a new system developed by Ford and Microsoft that aims to fully integrate your MP3 player, cell phone and car computer with a speech recognition system. You will be able to climb into your SUV and say, ‘Play artist Cliff Richards’, and the annoying old timer will start blaring out of your speakers. It can even read out your text messages for you in an old-skool synthesised voice, which even understands lazy abbreviations like GR8. Jump to see it in action on a video featuring the action movie guy voice over. More »
