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Peripherals
Landport Cubes Squeeze Powered Speakers In Just 2.5cm
Posted by Kit Eaton at 8:48 PM on December 1, 2008
Portable speakers for MP3 players are two a penny, but not many are not far off a penny in size: Landport's Cubes are though. They're just an inch cube, but fit in stereo speakers, 3.5-mm jack plug, rechargeable batteries and a mini-USB port. They'll run for 4-5 hours on a charge, too. Just don't go expecting bone-rattling volume as they pump out a similarly tiny 0.8-watts. Out soon in Japan for $US25. [Slashgear]
Researches at Osaka University have been doing some really tiny writing lately, using their newly-invented atomic pen, which can draw atom by atom. The resulting letters, the words "Si" for silicon or "Yes" in Spanish, measure only 2 x 2 nanometers, roughly 40,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. According to Masayuki Abe, one of the project scientists, they have reached a limit impossible to surpass:
Nippon Signal has revealed its new entrant into the colour projector size war, showing off a SVGA 800 x 600 resolution colour projector that's roughly the size of a cigarette case at a recent micromachines exhibition. The prototype, which measures a tiny 90 x 55 x 20mm, uses a MEMS scanner to project images, rather than the more traditional LED.
Freecom's just taken the portable hard drive crown with what they're claiming to be the smallest and lightest 2.5-inch USB drive on the market now. Their Mobile Drive XXS comes in 160GB, 250GB and 320GB sizes, and is bus-powered for one less thing you have to carry around. It seems like the race to having the smallest 2.5-inch hard drive is kind of ridiculous. The lowest you can go is down to the bare drive, which is exactly what someone should release (complete with USB adaptor cable) and call themselves the ultimate victor in this competition no one cares about. [
AreoVironment is building the world's smallest UAV, called the Nano Air Vehicle, that has moving wings instead of a propeller or engine. DARPA has given the company US$636,000 and six months to demonstrate an ultra-small UAV that will be under 7.5cm long and under 10 grams.
Demonstrating that fab things come in small packages is this Sony lay-dee, who's proffering one of the five golf ball-sized speakers of the HT-IS100 home theatre sound system for your loving eyes to inspect. It's a 5.1-channel, three-HDMI input system and will be released in Japan on July 15 at a cost of around US$870. Full details and a couple more pics below.
20% smaller than the previous generation, Samsung is claiming their new CLP-315K is actually the World's smallest colour laser printer. It's got a resolution of 2,400 x 600 dpi and can spit out four letter-sized pages per minute in colour and 17 in black, and apparently it has improved photo quality output. There's also another small all-in-one edition, the CLX-3175FNK, which has a scanner built in and can scan to and print from USB memory sticks so it can operate PC-free if you need it to. There's no word on release date or price yet, sorry. [
Scientists have developed a pair of robotic hands that are both strong and sensitive. The tweezers can guide themselves to pick up and move individual cells without damaging them, and have a grip that can be as slight as 20 nanoNewtons of force. In fact, so advanced are the little grippers, that they can be hitched up to a microscope and, with the right software, function without human control. More below.
I'm not sure there's room enough to install one of 
