Friday, February 5, 2010

HDMI 1.4's 3D




3D's happening whether you like it or not -- but the good news is that there won't be any format war to go with the adoption of the new tech. At least that's the sense we've been getting, as most manufacturers are adopting active shutter glasses, delivery will happen on cable, satellite, and Blu-ray, and now the HDMI Licensing group has opened up the 3D portion of the HDMI 1.4 spec so non-licensees can make their gear compatible. There'll be some changes coming down the pike in HDMI 1.4a, but that's also due for public release, so really we'll all be one big dorky family in 3D glasses when this is all over.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Armatix Smartgun



Armatix has apparently been working on its so-called "smartgun" concept for quite a while, but it's now finally shown up at the Shooting Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT, naturally) with its first actual product: a .22-caliber pistol that relies on a wristwatch as a safety. As you can probably figure out, the gun will only unlock itself when its in close proximity to the watch, which sends a "wireless arming signal" that, of course, also activates some green LEDs for good measure. Previous incarnations of the company's concept also relied on a fingerprint ID as an additional safety, but that seems to have been left off this production model, which will run €7,000 (or $9,700) when it starts shipping next month. more

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Aerotel GeoSKeeper

Have a grandmother or grandfather who tends to go for afternoon walks and somehow winds up on the other side of town? Does that town happen to be in Finland? Aerotel GeoSKeeper system could be your saving grace, a wrist-worn cellphone and GPS combo device that allows for others to keep tabs on the location of the wearer. It was announced back in 2008 and is now going live in Finland courtesy of EcoTec, where families can set up safe zones and receive alerts whenever the wearer decides to wander outside of them, which is reassuring -- so long as you're not the one wearing the thing. Calls can be made to doctors or family with the press of a button should something go wrong, and apparently you can even receive text messages somehow. The one thing it can't do? Tell time. If you're going to make someone wear something like this, the least you could do is build a watch into the thing! more

Thursday, January 14, 2010

LGE 15" OLED TV

LGE 15" OLED TV : 15-inches is small, it easily trumps the world's first production OLED TV, Sony's $2,500 11-inch XEL-1, and is a reasonable size for the bedroom (if you must) or kitchen counter. No word on specs but we expect the production set to offer the same million:1 contrast, 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution, and 30,000-hour shelf life as the prototype unveiled in January. The TV will launch first in Korea for an undisclosed price that is bound to be punishingly expensive.

POB-Bot Lite II



The POB-Bot Lite is a complete robot assembling all the POB-Technology’s know-how.

It provides a mechanical base on which an intelligent color camera, a screen, and I/O management board are mounted.

A CD-Rom with examples and development tools, a serial cable for your PC are also provided.

The POB-Bot has been designed with an open architecture allowing any kind of customization (electronics, mechanical and software).

Modules communicate via the very fast POB Bus. An I2C Bus is also available.

Except the the graphical screen, all POB robot parts can be used in other robots than ours.

You program the POB-Eye (colour camera) which pilot the other robot parts.


For example, you can add to the POB-Bot Lite :

Sensors on the front of the robot

Integrate servomotors to create an arm or motorize sensors

Add robot parts

Or add...your imagination !!!
Applications

The POB-Bot is the first robot totally open for users, as well for mechanical, electronics as software.

The softwares, RISBEE for starters and the POB-Tools for higher skilled users, make POB-Bot an excellent pedagogical support for different teaching levels from high schools to engineering schools.

You can use your robot with given examples or let your imagination go freely by developing new behaviors or adding electronics to increase capabilities and give new horizons to your robot.

Includes

1x POB-Eye II
1x POB-LCD128
1x POB-Proto
1x Tank Kit
The POB's Mechanical base
1 serial cable and 1 CD-ROM including compilors, softwares, examples and documentation.
USB/Serial Adapter

Next Generation Dashboard



Intel Atom processors, capacitive touchscreens, NVIDIA Tegra 2 graphics, Moblin installs... sounds like a suite of hot next-gen ultra-portables, right? Think again. Those are just some of the technologies used in the dashboards of cars that will be appearing on showrooms in the coming months and years, dashes that were largely on display at CES -- minus the cars themselves, usually. There we were treated to mobile glimpses of Google Earth, Pandora, and Slacker Radio on the go, plus the ability to lock and unlock your car via Ye Olde Internets. It's the future, and it's coming soon, so click on through already and get a sneak peek. more

Inbrics Android Based SoIP S1



The SoIP S1 from Inbrics is running Android, of course, but it's under that same fine UI skin that Inbrics has coated its M1 Android slider in. The result is a finger-friendly device with nice software for making calls and sending messages -- though it could really benefit from an external text-input device of some sort, and luckily there's Bluetooth onboard to make that a possibility. There's HDMI, Ethernet, USB and an SD slot around back, and the device is designed to sling video calls and media playback to a TV over the HDMI plug or DLNA (there's also WiFi onboard, natch). For VoIP there's a wireless handset embedded in the base of the unit. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see a demo of the video calling in action, and the big hangup with most of these video calling stations is still here: there's no mention of the big standards in video calling like Skype, Google Talk or iChat, so it's hard to see this catching fire with people who actually video chat. Still, at least Inbrics has roughly half of the software problem solved. Check out a video walkthrough after the break.(http://www.engadget.com)

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Transform iPhone Into a Universal Remote


OK, so we know a thing or two about the "convenience" of using your iPhone as a remote control. For instance, using it to control Boxee was alright -- until we needed to make a call. Or we received a call. Not to rain on anyone's parade, but the idea of re-purposing your phone to act as a universal remote seems a little silly. But what do we know? Maybe you hold all calls while Jersey Shore is on anyways. In that case, Re could be your next favorite gadget. This bad boy lets your handset communicate with all your AV equipment via infrared, contains an extensive database of devices, and can learn from any IR remote. If that weren't enough, New Kinetix promises regular updates to the app -- and your typical remote can't do that! Compatible with the iPod Touch as well, there's no word yet on a price or release date, but we're expecting that we'll be getting plenty more details come CES time...more

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Cooky Robots


Cooking robots aren't exactly anything new (even if they haven't yet been perfected), but they generally come in the form of humanoid robots or, at the very least, robotic arms in order to be more adept in the kitchen. JST's ERATO research division has taken a decidedly different approach with these so-called Cooky robots, however, which are tiny, wheeled bots that scurry about your countertop and work as a team to make miso soup for you. As you might have guessed from the image above though, they aren't quite entirely autonomous, and require that you both label all the necessary ingredients with special cards, and pre-program things like cooking time and temperature. They'll take things over from there on out though and, as you can see in the video after the break, the results do at least appear to be edible.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

This Is Your Data on Silverlight


Here's an interesting video that gives you an idea of what working with data on the web can be like using Silverlight. The company is Data Applied, and if you can take the robotic narration you'll see some interesting data visualization examples. There's a link to sign up and try crunching your own data for free. I tried it out with and it's definitely worth a look. One nit I have is the mouse wheel deepzooms the data rather than scrolls the list. But there are interesting analysis you can run, like pivots, tree maps, forecasts and correlations. If you're a data viz junkie, you'll find a lot to keep you busy. (http://www.on10.net/)