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Posted at Thursday, December 22, 2005 EDT |
| Design your own cockpit: People are used to configuring PCs on a website before they buy -- but an airplane? Diamond Aircraft Industries, a German-Canadian company that makes small single- and twin-engine planes, thinks the time has come. At its website, you can decide whether you want the Garmin GPS unit (for $8,868 U.S.), the autopilot with altitude hold for $12,390 or the engine pre-heater system ($620). Add those to the base price of about $145,000, and it's all yours. FedEx probably won't drop it off at your house though. |
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Personal video recorder company TiVo Inc. said Monday that it plans to roll out a new feature that will allow users to choose certain commercials, based on keywords, and then have them inserted into TV shows that they have recorded with their TiVo (Dave Zatz has a description of how this would work, taken from a patent application by TiVo).
That might sound a little odd considering one of the main benefits of having a TiVo is that you can fast-forward through the commercials, but it's obvious that the PVR company is trying to find new revenue sources and is willing to consider just about anything. This new feature sounds a lot like an attempt to create a kind of Google AdWords model, but with TV instead of the Internet.
Is that even possible? Carl Howe, a former Forrester Research consultant, says he thinks it is "a brilliant idea," -- the Googlization of TiVo, he calls it (he goes even further to say that he sees Google buying TiVo because of the information it will be able to collect based on its new advertising model). Others disagree.
Om Malik, for example, notes that paying users of TiVo -- who are already paying for something that others can get for virtually nothing through the PVR offered by their cable company -- might be less than enamoured with the new service. AdWords works for Google because its main service is not only free, but is so useful that people don't mind having ads served to them, not to mention the fact that the act of searching is more closely aligned with targeted ads than, say, the act of watching CSI:Miami.
Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek is also skeptical, as is Cynthia Brumfield from IPDemocracy. And I would have to say I am too -- TiVo's move seems more like a Hail Mary pass by a struggling company than anything else.
A Norwegian engineer named Eirik Solheim recently posted an interesting comparison on his website between Webshots and Flickr. The former is a photo site that is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and the latter is a former Vancouver-based photo site that is now part of the Yahoo empire and has been around for less than two years (thanks to Thomas Hawk for pointing out the link).
One of the exhibits in Eirik's argument was a chart mapping the traffic patterns from both sites (courtesy of Alexa.com), which shows that Webshots has been going steadily downward in terms of "daily reach" while Flickr has been going steadily upwards.
As both Thomas and Eirik note, this is likely because Flickr is a much better example of a "Web 2.0" service. In other words, it does a better job of taking advantage of the interactive Web. It is easy to use, it has a simple interface -- and perhaps most importantly, it emphasizes community through the use of tags, groups, comments, contacts and so on, not to mention RSS feeds for everything and an open API (application programming interface).
Mapquest, like Webshots, is also the current leader in its sector -- online maps. However, it is not growing and sites such as Google Maps are. Why? There's a clue in this story about the company: Mapquest used to have satellite images, like Google and Microsoft, but did away with them because executives at the company thought they were fun but didn't see them as useful. Mapquest also doesn't have an open API, which allows other sites to create "mash-ups" using Google Maps, such as the a map of liquor outlets at beerhunter.ca.
Is Mapquest still the leader in the industry it created? Sure it is. So is Webshots. But their competitors are redefining the industry from under their feet, and they are in the process of missing the boat. That is what Web 2.0 really means -- and it doesn't just apply to the photo-sharing or map-making business.
Alienware headphones: If you have one of those high-end Alienware PCs, now you can get a set of headphones to match -- the Ozma 7 phones have S-Logic surround and a gold-plated adapter, and that little alien head logo on the side. Retail price: $200 (U.S.). |
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| Hat gets rid of jet lag:
It may look a little odd, like some kind of futuristic gambler's cap, but the folks at legendary gadget retailer Hammcher Schlemmer say the Light Therapy Visor can help those who suffer from jet lag, by using "safe, heat-free blue-green light to biochemically increase seratonin, a mood elevator, while simultaneously suppressing melatonin, which increases alertness." Only $199.95 (U.S.). |
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| Gadgets and breakfast:
For the all-in-one fan, how about a toaster oven/coffee maker/frying pan? Yes, you can make your entire breakfast with a single appliance, featuring a 6-cup coffee pot and a dual-element toaster oven with a chrome rack and baking tray on the bottom and a frying pan/broiler element on the top. Only $49.98 (U.S.). |
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| It's the shower shower!
Maybe it's the name, maybe it's the pictures, but we can't resist posting this item about the "Shower Shower," a built-in cleaning system for your shower. You might think that your shower would stay pretty clean, what with all the water running through it all the time, but you'd be wrong, which is why you need the Shower Shower's four rotating spray nozzles that squirt your favourite shower cleaner everywhere. |
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| Cracker-sized Web client:
As more software and services get delivered over the Internet or the intranet, the need for desktop PCs decreases. If you want a really "thin client," take a look at the Jack PC from Chip PC Technologies. It fits an entire Windows CE operating system, chip and the required ports for sound and video into a box that fits where a regular Ethernet jack or power outlet would go. |
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Posted Monday, October 31 at 4:38 p.m.
To comment, click here, or email me at mingram@globeandmail.com
| Squeeze out the music:
Slim Devices Inc. has launched the third generation of its Squeezebox network music player, a sleek metal gizmo with an LCD display and two internal wireless antennas, which allows you to stream MP3 or WMA digital audio files throughout your home. The Squeezebox can also connect to Internet radio stations and stream those over an 802.11g network. It's $299 (U.S.) for the wireless version and $249 for a version that works over Ethernet. |
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| Power to the people:
Any mobile technology user knows that the Achilles heel of the mobile device is battery power. Xantrex Technology of Vancouver has a solution called the Pocket Powerpack, which combines a battery with a power inverter, and can power or recharge your Blackberry, iPod or cellphone either through a regular DC plug or through a USB port. Suggested retail is $119.99. |
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| Love that Crazy Frog:
Can't get enough of that wacky "Crazy Frog" ringtone and its associated video clips with the annoying "ring ding ding, bom bom"? Then you'll love what Digital Jesters has for you -- a Crazy Frog racing game, for PC and PlayStation. Other downloadable content is also available on the site, including wallpapers for your PC and mobile phone. |
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| See-through solar panel:
A California company called XSunX says that it has developed a thin, semi-transparent coating for glass windows that can turn any window into a giant solar panel. Although the product is still in development, the company says it should cost one quarter of what traditional panels cost. |
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| Finger-in-ear calling:
Forget about the Dick Tracy watch-phone -- how about a finger-phone? A new prototype from Japan, it slips over a finger like an egg-shaped ring and a user makes calls by tapping their finger in a certain way. In order to talk, the user sticks a finger in their ear, and the conversation is transmitted through bone conduction. |
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Posted Tuesday, October 11 at 2:02 p.m.
Auto-fill that iPod: If your music collection isn't big enough to fill up that giant iPod you just got, Apple add-on company Griffin Technology is happy to help, with something it calls (naturally) iFill. The software streams MP3 files from thousands of free radio stations directly to your iPod. According to the company, you can choose several stations at once and select from many different genres, and the software is available for both the Mac and PC platforms. It's $19.99 (U.S.) and there's a free 30-day trial available from the company's website.
Posted Friday, Oct. 7 at 10:45 a.m.
Flood-proof housing: Residents of low-lying areas in Louisiana and Mississippi aren't the only ones interested in ways of protecting themselves from flooding -- so are the Dutch, since 25 per cent of the country is below sea level. So architects there have come up with houses that "float" on giant pillars, rising and falling with the floodwaters. A good idea for a country that sinks a little more every year. |
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Posted Wednesday, October 5 at 12:24 p.m.
Mom sues record industry: As part of its campaign to stop Internet downloading of music, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued several thousand individuals for damages it claims they have caused by illegally copying music. Most of those claims have been settled out of court, but at least one of the accused isn't folding her tent so quietly: Tanya Andersen, a 41-year-old disabled single mother from Oregon, is counter-suing the RIAA for a number of things, including entering and taking information from her computer without her permission. Ms. Andersen's claim seeks damages under the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations or RICO act, a piece of legislation designed for fighting mob-influenced criminals, and alleges that the RIAA has "abused the judicial system," and used third-party companies to hack into her computer system. Ms. Andersen's suit also notes that contrary to the RIAA lawsuit, she "does not like 'gangster rap,' does not recognize the name 'gotenkito,' is not awake at 4:24 a.m. and has never downloaded music."
Posted Monday, Oct. 3 at 1:47 p.m.
Like to watch TV in the rain?: If you just love sitting outside by the pool watching TV, then this is for you: a 32-inch LCD television with a resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels, which supports high-definition broadcasts -- and is totally impervious to weather, including rain. The manufacturer says it is also resistant to dust, dirt and extremes of temperature. Unfortunately, the website gives no price, so that probably means you can't afford it. |
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Posted Thursday, September 29 at 11:44 a.m.
Let Hydro control the AC: In an attempt to prevent future outages like the Great Blackout of 2004, Toronto Hydro wants to get consumers to install the "PeakSAVER," a wireless switch that controls your air conditioner remotely. During peak periods of power usage, the switch would allow the utility to slow down the device. While Hydro says that customers would only notice a "negligible and temporary 1ºC or less" change in temperature at the end of a three- or four-hour cycle, the utility says that it could cut Toronto's electricity use during peak periods by a total of 7 megawatts, equivalent to the electricity demand of more than 1,600 homes. Hydro says that PeakSAVERs are already installed in 5.5 million homes and businesses across the U.S.
Posted Thursday, September 29 at 11:55 a.m.
Nice play, 7-inch-tall guy: New York Jets lineman Michael King must be getting a lot of razzing in the locker room: A bug in a recent update to Electronic Arts' football title, "Madden 2006," means that King shows up as a tiny, 7-inch-tall version of himself. Game developer Phil Frazier says the bug was the result of a typo in the spreadsheet that lists player attributes. It expects a two-digit entry for height, but someone mistakenly typed in 727, so the game read it as 72 inches. |
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Posted Tuesday, September 27 at 1:22 p.m.
Do you want GoogleTV?: Some intrepid Google-watchers found a job posting recently (since removed) that seems to indicate the search titan wants to move further into the TV world -- something it has already done with a video search tool and the recent streaming broadcast of comedian Chris Rock's new show Everybody Hates Chris. The job posted was for a "product manager for GoogleTV," who would "provide leadership on product vision and execution of projects that enable using Google's search and advertising technologies to enhance users' Television viewing experience." The company said that this person would focus on "the intersection of Internet and Television technologies, Video-On-Demand, Personal Video Recorders and emergence of next generation set-top-boxes with IP connectivity" and find ways for Google to blend its services with those new technologies. What does the search giant have in mind? Guess we'll have to wait and see.
Posted Tuesday, September 27 at 10:14 a.m.
Let's keep it clean, Ed: Motorola chairman Ed Zander appears to have had it up to here with all the raves Apple is getting for its tiny flash-based MP3 player (to be honest, so are we). In an interview with MacCentral, he was quite blunt about it: "Screw the nano," said Zander. "What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?" Zander's comments come just three weeks after the introduction of the iPod nano in an event that also saw the unveiling of the Motorola Rokr, the first iTunes compatible phone. |
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Posted Wednesday, September 21 at 2:52 p.m.
How dare you provide a service: William Bright, a New Yorker, had a great idea to help travellers find their way around: create small, easily-readable subway and transit maps that people could read on their iPods. So he set up iPodSubwayMaps.com and started giving away free maps of transit systems in New York, San Francisco, Paris and London. Then he got a letter from a lawyer with the city of New York, telling him his maps were a copyright violation and would have to be removed. He got another letter from San Francisco saying pretty much the same thing. So he took the maps down, and has been trying to recreate them in different colours so as to avoid prosecution. The letter from Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) said: "There is a widespread belief that materials published by public agencies such as BART are in the public domain. This belief is incorrect." Isn't it nice when someone tries to provide a public service?
Posted Monday, September 26 at 10:59 a.m.
Virtual reminders: Bridging the virtual and real world, Geominder is a kind of sticky note for your phone. It allows you to create "location-based reminders" that are "attached" to physical locations. When you or your cellphone are near that place (Geominder tracks your cellphone's location) you can receive either a text note or audio note you wrote or recorded earlier. Doesn't require GPS. |
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Posted Wednesday, September 21 at 2:52 p.m.
Posted Wednesday, September 22 at 3:20 p.m.
Skype CEO a bit garbled: Niklas Zennstrom, the Swedish entrepeneur who just sold his voice-over-Internet company to eBay for somewhere between $2.6-billion (U.S.) and $4.1-billion, was supposed to give the keynote speech at the Voice On Net or VON telecom conference as a video conference using Skype's software, but the speech was delayed for an hour due to technical difficulties. When it resumed, it was audio only, and was hard for some listeners to decipher. "The sound you hear is the sound of eBay stock going down," said Blair Levin, a managing director at Legg Mason.
Posted Wednesday, September 21 at 3:33 p.m.
A CD-ripping factory: Ripping your music CDs -- that is, taking the songs and converting them to MP3 files -- can be time-consuming. But not with Baxter's "desktop data assistant." It takes a stack of 25 CDs and rips them automatically, then prompts you for another stack. Simple as that -- provided you have $895 (U.S.). |
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Posted Wednesday, September 21 at 2:52 p.m.
Get your HD films here: If you like high-definition movies, then HDFest will be right up your alley. The event, to be held in New York Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, will feature a lineup of movies all shot and projected in high definition. This year, all films will also be shown in the Divx format, a compression scheme that allows a full high-definition image -- that is, 1080 lines interlaced or 720 progressive scan -- to be projected at 4 megabits per second, which allows a full-length movie to fit onto a single DVD disc. Tickets are $10 (U.S.) per screening.
Posted Tuesday, September 20 at 5:06 p.m.
Headlights for your feet: Roller-blading at night may be fun, but it can be dangerous too -- but not with the Bladelite headlight and tail-light system. The device attaches to a pant leg, and includes two blue LEDs facing forwards, and a one facing backwards. Powered by a nine-volt battery, they will last for about 35 hours. $60 (U.S.). |
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Posted Monday, September 19 at 10:48 p.m.
Swap those old DVDs: Netflix is for renting new DVD movies -- and now there's Peerflix for swapping them once they get old. Launched by two friends in Menlo Park, California, Peerflix went live a year ago and has grown to 40,000 users in the six months or so that it has been widely available. It's a trading platform that asks users to make lists of DVDs they want and DVDs they want to get rid of, then matches "wants" with "haves" for 99 cents a trade. The company provides a mailing label with a tracking number and shipping envelopes, but users must pay postage. Each movie title is assigned between one and three "Peerbux," based on their desirability. Users rack up Peerbux each time they ship a movie, and can then use their loot to purchase movies from other users.
Posted Monday, September 19 at 12:32 p.m.
A TV in your fireplace: If you don't feel like flaunting (or advertising to thieves) your big-screen plasma or LCD TV, why not hide it in your fake fireplace? Yes, now you can buy an antique or modern-looking fireplace with a hydraulic lift in it that pops up your big screen at the touch of a button. And they're only about $4,000 U.S. |
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Posted Thursday, September 15 at 2:46 p.m.
Rent an audio book: A company with the odd name of Jiggerbug wants to do for audio-books what Netflix has done for DVD movies -- convince people that renting them is the way to go. The company's Instant Download service is $19.95 a month, and for that you get an audio book in Windows media format (WMA) for two weeks. At the end of the period the file expires and the book is "returned."
Posted Monday, September 12 at 2:23 p.m.
Flash gets bigger: So far, flash-memory based products such as MP3 players have been restricted to fairly small memory sizes, but Samsung has bigger things in mind. The company says its latest flash chip holds 2 gigabytes and is small enough that you could pack 16 of them into a handheld device, giving users 32 gigabytes of storage. |
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Posted Monday, September 12 at 2:30 p.m.
Read the paper on your PSP: As soon as the PlayStation portable from Sony came out, hackers got busy finding ways of letting users play Doom and read RSS feeds on their PSPs. Now a newspaper in Norway has started offering its content to PSP owners. Dagbladet provides its entire paper in a specially formatted version that displays properly on the PSP screen.
Posted Thursday, September 8 at 11:03 a.m.
Skype with a headset: If you have a Bluetooth wireless headset for your cellphone but also like to use Skype -- the free voice-over-Internet software -- you might be interested in SkypeHeadset. It's a piece of software that connects a Bluetooth headset to your PC so that you can dial, pick-up, hang-up or mute calls with the headset buttons. |
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Posted Tuesday, September 6 at 1:30 p.m.
Pushing water uphill: A team of scientists has managed to use nanotechnology to move a substance uphill against the force of gravity by manipulating the molecules of the hill. A team led by scientists from Edinburgh University said they were the first to make objects move remotely and with no direct physical effort, shifting a tiny droplet of a substance called diiodomethane up a 12-degree slope against the force of gravity. This is said to be the equivalent of a conventional machine lifting an object twice the height of the world's tallest building.
Posted Tuesday, August 30 at 2:56 p.m.
Send pictures wirelessly: Uploading all those digital pictures from your camera is kind of a pain -- so Nikon has come out with a version of its Coolpix models that has built in Wi-Fi support. Pictures can be sent wirelessly to your computer or your printer, as soon as they are taken. |
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Posted Tuesday, September 6 at 1:08 p.m.
eDonkey takes over: Legal action by the movie and music industries against the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network seems to have succeeded in moving people away from the P2P program -- but they have simply moved to the eDonkey network instead, according to a recent survey by Cambridge-based Internet traffic-analysis firm CacheLogic. Last year, the firm's research showed that more than 60-per-cent of Internet traffic was P2P file-sharing, and more than half of that involved the BitTorrent network. Now, CacheLogic says that eDonkey has taken the lead away from its P2P counterpart.
Posted Monday, August 29 at 12:02 p.m.
Laser-powered slingshot: Who among us hasn't longed for an updated version of the tried-and-true childhood slingshot? Now you can have one. It's the super-powered Laser Slingshot, and it's accurate enough to split pencils in half from 20 feet away. The secret, apparently, lies in its "dual offset pivoting system." It's $49.95 (U.S.). |
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Posted Monday, August 29 at 12:14 p.m.
Find those virtual fish: Calgary-based Blister Entertainment has just launched two location-based downloadable cellphone games that are available to subscribers of Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Nextel in the U.S. The two games -- Swordfish and Torpedo Bay -- are both GPS-aware games that allow users to interact with virtual objects in the real world. The fishing game, for example, requires cellphone users to move around in a particular location to "catch" virtual schools of fish. The games cost $5.99 (U.S.) for the first month and $2.99 for each additional month.
Posted Wednesday, August 17 at 11:05 a.m.
A smart bracelet: A product designer in London, England has come up with a smarter version of the medical bracelet patients in hospitals wear -- one that would alert nurses or doctors if the wrong drug or dosage was being given. The bracelet uses a sensor to match the medicine with the patient's profile, by scanning an electronic tag built into the medicine bottle. If the drug doesn't fit the patient's history then the bottle won't open. |
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Posted Monday, August 15 at 12:07 p.m.
Print a burglar with your DNA: A UK firm called Redweb Security has developed a DNA "tagging" product it calls "i-powder." The theory is that the powder used in Redweb's product carries a "uniquely-traceable DNA code" which is registered to the owner and can be discharged onto a thief from a device mounted in the ceiling, front door or on the wall. The powder is suspended in a red dye and sticks like glue to clothes and skin. Redweb says it can't be removed for several weeks, giving police long enough to track a burglar.
Posted Tuesday, July 19 at 5:25 p.m.
Carry your PC on a key: FingerGear has introduced a bootable USB flash drive with a version of Linux that runs from the memory key. It uses the Gnome Desktop, and comes with anywhere from 256MB to 8GB of memory. All bookmarks, address book, emails, and office documents are stored on the device and accessed by a password login. |
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Posted Tuesday, July 27 at 3:06 p.m.
Take your router with you: Belkin has come out with a portable Wi-Fi router/access point that is small enough to take with you on trips, so you can not only use 802.11g wireless wherever you are (it has a range of 300 feet) but you can protect your computer while you're at it. Apple's AirPort will do the same thing, but Belkin's is cheaper: suggested retail price is $59.99 (U.S.).
Posted Tuesday, July 19 at 5:25 p.m.
Clothes peg forecasts weather: Technology, it seems, can pop up just about anywhere -- including the humble clothes peg. Designer Oliver MacCarthy has come up with a batch of clothes pegs that keep in touch with weather forecasts for your area, and if there is a chance of rain they refuse to open so you can't hang your clothes on the line. And you thought technology wasn't good for anything really useful. |
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Posted Monday, July 18 at 1:29 p.m.
Is that a movie in your pocket?: Moviegoers with Bluetooth cellphones might have felt a buzz -- literally and figuratively -- this summer when walking through certain movie theater lobbies, according to a recent news story. 20th Century Fox signed a deal with Loews Cineplex Entertainment to distribute movie trailers, ring tones and pictures through Bluetooth kiosks in Loews theaters in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The material can be picked up by anyone with a cellphone equipped with the short-range wireless technology.
Posted Monday, July 18 at 1:41 p.m.
For the bloodthirsty gamer: If you like the video game Resident Evil and are a fan of the chainsaw in particular, then you might be interested in a new controller from NubyTech that can be used with Resident Evil 4 on the PlayStation 2. It features "unique blood patterns," a rip-cord that starts the device "with a chainsaw roar" and a display stand. Suggested price: $59.99 (U.S.). Get sawing. |
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Posted Friday, July 8 at 4:23 p.m.
If it's good enough for Formula One: Maybe you figured notebooks couldn't get any cooler, with their 17-inch screens, high-powered processors and inch-thick cases. Well, you were wrong. Two words: Carbon fibre. Acer has just launched its new Ferrari 4000 series of notebooks, which have a case made from the same carbon-fibre compound used in Formula One race-cars and the space shuttle. Oh yes, and it also has a 64-bit AMD Athlon processor and all kinds of other goodies, and comes in red and black. And did I mention it's made of carbon fibre?
Posted Wednesday, June 29 at 4:52 p.m.
Vacuum-tube stereo: If you're one of those people who believes old-style vacuum-tube audio equipment sounds better than the new stuff, then Panasonic has something for you -- the CQ-TX5500D ($950) features a built-in vacuum tube amplifier that glows orange while the unit is playing, and it has old-style VU meters with needles instead of LEDs. |
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Posted Wednesday, June 22 at 12:19 p.m.
First-ever wired country: The tropical island of Mauritius plans to become the first country to have a wireless network spanning the entire nation, from coast to coast. Of course, that isn't as hard to do as it might be with some other countries -- such as Russia or Canada, for example -- because Mauritius is only about 40 miles long, making it a little smaller than Prince Edward Island. Regardless, the island says it wants to use its new wireless-nation status as a lure to high-tech companies, and plans to turn Mauritius into a communications and networking hub, as a replacement for some of the industries (such as sugar) that have been having trouble.
Posted Monday, June 20 at 1:48 p.m.
Watch TV on your wrist: Japanese gadget-maker NHJ is selling something for the Dick Tracy in you -- a wrist-mounted mini-TV with a 1.5-inch, 130,000-pixel colour LCD screen. Both the watch and TV functions are controlled with the buttons on the side of the unit, and the TV can also be taken out of the watch frame if you wish. The headphone cable on the unit also functions as the antenna. |
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Posted Wednesday, June 15 at 2:05 p.m.
Universal laptop dock: Lots of laptops come with docking stations that add ports -- now computer peripheral maker Targus has something called the Universal Docking Station, which adds video output, stereo audio output and two "always on" USB ports that allow users to power peripheral devices such as phones and MP3 players while the laptop is in standby or shut-down mode.
Posted Thursday, June 16 at 2:14 p.m.
More than just a pad: Not satisfied with your boring old mouse pad? Check out the Datexx MouseStation. It's not only made of leather but has a built-in calculator and a large LCD display that displays the date, time and temperature and has an alarm function. Retail price is $49.99 (U.S.) |
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Posted Tuesday, June 14 at 4:30 p.m.
Step right up -- get your free dictionary: If looking up words is your thing, a little-known Pennsylvania-based company called Farlex has just the answer: The Free Dictionary, which is just what it sounds like. Type in a word and you not only get a definition but also links to other sites with more information (such as the Columbia Encyclopedia and the open-source Wikipedia), as well as selections from classical literature using the term (if any exist). Farlex also runs The Free Library, which is a search engine for and index of freely available texts from older books that are no longer under copyright.
Posted Monday, June 13 at 11:41 a.m.
Take that, Superman: Scientists using a particle accelerator called the Z-Machine in Albuquerque, New Mexico have achieved a new speed record -- although it involves tiny pieces of metal only a couple of hundred microns in size. They managed to get such a piece to go from standing still to 76,000 miles per hour in less than a second. The device can now move particles at 30 kilometres a second, faster than the Earth is moving through space and 50 times faster than a bullet. |
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Posted Thursday, June 9 at 1:58 p.m.
Just wave the key at the lock: Sticking an old-fashioned metal key into a lock is so old-fashioned. Now that top-end cars come with radio-frequency ID chips in their keys -- which work so long as the key is within about 10 feet of the ignition -- a Korean company is selling RFID door locks for your home or business. They come with up to eight RFID "passcards" and can be supplemented with a personal ID number system using the built-in keypad, in case you lose your fancy new key.
Posted Wednesday, June 8 at 4:08 p.m.
Cat-based product testing: A company called Quantum Picture develops image recognition software, and one of their testers is named Flo -- Flo the cat, that is. Using a regular cat door, a light source, a digital camera and a computer, the system can recognize whether it's Flo or a racoon trying to get in, then decides whether to open the door or not. |
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Posted Tuesday, June 7 at 4:58 p.m.
Let your phone test your blood: A biological testing firm in Uppsala, Sweden has developed a tiny chip that can sample a drop of blood and determine whether the levels of certain bio-markers are out of whack -- using the power from a cellphone. The results are displayed in the form of a coloured light, which can then be photographed with a cellphone camera and sent to a doctor. |
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Posted Thursday, June 2 at 12:19 p.m.
Is that a swarm of robots?: If you see a small flock of miniature helicopters fly by, don't be alarmed -- it's just a swarm of "smart" helicopters powered by tiny on-board Linux computers that communicate with each other in an attempt at a kind of collective intelligence. Researchers at the University of Essex in Britain are working on an experiment in "cluster computing," using toy helicopters fitted with "gumstix" processors - tiny self-contained computers that run Linux and communicate over a built-in Bluetooth module.
Posted Wednesday, June 1 at 4:18 p.m.
What's real and what isn't?: It's hard enough to figure out what's real life and what has been generated by computer graphics. Now it's getting even harder, as an enterprising CGI artist has shown with what appear to be photos of characters from the video game Half-Life wandering around his neighbourhood. Using a feature called "high dynamic range lighting," he is able to match shadows and light sources almost exactly, giving the CGI models an eerie 3D feel -- all on a regular PC. |
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Posted Tuesday, May 31 at 11:10 a.m.
A peer-to-peer martyr: Until recently, Jorge Cortell was a teacher at a university in Valencia, Spain. Then the administration at the Polytechnic University of Valencia found out he was going to give a talk on the legalities of the peer-to-peer, file-sharing community. According to Mr. Cortell, the dean of the university came under some pressure from the Spanish Recording Industry Association, and denied the group he was giving the talk to (the local Linux users group) permission to use university facilities. After giving his talk in the cafeteria, he got a call from the director of the master's degree program, who told him he would no longer be teaching, and was to remove any reference to the university from his website. Supporters have started an e-mail campaign to try and force the university to rehire him.
Posted Monday, May 30 at 1:49 p.m.
Become an iTunes broadcaster: Belkin, the company that has made a business out of cool add-ons for the iPod, has come out with a device called the TuneStage that allows you to play songs from your iPod through your stereo or home theatre system using Bluetooth. The tiny transmitter connects to the iPod and a larger receiver connects to your stereo. Expected this summer, list price $179 U.S. |
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Posted Thursday, May 26 at 2:10 p.m.
A robot that washes and vacuums: By now, you've probably heard of the Roomba from iRobot, the mechanical vacuum cleaner that looks like a large, round beetle. For those who want a little something more than just a dusting, the company's latest product is the iRobot Scooba -- a device similar in size and shape to the Roomba, but with jets and suction power built in that allow it to wash as well as vacuum. The company says it washes, dries and scrubs the floor all in one pass. Available soon at your local robot outlet.
Posted Tuesday, May 24 at 4:47 p.m.
Get your own walking robot: Not content with playing video games that let you control a 12-foot-high robot, Masaaki Nagumo of Tokyo decided to create his own. His bot weighs a ton and has a control pod on top where he sits and drives the unit with two joysticks and four pedals. It can move at 1.5 kilometres per hour, and shoots sponge bullets from two guns mounted beside the cockpit. He says he'll make you one for about $300,000 U.S. |
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Posted Thursday, May 19 at 12:21 p.m.
Cheaper than a bomb-sniffing robot: Sure, the U.S. military has lots of high-priced bomb-detection robots that they can use, but not every infantry platoon gets to use them. So some enterprising grunts are making their own rudimentary bots -- using remote-controlled cars and trucks. According to an account at military.com, one platoon member on a trip "outside the wire" drove his truck up to a box in the middle of the road to see if it was a booby-trap -- if it fell over when the truck rammed into it, it wasn't a trap. And at night, they strap a flashlight to it. Now that's high tech.
Posted Wednesday, May 18 at 4:55 p.m.
A home-theatre case for modders: Enthusiasts of PC "modding" know the name Thermaltake, because of the futuristic-looking cases it makes, and now they can have a futuristic home-theatre PC case to go with it. Thermaltake's new ThermalRock unit has launched an HTPC called The Mystic, which features a brushed-aluminum exterior, blue LED lighting, a volume indicator, hydraulic doors and two exhaust fans. Price to be announced later. |
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Posted Tuesday, May 17 at 3:30 p.m.
A phone for non-techies: Lots of people love to have the latest high-tech cellphone, with all kinds of bells and whistles, but what about your Aunt Sally or Uncle Fred? They probably just want something that's easy to use and can make an emergency call if they get into trouble. A Dutch company called Secufone wants to fill that need, with a large-screen device that features just four easy-to-use buttons, and can also be used as a security alarm if the person using it is in trouble. Pressing the large red button on top sends a signal to the service provider, and an embedded GPS tracking device alerts emergency workers to the user's location.
Posted Monday, May 16 at 1:58 p.m.
A plane you can put in your garage: Owning and flying an airplane is great fun, but most of them are really expensive and have to be stored at airports. Not the oddly-named Cri-Cri -- you could probably put it in your van if you wanted to. It's barely large enough for an adult to fit inside it, and can be picked up by two adults, and yet it is powered by two (small) jet engines. For the budding pilot who doesn't mind thinking small. |
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Posted Friday, May 13 at 4:42 p.m.
C'mon Dad, not washing machines again: From the recent unauthorized biography of Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs comes a revealing story about how much he cares about design: "The big decision came down to whether to purchase a European machine or an American-made one. The European machine, according to Steve, does a much better job, uses about one-quarter as much water, and treats the clothes more gently so that they last longer. But the American machines take about half as long to wash the clothes." Jobs says he and his family spent about two weeks talking it over every night at the dinner table before they decided. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? And the end result: "I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years."
Posted Friday, May 13 at 5:09 p.m.
A comfy chair and 5.1 sound: If your home stereo setup just isn't working for you any more and you need a new La-Z-Boy, you might be interested in the Media Chair from B.C.-based Empower Technologies. It looks a lot like any other large TV-watching chair, but it has a full 5.1 surround sound system built into the back of the chair, which is compatible with almost any TV or game system. Empower says the unit also has a "tactile transducer" system that lets you "feel" the game as you're watching or playing. And all this for only $999. |
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Posted Wednesday, May 11 at 3:27 p.m.
Hang those nanotubes on your wall: The smart guys at Motorola Labs recently unveiled a prototype of a new flat-TV technology built on "carbon nanotubes," the futuristic building blocks of everything from space elevators to new plastics. Morotola showed a 5-inch color display using nanotube technology that it says could result in TV screens less than an inch thick, with the quality of a giant plasma displaying a high-definition TV signal. Motorola researchers say they could theoretically make a 40-inch display using the technology at a cost of $400.
Posted Tuesday, May 10 at 4:40 p.m.
Nintendo to provide free Wi-Fi: Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said that his company plans to offer a free Wi-Fi service to owners of Nintendo's DS game console. In a document sent to a Japanese game website, Mr. Iwata reportedly said that Nintendo will set up 1,000 Wi-Fi hot spots across Japan for the DS online service, and that the service will be free, with no additional hardware needed and no requirement to enter passwords and so on. |
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Posted Tuesday, May 10 at 1:18 p.m.
Xybernaut execs get mobile: Things haven't been going all that well lately for Xybernaut, which makes portable "wearable" computers for consumer and industrial applications. On Monday, the company announced that brothers Edward and Steven Newman -- CEO and president of the company, respectively -- had resigned from their positions, amid accusations that they misappropriated funds from the company, hired family members and tried to impede an investigation by the board. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also looking into trading in the company's stock, which has fallen to just 15 cents and is likely to be delisted from the Nasdaq stock market.
Posted Tuesday, May 10 at 11:13 a.m.
Radio station turned podcaster: The world's first "all-podcast" radio station will be launched on May 16 by Infinity Broadcasting, the radio division of Viacom. Infinity plans to convert San Francisco's 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content - user-generated audio files known as "podcasts" that can be downloaded onto portable music players. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio. Infinity is one of the country's largest radio operators with more than 183 stations around the country. The station's producers will screen submitted content to ensure it meets quality standards and does not violate FCC guidelines, and approved podcasts will be simultaneously broadcast over the AM airwaves and streamed online at KYOURadio.com.
Posted Thursday, April 28 at 12:08 p.m.
Apple gets medieval on Wiley books: Does Apple go around looking for ways to make the company look like arrogant and stupid? It must, because it seems to be doing a lot of it lately -- more than could be accounted for by just bad luck or a few errors in judgment. First the company sued bloggers for publishing rumours, and now it has pulled books from the shelves of its stores after an unflattering biography of founder Steve Jobs was published. Technology publisher John Wiley & Sons said on Tuesday that Apple Computer Inc. had removed all of its books from Apple store shelves ahead of the publication of a biography of Apple CEO entitled iCon Steve Jobs. "There were conversations with an Apple executive and following that the books were pulled," said Wiley spokeswoman Lori Sayde-Mehrtens. "It's an unfortunate decision for us and we're clearly disappointed in their decision."
Posted Wednesday, April 27 at 2:05 p.m.
| Fly your own mini-copter to work: Remember all those articles from the 1950s that promised you'd be flying a jet-car to work by now? Well, it's not a car, but inventor Elwood "Woody" Norris has something almost as good - the AirScooter, a helicopter-like gizmo you can buy for only $50,000 or so. It doesn't even require a license, although a helmet might not be a bad idea. |
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Posted Wednesday, April 20 at 1:30 p.m.
Big Brother makes uniforms: According to Japan Today, school uniform maker Ogo-Sangyo Co. "has released blazers mounted with global positioning system for grade school pupils which allow parents to keep track of their children's whereabouts. The blazers carry GPS terminals inside, which are provided by Secom Co, a leading security service provider. Parents are able to monitor their children's whereabouts through their personal computers. When a child faces an emergency situation, he or she can have Secom send a security agent to the spot by pushing a button on the terminal."
Posted Thursday, April 14 at 5:23 p.m.
Top up that laptop fuel cell: IBM's personal computer division and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. said Monday they have teamed up to create prototype notebook computer batteries using long-lasting fuel cell technology. Sanyo said that the prototype fuel-cell system can provide eight hours of battery life using replaceable methanol fuel cartridges. Fuel cell technology mixes hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity. The system is still in its early stages, however: at the moment, the prototype is larger than the IBM notebook it is supposed to power. Sanyo also admitted it would take a few years to resolve certain "infrastructure issues" such as having an ample supply of methanol cartridges.
Posted Tuesday, April 12 at 11:24 a.m.
Add a Linux network to anything: If you've always wanted to add Linux-based networking capabilities to your garbage can, the family dog or just about anything else, a German electronics company called Kleinhenz has just the thing: a tiny network-enabled Linux system only slightly larger than the RJ-45 Ethernet jack on the back of a laptop. The "Picotux" comes with a Linux-based OS, up to 8 MB of Flash memory and built-in processors of up to 55MHz. There's a wireless version too. |
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Posted Tuesday, March 29 at 1:38 p.m.
Anyone need a black hole?: Researchers in New York said recently that they created a fireball of energy in a special atom-smashing lab - the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider - that had many of the same characteristics as a black hole. The ion collider smashes molecules of gold and other metals together at high speed to create strange forms of matter, and then researchers learn from the collisions. According to a report in New Scientist magazine, quarks and gluons from the molecules briefly formed into a ball of plasma 300 times hotter than the sun, and displayed some of the features of a black hole. But don't worry - this one only lasted for 10 million-billion-billionths of a second.
Posted Friday, March 18 at 2:07 p.m.
Just pour yourself a building: In need of quick cover? Get out your building-in-a-bag. It's not for campers, but for refugees and aid groups who need quick, durable shelter. The invention of two London engineers, the Cement Shelter is a bag impregnated with cement -- all you need to do is fill it with water and inflate it, and when it hardens you have a hut-shaped building. |
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Posted Tuesday, March 15 at 5:27 p.m.
Lost? MapQuest and Nextel can ind you: Anyone familiar with on-line mapping services such as MapQuest and Google Maps knows how handy they can be in helping you figure out how to get somewhere. But what if you get lost on the way? If you have a mobile phone from Nextel that has GPS (global positioning service) built in, a new service from MapQuest - a subsidiary of America Online - can help. It uses the signal from your phone to figure out where you are, and then directs you to nearby services such as restaurants or hotels, or provides customized maps to help you figure out where you should be going. You can also share your location information with friends or relatives, who can see your progress (or lack of it) through the MapQuest web site.
Posted Monday, March 14 at 4:41 p.m.
A custom-made wooden laptop: If wood craftsmen in the 12th century had designed a laptop computer, would it have looked like this? Gabriele Zaverio, a geek and wood-worker, decided he didn't like the plastic outside of his laptop so he custom-designed a wooden case, right down to the wrist-rest and cover hinges, made from an old case of Sicilian wine. He calls it a "legnatile" - the word "legno" means wood - and it is for sale, along with other wooden computers Mr. Zaverio has created. |
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Posted Friday, March 11 at 3:33 p.m.
Get out your squeezebox: If streaming digital music through your home is something you're interested in, Slim Devices has just announced the second generation of its popular Squeezebox music server. With built-in support for Wi-Fi or wireless networks (802.11g), the units also come with the company's SlimServer software, which controls access to your digital music. The server software is also open source, which means anyone can modify it or add plugins and functionality to it, which is one of the things that a lot of people liked about the original Squeezebox. It also supports WAV files, MP3, FLAC, WMA, AAC and other formats, and can connect to the Internet so you can listen to Web-based radio stations.
Posted Thursday, March 10 at 4:55 p.m.
Forget about the old tape-measure method: A Mississaugua, Ontario-based company called Planit Measuring has an updated version of the old measuring tape: a Tablet PC equipped with a laser and computer-aided design software, which founder Mike Laurie calls the "Measuring Board", and allows the company to come up with accurate floor plans and virtual tours. Planit was just recognized by the National Research Council as a Canadian Innovation Leader. |
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Posted Tuesday, March 8 at 3:52 p.m.
It's a virus calling: Remember when a phone was just a phone? Not any more. SimWorks, a company that sells virus software for cellphones, says it has identified the first virus targeting the Symbian OS (used in many cellphones) that can spread itself using the multimedia message or MMS system. The CommWarrior.a virus can send itself to any MMS-compatible mobile phone in the world, but only infects those based on Symbian OS platforms. Once installed, it sends copies of itself to randomly selected contacts from the user's address book, including a copy of itself and a text message designed to encourage the recipient to install the application.
Posted Monday, March 7 at 1:28 p.m.
Hey, who turned up the temperature?: Haven't you always wanted to be able to control your home's thermostat from somewhere else via a secure Internet connection? Of course you have. And now you can, with the IP Thermostat from Smarthome. It gives you access to the temperature in any room in your house from anywhere with an Internet connection, via a built-in browser connection. But you'd better hope no one hacks into your home network and turns up the heat. |
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Posted Wednesday, March 2 at 5:28 p.m.
Toronto company licenses tech: A Toronto company called GestureTek (formerly known as JesterTek), says it has licensed its interactive-video technology to Sony Corp. for use in that company's EyeToy devices. GestureTek has a patent on a process that allows users to become part of a video game or to interact with a video display through the use of the company's "human gesture tracking" system. GestureTek also recently licensed its technology to toy maker Hasbro for use in an "educational gaming system" that uses an interactive motion-capture system.
Posted Monday, February 21 at 5:28 p.m.
Watch out for the smart water: Lots of stores use tags filled with dye or hidden serial numbers to try and track stolen property, but a retired detective from Wales has a better solution: Smart Water. This clear liquid contains microscopic particles encoded with a unique signature that can be traced back to the original owner. When brushed onto objects it tags them with millions of tiny fragments, each etched with a unique SIN (SmartWater identification number) that is registered with the owner's details on a national police database and is invisible until illuminated by police officers using ultraviolet light.
Posted Thursday, February 17 at 1:31 p.m.
Careful! Your bin is watching: Ever feel like someone is watching you? Residents of the Croydon region in London, England have been told that their garbage bins will soon contain tiny microchips which can be tracked by city council in order to keep an eye on missing wheely bins. However, council also mentioned that these chips could be adapted to transmit other information, such as how much rubbish a particular household was generating - or even whether that garbage was the right type or not (i.e., whether resident were doing trying to get around their recycling duty). In that case, city council said, residents might get a visit from helpful officials bearing advice on how they might "manage their rubbish more effectively". Any comment, Mr. Orwell?
Posted Monday, February 14 at 5:12 p.m.
All the gadgets you could want: In case you didn't get a chance to make it to the Consumer Electronics Show, design website Core77 has a nice roundup of some of the cool gizmos at the show, including a portable player called Coby that plays DVDs and displays JPEG images. There's also some nice Bluetooth-based snowboarding gear from Burton. |
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Posted Tuesday, January 25 at 1:42 p.m.
Plug your iPod into your shirt: Portable devices are great, but they all have batteries that run out after a few hours. Why not use the sun to recharge them? Using a technology developed by scientists at the University of Toronto, that might be possible. They've produced a flexible plastic compound that can absorb not just visible light from the sun, the way existing solar cells do, but infrared light as well. That boosts the amount of power they can store by a substantial amount. The plastic polymer - which is made up of nano particles called "quantum dots" - can also be sprayed onto other materials like paint, or woven into clothing.
Posted Monday, January 17 at 10:55 a.m.
Wanna buy a Biosphere?: If you're looking for a place you can be alone, how about buying your own glass-enclosed biosphere? The company that owns Biosphere 2 has decided to sell the three-acre research bubble, which became famous in the early 1990s after a crew of "biospherians" entered the facility for what was supposed to be a two-year experiment designed to show how humans could survive on other planets. The project was financed by billionaire Edward Bass, but it suffered from design and cost problems that led to the premature end of the experiment, which cost more than $200-million. Columbia University took over management of the biosphere and turned it into a tourist destination.
Posted Monday, January 10 at 4:40 p.m.
D-Link offers radio: Like many networking gear-makers, D-Link has a media "hub" that allows you to look at digital pictures on your TV, play movie files or MP3 files over your home entertainment system, and so on. Now D-Link has added an extra feature: the new version of its wireless MediaLounge player includes access to the Live365.com Internet radio network, so users can listen to Web radio anywhere on their wired or wireless network. The D-Link unit supports S-video, component video, optical audio and coaxial connections as well as Ethernet networking or wireless 802.11g (Wi-Fi). The MediaLounge sells for $278 (Canadian).
Posted Friday, January 7 at 5:07 p.m.
Burn photos to CD without a PC: It's nice to have all those digital photos, but how do you give a whole bunch of them to someone without uploading them all to their PC? Use the Digital Copy Station from Alera. It copies digital photos directly to CD from digital memory cards, with no computer required, and is also a CD duplicator and standalone memory card reader that connects via USB 2.0. Retail price: $349 (U.S.). |
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Posted Tuesday, January 4 at 3:45 p.m.
Take your VOIP with you: Sure, voice-over-Internet phone calling is fun and cheap and everything, but you can only do it when you're at home, with your VOIP router plugged into your cable, right? Not any more. At the Consumer Electronics Show, VOIP pioneer Vonage announced that UTStarcom will be making handheld phones that can make calls using public wireless or Wi-Fi networks. In other words, if you've got a Vonage VOIP account and you walk into a Starbucks or an airport that has a free Wi-Fi access point, bingo - you're making phone calls.
Posted Wednesday, January 5 at 5:43 p.m.
Linux laptops going cheap: Not that long ago, a laptop computer would set you back $2,500 or more - now Wal-Mart is selling one for less than $500. It has a 14-inch screen and a 30-gigabyte hard drive, with 128-megabytes of RAM (expandable to 512) and runs a Via C3, i-gigaherz processor. It comes with Linspire's version of Linux installed, along with applications such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice productivity suite. |
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Posted Wednesday, December 22 at 3:33 p.m.
Eurocom's speed demon "laptop": Everyone has been coming out with "desktop replacement" laptops - some of which strain the meaning of the name "laptop" - but Toronto-based Eurocom is trying to outdo them all with its latest model. Not only does it have a 17-inch screen, the new PCI Express video card bus, a 3.6-gigaherz chip, a TV tuner and a built-in camera, but it boasts up to 4 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM, two gigantic hard drives that can be used as a RAID array (one backing up the other), and an 8-times DVD burner that supports the new dual-layer format, which doubles the storage capacity on a disk. Just don't try to hold it in your lap for too long or your legs will catch on fire.
Posted Tuesday, December 14 at 6:32 p.m.
Get some armour for that iPod: After spending $350 or whatever for that fancy new iPod music player, you might feel a little nervous carrying it around - in which case you might be interested in some iPod "armour" from Matias, a Toronto-based company whose hardshell cases for the iPod have been called "the best hard carrying case" for the iPod by iPodlounge.com. If you happen to fall down a lot, either on the ski hills or just because you're clumsy, this might be for you.
Posted Monday, December 6 at 4:43 p.m.
Let the car do the work: Instead of taking a cab from the airport, you might soon be able to take a robot taxi - like the CyberCars that have been ferrying people around in Antibes and Monoco on the French Riviera. Unlike some of the earlier versions of the auto-car, which use embedded sensors in the road, the CyberCar follows a pre-programmed route and has a laser that allows it to stop before it runs into something. |
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Posted Monday, December 6 at 5:08 p.m.
That poster is calling you: A British company called Hypertag is setting up special posters which can beam information via infra-red to mobile phones. The first ad campaign will beam safety information to late-night travellers from posters at 25 major London subway stations, enabling them to get a phone number for safe travel information. But the company has bigger things in mind for its Hypertag feature - including services that will allow users to hold up their phone and download coupons, business cards, ringtones or games.
Posted Thursday, December 2 at 12:42 p.m.
Give your PC memory some bling: Sure, you've got tons of RAM in your machine, but does it have little flashing lights on it that speed up when your PC is working hard? Probably not - unless you've got some of Crucial's new Ballistix Tracer memory, which has "two rows of activity-indicating LEDs and blue ground effects." Yeah baby. |
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Posted Tuesday, November 30 at 4:45 p.m.
Hit back at e-mail spam: Lycos, the on-line search portal company, is experimenting with a way of hitting e-mail spammers were it really hurts - in their pocketbooks. The company is trying out a new screensaver that sends out continuous requests for products from the websites run by e-mail spam artists. The idea, Lycos says, is to shut down the spammers by tying up their websites and Internet bandwidth with billions of requests. So far, the software has only been used in a trial in Sweden, but Lycos says it plans to roll it out across Europe next month.
Update: Lycos Europe called off its "Make Love, Not Spam" campaign on December 6, in a move industry watchers say was designed to avoid lawsuits from spam companies.
Posted Monday, November 29 at 3:48 p.m.
USB mince pie anyone?: Sure, Christmas can get stressful sometimes, which is why it's nice to have a reminder of the good things -- like mince pie. So why not keep a tiny little USB-powered blinking mince pie memory device by you at all times. As the company that provides it notes, it is "100 per cent Christmas compatible!" |
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Posted Thursday, November 25 at 5:43 p.m.
A drink, some music and a seat: For the backpacker who wants to carry the party with them, Burton makes something called the Liquid Lounger that should do the trick: a cooler for drinks, a built-in radio/stereo system with speakers, a removable folding chair, a flask, a shot glass and a stirrer. Oh yes, and the zipper pull doubles as a bottle opener. |
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Posted Monday, November 22 at 1:14 p.m.
Go ahead -- surf with your iPod: It hasn't hit the market yet, but the new SV-iMini from H2O Audio should please all the surf-loving iPod listeners out there. It's a fully waterproof housing for your Apple music unit (good to a depth of 10 feet) that protects the unit itself, headphones and all. It's transparent, so you can see what tunes are playing while you swim, and the navigational controls can be used while the covering is on the iPod. Professional big-wave surfer Peter Mel says the SV-iMini is a great gizmo, and gave H2O Audio "props" for coming up with it. The company says it's also good for skiing or any other activity where moisture might be a problem.
Posted Friday, November 19 at 4:27 p.m.
Feel the sound: Sure, playing a video game with a giant video screen and huge sound system is pretty cool, but can you reall feel those energy beams your foe is hitting you with? Pyramat says you will with the Pyramat PM 550 Sound Lounger. It's a contoured mat with a "surround sound" system built in, including speakers and a sub-woofer in the headrest. It retails for about $150 (U.S.). |
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Posted Tuesday, November 23 at 2:39 p.m.
Click here to shoot your deer: By now, you can do just about anything over the Internet (including plenty of things you probably shouldn't be doing), but aiming a rifle and blasting away at a wild animal isn't one of them. Avid hunter and Internet geek John Underwood wants to correct that little problem with a setup he's putting together in which users could shoot a deer by remote control. His website already offers target practice with a remote-controlled rifle that has a webcam mounted on it, and he wants to branch out into actual killing, by giving website visitors the chance to shoot an animal on his 300-acre ranch in Texas. Unfortunately, federal wildlife officials aren't too keen on the idea.
Posted Wednesday, November 17 at 6:35 p.m.
Shake me your details: A company has developed a prototype for a next-generation data transfer device called iBand, which you wear on your wrist. The unit, which looks a little like a thick athletic sweatband, has a circuit board in it that can transmit a user's personal details to another iBand wearer. Those details, which can be downloaded into a PC via infrared, would light up various LEDs on the iBand depending on the logo chosen by the wearer. The more people an iBand user meets and shakes hands with, the more LEDs their iBand lights up with.
Posted Tuesday, November 16 at 5:32 p.m.
Change channels with your watch: Sure, it's kind of goofy, but you wouldn't be a real geek if you didn't want one anyway -- it's a wristwatch that is also a TV remote. You can get one for $24.99 (U.S.) and program it for your TV either by typing in the right code or by scanning to find one automatically. Then you can sit on your couch and press the volume and channel buttons to your heart's content. |
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Posted Wednesday, November 10 at 5:05 p.m.
Like the Pied Piper, for cockroaches: Everybody has their own favourite uses for miniature robots (tiny spies to see whether the light stays on in the refrigerator when you close the door?) but to some European researchers a tiny robot makes perfect sense as a cockroach Pied Piper. The InsBot is the size of a matchbox and has lasers and a light sensor. It acts like a cockroach and even smells like a cockroach, thanks to a special scent. The researchers hope they can use the research to go after larger things as well as the tiny pests.
Posted Monday, November 15 at 5:29 p.m.
Just don't nail it to a tree: So-called "flash" memory appears to be almost indestructible, according to recent tests conducted by Digital Camera Shopper magazine. Five memory card formats survived being dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car and given to a six-year-old boy. However, most failed two additional tests - being smashed by a sledgehammer and nailed to a tree. |
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Posted Tuesday, November 9 at 10:55 a.m.
Big Brother's underwear: They're only prototypes (so far, at least) but European designer and art student Theo Humphries has come up with several variations on the Medieval chastity belt that might give privacy advocates - and serial philanderers - the willies. His "where(a)ware," for example, is able to sense its geographical location, and if it is removed in a place that is not on the list of pre-approved locations, a text message is sent to the wearer's spouse or significant other. Other models can sense how long they have been removed, and send an alert if they have been off for longer than it takes to make the average trip to the bathroom.
Posted Thursday, November 4 at 1:34 p.m.
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The ultimate earphones?: If regular earphones aren't quite doing it for you, you might be interested in Ultimate Ears. These "in-ear monitors," as the company calls them, are "small, bi-amplified multi-armature speakers" In other words, they're custom-made earphones that have been specially molded to your ear. Unfortunately, they cost $900 (U.S.) for a pair. |
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Posted Thursday, November 4 at 1:42 p.m.
Breaking into your iPod: Although it might seem a little odd to anyone with a functioning brain-stem - especially from a company that is so concerned with ease of use - Apple has made it very easy for you to put songs on your iPod, but not very easy for you to get them off. A third-party program called iPod Download used to work, but then Apple disabled it in the latest version of iTunes, and went to considerable lengths to prevent users from making it work - including pressuring the company that came up with it to remove it from their website. But you can't keep a good geek down that easily, so a mini-industry has sprung up devoted to different ways of getting your own music off your iPod. Such a simple thing, really.
Posted Wednesday, November 3 at 5:21 p.m.
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Wireless router and VPN: wireless routers are a dime a dozen, so Buffalo Technology has added a little something extra to theirs: it provides a built-in secure connection to your home network via a point-to-point tunneling protocol, so that you can access your files from somewhere else without having to set up a cumbersome FTP server or worry about security. According to Buffalo, the Airstation Wireless Secure Remote Gateway should be available soon for $200 (U.S.). |
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Posted Tuesday, November 2 at 5:26 p.m.
Go ahead - give the CD to the dog: Forget about yelling at the kids to put the compact discs back in their little cases, or worrying about a fingerprint smudge stopping that latest disc from working. Japanese technology company TDK says it has a developed a coating for CDs - which can also be used on LCD screens on cellphones and other devices - that is almost impervious to scratching. A reporter for New Scientist magazine attacked one of the new discs with steel wool and was unable to make a mark.
Posted Monday, November 1 at 5:35 p.m.
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Put a Bluetooth in your ear: If your idea of a phone is a tiny wireless unit that fits over your ear, then a company called Jabra has just the thing: a Bluetooth headset that features an LCD display, a vibrating mode (sounds like fun!) 5 ringtones and 6 hours of talktime. It also has two buttons for accepting or denying a call, a jog dial, it charges via USB connection and weighs three-quarters of an ounce. Word is it will be released in the new year sometime. |
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Posted Thursday, October 28 at 5:43 p.m.
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Coming to a vending machine near you - not: In North America, cell phones come "locked" onto a particular carrier, which means you can't use them with anyone else - unless, of course, you go to one of the grey market dealers who will unlock it for you for a small fee. In Hong Kong, where virtually everyone has an unlocked cell phone that runs on the GSM standard, with a tiny SIM card that stores data, you can now buy SIM cards from a vending machine. |
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Posted Tuesday, October 26 at 12:26 p.m.
Stock up on replacement cartridges: For some time now, a fight has been going on between printer maker Lexmark and a company that sells replacement print cartridges that work in Lexmark printers. The printer company has argued that its technology is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and that Static Control's cartridges bypassed its intellectual property in order to work. A lower court ruled in Lexmark's favour last year, but now a higher court has reversed that ruling and said that Lexmark was effectively misusing the DMCA to try and prevent competition.
Posted Tuesday, October 26 at 1:40 p.m.
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Make your own lightning fossil: If you get a charge out of playing with gigantic magnets, Tesla coils and other electromagnetic phenomena, Bert Hickman's website is right up your alley. He shows you how to build your own Tesla coil, has pictures of quarters that have been "shrunk" using high-energy magnets and displays Lichtenberg Figures or "lightning fossils," which reproduce lightning inside a block of Lucite. Just make sure you're wearing rubber-soled shoes. |
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Posted Thursday, October 21 at 11:13 a.m.
Coming to a T-shirt near you: Why bother just having a boring old video screen sitting on a table playing your marketing spiel at your next show, or a "booth babe" handing out flyers - why not put them together with the T-shirt TV? It's an LCD display cunningly hidden inside a standard T-shirt, which can be worn around town by the model of your choice. Tourism Toronto is planning to use them as part of its cross-country tour to promote the city, starting Thursday October 21.
Posted Wednesday, October 20 at 4:54 p.m.
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It's a bird, it's a plane...:Maybe you like driving your boat, but you also like to fly. Or perhaps you just hate having to steer around things. Either way, the HoverWing is for you. This combination hover-boat and plane from has two stubby wings that allow it to lift off from a lake at a speed of 55 to 60 miles per hour and fly at up to 20 feet above the water. |
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Posted Monday, October 18 at 4:33 p.m.
Play console games with anyone: Console makers such as Microsoft have been trying for some time to push their on-line gaming services, but one of the problems is that you can only play Xbox Live games against other Xbox owners, or other PS2 games against other PS2 owners. But not if you have something called Xlink Kai -- it's a free software program you run on your PC, which allows you to connect to any console anywhere that is running a similar program and play a network-enabled game against them.
Posted Monday, October 18 at 1:58 p.m.
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For those big close-ups:Find you're just not getting enough detail in your web-cam or security camera pictures and videos? You might be interested in a new camera from Axis Communications that offers a resolution of more than one megapixel. That means a picture as large as 1280 by 1024 pixels. The $500 (U.S.) camera also supports widescreen format, which is a 16:9 ratio as opposed to the standard 4:3 television ratio. |
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Posted Thursday, October 14 at 11:32 a.m.
For all those PVR questions: If you're having trouble putting together a home-made personal video recorder (PVR), or need a question answered about a store-bought one, you might want to check out the Ask PVRBlog, a new site set up by the guys behind the PVR Blog, which as you've probably guessed by now is a website devoted to all things related to PVRs. Although the content is oriented towards the U.S. market - which has the TiVo personal video recorder and various other combined products, such as the DISH network satellite box with PVR - there are still lots of questions that you might find helpful, or maybe you could help answer someone else's question.
Posted Thursday, October 14 at 10:37 a.m.
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A TiVo for your radio: It's pretty obvious where the "RadioShark" from Griffin Technology got its name - the device looks a bit like a shark fin. Griffin says it can record any AM or FM radio broadcast, but can also be programmed to record a scheduled show, or to pause live radio, just like the TiVo does for television. You can program station presets and change other settings through a software application, and the Shark works with PC or Mac. |
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Posted Wednesday, October 6 at 4:44 p.m.
Carry your desktop on your iPod: If you'd like to take your Outlook e-mail, contacts, desktop folders and Internet Explorer settings with you when you go somewhere, without having to lug a laptop, PowerHouse Technologies would like to introduce you to its latest Migo product. The company's first version was a USB thumb drive with software that would copy your mail and settings to the device. The newer version runs on an iPod digital music player, so you can store your settings on the unit and retrieve them from any PC you plug the device into.
Posted Wednesday, October 6 at 3:54 p.m.
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Wireless for the wired: Many hotels and other establishments have added wireless Internet access to their rooms, and that's a good thing - but what if you don't have a wireless laptop? TeleAdapt figures it has the answer with its DeskBridge unit, a small wireless hub with an Ethernet cable sticking out of it. All a guest has to do is pull the cable out of the unit and plug it in. It supports Wi-Fi "b" and "g" standards and can be accessed by any Web browser. |
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Posted Tuesday, October 5 at 3:27 p.m.
Computer watches the road: You might not have much luck explaining to the police officer why you missed a stop sign if a new Australian technology becomes commonplace - the unit described in a recent article in New Scientist uses three cameras and a computer to analyze your driving. One camera watches the road and the other two watch your face, and use sophisticated facial-recognition software to figure out whether you're looking where you should be or not.
Posted Monday, October 4 at 5:18 p.m.
Did you hear that pill bottle?: You probably thought the technology that gve you talking birthday cards would never amount to anything, but Wizzard Software is proving you wrong. The U.S. Army has just signed a deal to use the company's talking pill bottles as part of its aid efforts in Afghanistan. The bottles, produced by a Wizzard subsidiary called MedivoxRx, can be programmed to give instructions in a local language (such as Pashto) so that villagers will know how to administer various kinds of medication.
Posted Thursday, September 30 at 4:27 p.m.
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A wireless FrogPad: FrogPad makes a unique kind of one-handed keyboard that crams all the letters and functions of a regular QWERTY board into a small square with 20 keys. Now the company has partnered with Canadian-based Gennum Corp. to produce a wireless version called the iFrog that uses Bluetooth. They're available for $175 and they support Palm, Pocket PC, Symbian and other popular mobile operating systems. |
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Posted Wednesday, September 29 at 3:41 p.m.
Where's my headlamp gone?: The gang at Griffin Technology just love coming up with add-ons for the popular Apple iPod music player, including the iTrip FM transmitter that allows you to play your MP3 files over your car radio. Now they have something for all those who find themselves fumbling in the dark but have their trusty iPod at hand: the iBeam combination flashlight and laser pointer, which snaps onto the top of your iPod. Just in case you happen to be spelunking with your iPod and the helmet light fails.
Posted Monday, September 27 at 1:18 p.m.
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When a painting isn't good enough: Now that you've got that plasma screen or LCD panel hanging on your wall, what do you do if you don't want to look at CNN all day long? You could try the ArtScreen from Vutec. It's a fancy frame that goes over top of your wall TV, with a remote-control screen that slides down and has a reproduction of a fancy classical painting on it. No price details, but hey, if you've got the plasma you can probably afford it. |
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Posted Monday, September 20 at 5:22 p.m.
Send your pics wirelessly: E-mailing embarrassing snapshots to friends could get a lot easier with a new technology offering from Concord Camera. The company, which makes digital and film cameras for Polaroid, among others, plans to demonstrate its new "wireless image transfer" or WIT technology at a photography show in Cologne, Germany. With a two-inch by two-inch wireless or Wi-Fi device that plugs into a camera's USB port, you can send pics over any Wi-Fi (802.11g) connection. Concord also has plans to incorporate the technology into some of its existing cameras.
Posted Monday, September 20 at 4:45 p.m.
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Gateway joins the all-in-one set: Not one to be left behind by Apple's new sleek iMac desktop unit, Gateway is rolling out an all-in-one PC called the Profile 5.5. The device comes with a low-power Intel chip that supports "hyperthreading" (which is not something to do with sewing) and has a high-speed hard drive and up to 2 gigabytes of memory. It comes in 15-, 17- and 19-inch models, optional wireless support and Windows XP operating system, and Gateway says list price is $1,400. |
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Posted Monday, September 20 at 5:03 p.m.
Track down those processes: If you've ever hit "control-alt-delete" on your Windows PC and taken a look at the Task Manager, you know that there are dozens of processes running all the time - some of which are necessary, and some of which aren't. Some are even installed by spyware and malicious programs without your consent. But how to tell which is which? Now you can use Process Library, a free service that tells you what each running process does and whether it is necessary or malicious.
Posted Thursday, September 16 at 5:28 p.m.
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Bluetooth for bikers: Motorola and hot Italian design firm MomoDesign have come up with a Top Gun-style motorcycle helmet that just might make Bluetooth as cool as its name. The helmet, which is modelled on those used by fighter pilots, has a built-in Bluetooth wireless module that allows a rider to make or receive phone calls wirelessly while riding. If you need to, you can continue talking after your ride is over by removing the Bluetooth module from the outside of the helmet and hanging it around your neck. |
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Posted Wednesday, September 15 at 12:08 p.m.
New hard drives built for gamers: Hard-drive maker Maxtor is shipping new high-speed drives with features it says will appeal to gamers and other intensive computer users. The DiamondMax 10 uses the fast SATA (serial ATA) standard and also has Maxtor's dual processors built in, as well as something called "native command queueing (NCQ)" which speeds up data throughput. In addition, the new drives have a 16-megabyte memory buffer that the company says will make it easier to run multiple applications at the same time, including memory-intensive games. No word on price yet.
Turn customers into salesmen: A Filipino cellphone company has come up with a novel way of trying to sell more phone minutes for its pay-as-you-go phones (95% of the Philippine market is pay-as-you-go). The company - fittingly called Smart - came up with its Smart Buddy program, which allows customers to re-sell phone minutes to friends and family, and earn a small commission by doing so. So far 100,000 people have signed up for the program.
Posted Wednesday, September 15 at 12:19 p.m.
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Wireless networking on a USB key: Maybe you have an old PC you want to add wireless to, or your laptop didn't come with Wi-Fi built in. Buffalo Technology says it can help, with its AirStation wireless USB key chain adapter. The unit provides access to 802.11g networks (at 54 megabits per second) and includes "auto-install" technology, which requires no installation CDs or drivers. |
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Posted Tuesday, September 7 at 4:50 p.m.
LG says that size does matter: Korean electronics giant LG says it has the world's largest all-in-one LCD television at 55 inches. Will it be that much more impressive than the existing world's largest, the 46-inch LCD TV? According to LG, it will - plus it comes equipped with a digital set-top box and has a wide 176-degree viewing angle. It also has inputs that allow it to be used as either a computer monitor or a TV, and has a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. LG says it should be available in Canada early next year.
Posted Wednesday, September 15 at 12:19 p.m.
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One-size battery fits all: Rechargeable batteries are a great idea, but if you have devices that use different kinds of batteries then you have to get a bunch of different chargers - or at least you did until Sanyo came up with its new Family Charger. All you need are double A rechargeables, because Sanyo has adapters shaped like C and D batteries that you just slide a double A battery into. Easy as pie. |
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Posted Tuesday, September 7 at 1:36 p.m.
Girls can geek out too: According to a recent story in the UK Observer, women are one of the fastest-growing markets for technology, and by some estimates are already spending more than men on gadgets. A recent survey by the U.S. Consumer Electronics Association found that women spent 14 per cent more on electronics than men, and that a majority of women would prefer a high definition TV to a one-carat diamond ring.
Posted Tuesday, September 7 at 1:48 p.m.
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Slide show in a picture frame: If you like the idea of displaying digital photos in a picture frame but the existing solutions are too expensive, Ziga might have the answer. Its frame is a 5.6-inch LCD display embedded in plexiglas, with the ability to read and display pictures and AVI video files from several different kinds of memory cards. It also plays MP3 files through built-in speakers and comes with a remote control for doing slideshows. And it's only $177 (U.S.). |
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Posted Thursday, September 2 at 11:42 a.m.
Instant messenging for adults too: According to a a recent study, more than four in 10 adult Internet users in the United States use instant messaging software, and one in five IM users is sending instant messages at work. The study released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project follows a similar survey released last week by America Online, a major provider of instant message software. AOL found that if teenagers are included, a substantial majority of American Internet users -- 59 percent of the total -- are using instant messaging.
Posted Thursday, September 2 at 10:28 a.m.
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RoboSapien rules: It may be only 13 inches tall, but the reviewers at GadgetMadness.com think the RoboSapien home robot is still the bomb. They've got a comprehensive review of the unit, which can be programmed via a Palm handheld to respond to its environment, and they even have pics of the RoboSapien in some fly hip-hop duds. |
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Posted Wednesday, September 1 at 12:13 p.m.
Hello, it's the aliens calling: An unexplained radio signal from deep space could be contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday. The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico. "If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting," Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western England told the magazine.
Posted Thursday, September 2 at 9:45 a.m.
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Wall-mounted Wi-Fi: It's easy enough for home PC users to set up a cheap wireless system with a Wi-Fi access point from Best Buy, but corporations have to install ceiling-mounted units that cost a lot and are hard to administer. Electronics maker Ortronics figures it has the answer with its Wi-Jack unit, which comes in both 802.11a and 802.11g formats and either a simple access point or a hub with Ethernet ports. |
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Posted Wednesday, September 1 at 10:29 a.m.
Who's calling? Not who you think: A service introduced Wednesday can send misleading information to phones that display Caller ID information, but the company offering it claims they will only sell it to collection agencies, private investigators, and law-enforcement personnel. Jason Jepson, founder and CEO of Star38, says companies will have to apply and provide copies of business licenses and other proof that they are legitimate, and approval takes seven to 10 days.
Posted Thursday, September 2 at 12:44 p.m.
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Take your Linux with you: Linux fans can take their entire operating system with them when they travel, using the GlobeTrotter bundle from Linux distributor MandrakeSoft, whose Mandrake "flavour" of Linux is a popular brand. The $219 (U.S.) package includes a copy of the company's version of Linux pre-installed on an ultra-compact LaCie hard drive, which can connect to any PC via USB. Boot from the portable drive and you're on your way. |
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Posted Thursday, August 26 at 6:02 p.m.
Holographic CD holds one terabyte of data: Japanese technology company Optware has announced that its new holographic process allows the production of CD-sized discs that can hold a terabyte of data or 1,000 gigabytes - enough to fill four large-capacity PC hard drives. The company uses what it calls a "collinear holographic" process to allow lasers to store and read multiple levels of data on a single disc.
Posted Wednesday, August 25 at 1:48 p.m.
Smile - you're on a hacker's candid camera: According to several reports, a new variant of the Rbot Web "worm" has the ability to take over users' webcams and use them to spy on people in their offices and homes. Rbot-GR spreads via shared network drives, exploiting a number of Microsoft security vulnerabilities and installing a "backdoor" Trojan horse. Hackers use it to access files and passwords, and can also control a user's webcam.
Posted Wednesday, August 25 at 1:28 p.m.
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A little ring-bling for geeks: Techie types don't get to wear much in the way of flashy jewellery, unless you include those Nintendo NES-style belt buckles, but a website called Marche Noir has a solution: rings made from computer keys. For between $37.50 (U.S.) and $50 you can get a nice chunky ring made out of a "delete" key or an "escape" key, and it will even move when you push on it. |
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Posted Tuesday, August 24 at 5:28 p.m.
A disposable camera with an LCD screen: Now even disposable cameras are getting the same features as expensive digital devices - including LCD screens. Giant U.S. pharmacy chain CVS has started selling the CVS Digital One-Time-Use Camera with Picture Preview, which has a 1.4-inch screen that allows users to see their pictures and delete the bad ones before taking it to a CVS pharmacy for developing. It also has a flash and metered exposure control, and sells for $19.99 (U.S.).
Posted Tuesday, August 24 at 5:14 p.m.
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Lick and stamp a loved one: If you're looking to add that special touch to a letter but you're all out of those Elvis memorial stamps, Stamps.com has something for you: personalized stamps. Just upload a picture of your son, daughter, wife, or pet to the website and order a sheet of 20 for $13.99 (U.S.) for regular stamps, or more for specialized stamps for larger packages. |
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Posted Tuesday, August 10 at 5:28 p.m.
A Mac app for BlackBerry addicts: Fans of the Blackberry PDA from Research In Motion who are also Apple users have had difficulty getting their two favourite gadgets to work together, but PocketMac says it has a solution. The company's BlackBerry Edition software allows Apple computers to sync data with BlackBerry PDAs, including their address book, contacts and calendar. The software is $29.95 (U.S.).
Posted Tuesday, August 24 at 4:58 p.m.
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Need to make a call? Get cranking: If your cellphone goes dead just when you need it the most, you might want to think about the Sidewinder. According the company, if you twist the handle for two minutes you get 6 minutes of talk time or 30 minutes of standby time. The device, which costs $25 U.S., can be used in any model of phone and comes with connector cables for five popular brands. |
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Posted Tuesday, August 10 at 4:54 p.m.
Sick of ripping all those CDs for your iPod?: If you just got one of Steve Jobs' gift to the travelling music fan but can't bear the thought of ripping all the files from your massive CD collection onto it, let Bill Palmer and his team do it for you. Their service, called LoadPod will pick up your iPod and all your CDs at your door, rip them and put them on the device and return it all to you - for $1.50 U.S. per CD (with 50 CD minimum) and a $20 shipping charge (waived if you have more than 100 CDs).
Posted Tuesday, August 10 at 4:26 p.m.
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Help for stranded photogs: If you've ever been somewhere and wanted to take a digital photo but didn't have a tripod, a Japanese company has the solution for you: an attachment that screws into the standard tripod fitting on most cameras, and fits the tops of most water or pop bottles. Screw it into your camera and use a bottle as an instant tripod - and only $9.99. (Unfortunately, they were sold out the last time we looked). |
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Posted Tuesday, July 20 at 6:08 p.m.
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Get a Pentium in your tank: If you're a PC enthusiast who's also into motorcycles, the Think Tank might be for you. It's a PC built into a modified motorcycle gas tank, complete with flames. It sells for $1,150 to $1,999 depending on configuration, and includes an AM/FM radio and CD player that can be used whether the computer is on or off. The Think Tank also includes a memory card reader and USB and FireWire ports. |
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Posted Tuesday, July 20 at 5:55 p.m.
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Take your tunes into the shower: If you absolutely have to have your iPod or CD player with you at all times, Dreamgear has something it calls the Boom Boom Multi-Box. It's a water-resistant enclosure for your iPod or other personal music player, and it retails for $20 (U.S.). It has built-in speakers and uses 4 AA batteries. |
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Posted Monday, July 19 at 6:10 p.m.
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Wheels that roll uphill by themselves: Japanese scientists have developed wheel-shaped robots that can move themselves up an incline by changing their shape. Using heat, the wheel-bots can deform the struts that radiate from their central hub, which are made out of "memory-retaining" steel (when heated they expand, and as they cool they retract to their original shape). |
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Posted Monday, July 5 at 3:58 p.m.
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Perfect for buying those beers on the course: Canadian technology firm Motion Wireless Inc. sells a wireless financial solution specifically designed for golf courses, which allows them to offer debit and credit-card transactions from a remote terminal, or even from a golf cart. It's a complete point of sale system that the company is already selling in the U.S. and hopes to launch for the Canadian market in November. |
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Posted Tuesday, June 29 at 4:58 p.m.
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Is there a cellphone recharger plug-in?: Medical implants such as pacemakers have a drawback: their batteries run out. Now a company in New York state is planning to tackle the problem by providing patients with an implantable power source that recharges their implant's batteries using electricity generated by the patient's own body heat. |
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Posted Monday, June 14 at 5:15 p.m.
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A Rollei camera for the digital enthusiast: If you've always wanted a genuine vintage Rollei twin-lens camera - the kind used by famous photographers such as Ansel Adams and Annie Liebowitz - but either couldn't afford it or prefer something digital, the Rollei MiniDigi might be for you. It looks just like the standard Rollei (including the film crank), but downsized, and it uses an SD memory card instead of film. Like the genuine article, it has a square viewfinder that you look down into, and a classic black and metal case. |
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Posted Monday, June 14 at 5:15 p.m.
Take some video before you remember: If you're always kicking yourself for not pressing the "record" button on your videocam when something great happens, then a company called Deja View Inc. has the answer: a wearable mini-camcorder with what it calls "after-the-fact" recording technology. The unit can be clipped to a pair of eyeglasses or on the bill of a hat, and includes a PDA-sized recording and storage device that can be worn on a belt or in fanny pack. The camera, which will sell for under $400, continuously records 30 seconds of action so that when you press the "record" button you get what happened just before as well as after. The company has signed a contract with Advent Electronics of Singapore to build the units.
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Branson drives across the English channel: Billionaire British entrepeneur Richard Branson doesn't like to do things the regular way. So it's no surprise that instead of rowing or swimming across the English channel, Sir Richard drove. Drove his Aquada, that is - the latest thing in amphibious cars. Apparently Sir Richard is thinking of buying a fleet of them. |
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Posted Monday, June 14 at 5:15 p.m.
Download fences to the cows: Virtual, moving fences controlled from a laptop could one day herd cattle to fresh fields for grazing, a roboticist told the MobiSys 2004 conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on Sunday. A farmer would control multiple herds from a single server at home as if they were playing a video game, said Zack Butler, of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. "Basically we download the fences to the cows," says Butler. "We say: 'Today stay here, tomorrow go somewhere else." The software transmits GPS co-ordinates of a virtual fence to head-collars worn by the cows in the field.
Posted Thursday, June 10 at 4:46 p.m.
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A fly-catcher that's fun to watch: If the usual variety of high-tech bug zappers don't really do much for you, you might be interested in The Flycatcher from Girls Stuff in the UK. It's a colourful plastic gizmo disguised as the monster man-eating plant from the hit Broadway show Little Shop of Horrors, and when a fly enters the trap - attracted by the special scent that comes with it - a sensor is triggered and the jaws snap shut. It even comes with a brush for sweeping out the remains. |
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Posted Thursday, June 3 at 5:30 p.m.
A remote control - for your washing machine: If you remember the early days of the Web, some enterprising souls set up cameras that would tell them when the coffee pot in the lunchroom was empty. Electronics maker LG has come out with a similar kind of feature for your washing machine and dryer. LG's "laundry monitoring system" tells users what stage the machine is in, and how long it will be. Called Clothes Eye, it consists of a small hand-held remote that plugs into any AC outlet and then communicates with the washer via the power lines in the house, and displays the status of the wash on the built-in LCD panel.
Posted Monday, June 7 at 4:36 p.m.
Like a video game, but without the shooting: If you think watching an all-candidates' debate during the election is exciting, video-game publisher Ubisoft has a game for you: it has signed a deal with Stardock Entertainment to publish "The Political Machine," a strategy game where players take on the role of campaign manager for a presidential candidate. Players must raise money, take out advertisements, win endorsements and appear on popular TV news shows to answer tough questions about today's most pressing issues. It's scheduled to launch late summer 2004 for the PC.
Posted Thursday, June 3 at 4:19 p.m.
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Some tunes for swimming along to: Amphicom has something it calls "the walkman for swimmers" -- a snorkel with a built-in FM radio. "Listen to your favourite radio station while you swim and avoid the boredom of those lengths. Relax to the sound of music as you enjoy a swimming pool session or when adventuring in the sea," the company says. Waterproof to 10 metres, it uses bone conduction to transfer sound to the user's ear. |
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Posted Thursday, June 3 at 5:30 p.m.
Make your laptop run like a stereo: Video-card maker Nvidia recently launched a new piece of software it's calling nStant Media, a program it says would allow laptop computer users quick access to their digital content. "With the touch of a button, nStant Media enables immediate access to DVDs, digital photos, MP3s and other music files without having to wait for the PC operating system to load," Nvidia said in a press release, and thus "transforms the notebook into a true portable consumer entertainment device." The company said the software - which would come built into laptops - would allow a user to play music files or access other data less than nine seconds after powering on the computer.
Posted Tuesday, June 1 at 5:49 p.m.
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Shed a little light on your shower: If you find it a little dark during your morning shower, you might be interested in the ShowerStar. It's a shower head that uses the force of the water flowing through it to power a built-in light. According to the manufacturer, "Water enters the shower head through the flow resrictor (1) then travels through the injector plate (2) which directs the water to the waterwheel (3). The water spins the magnetic waterwheel past the stator (4) of the field wincing (5). This hydroelectric generator develops the 2.5 volts at .31 amps which lights the PR-6 bulb." The company calls it a "miracle in motion." |
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Posted Tuesday, June 1 at 5:04 p.m.
