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zForce touchscreens from Neonode

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 04:00 AM PST


Anyone remember Neonode? Apparently we do, but not very well. Anyway, these guys are back with a range of touchscreen panels called zForce. These pads range from 5 to 13 in. widescreen models, and are supposed to have plenty of advantages over current resistive and capacitive panel systems. Well that certainly sounds enticing, doesn’t it?

And what exactly are those advantages you might ask? Well don’t ask me, ask the press release.

100% transparency (no overlay needed like in resistive or capacitive), low cost for complete touch screen solution, ultrathin design, outstanding finger touch experiences (multi-touch support for gesture like pinch to zoom), integrated ambient light sensor for self adjusting backlight levels and lower power consumption and much more.

The Neonode website also claims the zForce is equally responsive when you’re wearing gloves. I know I would prefer not to have my fingers freeze when I’m trying to figure out exactly what part of Brooklyn I’m lost in.

[SlashGear]

Panasonic’s new “Stereo D-Dock” is slim, supports iPhones and iPods

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 03:21 AM PST


Panasonic in Japan has announced [JP] a new stereo system today, the D-Dock SC-HC40. The device is just 69mm thick at the thinnest part but integrates a speaker plus digital amplifier (20W×2ch(6Ω)), a CD player, an AM/FM tuner, an SD/SDHC/SDXC memory card slot, and a “sliding door” (Panasonic).

Open the “door” to find a dock in which you can put your iPhone or iPod, which you can then control remotely (Panasonic calls this “Direct Docking”). You can also take your Apple player into your hand, choose what you want to hear and listen to the music through the D-Dock speaker. The device supports the iPhone 3G and 3GS plus the iPod, iPod classic, touch, nano, and mini (various generations).

The SC-HC40 features Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and needless to say, comes with a remote control. Play music (or videos) from your Apple devices from your couch or choose tracks directly from your SD cards (in AAC, WMA, MP3 formats). It’s also possible to copy music from the radio or your CD player onto SD cards without a computer (this won’t work with music stored on your iPhone/iPod).

Panasonic plans to start selling the D-Dock SC-HC40 in Japan on March 12 for $420. I don’t think this pretty neat system will ever find its way out of Japan though.

Home-sized fuel cells are on the way

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 03:00 AM PST

If you thought solar panels were too expensive to put on your house, wait ’till you hear this one. Bloom Energy, a clean energy start-up in Silicon Valley, said “Hello world” yesterday, unveiling a rather revolutionary solid oxide fuel cell unit. If all goes to plan, it should be able to put your house completely off the grid. There’s a 60 Minutes spot after the jump.

The project started way back in 2001, intended for colonizing Mars. Each unit is about the size of a parking space, and can provide upwards of 100kW of power. It has also proven to be much cheaper and more efficient than most other “clean energy” options. You can power it with nearly any fuel you can think of. Bio fuels, natural gas, etc.

At $700K a unit, you probably won’t be seeing these things in your neighborhood for a while. Unless your neighborhood includes the campuses of some heavy-hitters like Google or eBay. But reports say that one of the main priorities for Bloom Energy is making these units affordable at a home-owner level.

Click over there for a much more detailed explanation of the tech behind it.

[i4U News]

X90: Pentax updates its X70 digital camera

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 12:43 AM PST

In March last year, Pentax unveiled the X70, a 12MP “hybrid” digital camera with 24x optical zoom that currently sells on Amazon for $380. And today Pentax in Tokyo announced [press release in English] the successor, the X90. As to be expected, the new model has been upgraded in some areas.

The X90 has a 26x optical zoom lens with focal lengths from 26mm wide angle to 676mm super telephoto (in the 35mm format). There’s also an “Intelligent Zoom” function that extends the zoom coverage to about 162.5 times (for a focal length of 4225mm in the 35mm format). Pentax says they also boosted battery life by 50%, making it possible to shoot about 255 pictures on a full charge.

The camera still features a 12.1MP sensor, a 2.7-inch LCD, an HDMI interface, a USB 2.0 port, HD recording, Eye-Fi connectivity, face detection, “Triple Shake Reduction technology”, anti-shake mode, and an electronic viewfinder.

There is no word on price or release date in the English press release (which is to be found on Pentax’ Japanese homepage), but Amazon.com is already listing the X90 for $399.95 (as a pre-order). While there’s no information on availability in the US, Japan will get the camera sometime at the end of next month.

Daily Crunch: Smashing Movement Edition

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 12:00 AM PST

Electrical vehicle concepts running rampant

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 08:00 PM PST

Couple of things to talk about: Honda just announced that they are going to show off an electric concept vehicle, and a Hungarian company is making a concept car that’s capable of splitting into two separate vehicles.

Of the two, I think the Honda is more likely to become a reality. The Honda 3R-C is a single person transport, but pulls design cues from a trike instead of a motorcycle. It’s for Honda’s urban commuter concept for zero emission transportation, and uses a lithium ion battery system. Honda is also working on a car in the same vein, which actually has the ability to combine two smaller vehicles into one larger. The EV-N car would have solar panels in the roof, and charge the vehicle while it’s parked.

The Hungarian option however, isn’t quite so promising. Remember after all these are the people who brought you the Yugo. The Antro company is in the process of developing a car that will actually split into to smaller cars, each one capable of going about 12 miles before needing a recharge. That’s actually considered to be fine for a commute, but anything resembling a road trip would be pretty much impossible. Antro plans to be able to deliver this vehicle sometime in 2012.

Aw – they love each other

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 07:30 PM PST


That’s the JVC GZ-HM340, which they say is the lightest and smallest HD camcorder with a built-in drive. Full review will be up later this week, but this picture was too cute not to share. Aww, look at them!

Another Hourtime Episode

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 07:00 PM PST


In this episode we talk about watch repair tips and some classic watch legends. Enjoy!


Mentioned this episode:

Chad the Watch Guy

Otto Frei watch repair

Tokyoflash

Cave Story comes to WiiWare March 22!

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 06:00 PM PST


March is looking good for Nintendo fans. They just announced that the DSi XL will be shipping on the 28th, and now one of the most acclaimed indie games of all time has been confirmed for availability on the 22nd. If you’re not familiar with Cave Story, you’d do well to pick it up; it’s like 16-bit Metroid-style exploration and platforming taken to perfection. The stuff of legend among indie game lovers like myself, I assure you.

There are changes, of course; in addition to it being the game you can still download for free, you’ve got redone graphics, a few new modes like Boss Attack, and apparently some surprises for fans who have already played through the game a number of times. Seriously, guys, this is a game everyone who calls themselves a gamer should have on their Wii — and if you don’t have a Wii, get downloading! The link is the little guy next to the “2004.”

The same dev crew is working on bringing the similarly loved, but terrifyingly difficult and huge La-Mulana to the Wii as well. Now that’s something I haven’t had the courage to attempt just yet.

Microsoft’s tiny uPad is both a conductive charger and tiny display

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 05:00 PM PST


You know, I actually meant to write this up a couple days ago, but at the time all I could find was the schematics you see below. No real indication of whether this was a product-to-be, a patent lark, or what. Engadget popped it up, though, and someone recognized it and sent over some pictures. Apparently it’s been around for almost a year, and was given out as a gift from Microsoft Research Asia. One side charges a MS Laser Mouse 7000, which unfortunately is a terrible mouse, and the other is a microscopic display. It seems they’ve got some work to do on this one, but it’s a cool idea.

I like desktop widgets, but I can never find one that’s actually useful. If you put some media controls on this thing, with a couple widgets, I bet you’d sell a kajillion of them.

Researchers trying to find out why baby cries

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 04:45 PM PST

Ever wonder exactly why the baby is crying? Is he hungry? Is she tired? Does she have gas? Does he need changed? All these questions whirled about in my head whenever junior would wake in the middle of the night and start making noises. Researchers in Japan however, are working to find an answer to the first question, however they haven’t made any progress with the followup question, “why aren’t that baby’s parents making him be quiet?”

The scientists at the very important sounding “Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering” are working on the problem. They’ve had little success so far, due to the fact that a baby can’t communicate to indicate if they are right or wrong. They keep working on the project though, and promise to spend millions until they finally reach a solution. The current device uses an audio spectrum analyzer and recorded samples to try and match up the cause of the child’s distress.


Lomo goes instant with LC-A+ Instant Back

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 03:30 PM PST


The pain and sorrow of Polaroid’s death spiral is… ongoing. Luckily, there’s no rule against switching horses midstream, or whatever the idiom is. If you want instant pictures and crazy colors, go Lomo. Their famously weird lenses produce compelling pictures, and the LC-A+ body is actually capable of doing some ASA and focus adjustments, unlike pretty much every instant camera ever.

The custom back fits Fujifilm Instax film, which costs ~$15-20 for a 10-shot cartridge. The process is spelled out in the videos on the microsite; it’s a pretty simple installation process. The back costs $100, which seems pretty steep to me for a piece of molded plastic, but hey, Lomo’s been doing this for a long time. You don’t last 25 years with one camera system unless it’s solid as hell (or quirky, in Lomo’s case).

If you’re intrigued by the whole Lomo/instant thing, and I wouldn’t blame you if you were, you can get a pretty decent price on a LC-A+ body, instant back, and a two-pack of Instax film. For you my friend, $321.25. For others no. Best price for you.

Android’s “Blapkmarket” pirated app repository goes down hard

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 03:15 PM PST

Now, before we enter the breach, I think it bears repeating that MobileCrunch and indeed the rest of the TechCrunch network in no way condone software/application piracy. Developers work too hard for responsible members of the tech community to give them the shaft like that. That said, while cracked iPhone app repositories like apptrackr continue to operate with impunity, we’re surprised to see that the big Android equivalent has been forced to shut down first. Jesusxxx’s Blapkmarket, which provided paid apps free of charge to its users, was just recently shut down by his hosting company.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

“Magic Flute” audiophile speakers look like jet engines, probably sound amazing

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 03:00 PM PST


I don’t even want to speculate on the cost of something as cool-looking as this. I’ll just settle for pining away. The idea, I suppose, is to have speakers of every size necessary to reproduce sound perfectly, all attached to the same system. I mean, it’s not an original idea; most tower speakers use the same principle, but did you ever see a tower speaker that made you feel like you were listening to music on an airship?

Let’s be honest: the main draw to these things has to be the design. I’m betting they sound great — but, like the ceramic speakers I recently reviewed, and which the open cone design actually reminds me of, the originality of the look is what will sell it to most people.

There’s more information here, though I’ve included a small gallery of the best pictures, since the web designer at SW Speakers seems to think a slowly rotating Flash gallery is the way to go. It literally takes like 5 minutes to go all the way through. So click and enjoy.

[via Born Rich]

Apple has sold 10 billions songs on iTunes. Yes, 10 billions of them.

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 02:47 PM PST


Wows! Ten Billions is a lots of songs to sells! CrunchGears extends hearties congratulations, Apples.

Yes, friends, even Apple lets slip a typo every once in a while. Seriously, though, that’s a lot.

And the obligatory de-motivational version, for your lulzing needs:

Pentax finally makes its W90 rugged and waterproof camera official

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 02:37 PM PST


We’ve been looking at leaked pictures of this thing for a week or so, but there wasn’t much to say without the specs and all that. Besides, the leaked picture was just a little too muddy to show off the camera’s tasteful styling. But check this thing out: not only is the W90 waterproof to 20ft and shockproof from 4ft, it’s got a ring of LEDs around the lens to help with low light photos or movies. How come no one else thought of this?

The rest of the specs are pretty much the standard “nice point and shoot”: 12.1 megapixels, 5x zoom, 720p movie recording, 2.7″ 16:9 LCD, HDMI port, image stabilization… the usual fixins. One bonus is the “digital microscope” mode, whereby it can focus on things as close as 1cm away from the lens. To be honest, I think that’s pretty damn cool. Macro is something that’s missing from a lot of pocket-sized cameras. $330 is a kind of a lot of money, though. Just saying.

Honestly, if this thing performs as well as it seems to think it will, it may just be a replacement for the Casio Exilim FC series for my “perfect everywhere camera” recommendation. Looking forward to testing this sucker out.

Update: AHA! More pictures!

New Super Mario Galaxy 2 trailer: oh my god, this game looks fun

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 02:20 PM PST


Look, say what you will about the derivative nature of the Mario games (and Nintendo 1st-party products in general, Vitality Sensor excluded), you have to admit that for sheer platforming fun, they are absolutely unmatched. Just look at the varieties of platforming experience on display here. While for themes and graphics they’re not breaking any molds, the creativity on the level of fun and gameplay is oozing out of every frame, and sometimes that’s all that really matters.

Yoshi is nice, of course, but I’m loving the drill and the 2-D segments more. That allows for precision game design, as we’ve seen in New Super Mario Bros and stuff like Mega Man 9. I swear, one of these days I might actually have to buy a Wii.

HTC Incredible sneaks into Verizon’s inventory system

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 02:15 PM PST

Given that past leaks have been indicating as much for a few weeks now, it doesn’t come as any surprise that the HTC Incredible is heading to Verizon.

Still, it’s always nice to see new, unannounced handsets make their debut in a carrier’s inventory, as the Incredible just has.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Aperture 3 gets its first major update

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 01:55 PM PST


Aperture 3, Apple’s latest prosumer photo manipulation and organization software, got a major update and it looks like a doozy. As you recall, Aperture was eating memory like an Ancient Roman at an orgy and essentially bogging down all and sundry. This update improves the speed with which large libraries are imported and fixes many of the heavy batch issues that cropped up in the first release.

Full list of fixes after the jump. You can read more about the problem over at the KBase.

About Aperture 3.0.1
This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of issues in Aperture 3, including:

Upgrading libraries from earlier versions of Aperture
Importing libraries from iPhoto
Importing photos directly from a camera
Memory usage when processing heavily-retouched photos
Face recognition processing
Adding undetected faces using the Add Missing Face button
Printing pages containing multiple images
Printing photos and contact sheets with borders and metadata
Editing photos using an external editor
Display of images with Definition and Straighten adjustments applied
Zooming photos in the Viewer and in the Loupe using keyboard shortcuts
Accessing Aperture libraries on a network volume Selecting and moving pins on the Places map
Adding and editing custom locations using the Manage My Places window
Switching between masters when working with RAW+JPEG pairs.

Moosshiqk electric motorcycle goes fast, looks silly

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 01:30 PM PST

Here’s an interesting DIY project: Santosh apparently felt that the current generation of electric pocket bikes were just a little too large, so he built his own version. While Santosh’s bike is quite small, it is capable of running at almost 10mph.

Santosh’s bike is just 12 inches high and 18 inches long. That makes it a bit smaller then the currently available products on the market, but you’re still going to look silly as you ride it. Part of the way Santosh pulled off this lilliputian miracle was to make the battery pack wearable, rather then mounted on the bike. I’m not entirely sure I’d prefer that method, but I guess that would help with portability. Santosh didn’t provide much information on his blog, but definitely check out the video if you want to know more.

[Via RedFerret]
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