Gadget Access

Posted Feb 24th 2008 3:06PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Laptops
Look out, here comes yet another duo hopping on the Penryn train, and each of these buggers are sporting a Toshiba logo. Up first is the €999 ($1,480) Satellite A300 — the apparent successor of the A200 — which features a 15.4-inch display, a refreshed design, Harman Kardon speakers, built-in fingerprint reader, 1.3-megapixel camera, integrated microphone, up to 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and your choice of a Core 2 Duo T5500 (A300-124) or T8100 (A300-11I). As for the 17-inch P300 (seen after the jump), you can reportedly expect somewhat similar configurations, but sadly, we’ve no hard details on price or availability for it.

Posted Feb 24th 2008 11:15AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Transportation
It’s really too bad nanotechnology is so gosh darn morally unacceptable, it could do so much good for humanity! Take this new wiperless windshield, for instance. Designed by Leonardo Fioravanti of Pininfarina, the Hidra features an aerodynamic design, and a bit of a nanotech sandwich (mmm, sandwich) to keep the front glass clear of water and debris. The first layer protects from sun and repels water, the second layer features “nano-dust” to push dirt to the edges of the windshield and is activated by the third layer which senses the dirt, while the whole kit is powered by the fourth layer which conducts electricity to keep it going. The tech could be ready for mass production within 5 years, but there’s already a working prototype in the Hidra concept car.

[Via Sparking Tech]

A few more details are emerging on possible delays with the Asus Eee PC, this time it seems some of the units will be slowed due to a lack of power supplies.

“But, shipment of the brand’s hottest-selling Eee PC, a budget-price laptop, is estimated at only between 650,000 and 700,000 units for the quarter due mainly to a shortage of power supplies.”

The statement specifically mentions “power supplies” but this may be referring to the recent reports of the battery shortages. Either way, batteries or power supplies (power cords) it seems like we are going to be seeing some delays on the Eee PC. The delays could prove to be good news for at least one other notebook, the Everex Cloudbook.

Read [emsnow] Via [eeeuser.com]

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A new online resource from Palm could prove to be helpful for some of the new Palm smartphone owners. With the recent popularity (and the low price) of the Centro we are now seeing a whole new group of smartphone users, some who may not be as technology friendly. These new Self-Paced Learning guides from Palm should offer them the needed help to use their smartphone like a pro.

Palm has guides available for the Treo 500v, 680, 700w, 700wx, 700p, 750 and the Centro from both Sprint and AT&T. The guides offer up some tutorials on topics like getting to know your smartphone, setting up your smartphone, sending email, browsing the web, tips, tricks and a whole lot more.

Read [Palm Learning Guide] Via [gadgets On The Go]

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With the recent demise of HD DVD and all things that surround it, this news from Microsoft comes as no real surprise, they have officially discontinued the Xbox 360 hd dvd player. Current owners need not worry though, because although discontinued the support and warranty will remain in effect.

Actually the only real surprise here is that it took Microsoft this long to make it official. A nice follow up would have been the announcement of a Blu-ray player add-on, but that still has not been mentioned. It would make sense though.

Via [Gizmodo]

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Posted Feb 24th 2008 8:57AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Transportation
Ever on the lookout for the next step in up in Big Brother policy, there’s a new camera technology being developed in the UK at Loughborough University which can count car occupants by figuring out how much water and blood content there is inside the car. The obvious application is for trimming down those carpool lane offenders, trying to squeeze by the law with a dummy or a pet in the passenger seat. Look, privacy concerns aside, there’s just something awkward about traffic cams tracking quantities of blood and water inside of commuter cars. Do we really want to let the Machines have that kind of inside (literally) information on us?

[Thanks, Richard W]

You can’t normally fish and kayak at the same time (unless you enjoy getting wet), however that could change with the new fisherman’s kayak.

This is the only kayak available that uses a patented extendable outrigger system to stabilize the craft, enabling outdoor enthusiasts to fish from a standing position. Made of durable polyethylene with stainless steel and aluminum hardware, the kayak has two independent outriggers that pivot outward 45 to its centerline, yet both swing back into position to form the aft section of the craft to allow for smooth paddling.

The fisherman’s kayak costs $1,899.95 and is available at Hammacher.

Posted Feb 24th 2008 12:15AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
We’re pretty certain this isn’t the first time researchers have dove in and tried to accurately gauge laughter, but it just might be the most thorough. Gurus at Kansai University have reportedly crafted a machine that can “scientifically measure the quantity of a person’s laughter, as well as distinguish between the real and the fake.” Apparently, the idea here is to gather such information and use it to “conduct more detailed research into the physiological effects of laughter on the immune system,” and it’s collected by a series of electrode sensors that monitor “bioelectricity generated by certain muscles that flex when you chuckle.” Best of all, they’ve actually created a unit of measure to quantify their findings (aH), which certainly removes any doubt that all of this is just some elaborate joke.

[Via PinkTentacle, image courtesy of TravellersPoint]

Posted Feb 24th 2008 5:05AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Desktops
Anybody remember when a gigaflop was a big deal? Oh, how far we’ve come. Researchers are now talking about exascale computing, which means systems that can handle a million trillion calculations per second. To put that in perspective, IBM’s BlueGene/L (pictured), the fastest machine running, has a peak performance of 596 teraflops. A petaflop is 1000 times faster than a teraflop, and an exaflop is 1000 times faster than a petaflop. Yeah, that’s a lot of flops. Right now researchers are sorting out the most preliminary of groundwork, such as how do you get data to tens of thousands of processors at a time for crunching, but we’re sure before a few decades are up they’ll finally have built a machine that is powerful enough to cure all human diseases — or, you know, maybe even play Crysis at 60fps.

Ever wanted to just quickly log in and check your email only to have a bunch of friends instantly hit you up on chat, well now you can do just that, just switch yourself to invisible. A new option that was added to Gmail Chat will let you switch yourself from visible to invisible. The nice part about this is that while you are logged in and invisible you will still be able to see your friends status, they just cannot see you, meaning you may actually be able to get your work completed.

This new option works in the latest version of Gmail on Firefox 2 and IE7. The only limitation seems to be that you cannot switch yourself to invisible if you are logged in using another (gadget or desktop application) Gmail Client.

Via [Google Operating System]

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