Gadgets and New Technologies

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 27th 2008 at 6:38PMLet’s face it — we owe a great deal of gratitude to the robots that get up each and every morning to explore far reaches of the universe that we humans are just incapable of landing on. But there’s still the problem of we humans having to tell these things what to do from our humble laboratories here on Earth. The brilliantly named Wolfgang Fink, a physicist and senior researcher at the California Institute of Technology, has plans to remedy said quandary by creating autonomous spacecrafts “that will be able to analyze data about points of interest as it passes and then make quick decisions about what needs to be investigated.” In essence, he’s looking to remove the Earthlings from the equation, which would enable smart robots to explore on their own and possibly discover new pools of purified water, REEM-B’s long lost siblings or the real most innovative NES-in-a-whatever mod. (Read the full post about ‘Intelligent space robots to dig around, throw raves on their own by 2020′…)

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 27th 2008 at 11:31AMLittle known tidbit for those not keenly watching the happenings at Infineon: the firm was forced to write down the value of its Qimonda stake by €1 billion ($1.57 billion) in April. Not surprisingly, Infineon’s head honcho is about ready to rid the company of the flagging unit, making quite a few direct statements in a Germany daily saying as much. (Read the full post about ‘Infineon CEO wants to sell flagging Qimonda unit… badly’…)

Share This

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 27th 2008 at 1:51PM If you’ll recall, the evolution of homebrew on the Wii started out quite similar to this. First comes the Hello World proof of concept, then comes Pong. It would just be wrong to unfold otherwise, right? Dragula96, the same guru who whipped up the original homebrew hack, has now introduced 2 Player Pong 1.0 — the first notable game to take advantage. (Read the full post about ‘PS3 homebrew capabilities inevitably leads to Pong’…)

Share This

If you’d like the option of a bit more than just plain bread toasted in the morning, you might check out this design.  It actually has a rotary basket built into it, which also means nice hot croissants and other breaded goodness that you can toss into the basket.  With the basket itself, you can set an individual timer as to how long to keep it going.  On the rest of the toaster, since the rotary is on the top, your bread has to go someplace else for your morning toast. (Read the full post about ‘The Patentee the very first toaster with a rotary basket’…)

Share This

Ubuntu’s founder, Mark Shuttleworth, has proposed a plan to make his distro of Linux just that much more popular. He plans on overtaking Apple’s Mac OSX in the looks and desktop experience departments in order to overtake the art-savvy giant. Sure, these plans do sound a bit confident for where Linux is now, but that almighty force of Linux programmers is really starting to leave an impression on the industry. Shuttleworth believes the idea that open source operating systems need not only be for the tech savvy and he aims to push for easier, more stable, and more attractive aspects to updates to his operating systems. With Ubuntu updates popping out about every 6 months now, this dream may not be as much as a reach as it may seem. (Read the full post about ‘Ubuntu to beat Mac OSX in looks within 2 years?’…)

Share This

With today’s technology there are a lot of ways to make sure your pet is well taken care of and safe.  Well this Plexidor is basically an updated version of the classic doggy door.  It works as a garage door would, only instead of hitting a button this has an RFID chip that clips to your pet’s collar.  Then whenever they get close to the door it will slide open.  Which thankfully means that you won’t be stuck up at 7am on a Saturday when they suddenly feel the need to go outside.  Also an extra bonus is that this little door won’t go flying open over a bit of windy weather. (Read the full post about ‘The Plexidor Electronic Pet Door’…)

Share This

With today’s technology there are a lot of ways to make sure your pet is well taken care of and safe.  Well this Plexidor is basically an updated version of the classic doggy door.  It works as a garage door would, only instead of hitting a button this has an RFID chip that clips to your pet’s collar.  Then whenever they get close to the door it will slide open.  Which thankfully means that you won’t be stuck up at 7am on a Saturday when they suddenly feel the need to go outside.  Also an extra bonus is that this little door won’t go flying open over a bit of windy weather. (Read the full post about ‘The Plexidor Electronic Pet Door’…)

Share This

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 27th 2008 at 8:49AM Not quite sure why, but we get this whole Get Smart vibe from this thing. IOCELL’s contents phone would probably be more suited for a highly covert spy agency rather than your grandmother’s home, but we suppose even granny could appreciate the built-in hard drive that logs conversations, plays ‘em back and makes remembering things that much easier. Furthermore, the firm asserts that this thing can send completed calls out on the internet should you want to pass along the audio to someone else, and there also appears to be a USB port for possibly offloading those onto flash drives. Heck, it even syncs caller ID information with calls and provides background music during conversations (uh, okay?). (Read the full post about ‘IOCELL contents phone logs conversations, sends ‘em around the web’…)

Share This

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 27th 2008 at 8:49AM Not quite sure why, but we get this whole Get Smart vibe from this thing. IOCELL’s contents phone would probably be more suited for a highly covert spy agency rather than your grandmother’s home, but we suppose even granny could appreciate the built-in hard drive that logs conversations, plays ‘em back and makes remembering things that much easier. Furthermore, the firm asserts that this thing can send completed calls out on the internet should you want to pass along the audio to someone else, and there also appears to be a USB port for possibly offloading those onto flash drives. Heck, it even syncs caller ID information with calls and provides background music during conversations (uh, okay?). (Read the full post about ‘IOCELL contents phone logs conversations, sends ‘em around the web’…)

Share This

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 27th 2008 at 5:41AM Not that Samsung is actually looking to pump this out into beauty salons worldwide, but there stands at least a mild chance that sophisticated females shopping for new compacts would also spring for some storage. Joongoo Lee’s Costume is a sleek, deliberately styled 2.5-inch external hard drive that looks entirely at home mixed in with various makeup components. Additionally, the bundled dock is equally sexy, though we can only hope there’s a USB 2.0 port somewhere on this thing. Though this is just a concept, we wouldn’t put it past Samsung to turn into a reality — after all, it did just produce pink and blue BlackJack IIs. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung Costume hard drive concept appeals to the ladies’…)

Share This