FujiXerox shows off color e-ink display with writing capabilities
Filed under: Displays
[Via Tech-On!]
Friday, December 07, 2007
[Via Tech-On!]
Postal Service to Netflix: redesign your mailers or face fees
You know those handy mailers that you've been sending back to Netflix for ages as you eagerly await the next few flicks in your queue? Apparently, those buggers have cost the US Postal Service a staggering $41.9 million in additional labor costs over the past two years due to their "nonmachinable nature," and if things aren't changed, it could cost 'em another $61.5 million over the next couple years. In a letter from the Inspector General's office, Netflix is being, um, asked to rework its mailers or face a $0.17 surcharge per envelope, and if such a fee was tacked on, it would reportedly decrease the outfit's monthly operating income per paying subscriber by a whopping 67-percent. Not surprisingly, it sounds as if Netflix will bite the bullet and redesign the problematic mailer if the USPS is serious about the charges, so feel free to keep an eye out for a design change in the not-too-distant future.[Via TechDirt, image courtesy of ABC]
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Apple Remote: It's Not What You Think
The idea is that each member of the household would have their own personal remote, programmed to their tastes. The device could also respond to motion gestures like rotating it left to lower the volume, and rotating it right to raise it. When not in use, the apples can be returned to the bowl for recharging. I don't know if Sony would actually be into something like this, but I can see how future products could incorporate some of these ideas. [Yanko Design]
Porsche's Futuristic Champagne Tower for Veuve Cliquot Is a Fridge by Any Other Name
Zetix Blast-Proof Fabric Resists Multiple Car Bombs, Makes Our Heads Explode
Zetix is built around the principle of auxetics: objects that actually get fatter the more you stretch them. Though it hurts to think about, as you will discover, it actually makes sense.
To demonstrate how Zetix works, the best thing is to look how a thread behaves. When you jump from a bridge using a bungee cord, the force of gravity acting over your body weight will stretch it as you go down in free fall. While this happens, the cord threads will stretch getting closer together and making the cord get thinner as it expands through a larger distance.
This material has other uses beyond terrorist attacks or battle scenarios, said Dr. Hook. The fabrics can "provide sustained protection and gives emergency services extra time to rescue trapped or injured people," and can offer effective protection against natural forces like hurricanes, as well as be deployed in containment systems, military tents, ballistic mosquito nets and body armor, a $2 billionpret-a-porter market.
Though the company is in talks with multiple manufacturers to go into mass production, we don't yet know when you'll be able to buy this stuff at Home Depot to protect against the next hurricane or tornado, let alone when Chen will be able to buy underwear made completely from it for his next pantsing session. [Auxetix]
Samsung announces world's fastest memory: GDDR5
Toshiba and Samsung to cross-license NAND rights: more flash for all!
While Toshiba (and SanDisk) and Samsung might be battling it out in the press for the world's fastest and highest-density NAND, they're actually good buddies behind closed doors. In fact, they've been partners in the Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corporation for years. Today they announced a deal to cross-license the rights to respectively produce, market, and sell Samsung's OneNAND and Toshiba's LBA-NAND memory chips. Each plans to release products next year based on the newly licensed technology of the other. The move should broaden the choice of suppliers to OEMs in a day where multi-sourcing reigns supreme. Yes, that's a good thing for us consumers.[Via DigiTimes]
Wal-Mart, Amazon ratchet up anti-DRM pressure
Both Wal-Mart and Amazon have already made their positions on DRM pretty well known, but it looks like each are now taking some further steps to ratchet up the pressure on the remaining hold-out record labels. For its part, Wal-Mart has reportedly told the record labels point blank that they must offer DRM-free MP3 versions of all their music, a matter that Sony BMG is apparently still the biggest hold out on. Amazon, on the other hand, is looking to give its download service (and, in turn, DRM-free downloads) a boost by giving away up to a billion free downloads in a promotion with Pepsi that's its set to launch during the Super Bowl in February. You'll need to guzzle quite a bit a Pepsi if you want to get your quota of those MP3s, however, as you'll apparently need to collect five bottle caps for each download. According to Billboard, Amazon has approached all the major record labels about participating in the promotion, but some are apparently balking at the 40 cents per track Amazon is willing to give 'em, which is a sizable cut from the 65 to 70 cents they currently receive.[Via Gadget Lab]
JetBlue introduces free in-flight email and IM
Bandwidth for these services is provided by LiveTV, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the carrier that provides the entire fleet with select DirecTV and XM radio channels, and which also happens to possess a valuable 1MHz slice of ground-to-air spectrum that it's deploying for this very purpose (with the help of some 100 existing cell towers around the country). If all goes well in what is admittedly a beta test, more aircraft will receive the WiFi makeover, and more features -- such as access to terabytes of locally-stored multimedia content -- will be rolled out, along with additional service providers besides Yahoo. Just don't expect an open pipe any time soon: that sweet little slice of spectrum is not nearly robust enough to handle the heavy Slinging, VoIPing, and Torrenting you all would obviously be doing.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Carnegie Mellon's "Crusher" military bot getting $14 million upgrade
Carnegie Mellon's so-called "Crusher" unmanned military vehicle already had quite a bit going for it in its previous incarnation, but it now looks to set to expand its robotized arsenal even further, courtesy of a $14.4 million grant from the Army. According to the university's National Robotics Engineering Center, the updated bot will make use of the "latest suspension, vehicle frame, and hybrid-electric drive technologies to improve upon its predecessor's performance" while also promising to, somewhat ominously, "push the envelope for autonomous and semi-autonomous operation." That the NREC says, should allow the bot to begin working alongside troops in five or ten years, with it initially confined to convoy roles before it puts its autonomous skills to use in "tactical" missions.[Via CNET Military Tech]
The 20GB+ Eee PC mod
Filed under: Laptops
[Thanks, chainofcommand02]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Hama PhotoPlayer 1080i digital picture viewer
[Via PhotographyBLOG]
Monday, December 03, 2007
Comcast CEO sees 160Mbps internet in 2008
Remember that blisteringly fast channel bonding modem Comcast showed off earlier this year? Turns out that the firm's CEO is apparently aiming to roll out internet services that can reach up to 160Mbps down / 120Mbps up sometime in 2008. As in, next year. In a recent interview with Fortune, Brian Roberts stated that service based on DOCSIS 3.0 technology would start "rolling out" sometime in 2008, and casually noted that it should provide "more than enough bandwidth to do multiplayer online gaming." Additionally, Cable Digital News explains that the firm has plans to cover some 20-percent of its footprint with the uber-quick service before 2009, and while we're left to guess what areas will be covered, we'd bet locales fetching FiOS could entertain some competition. Granted, we've still got aways to go before we can go toe-to-toe with a certain Swede, but we'll take any progress we can get.[Via ArsTechnica, image courtesy of AFP / BBC]
Read - Fortune interviews Comcast CEO Brian Roberts
Read - Comcast closes in on 100Mbit/s
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Blackberry 9000 Specs Leaked, Faster Than iPhone in More Ways than One [Rumor]
- 480 x 320 resolution screen - 1GB onboard memory - GPS, WiFi, HSDPA - Maybe a 3.2MP camera - Maybe dropping in Q1 or Q2 of 2008Looking good, but can anyone get over a loss of button-driven QWERTY? [ bgr]
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