Sony CineAlta 4K SRX-R220 projector for great cinema experience
Friday, May 25, 2007
Futuristic Luxury Hotels; some just a concept others, a reality
There are many categories of hotels present in the world today. From the Business hotels to the Budget ones, each of them try to offer their clients something that will want them to come back again. Featured here are hotels that are being made with only one main base- their unique location and design. Some of them are just concepts but others are shaping out to become truly futuristic. Water and space are two elements that have taken the fancy of the developers, as you will notice, most of the hotels are either situated below the sea or above the earth!
8 The Apeiron island hotel
This seven star hotel is still in its conceptual stage. It is $500million project that is being designed by Sybarite. This island hotel will have a total floor area of 200,000m². With over 350 luxury apartment suites, the hotel will be accessible by water (yacht) and air (helicopter) only. 'Apeiron' hotel gets its name from Anaximander's 6th century BC cosmological theory. He believed the beginning of time to be an endless, unlimited mass, subject to neither old age nor decay; perpetually yielding fresh materials from which everything we can perceive are derived. Private lagoon, beaches, restaurants, art gallery, retail shopping, cinemas, spas and conference facilities will be there for you to enjoy.
Spotlight Live New York - Feel famous for a night
I am spellbound…I don’t know how to go further with this article, but I’m not good with keeping news to myself either. If this is anything to go by then I’m floored by the very concept of this place. There aren’t likely to be many eating or drinking establishments that can offer the star power of Spotlight Live, located right at New York’s Times Square. This jumbo karaoke emporium on something much stronger than steroids is a 23,000 square-foot, four-story potential nightmare for anyone but those with a craving for the limelight. With fake paparazzi waiting at the door (your mug will show up everywhere), and your record contract waiting to be signed inside, you are in for a real expose. Once you’ve selected your song, you are whisked to the VIP green room (with white leather couches of course) where you and your performance are polished and perfected (if possible) with the help of choreographers and make-up artists. Off you go on to the massive stage where a professional band and back-up singers are ready to make you sound like a star (again, if possible) as your stellar performance is streamed live to the web and onto a 25-by-40-foot Jumbotron in Times Square. With the five recording booths, seemingly hundreds of flat screens and constant instant messaging between tables, you may forget that there is food, too.
Counterfeiters on the prowl… Audemars Piguet comes to the rescue
Shinebox Print Business Cards
Everybody's got a business card these days, even soccer mom's have them! It's just the easiest way for everybody, not just business types, to keep in touch and communicate sometimes. So why not design your own, and have something unique and stylish instead of the standard boring layout everybody has? Business cards from Shinebox Print are not only cute in their little box with perforated edges, but you can personalize them however you want by including your own pictures, graphics, layout and everything on the front and back. Of course you can get personalized cards from lots of places, but these are so much more artistic, and a little different. And if you like the idea but don't necessarily want business cards, Shinebox can make calling cards, coupons, or any number of other projects. Prices start at $150.
Via LuxuryLaunchesXJet Private Club Set To Open
A couple of years ago I wrote about the plans for the XJet Club, a new private jet club opening at the Centennial Airport in Colorado. Now it seems that the club is finally set to open next month (it was originally set to open last year). The club has a a 100,000-square- foot facility and promises a luxury setting, and, more importantly fuel at cost. The club has a clubhouse, a restaurant and concierge services. The Denver Post reports that members pay $60,000 or more to join and have access to a fleet of private jets. The fleet may also someday include Aviation Technology Group's coveted Javelin jets. So far there are around 20 members and the business plans to also set up a smaller facility at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Mich. and they hope to have eight locations within five years across the country.
'Matte' the HAMANN Ferrari F430 Black Miracle
Matte finish paint seems to be all the rage these days in higher-end vehicles and concept cars (BMW M-series, anyone?), and HAMANN has no problem jumping on the bandwagon, down to the bright orange 20-inch rims. The company's new modified F430, dubbed the "Black Miracle," features orange and black matte finish, showing off ground effect details, brake calipers, wheels, side-view mirrors and bold racing stripes down the middle in bright orange, with the rest of the body beautified in black. The secret is in the foil treatment, which, if the owner would like to see glossy finish again, can be reversed.
HAMANN decks out the interior as well with the color scheme, and even adds lambo doors for show. Even with the paint job, however, no Ferrari modified this heavily visually could earn the street cred it's due without some performance modifications as well: the ECU and exhaust is modified for 50 extra horses, and special HAMANN suspension completes the low-slung feel.
[Check out Autoblog for a gallery of the vehicle and the HAMANN press release]
$100,000+ For An Audi?
Sure, if it feels like it should cost $200,000. The always-funny Ezra Dyer got to take a spin through Beverly Hills in the 2008 Audi R8 for the New York Times, where he bemoans the car's sideblades (or "sideburns," as Dyer calls them) but not much else.
Despite the price tag of $110,000 and up, the DNA shared between the street-bound R8 and Audi's lauded race car R8 -- midengine layout with most of the torque going to the rear wheels, dry-sump lubrication, etc. -- makes the 2008 Audi R8 one of the few cars allowed on municipal pavement that truly feels like a race car. In effect, the R8 is more like its Lamborghini cousins (also owned by VW) than like its other Audi siblings.
Unlike most Audis, which Dyer says are criticized for lacking any soul, the R8 offers up plenty of meat to get us grunting like cave men -- yes, even the women -- from an exhaust note that gets your blood rushing to optional LED lights that appropriately light up the engine under its transparent cover when the parking lights are on (should you be showing things off under the hood after dusk).
Click through for the full review, and watch this space in the coming months for more news about the R8, including rumors that it will soon be packing an optional V10 courtesy of Lamborghini.
[Source: The New York Times]
Versace Designs An A319 Jet
Versace and TAG to are teaming up to design a luxury interior for private Airbus 319 jet. If you've seen the many Versace designs for helicopters, jets and homes, the picture above is no surprise. The Versace look of black and white with high-end furnishings and the Greek key motif is so well-established you'd think anyone could just copy it. But then it wouldn't be a Versace. The A319 is being designed for a European client and will go into service in the fourth quarter of 2008. The plane will have four compartments with 16 luxury seats, a salon, galley, business office and a state room with an ensuite bathroom.Thursday, May 24, 2007
Pandora's Chandelier
Crystal is beautiful by its very nature, so I don't know that anybody could argue that Pandora's Chandelier isn't gorgeous, but there's more here than first meets the eye.
Designed by Fredrikson Stallard, the Pandora's Chandelier consists of thousands of Swarovski crystals individually threaded on motorized wires. What starts out as a very standard and traditional silhouette is soon morphed into something smeared and messy looking, before it quietly returns to repeat the cycle all over again. A little abstract art blended with shimmering hanging Swarovski.Dining is an Adventure with 'Dinner In The Sky'
Now here's a concept that takes the idea of "a unique dining experience" to a whole new level, literally. Created from an idea by Belgian chef Quentin Jadoul, Dinner in the Sky is one of those things that is exactly what it sounds like: it's a large dining table that seats about 20 people and gets hoisted high up into the sky on a crane -- there's even room in the middle for the waiters to come along! And surprisingly, even though it's based in Belgium the table is mobile and travels around Europe for different events and occasions, and the menu can be adjusted to accommodate tastes for pretty much anything.
For somewhere around $20,000 you can have your own "Dinner in the Sky" party, just pray for good weather and hold onto your napkin!
$1 Million Grand Enigma Speakers Top the List of Most Expensive
Now we're just getting ridiculous. Joining the "$1 million" club is these Grand Enigma speakers by Karma, and there's apparently only 1 pair in existence in a basement somewhere in Belgium. Seeing as how there's only the one set, it really doesn't matter what the features are (it's not like you could get your own), but I'm still really curious! Just what does a set of speakers have to do to be worth that much? They look huge, but other than that I'm skeptical (I don't see any diamond accents...) and it seems feature specifics are hard to come by.
And be sure to check out the rest of HigherFi.com's list of the world's most expensive speakers, with 2nd place going to Wisdom Audio's Infinite Grande at $600,000.Philips' 42-, 47-, and 52-inch Ambilight LCDs go 1080p, 120Hz, LED backlighting
Has it really been 10 years since the first Ambilight television? Does anyone care? After all, the press release was issued back in January at CES and missed by nearly everyone, including us. Well, Philips certainly cares and aims to celebrate by dishing out a triplet of Ambilight LCDs ranging size from 42-, 47-, and 52-inches. As you'd expect, they've got all the sweetest buzzwords covered: 1080p, 120Hz, LED backlighting. They also feature Philips' Perfect Pixel HD processing engine, plenty of HDMI inputs (3x on the 52-incher) and of course, Philips' Ambilight glow for a more immersive experience with reduced eye strain -- or so says Philips. Priced at $2,999 for the Ambilight Full Surround (independent lighting on all four sides) 42-inch 42PFL9832D (pictured) or $2,799 for the 47-inch 47PFL9732D and $3,599 for the big 52-inch 52PFL7432D with Ambilight 2 for that left and right glow. All are expected to roll Stateside as early as June.
Sony's world's first 16.7 million color flexible OLED
Oh boy, another bendy display we won't likely see on the market any time soon. This time it's Sony's turn to tout with this, their 2.5-inch, 160 x 120 pixel OLED display on a flexible plastic film. Better yet, this organic TFT delivers a relatively stellar 16.7 million colors compared to the 262k and 16k colors Samsung and LG.Philips, respectively, were showing off last week. That's a world's first 24-bit color depth for these types of displays. Take that Samsung. The display also measures a mere 0.3-mm thin which easily bests the hapless Korean (and Dutch) giants. The only downside (if you call it that) is the display's "greater than" 1000:1 contrast ratio compared to Samsung's 10,000:1 rating. But by now you've learned to take contrast measurements with a grain of salt, right?
Researchers develop ultrathin compound-eye camera
A team of researchers led by Jun Tanida at the University of Osaka look to be making some steady progress in an area where many others have tread before, developing a camera that can capture a scene and produce a 3D image of it. Dubbed TOMBO (Thin Observation Module by Bound Optics), the camera consists of nine tiny lenses that each capture a scene from slightly different angles. Some software, apparently designed to mimic the the process that insects use, then picks out the position, shape, and color of objects to reconstruct the images into a single 3D scene. The big advantage to this particular system is its size, which the researchers say could eventually be used in cellphones or placed on the wings of airplanes for surveillance without causing any drag. There are a few downsides, however, namely its 1.1 megapixel resolution, although the researchers seem confident they'll be able to improve that in short order.
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