Man-made 'tethered tornadoes' touted as a viable power source

from Engadget by Evan Blass

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

With all the wacky unconventional proposals we've seen people come up with for generating electricity in an environmentally friendly manner, is it really so outrageous to think that giant, man-made tornadoes could be harnessed to power a small city? Well that's exactly the idea being floated around the University of Western Ontario these days, which is currently testing a scale model of retired refinery engineer Louis Michaud's patented vortex engine -- a machine fueled by excess power plant heat that uses the physics of convection inherent in rising air to drive electricity-producing turbines. In its most grandiose realization, the engine (inventor's rendition pictured above) would be 200 meters in diameter and generate a 'clean' (debris-free) tornado stretching 20 kilometers into the sky able to coax 20 megawatts each out of ten independent turbines. Obviously the main concern about the anticipated $60 million project -- which would reportedly operate at just a quarter of the cost of a coal-based facility, even before taking into account the $20 million saved on a cooling tower by the participating power plant -- is that the tornado could somehow escape its confines and wreak havoc on nearby communities. Still, with all the advantages this scheme seems to offer, we're certainly willing to give it a chance -- after all, a 'malfunctioning vortex engine' is a lot less scary than a potential disaster at one of the many nuke plants dotting our landscape. [Via UberReview]

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Judges fighting litigation with Supreme Court's "obvious" patent ruling

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

You might recall that the Supreme Court recently handed down a decision which loosened the definition of "obvious" as applied to patent interpretation, saying that if a person of ordinary skill could "fit the teaching of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle," the patent is obvious and unenforceable. That decision, which has been called the most important patent ruling in decades, is starting to affect several longstanding patent disputes, most notably a case brought against Real Networks in 2003 by a company called Friskit. In the first instance of a judge applying the new rule, Friskit's patents have been deemed unenforceable as obvious, a change from an earlier ruling allowing the case to go forward. Friskit is of course considering an appeal, but we wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more of these suits decided early on the basis of obviousness. [Via TechDirt]

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A Wall Projector for your iPod, Mobile phone or Digital Cameras

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

[Picture of a couple watching video clips from their mobile phone projected on the wall]

Imagine projecting pictures or video clips from your iPod or mobile phone on to the nearest wall. Or playing the PowerPoint presentation directly from your smartphone or PDA on the wall of the conference room without the bulky projector.

Explay, a company based in Israel, has developed a battery-operated projector called "oio" that looks like a USB thumb drive and can be used to display content from any mobile device including cell phones, digital camera, media player, video camcorders, etc.

Oio mobile projector is no vaporware, the device was recently demonstrated at a conference in California and Explay plans a commercial launch in 2008. No word on pricing yet.

So you are not limited to viewing those high resolution pictures on the tiny LCD screen of the mobile device, Oio will help you watch content on any surface like a wall, coffee table or even your bed.

Explay Oio | Product Brochure (PDF) Thanks Ilya.

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Prevent Visitors from Downloading Images from Your Website

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

Technically it is impossible to protect web pictures from leeching since most browsers will first download a copy of the entire image from the internet to the local cache before rendering.

Some webmasters try to disable right click on their webpages so that visitors cannot access the "Save Image As.." command in the menu but that trick can be easily defeated by disabling Javascript or using Firefox. Image Maps are another option but the sliced images can be saved as a whole using any screen capture program.

So what's a good alternative if you are very eager to protect you images on the internet ? One option is is convert your images to SWF Flash objects before uploading them to the web but if that sounds too impractical, try swfIR (SWF Image Replacement tool).

swfIR is a very simple technique to prevent image download from your website - instead of adding the standard tag for embedding pictures, you define the image location in Javascript and the image will then wrap inside a Flash movie on your webpage.

What's so nice about swfIR is that it lets apply nice visual effects to your images including borders, rounded corners, small rotations and shadows without actually modifying the original image.

Tech savvy users can easily download the image by looking at the HTML source code of your web page but for the not-so-geeky crowd and image leech software, all they'll see is a blank Flash movie.

www.swfir.com | swfIR Examples

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Casio Adds A 5.1 MP Cameraphone To Its Exilim Line

While Casio's Exilim line has become synonymous for quality cameras, they took a different route this time and hit us with the W53CA Cameraphone. The device features a 5.1 Megapixel camera with 9 point auto focus, image stabilization and a clamshell swivel screen. To top it off, Casio added MicroSD, MP3 support, and one hell of a sleek design. Unfortunately, it's a Korea exclusive.

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