Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Saturday, January 05, 2008

3M to showcase a micro-projector for handheld devices at CES

The idea of stuffing a tiny projector into a handheld device isn't a new one -- we've seen a couple different takes on the idea -- but it looks like it might be hitting the mainstream soon, as 3M has announced plans to demo a half-inch wide projection unit at CES that can put up a 40-inch image. The LCoS projector is about the size of a wireless headset, according to 3M, and tops out at VGA resolution -- which seems adequate, given the QVGA resolution of most handhelds. Apparently we'll be seeing devices with the projector built in later this year, and hopefully we'll get a chance to play with a couple at CES -- you'll know as soon as we do.

Hitachi to show off 1.5-inch thick plasma, .75-inch thick LCD prototypes at CES

Slimming down LCDs just wasn't enough, Hitachi will demo a 1.5-inch thick plasma HDTV at CES. Cutting more than a third of the thickness from previous displays, it ensures your screen will look as incredible from the side as it does the front. Also on display, but without concrete plans for release, are the "super" Ultra Thin LCD that's just .75-inches thick, a search technology for visual images, TV video sharing over the internet without a PC, a wireless video gateway and a prototype IPTV interface. Looking from the near future to the slightly further-off future, we'll get a look at it in Vegas. Check out a side profile of the skinny plasma after the break.

Continue reading Hitachi to show off 1.5-inch thick plasma, .75-inch thick LCD prototypes at CES

Hitachi Ultra Thin 1.5 LCD lineup headed for CES

Hitachi's not really reaching here in the naming department, but we sort of like the effect: the company's new Ultra Thin 1.5 LCDs are 1.5-inches thick (hence the name), and headed for Vegas. Coming in 32-inch, 37-inch and 42-inch sizes, the 1.5 line has been hanging out in Japan for a few months under the Wooo name (pictured), but CES will mark the design-centric LCDs' entrance into the States. The two larger sizes feature 1080p resolutions and 120Hz refresh rates, and all displays will be available in Q2 2008. It seems like the main tradeoff for the slimness and weight loss of this lineup is the lack of inputs -- the Director's and V Series only feature one HDMI plug and one D-Sub plug, while the S series includes a breakout box with three HDMI plugs and dual component inputs. Specs and model number breakdown is after the break.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Belkin's FlyWire Wireless HD solution ready for CES

from Engadget by Darren Murph

As the war between wireless HD solutions heats up, AMIMON is looking to make a splash by partnering up with Belkin. Reportedly, the firm's Wireless High-definition Interface (WHDI) -- which was just recently HDCP certified -- will be the heart of the Belkin FlyWire aimed at streaming HD DVD / Blu-ray (among other uncompressed content) to television sets sans wires. Unfortunately, little more is known beyond that (aside from the price range, set at $499 to $599), but here's to hoping that we'll get a closer look in just a few days.

Pinnacle Video Transfer records video to anything USB 2.0, even your iPod

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Mark down "plays well with others" on Pinnacle's report card, the company's upcoming Pinnacle Video Transfer can take an analog video input and record the source to any USB 2.0 storage device, including an iPod. Video is recorded straight to the H.264 format, with user-selectable quality of Good, Better and Best. You can even charge the iPod you're transferring to. Supported devices include the PSP, PSP Slim, USB flash drives, USB hard drives and the iPod video, iPod nano third-gen, and iPod classic. The Pinnacle Video Transfer should hit stores January 15th for $129.99.

Microsoft announces Windows Rally network device framework, shows off first product

from Engadget by Nilay Patel It's strange that we haven't heard a peep about this earlier, but apparently Microsoft's been working on a suite of bundled network discovery and configuration tools called Windows Rally, designed to ease ODM development of network devices and make them as easy to use as USB gear. Although things have been going down on the DL since April, today's the big coming-out party, and the the crew in Redmond is celebrating with...the launch of VS-IPC1002 VGA webcam from China's Vimicro. Aimed at "China's fast-growing surveillance market," the standalone cam plugs directly into a 10/100 Ethernet network and uses Windows Rally to auto-configure itself and begin streaming 30fps video to a Vista PC. That doesn't sound like the sexiest thing in the world, but if it actually works as described, we might be seeing a lot of actually-interesting Rally-powered devices in the future. Update: Check out a video of Rally being demoed at WinHEC after the break -- thanks, Dan Z.

Continue reading Microsoft announces Windows Rally network device framework, shows off first product

gOS 2.0 "Rocket" set to debut at CES

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Considering the absolutely lackluster hardware present in the Everex gPC, it's a tad difficult to get psyched up about the next revision of the gOS. Nevertheless, gOS 2.0 (or Rocket, as it were) is all set to launch on Monday at CES, and while there's not much to phone home about, the inclusion of Google Gears is the most notable feature. The aforementioned bundle is an "online / offline synchronization technology from Google that enables offline use of web apps." More specifically, users can look forward to gBooth (a browser-based web cam), integration with Facebook, shortcuts to launch Google Reader, Talk, and Finance on the desktop, an online storage drive courtesy of Box.net and Virtual Desktops, which is hailed as "an intuitive feature to easily group and move applications across multiple desktop spaces." Additionally, Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux will come preloaded, and if you're so inclined, you can download the package yourself on January 7th.

Archos TV+ WiFi-enabled DVR gets official

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Don't act surprised -- you knew good and well this thing was a-comin', and it seems launch day has finally arrived. Highlighted now on the firm's website, the TV+ DVR still rocks that WiFi goodness we knew would be included, with options for an 80GB or 250GB hard drive and the ability to schedule, record and stream content at will. Additionally, you can sync your recorded shows with your Archos PMP, flip through songs / photos and even view PDFs. You know by now if this one is still lingering on your must-have list, and if so, you can snag one for $229 (80GB) or $349 (250GB).

Gallery: Archos TV+ WiFi-enabled DVR gets official

Dell announces Crystal transparent monitor a little early

from Engadget by Ryan Block

We're not sure why Dell suddenly pulled its release / launch page for the slightly overdue, slick, 4mm thick glass Crystal monitor, but it looks like last year's concept will be this year's reality. A severely overpriced, $1,200, 22-inch reality. Hope that thing is packing DisplayPort, after all.

LG.Philips announces 14.3-inch flexible e-paper display for CES

from Engadget by Ryan Block

Try to contain yourself when we rattle off the following list of specs for LG.Philips's latest A4 sheet of flexible e-paper: 14.3-inches, 1280 x 800 pixels, 16.7m colors, 300 micrometers thick, full 180° viewing angle. It'll be at CES, but apparently only for Korean models to hold and love. The rest of us? Not so lucky, not even by a long shot.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Microvision to launch pocket-sized projector at CES 2008

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

Ready for projectors to get really, really small? Enter aptly-named Microvision 's latest contender in its ongoing attempt at mini-projector domination; a plug and play "pico" projector that aims to take mobile devices to slightly larger vistas. The handheld, stand-alone projector -- mysteriously code-named SHOW -- is based on the company's PicoP display engine, and is capable of projecting a 12-inch to 100-inch, 848 x 480 WVGA image for up to 2.5 hours on a single charge. The SHOW is clearly aimed at the emerging market of media-rich mobile devices, though aside from the projector itself, the company has plans to embed its PicoP chip in other consumer electronics, promising a future of blinding, surprise projections the likes of which never imagined. Of course, as we've seen it'll have some competition, particularly from Texas Instruments, which seems to have this concept on lock. The SHOW will apparently be available for manhandling at CES this year, and you can bet we'll be getting our grubby mitts all over it.

iPod touch gets microphone for VoIP via modded dongle

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

Now that the startling mystery of VoIP has been cracked wide open on the iPod touch, it was only a matter of time before other, related mysteries were broken apart and inspected. One such case involves the process of getting the sound of your voice into the formerly-audio-out-only device, which must be accomplished via the use of some type of audio-in microphone dongle, which now -- thanks to one clever man -- has been hacked for VoIP-on-touch purposes. Using the hideous, yet cheap, Macally iVoiceIII audio recorder add-on for 5G iPods, and the simple soldering of a jumper to the board, you can be chatting away like a madman (provided you've got some WiFi) on your touch. Check the read link for the simple steps, and get ready to stick it to the man (his name is Mr. Steve Jobs, by the way) once again.

Noro No-Drip Lip Keeps Sticky Spills Off the Table [Design Concept]

from Gizmodo by Charlie White

Gooey substances such as syrup and olive oil spill all over the place with their containers' drippy lips, but not if they're dispensed from the no-drip two-lip pouring system from a Barcelona designer who calls himself Noro. It's about time somebody designed one of these drip-free decanters for viscous and edible liquids, because we've seen a similar technique in containers of liquid laundry detergent for years. Check out the gallery for the beautiful bottle designs associated with Noro's design concept. [Behance Network]

Windows Mobile Internet Sharing Made Easy (3G iPhone!) [Cellphones]

Augustine: windows mobile device can provide WiFi (internet connection sharing) over 3G for the iPhone/iPod Touch

from Gizmodo by Jason Chen

After tooling around with getting internet sharing working on the Sprint Mogul for a bit, we discovered this small WMWifiRouter app by Jorrit Jongma. It's pretty much an install and run affair (save a bit of internet connection Wi-fi setup beforehand), but the only thing you have to watch out for is using a static IP address on the device you want to access it with (iPhone/laptop/whatever) because there's no DHCP server present. There's a good guide in the XDA Dev forum as well. The result? A 3G-ish iPhone. [WMWifiRouter]

Dream PC: 8-Core Workstation Rocks the Penryns (Verdict: WOW!)

Augustine: this is what gets the most play on blogs

from Gizmodo by Charlie White

HP is cranking out some smoking workstations these days, and the latest Intel Xeon quad core processors, affectionately known as the Harpertown chips with 45-nanometer Penryn technology inside, take Windows performance to the next level. HP shipped us the fastest workstation they could muster, with a total of eight processor cores, along with a 15,000 RPM SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI) drive on two separate disks, one with Windows XP and the other with Windows Vista, plus a 250GB SATA drive for applications. We opened the box, ran a bunch of benchmarks and our jaws promptly dropped. How much workstation can you get for $8,551? Join us for the smokefest.

As soon as Intel released these 5400 series Penryn processors this month, HP sent us this top-of-the-line xw8600 workstation with two of them inside. intel%20quad-core.jpg This expensive machine—aimed at oil and gas explorers, video editors and animators—is not really a gamer's box, but instead showcases the capabilities of these new four-way processors. Our test machine's 3.16GHz quad-core "Harpertown" processors (officially called the Intel Xeon E5460 Quad Core), use Intel's latest 45nm Penryn microarchitecture. Yep, those are as fast as these suckers get. The catch? They each cost $1550 more than the lowest-cost Xeon quad-core chip offered, the 2GHz 5405.
Due to their finer geometry (going from 60nm down to 45nm), you get 50% more cache, resulting in 6MB of shared cache between each dual core, totaling 12MB of cache in each processor—that's 24MB total in our test machine. In addition to that, the frontside bus is also running at 1333MHz, giving you a 30% speed boost over its predecessor.

Check out this pic (and another larger one in the gallery showing the task manager along with the graphic it's rendering) that tells the story of all eight cores screaming away at the same time, rendering a complex graphic on the CineBench benchmark. Here it's just finished the render:
Video editors and scientists like to be able to expand everything inside one of these boxes. Although we had a "paltry" 4GB of RAM inside, you'll be able to cram 128GB up in there as soon as 8GB RAM sticks are available—Q1 of next year, we're told. You can also fill the thing up with storage, using your choice of eight Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) ports or six SATA connections, in addition to FireWire ports on the front and back, and dual Gigabit Ethernet. (You can lash them together for faster networking.) If you wanted to, you could set up a disk array on those SAS ports to get 2GB/sec drive performance.

HP included the NVIDIA FX 4600 workstation-class graphics card in the package, but there's room for two PCI Express x16 graphics cards tied together, certain to be a favorite of animators and those oil and gas explorers who need to simulate all kinds of complex graphics. The FX 4600 has 768MB of GDDR3 memory on board, useful for CAD designers working with huge graphics. And yes, it could most definitely play Doom.

We especially like this workstation's case. Normally they're staid and gray-looking, but HP stuck on some special sticky graphics that may look a bit cheesy, but are an improvement over the typical plain-Jane exterior. Never mind the visuals, HP's made this an extraordinarily quiet machine too, where even though it's packed with hardware, you can hardly hear it running next to you. We also like its tool-less chassis: Once you get the hang of it, you can take out drives and fans in a snap with nary a screwdriver in sight. Overall, it's an outlandishly configurable and powerful platform, practically begging you to turn it into whatever kind of monster workstation your heart desires.

Check out the benchmarks below, and you'll see that this $8,551 machine slam-dunks last year's fastest HP xw8400 workstation:

It's fast. Blazingly fast, and on some benchmarks it's a whole lot quicker than last year's model. Its speed is just unreal, and you can feel it with every click. Impressive. [HP xw8600 Workstation ]

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