More details about the Triac highway-capable three-wheel electric car emerge
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/286029176/
Filed under: Transportation
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Dell Inspiron 1435, 1535 and 1735 leaked
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/286065608/
Filed under: Laptops
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Seamless ice-spheres for superior whiskey-rocks
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/285973436/seamless-icespheres.html
Using a sphere of ice (as opposed to a cube) in your whiskey-rocks is nice because the round ice melts more slowly than the square stuff (better surface-area/volume ratio). Now a Japanese company has introduced a mold for making a perfect, seamless ice-sphere:Link (via Make)Taisin has introduced a mold that seamlessly creates a perfect sphere, no chipping and shaving required. Simple place a chunk of ice into the metal press and, as it melts, the device will close around the ice forming a ball, which is then released by the flick of a switch.
The Ice Mold, available in 55, 65, 70, and 80mm mold sizes, can make 30-40 ice balls an hour.
Spheres of ice are preferred by serious on the rocks drinkers because the reduced surface size means that the ice melts at a slower pace, keeping your drink
First Person R/C Plane, Almost as Good as Actually Flying [R/c]
We'll be honest, we don't even care that we'd be wearing video glasses. It looks like incredibly fun. [Product via Gearfuse]
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Talk About A Really Shiny Watch
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/285187543/
An exclusive, hi-tech concept watch aptly named Shine - combines luxurious gemstones with advanced technology and materials. Using a unique laser projection system, time is displayed by a touching the logo. It’s completely made of hi-tech white ceramic filled with over 200 square cut white topaz gemstones. If this were real, every celebrity socialite would be wearing one now. Can we say bling?
Designer: Vlad Icobet
The New Yorker on Simultaneous Invention and the Intellectual Ventures Laboratories [Pulp-bite]
The New Yorker about the history of simultaneous invention, the best example being Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both patenting the telephone on the same day. There are many other examples, leading to the conclusion that "scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place." The story is put into modern perspective by including scenes drawn from meetings of members of the company called Intellectual Ventures. The founding member, Nathan Myhrvold, also founded Microsoft's R&D labs. His idea for IV was to see if "the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered." The whole point being the creation of powerful ideas. Bill Gates, who works with them on H.I.V prevention, is quoted:
Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, "I can give you fifty examples of ideas they've had where, if you take just one of them, you'd have a startup company right there." Gates has participated in a number of invention sessions, and, with other members of the Gates Foundation, meets every few months with Myhrvold to brainstorm about things like malaria or H.I.V. "Nathan sent over a hundred scientific papers beforehand," Gates said of the last such meeting. "The amount of reading was huge. But it was fantastic. There's this idea they have where you can track moving things by counting wing beats. So you could build a mosquito fence and clear an entire area. They had some ideas about super-thermoses, so you wouldn't need refrigerators for certain things. They also came up with this idea to stop hurricanes. Basically, the waves in the ocean have energy, and you use that to lower the temperature differential. I'm not saying it necessarily is going to work. But it's just an example of something where you go, Wow."Worth reading, if you've got a bus ride in your near future. [The New Yorker]
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Long Awaited Nokia E71 May Hit On May 8th [Cellphones]
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/284883771/long-awaited-nokia-e71-may-hit-on-may-8th
Acer rolls out Business, Value series monitors aplenty
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/284827599/
Filed under: Displays
Never one to skimp on a product launch, Acer has once again gone all out with its latest batch of monitors, with this one consisting of no less than eleven new LCDs that fall into two different product lines. On the lower-end of the lot, you can look forward to 17- and 19-inch 4:3 displays (model numbers V173 and V193), and 19-, 22-, and 24-inch 16:10 displays (V193W, V223W, and V243W) in the company's Value series line, each of which apparently boast 5 ms response times, 2,000:1 or 3,000:1 contrast ratios, VGA and DVI (with HDCP) ports, and presumably all the usual resolutions for their respective sizes. Moving on up a bit, the Business series models add a "stylish and elegant black bezel and base," and again come in 17- and 19-inch 4:3 models (B173 and B193), as well as 19-, 20-, 22-, and 24-inch models (B193W, B203W, B223W, and B243W), with each apparently otherwise boasting the same specs as the Value series models. From the looks of it, you can get your hands on any one of 'em right now, with prices ranging from a mere $185 (list price) to $399 for the top-end Business series model.
Intel brings DirectX 10 to integrated graphics, NVIDIA says not so fast
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/284914410/
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
Intel has been boasting of DirectX 10 support for its various integrated graphics options for some time now, but it's only just recently gotten around to actually releasing a Vista driver that brings its GM965 and G35 Express chipsets up to speed. Of course, NVIDIA just couldn't help itself from getting a few (more) digs in at Intel's expense, and it's now kindly provided a few benchmarks to show just how badly Intel's integrated DirectX 10 solution stacks up against the bleeding-edge DirectX 10-ready games it now ostensibly supports. They couldn't find a single game that was able to crank out more than 5 fps, even at a lowly 1280 x 1024 resolution and with the usual graphics intensive settings turned off. Then again, 4.4 fps in Crysis is pretty much par for the course.Read - Crave, "Intel updates graphics with multimedia capabilities"
Read - Hardware Secrets, "Are Intel chipsets really capable of running DirectX 10 games?"Permalink | Ema! il this< /a> | Comments
Legal Snafu Makes Thousands of Patent Rulings Since 2000 Invalid [Oops]
But the Justice Department has already all but conceded that Professor Duffy is right. Given the opportunity to dispute him in a December appeals court filing, government lawyers said only that they were at work on a legislative solution.Yikes! The Supreme Court will probably take this issue on in the not too distant future, but before that, lemme just put this in writing now: I came up with the idea for the iPod and iPhone way before Apple, and I deserve all of the revenue from both of those products. See you in court, Jobs. [NY Times via Boing Boing]They did warn that the impact of Professor Duffy's discovery could be cataclysmic for the patent world, casting "a cloud over many thousands of board decisions" and "unsettling the expectations of patent holders and licensees across the nation." But they did not say Professor Duffy was wrong.
If it was a legislative mistake, it may turn out to be a big one. The patent court hears appeals from people and companies whose patent applications were turned down by patent examiners, and it decides disputes over who invented something first. There is often a lot of money involved.
The problem Professor Duffy identified at least arguably invalidates every decision of the patent court decided by a three-judge panel that included at least one judge appointed after March 2000.
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