Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Field of Light: Nikolai Tesla Meets Lenny Kravitz [Design]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/407821559/field-of-light-nikolai-tesla-meets-lenny-kravitz

When I see images of Bruce Munro's Field of Light installation, whatever glumness I might have felt during the day disappears, and that Beatle-esque Lenny Kravitz song of a similar name starts playing in my head. If I had the chance to check out Munro's light installation, coming to Project Eden in Cornwall, England on November 1, I would totally wander through the fields—slowly, slowly through the fields, in fact—touching the acrylic globes that float at the ends of 6,000 fiberoptically united tubes.

The tubes' intensity and color are controlled by an external projector; they're in sync but don't actually contain any electricity. (Sorry, Tesla.) In the Cornwall exhibition, they will be installed on a huge 1,200-square-meter grass-covered roof using 24,000 meters of fiber. It is of course "best viewed in hours of darkness." Munro has actually set up Field of Light shows on a number of occasions in the past, each successive installation growing in some way. His next all-new project is "a massive illuminated maze synchronized with choral music" named (what else?) Water Towers. That will be on display next March in Frome, Somerset, so yes, again again with the England. You lucky Limeys had better send pictures! [Dezeen]

Water Invisibility Barrier Protects Against Tsunamis [Invisibility Cloaks]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/407877863/water-invisibility-barrier-protects-against-tsunamis

Research into invisibility cloaks, which work by bending light around 2D objects, could end up protecting offshore rigs and vulnerable coastlines from water. Scientists at the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France said that established cloaking principles can be applied to ocean waves, and built a 10cm model to show how carefully placed concentric pillars make objects in the center "invisible" to the sea.

Waves pass along the radial corridors, interacting with the pillars and producing forces that pull the water away from the innermost ring. The water is then pushed out of the cloaking area as if it had not encountered anything at all. The circular formation could be used to protect anything from oil rigs to islands, though very few islands can probably afford the amount of pillars needed to make this effect work. [New Scientist via Dvice]

DoCoMo and Fujitsu show off splitting phone at CEATEC

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407166627/

Filed under: Cellphones

DoCoMo and Fujitsu are showing off some interesting phone tech in Japan at this year's CEATEC, particularly a concept device which can be split into two pieces. The gadget features a separate screen and keyboard segment, and the pieces can be configured in a standard flip-phone-like arrangement, or snapped together to form an X1 or Touch Pro-esque landscape QWERTY variation. The two halves are held together by magnets and communicate via Bluetooth. Of course, right now this is very much in the concept phase, and honestly -- aren't we trying to minimize the amount of electronic components we're carting around? Still, it's a fairly slick design, and certainly a new way of thinking about phones. Take another look after the break, and hit the read link for a slew of pics.

Continue reading DoCoMo and Fujitsu show off splitting phone at CEATEC

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Super Talent intros a sub-$300, 128GB solid-state drive -- things will never be the same

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407234786/

Filed under: Storage

If you've been waiting for SSD prices to drop to reasonable ranges -- now may be the time to put the credit card down. Super Talent has begun selling its 128GB, 2.5-inch, SATA II "MasterDrive LX" for the shocking affordable price of $299, which works out to about $2.49 per gigabyte. If that still puts of pinch on your pocketbook (and what doesn't right now?), then perhaps you can be enticed by the company's 64GB offering, which clocks in at a fairly doable $179. With prices this low, you barely have a defense against purchase... unless, you know... you don't have the money. Then we totally understand.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Emblaze Mobile's iPhone competitor detailed, hitting Russia next month

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407258874/

Filed under: Cellphones

Emblaze Mobile's iPhone competitor detailed, hitting Russia next month

We don't hear too much from Emblaze Mobile around these parts, just the occasional boastful proclamation about revolutionizing mobile communication. So, color us surprised when we got wind of an entirely new and impressive sounding handset due to ship in just a month. The Edelweiss (named after a flower representing purity) is a 3G, touch-screen handset with internal GPS and either 8 or 16GB of storage. That may sound familiar, but what this has over the competition is a massive resolution of 854 x 480, more than twice that of the iPhone and greater even than the previous high-res handset king, HTC's Touch HD. Right now Herr Edelweiss is due only to release in Russia, but if it lives up to it promise we'd certainly expect to see it elsewhere. Oh, and that other project to revolutionize mobile communication? They're still working on that too, dubbing the Linux-based device "Monolith" and promising release sometime in the first half of next year.

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LG introduces "attractively-priced" KP500, doesn't say how attractive

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407258872/

Filed under: Cellphones

Got touchscreen envy but don't have the pair of Benjamins required to get yourself into a celly without a keypad? LG has a solution: the KP500, a nearly button-less and stylus-bearing handset that sounds rather like another recent cheap smartphone. LG's not giving many details about this one beyond its 3-inch display, a 3 megapixel camera, motion sensor, and availability in black, brown, silver, or gold (though based on the pic above we'd stay away from that last one). There's a short video of the TouchFLO-like UI to whet your appetite just below, but that's all we have to share until this phone hits Europe in a month, with a worldwide release to come afterward.

[Via Unwired View]

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AMD's 45nm Shanghai enters production, next stops are Deneb, Istanbul

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407334971/

Filed under: Desktops

AMD's 45nm Shanghai enters production, next stops are Deneb, Istanbul

Let's not beat around the bush: AMD's oft-delayed Barcelona quad-core processor was a flop. It arrived late and buggy, an undesirable reception that helped to drive the company's $1.2 billion Q2 loss this year. AMD can't afford another flub like that and is hoping that processor's successor, Shanghai, finds more success in the server market. It's a 45nm quad-core chip with three times the cache (6MB) and HyperTransport 3, apparently equating to a 20 percent boost in speed and even thriftier power consumption. AMD is saying the chip is already under production and will be available for sale before the year is out, actually beating expectations for once. That should be shortly followed by the release of 45nm Deneb processors for desktops, then six-core Istanbul chips sometime late 2009. Meanwhile, Intel's six-core, 45nm server chips are now shipping.

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AMD debuts dirt cheap ATI Radeon HD 4550, HD 4350 graphics cards

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407510677/

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

NVIDIA managed to generate quite a bit of interest with its $59 GeForce 9400 GT graphics card, and it looks like rival AMD is now taking things one step further with not one but two cards that are even cheaper. Those include the $55 ATI Radeon HD 4550 and the $39 ATI Radeon HD 4350, which pack 512MB and 256MB of memory, respectively, along with some other surprisingly not too shabby specs. Namely, each card packs DirectX 10.1 support, an HDMI port with support for 7.1 channel audio, upscaling "beyond 1080p," and even support for ATI's CrossFireX technology in case you want to pair two of them up. As usual, you can expect the cards to be available from a whole host of different manufacturers, at least some of which should have cards available by October, if not sooner.

[Via bit-tech.net]

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LG's 8-megapixel Renoir handset gets previewed, handled

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/407599582/

Filed under: Cellphones

We were already warned that the megapixel race was headed to the mobile realm, and as if you needed any more proof, here we are looking down the lens of LG's 8-megapixel Renoir. Clearly aimed at Samsung's recently unveiled Pixon, this touchscreen-based handset found itself in the loving arms of CNET's UK branch. During the limited time editors spent with it, they found the interface to be eerily similar to that found on the Viewty and the camera to be a real winner. As expected, the not-a-3.5mm headphone jack was none too pleasing to critics, but we did overhear the T-Mobile G1 voicing its support of the port. Anywho, tap the read link for the full preview / hands-on shots.

[Thanks, T.I.]

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