Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

At Gizmodo Gallery: Tiny Projectors That Fit In Your Hand Or Mouth! [Gizmodo Gallery]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/_FOd4u5I1IM/at-gizmodo-gallery-tiny-projectors-that-fit-in-your-hand-or-mouth

Our Toys for Tots fundraiser and all mega gadget exhibition, Gizmodo Gallery starts this Thursday in NYC. And among the ~40 devices we'll have more than just a huge TV; we'll have one of the world's tiniest projector, like the Aiptek PocketCinema Wilson reviewed last week.

I'd like to imagine that one day all cellphones have such components built in, but until then this is the best way to put a picture on your wall with hardware the size of a remote control.

What should we play on it? What should we aim it at? I don't know, but if you've got the time, please stop by and try it out.

[Thanks to REED ANNEX and thanks to our benefactor gizmine.com]

Gizmodo Gallery

Reed Annex

151 Orchard Street

New York, NY 10002

Gizmodo Gallery Reader Meetup

The reader meetup takes place across the street from the Gallery, at a place called The Annex (not to be confused with REED ANNEX where the gallery is hosted.) The address is 152 Orchard Street and we'll be there at 9 PM SHARP on Friday December 5th.

Gallery Dates:

December 4th-7th

Times:

12/4 Thursday

12-8

12/5 Friday

12-8

12/6 Saturday

11-8

12/7 Sunday

11-4

[Read more about our Gizmodo Gallery here and see what else we'll be playing with at the event.]

Enhanced Photos Can Bypass Any Face-Recognition Software [Face]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/yuJ0lgqcauY/enhanced-photos-can-bypass-any-face+recognition-software

BKIS, a Vietnamese security center, recently demonstrated that face-recognition security programs found in Toshiba, Asus and Lenovo laptops can be bypassed with a special photo.

To enroll in the face recognition software, the built-in webcam on the laptop scans the face for prime areas, such as the eyes or more conspicuous facial features. The special photo, which does not have to be of high quality, is processed so that the key areas are enhanced and the contrast levels are adjusted to the expectations of the software.

Dong Ngo of CNET recently underwent a Skype demonstration with a BKIS technician. The technican captured a photo of Ngo's face, and produced a special "unflattering" photo five minutes later using a special algorithm. Ngo was able to use the photo to log in to his Lenovo Y430. The technician later then demonstrated this procedure on similar Asus and Toshiba notebooks.

In lieu of fingerprint scanners and the traditonal username/password combination, face recognition software may not be the most secure way to protect data. Until then, I'll just use my own "specially" produced photos (courtesy of Photoshop) to tweak that, uh, zit, maybe even change my eye color—ooh instant nose surgery—to log me in. But only after I post that photo of "myself" on my Facebook profile. Hah! [CNET Crave]

A Lesson in Gadget Product Placement, Courtesy of Scooter Smiff [Product Placement]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/m48ROnDKFv0/a-lesson-in-gadget-product-placement-courtesy-of-scooter-smiff

Moderately musical little person Scooter Smiff has helpfully demonstrated, point by point, how not to endorse gadgets in your music video.

1. Get a company's flagship phone
I understand that Scooter Smiff's audience is probably as young as he is and doesn't buy many massive smartphones, but if you've got to shill for a BlackBerry, hope it's not the Pearl Flip. Matt—notably a gadget blogger, not a rapper—said it was kind of uncool, looked inconsistent, and even called it a "fatass". Next time beg for a Storm, or at least a Bold.

2. Don't include an incredibly boring product
So imagine you're a tween, just browsing YouTube, and you notice Scooter Smiff's teacher grading (UPDATE: fabricating, more like. Scandal!) his paper on an HP Touchsmart PC, with her fingers. This is the least exciting thing you've ever seen. It doesn't even make sense in context—it's like HP just edited a few seconds of their press materials into the video. Same goes for the inexplicable printer cameo.

3. Refrain from using devices that make you look even more like a child
Riding a miniaturized Cadillac Escalade will not help you look older, and will probably make those few people who actually have a toy like that return it as fast as they can drive it back to Sotheby's. See also: catcalling obviously older girls.

This song might not be as embarrassing as the iPhone's prominent r! ole in a certain inauspiciously-named (and NSFW) track from earlier this year, but a different difference here, and an important one, is that HP and BlackBerry actually wished this on themselves. [CrackBerry]

Eee Box Upgraded With HDMI and Discrete Graphics [Eee Box]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/NeFSVWIgYwY/eee-box-upgraded-with-hdmi-and-discrete-graphics

There was nothing wrong with the Eee Box, a PC not so dissimilar to the Wii, except that it lacked any real reason for existence with processing no more powerful than a netbook.

The new Eee Box B204 and B206 look to beef up the line's capabilities into something worthy of HTPC application. While still running light 1.6GHz Atom processors with 1GB of RAM, the systems now feature ATI Radeon HD 3400 series discrete graphics with 256MB of DDR2 memory along with HDMI output to play back high def video on an HDTV. And when you account for the Wireless-N networking and 160GB SATA hard drive, you realize that the the Eee Box could be a contender in the low end home theater PC market.

No word yet on pricing or availability, but the original Eee Box ran a palatable $300. [Asus]

Note: Image is of the original Eee Box.

Amazon iPhone App Lets You Buy Anything You Take a Picture Of [IPhone Apps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/i5iNbv6nAiQ/amazon-iphone-app-lets-you-buy-anything-you-take-a-picture-of

Tomorrow, Amazon's launching an iPhone app that'll exist solely to make buying crap easier. Its killer, buy-more-crap feature? Take a picture of anything, and Amazon'll shoot you the product page to waste money on it.

So how does this economy-stoking magic app work? A complex, supremely intelligent algorithm that can analyze pixels and determine just what it is you want to buy? Gremlins? Google? Actually, if you guessed gremlins, you almost on the money.

When you upload a photo, Amazon's living, breathing Mechanical Turk workers (so-named for one of the first "robots") try to match the photo up to products for sale on Amazon.com. You'll get results back in 5 minutes to 24 hours. The giant kink, obviously, is the potential for human error—how will they tell one giant black HDTV from another, for instance, especially with the iPhone's crappy camera?

Normally, it'd be the perfect time to launch this kind of app—the holiday season—but with the financiapocalypse, I sorta wonder how many George Bush bobbleheads this thing is gonna sell. [Bits]

NewerTech intros quad-interface SATA HDD dock of its own

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/newertech-intros-quad-interface-sata-hdd-dock-of-its-own/

It's amazing, really, that this meme has lasted this long. When we first noticed Brando's SATA HDD Dock, we figured it was destined to become a cute, one-off gift that only the hardest of hardcore storage freaks would bother with. Over a year later, we're having trouble counting the iterations available. Now, we've got storage mainstay NewerTech diving in with one of its own, as it has just revealed the quad-interface Voyager SATA hard drive docking station. As you'd expect, the unit turns any 2.5- or 3.5-inch SATA I / II hard drive (up to 2TB) into an external drive, and with FireWire 400 / 800, USB 2.0 and eSATA sockets, you shouldn't have any issue hooking it up. It's available now for stocking stuffing at $99.95.

Filed under: Storage

NewerTech intros quad-interface SATA HDD dock of its own originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Acer's K10 pocket projector announced, projected for January

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/acers-k10-pocket-projector-announced-projected-for-january/

Tiny projectors are pretty much a dime a dozen these days, so we'll be honest, the Acer K10 kind of looks like more of the same. Sure, it's small -- just 1.2 pounds -- but that's not nearly as small as some (and certainly not small enough to be impressive). It's an SVGA projector with an 800 x 600 resolution, and it's got an LED backlight with about 20,000 estimated life hours, delivering 100 ANSI lumens with a contrast ratio of 1000:1. The K10 also boasts both S-video and VGA connections. It's a little hard to say, but this might be what we've been searching for to project our tiny kitten photo collection upon our walls. It's supposed to be ready for a January release and it'll go for about $443.

[Via About Projectors]

Filed under: Displays

Acer's K10 pocket projector announced, projected for January originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Aircell's Gogo in-flight WiFi goes live commercially on Virgin America

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/aircells-gogo-in-flight-wifi-goes-live-commercially-on-virgin-a/

The time has come, internet mavens... to comment on this post from 35,000 feet up, of course. After launching to a select handful of lucky souls last week, Virgin America has gone live with its Aircell-engineered Gogo internet service on select flights. As of now, an undisclosed amount of VA flights will offer guests unlimited use (with certain restrictions around VoIP, we hear) while in the air for $12.95 on flights longer than three hours and $9.95 for flights under three hours. The airline's entire fleet should be WiFi-ready by Q1 2009, but for now, why not kill some time tracking planes with live internet access? Fun, right?

Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

Aircell's Gogo in-flight WiFi goes live commercially on Virgin America originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Motoman SDA10 robot shows off its cooking, camera-building skills

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/motoman-sda10-robot-shows-off-its-cooking-camera-building-skill/

Yaskawa Electric's Motoman SDA10 robot has been out and about for a little while now (along with its not-so-distant relatives), but it's apparently not just getting by on its good looks alone, and it recently took advantage of Osaka's International Next-Generation Robot Fair to show off its newly developed cooking skills. While there unfortunately doesn't seem to be any video available, the word is it was able to take an order from a customer using its voice recognition capabilities and whip up some okonomiyaki (a pancake, of sorts) from scratch, with it even going so far as to serve it to the customer and top it off with some condiments. As if one human-replacing activity wasn't enough, the bot also recently made an appearance on a Japanese TV show where it assembled a camera and, thankfully, there is a video of that -- check it out after the break.

Continue reading Motoman SDA10 robot shows off its cooking, camera-building skills

Filed under: Robots

Motoman SDA10 robot shows off its cooking, camera-building skills originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Canon EOS 5D Mark II unboxed

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/canon-eos-5d-mark-ii-unboxed/

It's been on sale for a couple days now (at least in Shanghai), so it had to happen eventually -- you're witnessing the first tentative breaths of a Canon EOS 5D Mark II as it leaves the box. So many manuals to ignore! So many useless composite video cables and driver CDs to fill your drawers! So much bubble wrap to spend intimate moments with! It all goes down at the read link, kids.

[Thanks, Mikha]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Canon EOS 5D Mark II unboxed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

HTC acquires design firm One & Co

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/htc-acquires-design-firm-one-and-co/

It'd already been known that HTC got a little help from the boys and girls at San Fran-based One & Co in designing its beautiful, WinMo-defying TouchFLO 3D user interface along with the Touch Diamond on which it premiered; apparently, HTC likes the result so much that it's snapping the privately-held firm right off the market. One & Co's expertise certainly isn't limited to phones -- its clients span from Coca-Cola to Adidas, Dell, and Palm -- and interestingly, HTC has decided that the move won't spell the end of the design consultancy, so if you were hoping to get your hands on an HTC-designed K2 snowboard, you might just have a shot. We're told that the injection of fresh thought that found its way into the Diamond will ultimately filter its way through HTC's entire lineup, which we're taking to mean Android- and WinMo-based devices alike -- and sorry, G1, but if this means that we can eventually land a Google-powered set with a giant display and some glossy facets on its rear, you know you're getting eBayed right quick.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC acquires design firm One & Co originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Nokia could give Linux a spin in high-end mobiles

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/nokia-could-give-linux-a-spin-in-high-end-mobiles/

To anyone even remotely familiar with Nokia's history, this tidbit won't come as a surprise at all. In fact, we've been hearing "Linux" and "Nokia" in the same sentence for years. At Nokia World in Barcelona -- the same place where the almighty N97 (pictured) was unveiled -- Ukko Lappalainen, vice president at Nokia's markets unit, informed Reuters that "in the longer perspective, Linux will become a serious alternative for our high-end phones." Potentially more interesting was his followup line: "I don't see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo." Quite frankly, we'd be entirely more interested if this was some revolutionary epiphany, but it's basically just more of the same song and dance. Now, if an N98 pops out next month with a freakishly awesome and nimble mobile variant of Ubuntu, well -- that's a horse of a different color.

[Via LinuxDevices]

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia could give Linux a spin in high-end mobiles originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

NewSight 180-inch 3D Video Wall is first with LEDs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/newsight-180-inch-3d-video-wall-is-first-with-leds/

NewSight decided just removing the need for silly glasses wasn't good enough, showing off the first 3D LED-based display. Each LED is arranged at a pitch of 6mm, similar to current LCD 3D technology, so it can display the same content that's been popping up as of late. The 180-inch 3D LED Video Wall is capable of combining with three others to form a 360-inch screen, with a 20,000 hour warranty period on its LEDs and NewSight's digital signage background, we can imagine watching a game or being hounded by eerily-realistic Black Friday ads very soon.

Filed under: Displays, HDTV

NewSight 180-inch 3D Video Wall is first with LEDs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Samsung teases with 50-inch OLED TV for CES, scolds us for caring

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/samsung-teases-with-50-inch-oled-tv-for-ces-scolds-us-for-carin/

When SED development hit the brakes a few years ago, OLED technology quickly stepped in to fill the emptiness felt by our fickle hearts' desire for the blackest of blacks. Up until now, prototype OLED panels have been limited to a max size of about 40-inches. But these won't be available for consumers until 2010 or so. For now, we're "stuck with" Sony's little 11-inch XEL-1 if anyone actually wants to purchase an OLED TV for their ~~living room~~ kitchen. Samsung's vice president of flat panel development, HS Kim, says that Sammy "may demonstrate" a 50-inch OLED TV at CES in January but quickly tempers any enthusiasm with a crushing blow of reality,

"I'm sure that if we marketed such a set at ten times the price of current LCD TVs, which is what it would be now, no-one would buy it."

Kim then shifts into sales-mode by pointing out that Samsung's more power-efficient 240Hz LCDs and Plasmas with highly-reflective black panels and LED edge-lighting are quickly cutting into any advantage offered by OLEDs -- including thinness if you factor in the additional electronics you'd have to slap onto the back of those 3-mm thick OLED panels to create a TV. Of course, manufacturers can also dump all that tech into a display-side box much like Sony does with it's XEL-1, but hey, he's on a roll. When the interview with! Wha t Hi-Fi ended, Kim presumably kicked a puppy just to drive his points home.

[Via OLED-Display]

Filed under: Displays

Samsung teases with 50-inch OLED TV for CES, scolds us for caring originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

RED's 'big change' announcement is actually kind of big (updated)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/03/reds-big-change-announcement-is-big-for-pros-disappointing-f/

RED's "big change" announcement is out. The good news: no more waiting. Unfortunately, that's about it -- ~~still no DSMC configuration for the general consumer~~. The rest of the news is targeted at professional film makers which, really should be expected if only these lustful hearts could be contained. With Jannard's team recently overcoming some sensor and electronics limitations, the specs and prices for the Scarlet and EPIC systems have been juggled resulting in a new, stretched delivery schedule. Judging by reactions in the RED USER forums, the changes are welcome if only vaguely understood for a system that only exists on paper (outside of RED ONE) for the time being. Now go ahead and hit the read link for the specifics of what changed -- and with 1,048,576 possible configurations to this modular camera system, you'd better bring help.

Update: After reviewing the 1 million configs, we did find something noteworthy: the previously TBD price of the 2/3-inch 8x fixed zoom 3K Scarlet is now priced at $3,750 when it ships as a "complete kit" with brain and lens sometime in the Fall of 2009. It looks like it should also be compatible with lenses from Canon and Nikon via an optional interchangeable lens mount. As previously announced, the "brain" alone costs $2,500. That officially puts RED within fighting distance of the 1080p-capable Canon EOS 5D Mark II for the prosumer's dollar. Relevant components pictured after the break.

[Thanks, Ben]

Continue reading RED's 'big change' announcement is actually kind of big (updated)

Filed under: Digital Cameras

RED's 'big change' announcement is actually kind of big (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)