Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Huge shocker here: removing your shoes at airport security causes massive headaches and makes the wait longer for everyone. Now that we’re all good with Captain Obvious’ latest headline, let us point you to one prototype that’s looking to solve said dilemma. SecuriScan, which has been developed by Professor Wuqiang Yang at the University of Manchester, would theoretically be able to “detect and pinpoint suspicious objects instantly,” all without requiring passengers to remove their kicks. Better still, the system uses electric and magnetic sensing instead of a radiation source, which could also address safety concerns while helping you get where you’re going more quickly. Moving forward, Yang hopes to develop a more advanced and realistic prototype for testing, and just in case you were doubting this guy’s determination, he’s also investigating a handheld version that could hastily screen abandoned luggage or packages.

[Via Physorg, image courtesy of ChangeAirportSecurity]

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Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals

Alas, here we are, 2008 drawing quickly to a close, and yet we still live in a world where the only viable portable fuel cell system is available exclusively to the US Army (unless you can make due with one lowly watt). Panasonic says we have another four years to wait, planning for a 2012 releasing of device powerful enough to run a notebook yet small enough to fit inside a battery compartment. The company estimates up to 5 hours of power could be had from 50cc of “highly concentrated” methanol, and of course you’d always be just a squirt away from a full charge — the same sort of promises we’ve heard again and again about this tech. Four years may seem like a long way off, but it’s surely more realistic than the release dates we’ve seen on some earlier prototypes.

Update: A few 200cc, 20-hour prototypes displayed after the break.

[Warning: reg required on read link]

Continue reading Panasonic talks up 2012’s hottest fuel cell tech

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Filed under: Displays

While most manufacturers seem to be working on privacy tech to make LCDs harder to view by anyone not sitting right in front of them, LG is bucking the trend, demoing a prototype that can be read even by those sitting clear over on the back side. Unlike Samsung’s tiny double-sided prototype from early last year, LG’s shows the same image on both sides, but the 15-inch reflective display’s 512 x 384 resolution and 14:1 contrast ratio also reflect just how early this tech is.

[Via Hallu Tech]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Kyoto-based company Rohm impressed us at last year’s CEATEC with a mega-tiny OLED display but it didn’t rest on its laurels. A larger prototype exhibited this year emitted ambient light at 3,000 to 4,000cd/m² and a brief flash at 100,000cd/m² — that’s respectively 10 and 250 times the brightness of a typical LCD display. But the impressive bit was this: nothing illuminated cast a shadow. Obviously a light like that is a poor match for a haunted house or romantic restaurant, but surgeons use shadowless lamps at the operating table, so there are applications. The short shelf life of OLED materials is still a nagging disadvantage, but as Dr. Eldon Tyrell would say: “the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly.” Then again, he was talking about cybernetic killing machines, so, maybe not such a great endorsement.

[Thanks, Erik]

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Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals

Imagine this — you, sitting in a dingy airport terminal waiting on your flight with a lifeless laptop and just 10 minutes to spare. You’ve got oodles of spreadsheet work to do before 8:00AM tomorrow, and unless you get it done on this flight, you’re fubared. Toshiba is looking to make said scenario seem like one that’s not so grim, as its prototype SCIB (Super Charge Ion Battery) purportedly has the potential to get 90% full in just 10 minutes. The battery was unveiled at CEATEC 2008 in Japan, though little was known about its eventual availability. Shame development cycles can’t be fast tracked in a similar manner, huh?

[Via UberReview]

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Filed under: Handhelds

Before we go any further, we’d like to inform this here Telson UMPC that if Pandora can finally get out of the starting blocks, so can you. Today, we’re looking at new evidence that Digital Cube (the handheld’s new parent) could be inching ever closer to bringing this shockingly thick gaming handheld to market. Out of seemingly nowhere, images have emerged of the portable posing beside a USB 3D camera dongle (saywha?); additionally, we’re told that it will pack a 1.2GHz VIA C7M CPU and feature a 4.3-inch display, 512MB of RAM, 30GB hard drive and Windows XP. Oh, and we’re also informed that it’ll be “released in October” in at least one section of the world, so we’ve got T-minus 27 days to see if that claim is legit.

[Via Pocketables]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras, Wireless

If you’re still in disbelief that wireless HD is finally catching on, here’s yet another demonstration that just may sway you into being a believer. Hitachi demonstrated a wireless HD camcorder setup at CEATEC in Japan, which saw a hacked up handycam get fitted with a protruding wireless card and stream high-def content to a nearby TV via DLNA (got all that?). Obviously, there’s no telling when or if the company will clean the application up and bring it to retail, but in all seriousness, we have our doubts about the value proposition here.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Remember that scene in ‘The Dark Knight’ where (spoiler alert!) Batman uses the city’s cell-phones to look through walls and find the bad guys? Totally awesome, right!? A group of scientists at KDDI apparently thought so too, creating a prototype they say could do something similar. Using geomagnetic sensors, accelerometers, and GPS, the device is able to determine its position and render its surroundings on the screen in OpenGL, including areas that are currently out of sight. We’re guessing you must have already scanned those areas with the phone and that it can’t actually see through walls, but we’d be happy to be proven wrong — whenever they actually have something to show us. Like the group’s funky concept phones we brought to you earlier, this one doesn’t actually work. Yet.

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Filed under: Wearables

Oh sure, we’ve already seen solar jackets, backpacks and all manners of like-minded creations, but having an energized trinket around your neck just seems so much more useful. Dreamed up for Samsung’s Young Design contest, the Prometeo is an admittedly large box that could be worn around one’s neck or arm and used to suck in energy from the beaming sun; once it’s juiced, wearers can simply plug a couple USB devices in there and let the good times roll. Additionally, there’s an integrated power meter to let you know just how full / drained the thing is, though we don’t see any sort of AC plug in order to power it up in a pinch. We know, you’re balking at the size of this thing, but don’t you think folks looked at Mr. T funny back in the day? Trendsetting ain’t easy, people.

[Via DesignLaunches]

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Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

Now that pico projectors are actually headed to end users, we’re seeing a number of companies hop in the fast lane to production. Take Microvision for instance — these guys were taking their sweet time by introducing the PicoP beamer back at CES, and now we’re looking at a freshly revamped version that has already begun shipping to OEMs for “evaluation and end-user testing.” Reportedly, the device shown at CEATEC featured a “thinner, smaller and brighter PicoP engine and several image quality enhancements” over the unit displayed at CES, and it officially boasted a WVGA resolution that could be blown up to 100-inches in size. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting to hear how long it’ll be before this one slips into consumers’ hands, but we’ve a feeling it’ll be sooner rather than later.

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Hitachi drug its oh-so-sexy 1.5-inch plasma to Japan after showing it off in Denver earlier this month, but what we didn’t see at CEDIA was this: a 15-millimeter thin 37-inch LCD TV. The “reference” set packed a 1,920 x 1,080 panel and a fittingly designed stand, though it won’t see mass production until “2009 or later.” Ugh, even 1-inch just seems so bloated now.

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Filed under: Transportation

While Chevy makes quite a to-do about the upcoming Volt hybrid, GM-cousin Chrysler has quietly continued to produce over 38,000 real, honest to gosh electric cars in its GEM sub-division. In need of a little eco-PR boost, Global Electric Motorcars is re-branding itself as Global Eco Mobility and introducing the Peapod. No, not that Peapod, or that Peapod, but a new Peapod that will travel up to 30 miles at 25 mph on an eight hour charge — stats that sound suspiciously identical to the company’s earlier Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (when not in muddin‘ guise, at least). But, that car doesn’t sport bulbous looks on the outside nor gratuitous iPod integration on the inside (pictured below), which, if you don’t have to go far or fast, might make it the perfect accessory for your pod when it enters production sometime next year for an undisclosed price.

[Via Register Hardware]

Continue reading GEM becomes Green Eco Mobility, introduces Peapod prototype

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Filed under: Household

Given how large the green bandwagon has become, it’s no real shock to see an energy-saving concept from the 1930s being exhumed and investigated further. Scientists at Oxford University have begun to take a closer look at an early invention from the great Albert Einstein in order to hopefully create refrigerators (and appliances in general) that could be used completely without electricity. Back in the day, Sir Albert created a mechanism that had no moving parts and used only pressurized gases to keep things chilly. Once compressors became more efficient in the 50s, however, the idea was tossed aside. Now, the idea obviously has greater appeal, and if things keep humming along nicely, a completed prototype should be erected by the year’s end.

[Via Physorg]

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Filed under: Laptops

When looking to dazzle your friends with humorous examples of oxymorons, make sure you insert Alps Electric’s new “Non-Contact Touchpad” right after “military intelligence” and before “jumbo shrimp” (that last one always gets ‘em laughing). Alps’ prototype (shown without the hand model after the break) breaks linguistic and laptop convention by letting you control your machine with fingers waving about an inch above it. Right now it seems to have limited precision, with one sensor on either side of a rather more traditional pad picking up digits as they move from left to right or in a circle. So, touch-free retouching of images in Photoshop isn’t quite possible yet, but with a few years of refinements anything is possible.

Continue reading Alps Electric’s “non-contact touchpad” needs no touch

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Filed under: Displays

22-inch monitors have generally been stuck at a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution for years with just a few notable exceptions. Now it looks like Dell is about to change that with the introduction of a newly designed, S2209W monitor with rumored 1,920 x 1,080 pixel resolution. The evidence stems from that prototype pictured above as well as drivers already available on Dell’ support site. Still not sure about the piano-black, Samsung-esque design, though. One more snap after the break.

[Thanks, Alex P.]

Read — Dell drivers
Read — Prototype

Continue reading Dell’s 22-inch S2209W monitor to reach Full HD resolution?

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

In the run-up to Photokina, Olympus just announced its latest Four Thirds DSLR targeting the “advanced amateur.” Positioned in the enormous gap between Olympus’ flagship E-3 and E-520 shooters, the new E-A1 DSLR inherits the E-3’s high-speed 11-point AF system, image stabilization with 5 stops correction, while featuring improved weather sealing around a housing we expect to be relatively compact by comparison. Available in Q1 2009 if things stay on track.

As co-consprirators with Panasonic behind the Micro Four Thirds format, it’s no surprise to hear that Olympus also has a tiny, mirror-less prototype camera to show off at Photokina as well. The only surprise is that it’ll be on display under glass without a date, specs, or price.

[Via cnet]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

In the run-up to Photokina, Olympus just announced its latest Four Thirds DSLR targeting the “advanced amateur.” Positioned in the enormous gap between Olympus’ flagship E-3 and E-520 shooters, the new E-A1 DSLR inherits the E-3’s high-speed 11-point AF system, image stabilization with 5 stops correction, while featuring improved weather sealing around a housing we expect to be relatively compact by comparison. Available in Q1 2009 if things stay on track.

As co-consprirators with Panasonic behind the Micro Four Thirds format, it’s no surprise to hear that Olympus also has a tiny, mirror-less prototype camera to show off at Photokina as well. The only surprise is that it’ll be on display under glass without a date, specs, or price.

[Via cnet]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

We just barely got our unsteady mitts on the upcoming Lumix G1, yet already Panasonic is teasing with something of a successor, currently dubbed the “G.” It uses the G1’s same micro four thirds body design, ditching the mirror and optical viewfinder in favor of case slimness, but adds a stereo microphone on top and record button on back for high-def video capture — rare stuff on a consumer digi-cam with a replaceable lens. No word on price or availability, but given the G1 isn’t slated to hit Japan until October we wouldn’t expect this one until sometime next year. Meanwhile, if you tend to prefer pictures of the non-moving variety, LetsGoDigital also has some test images taken by a pre-release G1. The 640×480 snaps themselves aren’t anything to get too excited about (unless you’re a Formula One fan), but do prove that the camera can indeed take pictures.

Read - Panasonic Lumix G
Read - G1 Test Photos

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Wireless

With Belkin’s FlyWire just about to hit the market, JVC’s planning to ride the wave and produce a wireless HDMI box of its very own. The unit was said to be a last minute addition to its CEDIA arsenal, and the representatives on hand weren’t even briefed on what wireless technology the demo was using. Of note, there was a live demo involving no smoke nor mirrors, where the box received a 1080p signal via HDMI and beamed it out to a hidden receiver that was connected to an HDTV via (you guessed it) HDMI. JVC is obviously aiming for consumers with just one primary set-top-box (a PS3, for instance), and the plug-and-play nature means it can work with any source and any display so long as HDMI is involved. Pricing hasn’t been set, but we were told to expect a Q1 2009 launch. Check out the prototype in the gallery below.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Hitachi’s 1.5-inch thick 50-inch plasma wasn’t exactly front and center like we had imagined, but it was there garnering stares nonetheless. Donning a glossy white finish and displaying nothing but floral arrangements, the set looked pretty good (though not great) in terms of visual quality. The design, however, was simply stunning. And just as promised, we did include the obligatory iPhone comparison, though you’ll have to account for the Belkin skin when drawing your conclusions. Give it a peek in the gallery below.

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