Gadgets Future

Sony ought to be proud with themselves for developing their new line of OLED TVs that are so thin, you’d be extremely cautious about picking up one of these. Measuring an impossibly thin 0.3mm in thickness, which is roughly equal to that of a playing card. Definitely not the TV to have in a home where there are boisterous kids running around, as it will probably cost a bomb to replace it asssuming a wayward ball shatters - or should I use the word tears - it?

CNET reviews the LG Glimmer and writes, “We really like the Glimmer’s camera. Not only is it a 2-megapixel camera with a variety of settings and options, but it also has a really nice user interface, all managed via the touch screen. You get a choice of four resolutions (1,600×1,200; 1,280×960; 640×480; 320×240), and you can choose from three quality settings. Other features include a night mode, a self-timer, five color effects, an adjustable brightness and white balance setting, multishot, and shutter sounds. Photo quality was very good–images appeared sharp, with good lighting and accurate colors. They still appeared slightly hazy and smudgy, but it wasn’t that bad. It suffered a little bit under low-light conditions, but the flash helped to make things brighter. There’s also a built-in video recorder that shoots clips in two resolutions (320×240 and 176×144) and three quality settings. Record time varies from 15 seconds (which is typical for multimedia messages) to an hour, or as memory allows. Other settings include brightness, white balance, color effects, and cue sounds.”

Read more about the LG Glimmer.

You’ve probably seen the commercials on television touting the evils of plastic water bottles. “Forever in a landfill,” the commercial warns. Well, thanks to one high school student, forever may just get a lot shorter. It appears a Canadian teenager has figured out a way to make plastic decompose in only three months versus a thousand years.

Daniel Burd, a 16-year-old from Waterloo, Ontaria wanted to see if there was a way to make plastic bags composed of polyethelyne decompose faster. After some experimentation he concluded that by combining landfill dirt with yeast, tap water, and ground-up plastic and then letting the mixture sit, the rate of plastic decomposition was significantly increased.

Burd proved that there are polyethyelyne degrading microorganisms that do exist in nature and could be isolated for larger applications. He hopes his discovery could one day be used on an industrial scale to help reduce the amount of plastic sitting in landfills.

Read more at DVICE.

If you repair PC’s, one of the biggest pains can be repairing a computer after a hard drive has crashed or experienced severe OS failure. This is especially true if the person wants to retain some of the data from the old drive. This means plugging in the old HDD as a secondary drive which usually entails tracking down another SATA cable and more screws. And if you’re working on a small form-factor computer, there is usually no room to mount a second drive which means you’re left with leaving case wide open while the old drive sits precariously on top while you transfer data. Thankfully there is a new gadget to make temporary HDD hook-ups a snap.

Brando is selling a new SATA HDD Multi-Function Dock that makes it easy to plug-in and examine SATA HDD drives. All you need to do is plug-in your 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA HDD into the dock opening and plug the dock into any USB port or eSATA port on your computer. No additional hardware or SATA cables are needed. If that wasn’t useful enough, the dock also doubles as a media transfer device with a built-in 2-port USB hub and 4-card slot reader. If you want to grab one of these sweet SATA HDD Multi-Function Docks for yourself, they are going for $80 dollars.

Read more at Brando, found via OhGizmo!

Over the past few weeks we have been hearing a number of rumors about delays to Intel’s Centrino 2 (codename Montevina). Centrino 2 is Intel’s fifth generation mobile platform and was originally expected to launch at Computex in early June. Regardless of if models will be on display at Computex, Centrino 2 won’t be hitting the streets as early as expected.

It is expected that Centrino 2 will ship on July 14 thanks to problems with the new integrated graphics system and some misfiled paperwork with the FCC. Only some of the chipsets will ship on that early date and more will arrive over the following weeks, though Intel is still being quiet about any details at this point. We do know that starting models will ship with Intel’s a/b/g wireless thanks to that problem with the FCC and 802.11n WiFi will come slightly later down the road.

Perhaps the most interesting point to all this is that AMD’s new Puma notebook platform is on the way and if not for these problems Intel could have pushed up its time line to match the Puma release. This delay gives Puma a small windows in which it can get established and move some units. That noted, it won’t be too much of a boon to AMD as their current strategy is mainly aimed at mainstream buyers and Centrino 2 will be rolled out in a number of different segments.

Read more at TGdaily

Back in April, we reported that Research In Motion, the company that markets BlackBerry handhelds and services, began discussions with India, because of a requirement by the Indian government to have the ability to intercept and read all emails sent and received with a blackberry within the country. One idea set forward by an Indian official is to place BlackBerry servers within India which could be monitored by the government.

PCWorld is reporting that it sounds like RIM and India are not going to be able to come to terms soon, if at all. That’s because in a memo to its Indian customers the company stated that the current BlackBerry architecture is setup to exclude the ability for RIM, let alone a third party like the Indian government, to be able to read emails. RIM states that you need an encryption key to be able to read the emails and the only person with a copy of the encryption key is the customer.

The hubbub over offering the BlackBerry in India came after a wireless provider in India had applied with the Indian government to offer the service. Interestingly enough, the service was already being offered by other wireless companies in India. It seems those customers are concerned that their emails may soon be open for reading by the government which is why RIM sent an email directly to them.

Though it seems that RIM and the Indian government are still in talks I don’t see how there will be any resolution without a complete re-design of the BlackBerry service just for Indian customers. That seems like a lot of work just to let “big brother” read your emails. Also, I can’t believe people will be lining up for a BlackBerry if they know all of their emails are going to be monitored. If RIM does offer a re-designed solution they may find there won’t be any customers to support it.

Read more from the PC World article.

Germans can finally get their hands on the MDA Compact IV courtesy of T-Mobile. This new smartphone will share the same interface as the HTC Touch Diamond, although it will come in T-Mobile’s flavor. This feature packed phone will boast the following :-

• VGA (640 x 480 resolution) touch screen display
• Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system
• HSDPA (up to 7.2Mbps) connectivity
• Internal GPS receiver
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• 4GB internal memory

If you happen to be in Germany, will this be your next purchase?

If you happen to fall under the category of a “Japanese Geek Teen”, then the Sega Toys DigiPod is just the thing for you. It comes with a 1.5″ LCD display housed within a body that measures 78mm x 57mm x 29mm, making it perfect to tote around in your pocket, secretly sharing all your most private photos with a trusted friend, away from the peering eyes of the world. Photos can be transferred using a mini USB connection located at the side of the DigiPod. At $30 a pop, I don’t really see the importance of such a device as most cell phones these days already come with a screen size larger than 1.5″ and do a pretty bang up job displaying photos captured via a high resolution digital camera.

Source: Geeklife Blog

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