Gadgets Future

We finally have the details of the TV to be powered with ‘freakin lasers,’ and Dr. Evil is nowhere to be found. Or is he controlling Mitsu through a ghost subsidiary of the Evil Corporation? (Picture an impossibly arched eyebrow). 

According to the latest statement straight from Mitsubishi’s Japan headquarters, the new LaserVue TV will be available in monster sizes only, 65" and 73," and is supposed to come out in the first part of the third quarter later this year. That translates to the first couple of weeks of September, if you’re fixing your planner at home, or even if you’re alone. 

Laser TVs have been anticipated for quite a long time, even as far back as the 1960s. But the cost and the semiconductor processing needed to power quality, consumer grade light engines was too prohibitive (check out the field of optoelectronics for more information). Only until recently, when companies like Novalux started showing their new semiconductor laser tech, did we think we’d see any significant improvements or an actual product.

The Mitsubishi LaserVue will include several interesting breakthroughs that could build it a nice niche (until the expected high prices fall, down the road).

First of all, they promise to project the most extensive range of colors and the best depth of field of any display technology. Second, they’ll consume only about a quarter of the power of other LCD’s, and will feature the most accurate visual quality without picture degradation — meaning it’s supposed to look as good on its last day as its first.

In addition, it will have a 50,000-hour life span, produce twice the color spectrum of regular LCDs, and will include 3D viewing capability.

Earlier this year at CES 2008, we got an exclusive first look at the first Laser TV, and came away impressed with the technology, especially with the vivid, intense color range, and the beautiful motion processing.

For a first look, it looked real good — despite the fact that our eyeballs turned completely red from staring at the super-bright display. Although, it has to be said, the setting was a Las Vegas nightclub, we were tired, and it was deep into the night. When it comes CES and press junkets, what happens in Vegas, definitely ends up on the Internet.

See also:

CES 2008: Mitsubishi’s 50" Laser TV Changes the High-Definition Game (With an Exclusive Gallery!)

CES Preview: Huge LCDs, Wireless Dominate Home Entertainment

I must agree with Morgan Webb - the Gizmodo venture down into the Lego vault that has every single Lego set ever made is truly amazing, and even though it’s only 2 minutes long, this video totally captures my childhood Lego memories.

What’s even more remarkable is how the author and myself almost have the same single memorable Lego kit - the Lego Space Galaxy Explorer (except mine was the kit with the attached space station - yay me ).

Posted in Miscellaneous

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 12:06PM
Never mind those fancy BD-R critters, how’s about a 42GB DVD? Researchers with a good deal more intelligence than us over at Tohoku University have reportedly figured out a way to “multiply the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or CD by 9.” Based on our best guess at translating a foreign language (we kid… sort of), the achievement was realized by shaping the pits on a DVD’s surface like Vs, essentially making the disc more capacious in the process. Unfortunately, said project will probably never see any mainstream attention, as existing DVD / CD players won’t recognize the malformed media, and worse still, the process can’t be applied to Blu-ray Discs.

[Via CrunchGear]

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Filed under: Storage

by Paul Miller, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 9:50AM
It’s not every day we get to glimpse a brand new experience from Dell, and while Studio might just be near-XPS laptops in everyman clothing, that certainly seems to be a good thing. The laptops appear to combine the power of XPS and the prices of Inspiron, with some new perks like HDMI out and slot-loading drives to keep things fresh. The laptops tend a little thicker than their XPS counterparts, and the fact that these are hitting just before Centrino 2 might be cause to hesitate, but otherwise we’re getting the feel from these reviews that the Studio line just might be the consumer lineup to beat if you can dig the design quirks and a little bit of bulk.

Read - NotebookReview, Studio 17 (”Hard pressed to find a better 17-inch notebook in the same price range”)
Read - CNET Reviews, Studio 15 (7.3 / 10, “We’d be tempted to save up a few extra dollars for a thinner, lighter XPS.”)
Read - PC Mag, Studio 15 (4.5 / 5, Editor’s Choice, “Retaining many of the XPS’s qualities while selling it for Inspiron prices.”)
Read - Laptop Mag, Studio 17 (3.5 / 5, “For $1,599, you’ll get plenty of multimedia muscle.”)

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Filed under: Laptops

Bill Gates retires from fulltime work at Microsoft next week. We figured that would be the perfect time to put together a highlights reel showing the most entertaining, goofy and inspiring moments from his 33-year career. Take a look at this two-minute montage showing everything from Gates getting a cream pie in his face to the famous "blue screen of death" demo to a mockumentary of his last day at the office. Enjoy!

Embedded video not working? Click through to see the Bill Gates highlights video on the Wired.com video site.

Aside from it’s rather weird name, this new ”Eee” like laptop is actually a pretty good one. The Mouse Computer U100 LuvBook comes with 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a 10.2-inch WSVGA screen, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, a 1.6GHz Atom processor and runs Windows XP. Unfortunately, it is only slated for a Japanese launch at this time, with no word on whether if or when it will be available in other countries. Beginning in July, the U100 will be selling for 59,800 Yen, or around $439 US.

Via [Pocket-Lint]

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 8:45AM
You know how we love plug-in hybrids around these parts, particularly if they’re actually going to get built — crazy, we know. Now it looks like Volkswagen is going to get into the game, with a “Twin Drive” Golf powered by a 122 horsepower diesel engine and 82 horsies of electric motor. The car should debut around 2010, and VW plans on spending $769 million on the project, helped along by a $23.5 million program put in place by the German government to help along such development. The car, which uses the electric motor for primary power, supplemented by the diesel motor and regenerative braking for extra juice, should be able to squeeze about 31 miles out of its Sanyo-developed lithium-ion batteries in all-electric mode.

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Filed under: Transportation

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 9:31AMPalm continued to flaunt its almost inexplicable boost in health in an earnings call yesterday. According to reports, honcho Ed Colligan boasted of a 29 percent gain in smartphone sales year-over-year, largely in part to the stellar performance of the company’s budget-priced (with contract) Centro. In light of the recent negative outlook from investors, retail store closings, a constantly delayed OS update, and fierce competition, it’s a pretty impressive feat to not only stay afloat, but manage some small victories. Now if they can just deliver on those OS and device promises we keep hearing about, they may stay in this game yet.

[Via Palm Infocenter]

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Filed under: cellphones

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 8:24AM
Leave it to space nerds with money to come up with the world’s highest resolution visualization system. NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames has created the 128-screen hyperwall-2, a mega display capable of rendering one quarter billion pixels. Hyperwall-2 measures 23- x 10-feet of LCD goodness, and is powered by 128 GPUs and 1,024 processor cores with 74 teraflops of peak processing power. To top things off, 475 terabytes of storage keep the system rolling. All in all, hyperwall-2 has more than 100 times the processing power of its poor predecessor, hyperwall, from 2002. The elder hyperwall was unavailable for comment and is most likely on an alcoholic bender somewhere, complaining about “kids these days.”

[Thanks, james]

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Filed under: Displays

I’ve discussed the dedicated hosting, benefits of dedicated hosting in the past and this time, I’m going to review a dedicated hosting provider that I discovered on Internet while hunting for a dedicated servers.

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