Gadgets Future

by Nilay Patel, posted Aug 4th 2008 at 11:04AM
Lenovo’s dimunitive X200 finally made the scene just recently after hiding out in the shadows for a couple weeks, and it looks like it’s got a little friend waiting back there as well — some specs for a tablet version of the 12-inch ultraportable surfaced over the weekend. We’re not taking any of this as fact — the spec sheet showed up on the web page for the Hong Kong Baptist University, and it’s accompanied by a picture of the regular X200, so it could just be a mistake — but we certainly wouldn’t say no to a 4-pound tablet with a 1.86GHz SL9400 Core 2 Duo and a 7-hour battery life for $1,339, so we’ll see how this one plays out.

[Via GottaBeMobile]

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Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

The LiMo Foundation announced growing support for its mobile LiMo Platform according to a recent press release. The foundation, which is a global consortium of members which offer an open handset platform for the industry, announced seven new devices that are powered with the LiMo Platform. The companies offering the new mobile phones include Motorola, NEC and Panasonic Mobile Communications.

The model from Motorola includes the MOTOZINE ZN5 while NEC is offering four phones including the FOMA N906i, FOMA N906iμ, FOMA N906iL and FOMA N706i. Panasonic Mobile Communications will be offering the FOMA P906i and FOMA P706iμ. The seven new devices bring the total of LiMo Platform powered mobile handsets to a total of 21.

The idea of open source has been warmly adopted by many companies within the wireless community. It seems everyone is trying to offer something “open” including Google and their Android mobile operating system. One would think that we would start seeing some consolidation in the mobile open platform community. It would only make for a stronger open platform with wider acceptance by the industry.

Read more from the LiMo Foundation website.

Located right smack in between new tech and old-school woodworking, the new wooden bike frames from Portland dealer Renovo seem destined to embody an age-old saying (from confused ancestors): Don’t knock wood until you try it.

The R2 Hardwood Monocoque Bicycle comes with a hollow wood frame structure and its shell is bonded and mechanically fastened to the frame. The creators promise aggressive performance through lightness, as well as tight handling.

Even though it’s not easy to see at first, using a wooden frame might have some advantages over other frame materials (like butted metal, carbon fiber, or titanium.)

According to the Renovo site, wood absorbs vibration better than steel, so when you’re going down a tough rock-filled mountain road, the ride should be smoother. Wood is also easily finished and is generally tougher over time, meaning that the dents you put in your steel frame might not force your ride to be out of commission.

Wooden bikes have been made for over a century, but over the years, the heaviness of the wood made them unsuited for anything more than a simple stroll around the block. And forget any racing — if you pushed them hard, the wood frames could crack because it wasn’t bonded with correct adhesives, and it also could not block the damage from the sun and other outdoor effects.

The Renovo is made by chemically bonding the frame to the other bike parts (like its various metal inserts), by kiln-drying the wood, and the metal components are chemically treated before bonding, to give them a true durable grip.

Look out for a review of the bike coming up soon, from Wired’s own Bike Geek, Mark McClusky.

Thanks to Gadget Lab Reader William for the tip. Keep ‘em coming!

See also:

Bike Geek: Specialized 2009 Road Event

Bike Geek: The Index

by Darren Murph, posted Aug 4th 2008 at 8:11AM
We don’t know what those cats in RTP are munching on, but Lenovo has been cranking out IdeaPads faster than people can wrap their heads around ‘em. Ever-so-shortly after the IdeaPad G series was made official half a world away, the IdeaPad S family is apparently next in line for the immensely important stamp of public recognition. A smattering of the 8.9-inch netbooks were captured on video at a New York-based preview show, though we are told that the ones on display were merely “prototypes.” Is it wrong that we’re having a tough time getting excited about yet another underpowered, incredibly portable PC that will likely be priced a few Benjamins too high? On second thought, don’t answer that — just point your attention to the vid waiting after the jump.

[Via jkkmobile]

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Filed under: Laptops

Buffalo and I-O Data Device of Japan will be rolling out new 8x Blu-ray burners in due time, with the former offering an internal BR-816FBS and an external BR-816SU2 model, while the latter will have the BRD-SP8 on offer sometime this month or the next. All three burners will be based on Matsushita’s 8x Blu-ray Disc burner model known as SW-5584. At this point in time, most international PC vendors rely on 4x and 6x BD burners but not 8x models as those will add a considerable amount to the final price tag, and the sales benefit is just not there despite being able to burn Blu-ray discs at speeds of up to 8x. Do you currently use Blu-ray discs as a backup medium?

Samsung teams up with luxury label Armani yet again, but this time they won’t be releasing a new cell phone. Instead, the Samsung Armani Pavv is a HDTV that was specially designed by Giorgio Armani himself, coming in 46″ and 52″ sizes. The former will retail for approximately $6,865 while the latter is even more painful on the wallet at $8,530. Of course, being of Armani descent, you can be sure that most of your money goes towards the design albeit both HDTVs boast some pretty decent performance specifications. Whenever the Armani Pavv is turned off, that doesn’t mean your living room’s sense of design has turned upside down as this new line of HDTVs lend an air of sophistication when not in use.

Out of all three current generation consoles, the Nintendo Wii has the most problems when it comes to storage. Having an SD memory card slot with no hard drive at all makes it really tough for Wii owners to expand upon their collection of downloaded games, since that would mean building up a sizable amount of SD cards in due time. Nintendo is looking towards the future by considering a futuristic storage format as the solution - by filing a patent application for “Miniature flexure based scanners for angle multiplexing”, making a fair number of references to holographic storage. Several advantages of this include storing data at a much faster rate compared to current technologies, but since Wii titles aren’t that data intensive, it wouldn’t really need fast read/write speeds. Well, this is still all speculation at this point in time, so it remains to be seen whether the Wii will actually get holographic storage or not.

Source: RegHardware

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iphone clones are as common as the iPhone itself, but to clone one of the better selling Palm devices? That’s the case with the OQO G900 that is heavily inspired by the Palm Centro, although it takes a different route from iPhone clones that fail in the hardware department, falling far short of the actual iPhone specifications. With the OQO G900, this clone actually boasts better hardware specifications such as a 624MHz processor, 128MB memory, a 2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Pretty neat, eh?

If you’re stuck attempting to lose a bit of weight and have a serious addiction for all that is Hello Kitty, then you might pick up one of these.  Although I doubt there is a single person on this earth who actually loves scales, this one does have a few extras to keep you motivated.  It might actually help you to not loathe that point that you have to step onto the scale.

This Hello Kitty scale actually hooks up to your computer and basically saves your weight.  Then charts it and keeps track of it from day to day.  That way weight loss is a little less of a guessing game and you know exactly where you were at last month.  To plug it into your computer, it has a handheld panel that connects via USB.  It is being sold for 12,000 Yen or about $112.  Which is a bit much for just a silly little scale, but slap Hello Kitty on it and it’s guaranteed that someone will buy it, especially in Japan.

Source: gizmodiva

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Just how many megapixels can your digital camera shoot? 15? 20? Well, all those numbers mean nothing to Leaf’s latest Leaf 56-megapixel AFi 10 medium-format digital camera. Yes, it is capable of capturing a whopping 56 megapixels’ worth of visual data in a single image, which means you’ve got to have some pretty decent amount of storage solutions lest it eats up an entire memory card after what, 5 shots? The AFi 10’s True Wide Frame (TWF) 56mm x 36mm sensor is also compatible with more than 80 other large format cameras. The AFi 10 will be available sometime in Q4 this year, retailing for a massive $43,675.

Source: Gizmag

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