Bill Nye’s paper recycling factory toy (right) looks like a promising way to teach kids environmental friendliness while they’re ripe and impressionable. The kit includes an assortment of colorful, plastic tools to mash, dye, hydrate and mold old paper into new stuff like notebooks and post cards. Potentially gives the word "greenwashing" new meaning, doesn’t it?
Product Page [via Boing Boing gadgets]
Photo: Discover This
HP just launched an updated MediaSmart Server, which is a small networked storage appliance that runs on Windows Home Server. There are a number of improvements, but the big thing is that it is now Time Machine friendly and Mac OS friendly in general, although you still need a PC to configure it. It’s good to know, if you’re a Mac-only person.
This is not it, this updated version also have the ability to save data online, using the Amazon S3 service. That’s something that was high on the users’ wishlist. I bet that more online services will be available in the future.
The hardware has also been updated: MediaSmart server now runs on a 2.0Ghz Celeron with 2GB of RAM. It makes it fast enough to convert music files on the fly for streaming your tunes over the web. The older model won’t be able to do that, even with a software update. We’re still playing with the new MediaSmart, but keep your eyes open for a review.
Today must be Advanced Watch Day, because I just finished reporting on a new Cellular Phone Watch from LG. This next watch feels just as advanced, as it comes with a 4GB USB Flash Drive.
This USB drive fits snugly into the case, where no one will look for it. In fact, that is one thing I like about this watch: it doesn’t look like heavily advanced spy watch. No, this watch looks completely innocuous with its fancy exterior.
The USB Hidden Flash Drive Watch has “a plastic case covered by a stainless steel mask with brushed silver finish and convex mineral glass with a shiny raised index”. It may not be a Rolex, but it is fancy enough for James Bond to sport.
I can just see it being used in the next James Bond film. Here’s the scene: Daniel Craig sneaks into an enemy base, and then whips out the flash drive from his wrist and downloads the head bad guy’s plan. Knowing movies like I do, they’ll probably make it more suspenseful by showing a little bar that has to be 100% complete before a guard shows up to stop Bond.
So before Bond goes out on his next mission, he doesn’t need Q anymore. He can just order from the ThinkGeek site. That’s probably good, because the latest James Bond films don’t have Q in them anyway.
Source
Just as Samsung let slip their 2009 HDTV range before CES, we have news on a great new LED LCD HDTV range from LG. The LG LH95 series looks set to claim the title for the world’s slimmest LED backlit LCD HDTV at only 24.8mm (0.976 inches) thick.
LG willl present the LG LH95 series at this years CES in Las Vagas. Few details are currently known about the LH95’s but we do know it will feature LED backliting, boast a 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, and the new 240Hz TrueMotion Drive, doubling their previous offering. Making everything flow nicely without judder or motion blur effects.
No release date or price or currently known for the LG LH95, but we assume the first half of 2009. Sizes are also unknown, but as the sets seems rather highend, we will expect sizes of 37-inches and above.
We are assuming the possibility of the following model names. LG 40LH95, LG 42LH95, LG 47LH95, LG 52LH95.
Them Jedi and Sith are pretty limited when it comes to weapons, favoring a lightsaber over everything else (be it single or double-bladed), but if the Shaolin Monks were around back then, we would probably have had lightsaber nunchuks, lightsaber spears, the works! Would be pretty challenging trying to master the lightsaber nunchuks unless you’re from a species that is able to grow back your limbs instantly while practising and have no pain receptors at all.
You can be sure that LG won’t be holding back any punches when CES 2009 rolls around - they will use that occassion to launch the LH95 LED LCD TV - touted to be the slimmest in the world at 24.8mm. Well, until somebody comes along and pulls the rug from under LG, we don’t think that the record will be broken immediately. Other features found on the LH95 will include a whopping 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 240Hz TrueMotion Drive technology. Just watch out when you play your Wii with the LG LH95 though - sweaty hands might mean having the Wiimote fly straight through the LH95, where your sweat will then be mixed with tears.
The latest netbook from Asus has begun to make an appearance, and in what seems like a growing trend, it features a 12-inch display. Personally, I have a hard time relating anything more than a 10-inch display as a netbook, but more on that in a future post. As for the new model, it is the Asus S121, which following suit with the previously released S101, this is also in the “luxury” category.
We do have plenty of images, however the details are mostly speculation. So far the S121 is expected to feature an Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0, a built-in card reader and a built-in webcam. Also, as you would expect, the pricing is still unknown. Of course, if we take the $699 price tag of the S101, then it is likely to expect the S121 to come in a little higher, possibly at $799.
Via [Eee PC News]
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Toshiba and SGI Japan have developed full HD file-based TV program broadcasting systems and core broadcasting systems, including master control equipment. Until now, TV programs have typically been recorded and edited on video tape, and the various content elements, including video, audio and closed caption, have been compiled, edited and finalized and then uploaded to a playout server, a long, laborious process. Toshiba’s new equipment, incorporating a file-base program broadcasting system, supports faster transfers to the playout server, and secures vast improvements in workflow and efficiency. The system also integrates the tried and tested Omneon Spectrum media server and Omneon MediaGridTM active storage system made by Omneon Inc. and Omneon Video Networks of the US, which are in use in broadcasting systems worldwide.
A terrestrial broadcasting system has already been released and delivered to Japan’s Fuji Television Network, Inc., and systems for BS and CS satellite broadcasting are also scheduled for release in due course.
[Source]
If there’s one thing Philips’ Xenium line is really good at, it’s ridiculously long claimed talk and standby times; and if there’s one thing it’s really bad at, it’s 3G. Personally, we’d rather recharge an HSPA phone once a day than an EDGE phone once a week, but for those who don’t share our love of high-speed data — particularly those in Russia — we give you the Xenium X710, complete with dual SIM slots and a respectable 3 megapixels of autofocus power. It’s got Bluetooth, an integrated FM radio, and microSD expansion, too, not to mention an unabashedly clean, simple look that does a pretty good job projecting its low-end aspirations.
[Source]
On the inside, all flash thumb-drives are essentially the same — a circuit board, a RAM chip and a USB plug. This is why we are bombarded hourly with pen-drive junk, the physical equivalent of spam.
But this generic interior means that some truly useful cases can be fashioned easily, such as this Eraser USB Memories Stick, a stick of "memories" wrapped in a pencil eraser. So simple is this design that it doesn’t matter that it is merely a concept: With a craft knife and a chunk of rubber you could make your own.
The final requirement for a marketing masterpiece is an enigmatic, meaningless slogan which hints at profound conceptual depth. The designer, Studioroom 906, delivers this with a gleeful lack of regard for the English language:
Form define by user and disappearing on their own during their use.
Fantastic!
Product page [Studioroom 906 via the DVICE]
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