Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

There has been talk and details about the newest laptop from Asus, mostly centered around the material it’s made from; bamboo. Admittedly this isn’t the first time that bamboo has been used as a computer case (Dell intro’s super-small, eco-friendly bamboo Green desktop PC) but it may be the first time for a laptop, and it does look interesting.

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There can’t be many people who have been on the internet, and not also been on YouTube, and the home video craze has really caught on. This is both good and bad: it makes videos more accessible but leaves the door open for happy slapping idiots trying to make a name for themselves. And recently another problem has arisen, it’s starting to get a bit too big.

With a reported 13 hours of video being uploaded every minute it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the video that you want, however specific you are. So new techniques are needed, and there are plans to use voice recognition to automatically convert the words into metadata which in turn is embedded in the video meaning key words can be searched for with increased effectiveness. It also means, if you know what video you are looking for, you can directly quote from the video and thus find it easily.

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This new concept car is, to say the least, odd. In fact unless you were briefed beforehand it might take you a while to work out what it is; a concept car from Peugot cleverly disguised as a squashed drinks can. Nevertheless this façade is complimented by some very savvy specifications, some of which are given away by its name, the ‘Ozone’.

It’s name derives from the fact that its powered by ‘environmentally friendly’ hydrogen fuel cells which power the two electric motors, and in turn the large wheels which sit either side of the cabin. This two person cabin is both spacious and luxurious, and it goes some way to epitomizing the contemporary world in which we live today, which is only emphasized by the fact that this is controlled by a joystick!

However it is probably a good job that very few concept cars ever make it to mass production because this has many flaws that would make this very impractical. First, although the cabin doesn’t move when the car is moving when you brake hard, surely you would get at least a weird sensation? Also it would be somewhat disconcerting going at 70mph with two massive wheels 20cm away from your head, and these wheels surely also cause a safety issue if you were to hit someone? And also there are very few roads that would be wide enough to accommodate this car.

In conclusion: its a good concept, but little more than that due to its great practical shortfalls.

Via [GearFuse]

It would appear the nature is slowly becoming obsolete. Who needs real plants when fake ones are easier to look after? Who needs real light when light bulbs, light balls and light walls are easily available? And who needs beautiful scenery when you can make it in Photoshop? It is becoming more common for people to just ignore nature, and instead replace it with expensive electronic gadgets. And it would appear that not even the sky is excluded from this ‘anti-nature revolution’.

I am not saying that SkyCeiling is totally useless and has no purpose, and to be fair it seems to be very good at what it does; imitating the sky. It is programmable, essentially meaning you can customize the sky that you see through a skylight in your ceiling. It can change throughout the day, and throughout the seasons which will at least keep it interesting as well as having some ‘theatrical effects’ such as dark blue moonlight or long shadows.

The website for the product emphasizes the ‘health benefits’ of this product, claiming that it can help a range of patients, from dementia to Alzheimer’s, which you cannot deny is a good thing...but can it be comparable to the health benefits to being outside under the real sky?

In conclusion I cant see how this will sell particularly well, for several reasons. People don’t often look at the sky in the same way they would look through a window; and the principal purpose of a skylight is usually purely for light. This taken into account, it would seem that SkyCeiling is little more than an expensive, advanced and largely unnecessary novelty.

Product [TheSkyFactory]

Everyone loves a music festival: the mud, the cold, the inevitable rain, the ludicrously priced drinks and of course the music. However going to live in a field for a weekend does mean you have to survive without mains for a couple of days, so portable gadget recharges are becoming increasingly popular. This leads nicely onto the ‘Dance Charge’ prototype that has recently been released by Orange, which essentially converts the kinetic energy from your dancing into juice for your phone.

Using a system of weights and magnets you can convert ‘The Monkey’, ‘The Robot’ and ‘The Worm’ into electricity which can recharge your phone, and this is all contained in a strap that goes on your arm and closely resembles those worn by joggers for their MP3 players, which looks fairly discreet and not a bit ‘uncool’. However for those who don’t feel confident either dancing or wearing what looks like a doormat, Orange has also lined-up the Dance Charging Man which we can only guess is a small (and probably interactive) man which will dance an do the work for you.

So far Orange has only made a few prototypes (which will be scattered around Glastonbury) so we do not know how popular it will be, but it does show some promise.

Via [Register Hardware]

For those who are busy, outgoing and are often in meetings, using your laptop (however small) is often not very practical so you end up taking notes through the old fashioned, and lot cheaper method, the pen. However not only does that hurt your hand after a while, but you get a result that you cant search, send off instantly, or mess around with on Word. In fact you often end up re-typing it anyway to make it usable which is frustratingly time consuming, and makes you wish there was a better solution.

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Plants are more versatile than we give them credit for, you can make clothes with them, build with them, use them as ornaments and if your really radical you can eat them. However up until know you would have even thought of making phones with them, and its all thanks to Samsung who have unveiled their new “initiative to be more nature friendly” which means they will making some of their new handsets (the W510 is the first) out of corn.

Admittedly it is not just corn as that would be incredibly impractical, rather it is a corn based plastic that makes the casing. This technology is not new, it has been used in things like plastic bags on-and-off since the mid 1990s, but it is not till now that it has been used in such a high profile and relatively high cost product. This is due to the fact that is has been strengthened, so in the future we could see things like corn PCs and Laptops, and this could spell the end for some of the heavy metals such as lead or mercury which have not been needed in this handset.
This, coupled with their attempts to irradiate BFRs and PVC from charges and other accessories, will make Samsung a lot greener in the future.

Via [InfoWorld]

The portable audio market has boomed in the last few years, and its in now thoroughly convoluted with ‘style,’ ‘good value’ and cheap rip-offs. So it would appear that the only to make an impact on this sector would be to either have a very cheap player, a very big drive or a unique design, and it is the latter that Philips has tried to utilize.

And to be fair its not that bad. With their most recent ‘Go Gear’ design they have gone for a square design which does look very sleek, mainly due to its 128 x 64 resolution OLED display with a ‘mirror finish’, which upon a touch shows you the track information.  They are fairly small, at just 41 x 41 x 15mm (which makes it another gadget easy to lose) but delivers a full sound thanks to the Philips FullSound technology which it includes. According to Philips, FullSound tweaks the dynamics, bass, treble and stereo imaging of highly compressed MP3 to revert the sound quality back to (or near enough to) where it was before it was compressed, which should give a high quality sound.

As with most MP3 player nowadays they support MP3 and WMA files, a battery life of 20 hours and (according to Phillips) a good quality set of earphones. 
The players support WMA and MP3 files, battery life is rated at 20 hours and Philips says they come with a decent set of cans. The SA2845 (4GB+FM) and SA2825 (2GB+FM) cost £45 and £35 respectively, and the non-FM SA2840 (4GB) and SA2820 (2GB) cost £40 and £30. They are not cheap, but its look like a good quality stylish MP3 player.

Via [Gizmodo]

A recent survey has been done on the radiation emitted by phones and a brief insight as to whether that is really a biological problem. For those that don’t know the answer is pretty much no, but there are serious social problems that are caused by mobiles, shown very vividly in a recent case in Spain.

Two children, aged 12 and 13, have been admitted into a mental health institution to help fight their addiction to their mobiles, having been sent by their parents who felt that the children couldn’t carry out normal activities without their phone. They are now trying to cope for three months without their phones, after they were doing badly at school and were even lying to relatives to get money so they could fund their addiction. Dr Maite Utges, who runs the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida said;

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One of the worst fears that people had when cell phones first became widespread was the radiation that they emitted and what damage it would do to the users, and although the general advice is that you shouldn’t put mobiles near young babies heads, we currently have no evidence that the radiation that is emitted from phones is dangerous.

Nevertheless CNET has compiled a list of which American phones have the most (pictured above), and least (pictured below), radiation and although this doesn’t imply that there is an actual risk, it is interesting to say the least, especially if your phone is at the top. 

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