Month: April 2006

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YOU May Be the Next Alternative Energy Source

If only the evil AIs in The Matrix had been smart enough to create piezoelectric nanowire generators, they wouldn’t have had to go to extraordinary lengths to harvest the paltry amounts of juice we meatbots generate. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have engineered a type of nanogenerator from zinc-oxide nanowires. Like quartz crystal, the nanowires are piezoelectric, i.e. they generate power when they’re stressed. Bending them produces electricity, making them a possible candidate for a power source in future bionic implants. A generator made from bundles of these wires (each 20-40 billionths of a meter in diameter) could, researchers say, produce enough energy to power the implantable medical devices of the near future.

You can find out more about Georgia Tech’s Nanotechnology Research Center here.

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Origami Folds Under Pressure

Making fun of botched Microsoft demos is like shooting fish in a barrel. But given the bluster and bravado of the carp in question, shooting them never seems to lose its appeal. The Korean Times is reporting that, at a recent Samsung show-off of their new Q1 Origami device, MS, Samsung, and Intel execs ALL stumbled and fumbled with the Microsoft-powered ultra-portable. First a Samsung veep couldn’t get passed the second page of the Powerpoint presentation on his Q1, then the device’s battery gave up the ghost after only minutes of operation (it’s rated at 2-3 hours). Then the President of MS Korea couldn’t even launch Powerpoint on his unit, and once he did, it failed him so badly he had to cut his presentation short.

But wait, there’s more! Then the CEO of Intel Korea whipped out his Origami, to save the demo, but had similar problems, as he and nervous underlings struggled to rope-start his presentation.

The Samsung Q1 will go on sale next month in Korea and will set you back US$1200, ya know, if you don’t factor in the cost of downtime, crashes, and calling other people in to help you troubleshoot countless software glitches.

[Via vnunet]

Thanks, Jay!

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Small Retailers to Gouge PS3 via eBay

When the Xbox 360 was in initial short supply, with Redmond shipping stingy amounts to retailers, many of those retailers made a killing by selling the consoles on eBay at an inflatable price. According to a short item on Joystiq, mom and pop retailers are planning to pull the same stunt with the Sony Playstation 3 launch.

So the big retailers will screw you with bait and switch tactics and bloated bundle deals and the smaller stores will make you compete against fellow rabid early adopters for their precious few units. It’s times like these that I’m glad I’m not a rabid video gamer.

[Via Joystiq]

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Dual Core for the Rest of Us

Techware Labs wrestles the very affordable Intel Pentium D 805 dual core processor onto the bench and observes some very impressive performance for the price. They were even able to overclock the chip by an impressive 46%. Thusly tweaked, the 805 was able to outperform the AMD X2 3800+ and the Intel 840EE dual cores, both priced much higher than the 805 (which can be had street for as low as USS130). But as AnandTech points out in their testing of the chip, it mainly shines in multithread or multitask processing, so other types of users may want to wait for AMD’s socket-AM2 to be released or for Intel’s next-gen Conroe processor.

You may also want to check AnandTech’s 805 coverage.

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Epson’s Class Action Settlement Not That Classy

Epson has settled a class action suit filed over the questionable reporting of empty printer cartridges on many of the company’s printers. As you’ve likely experienced, the printer or the printer’s software will indicate that the cart is spent when you can clearly feel or hear that toner is left. In the settlement, buyers who purchased their printers online, and only at the Epson online store, from April 8, 1999 to May 8, 2006, are eligible for US$45 in Epson credit, or a $25 check and $20 in Epson credit, or 25% off, up to $100, at the online store.

Amazingly, the settlement does not require that Epon change the way their printers report empties, and apparently, Epson has no plans to change their practices. So, basically, Epson gives out a few free consolation carts, they continue a scuzzy business practice (we won’t even mention the criminal pricing of their cartridges), and the lawyers involved get to print some money of their own.

You can find the details of the settle at this site.

[Via Daily Tech]

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Is Hello Kitty the Next Threat to American Jobs?

Oh, I just can’t wait for the day when American politicians start making robots a straw man issue in an election season. If Hello Kitty has her way, she’ll be one of the robots taking over our jobs, at least she will be if Japan’s Business Design Laboratory has anything to do with it. They’ve built a Hello Kitty robot office receptionist that a partner company (called Robot Dispatch) is now renting out to businesses. The 20″ bot can recognize faces, ask visitors for their names, and hook them up with the right person in the office. It also has 20,000 stored “conversational patterns,” songs, and riddles.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be a little spooked if I walked into the office of a reputable company and there was a giant plastic doll on the desk asking me to identify myself and posing me riddles while I waited for my appointment. But as the article points out, a robot might at least be more entertaining than many office receptionists.

Thanks, Jay!

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E-Scoot: It’s How I Roll

Alright, you Street Techies who ride scooters, try not to laugh, and you bikers in the audience, try not to hork in your Keiser helmets. It looks like something out of a Frauenfelder comic, like something Kata Sutra might drive, a sleek, barely-there electric scooter that can get 50 miles on a 50 cent charge.

This is something I might personally be interested in. I don’t drive a car and there are tons of stores and restaurants within one or two miles of my house. I’ve thought about a Segway, but they just look too dorky. This baby, a silver jump suit, and a silver helmet (or maybe orange suit and a DEVO flowerpot hat) and you’re talkin’ BOLD statement. The bad news is the Electric Scoot only goes 18mph tops. The price is 1500 Euros (about US$1,800).

For those scooter purists out there (who are still gas conservation conscious), this may be more to your liking.

Read more about the E-Scoot and see more pictures on Gizmag.

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More USB Madness: USB TV!

With all of the Build Your Own DVR articles popping up these days, what if you could just add a TV tuner to your PC by plugging in a thumb drive instead? Akihabara News is showing a few pics of a keychain-sized pocket TV (the MobiTV Global from V-Gear) that plugs into your laptop (or other WinPC) via a USB port. The tuner allegedly handles VHF/UHF/CATV and can even record MPEG-2 video at 720 x 480. Comes with a credit card-sized remote control. Although “Global” is in the name, no word on whether there are plans to sell it outside of Japan.

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DIY USB Thumb Drive

ThinkGeek has this nifty USB adapter that turns any SecureDigital/ MultiMedia Card (up to 1GB) into a USB thumb drive. We all have them, forgotten in a drawer, memory cards for old cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, etc. For US$15, this adapter will turn them into something useful again.

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Paying to Have Your New PC Decrapified?

Todd over at Geek News Central claims that he bought a new Dell computer recently and was asked by the SalesDroid if he wanted to pay an additional $20 to have them remove all of the junk software the manufacturer loads on. I love the twisted logic of this: Buy this product and then pay me more to take some of the product back. Luckily, you don’t have to pay a Blue Shirt at Best Buy to remove all of those unwanted wares. The Dell De-Crapifier is a utility created by a frustrated user to automate this inevitable purging. Unfortunately, it only works with Dells and you have to have the automation and scripting tool AutoIT installed.