TechCat

These are the clothes of the future: smart-clothes. I can’t wait for these to be actually produced. Detectair is a fashion project by Genevieve Mateyko and Pamela Troyer. Their unusual clothes detect the pollution level in the air.

I find this pretty darn cool, especially if you live in a big, smoggy city. The quality of the air is transmitted to the wearer thanks to an ingenious LED lighting system, sewn into the fabric of the garment.

If the pollution level is too high, the collar can be pulled up over your face to protect against them, kind of like a gas mask.

Of course, if the pollution level is too high, you’ll probably need to get yourself a biohazard suit and a respirator to cover this outfit with.

[Fashioning Technology via Make:]

Am I the only one who finds large-scale miniatures slightly ironic? If anyone else does, they obviously don’t find them ironic enough to stop making them. The Seoul Museum of History just finished up a full-city recreation that takes up a whopping 317.29-square meters.

This project was finally finished after two years of work, involving over 2,000 people. It cost approximately 1.5 million USD to build, and contains over 200,000 LED. Now that’s a lot of lights. Seeing this city kinda makes me want to go play Beautiful Katamari again.

Video after the jump.

[Techie]

I’m sure at least four of you would have enjoyed seeing the year old Project Natal demo I promised we’d stream live on the site. Thanks to some delightful assdickery by Microsoft we were told we were first told we wouldn’t be able to show the Natal bar – the thing you see above – on video and then we wouldn’t be able to film the screen. The video, in short, would have been me waving my hands around.

The demo unit we saw was still running the Natal project under Windows – it looked like 7 or some dev version running on an XBox – so it’s clear this project is 1/8 baked, if that. Oh well. Both my XBoxen are RRODed anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

With all the flaws that e-book readers have, they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. VTech, makers of fine educational electronics, are rolling out the Flip animated e-book reader, so now, your kids can get in on the action too.

I always loved to read as a kid, so on family trips I’d bring a backpack stuffed with Hardy Boys paperbacks. The Flip is aimed at bit lower age group with the animated touch screen and read-along feature, but it does allow parents to bring dozens of books in a fraction of the space.

It features various word games and a dictionary feature to teach kids how to read, as well as downloadable content. The aren’t a huge number of “books” available, most being various Disney or Pixar characters, but the device hasn’t even launched yet.

Units will be available this August at $59.99 a pop, with the e-books running at $19.99.

It’s not a big secret.  The ear buds Apple provides with all of its iPods & iPhones aren’t great.  Okay I was being kind, they suck!  They do a decent job of providing sound but they often fit poorly.  Apple used to provide the ear buds along with two sets of those foam covers which help keep the buds seated in your ear but they stopped doing so.

While traveling last week I came across the Whoomp Ear Bud Enhancers by Comply.

The Whoomps claim to better the fit of your iPod or iPhone ear buds along with offering a softer more comfortable fit and a boost in bass.

So do they live up to their claims?  Click on through to find out.

… [visit site to read more]

Related posts:

1. The Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers Review: Apple’s Dirty Little Secret
2. Holiday Gift Suggestions: Zagg Z.buds for the Chatty Audiophile
3. Arctic Sound E361 Earphone Review

Tags: Apple, Apple iPad, Apple iPad Accessories, Apple iPhone, Apple iPhone and Touch Gear, Audio Visual Gear, Reviews

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My favorite game in the whole wide world, Civilization, is getting one more incarnation. Civilization V (that’s “five” for non-Romans) is coming in the Fall of 2010 and promises – get this – hex tiles. Hollah!

Civilization V takes this definitive strategy game series in new directions with the introduction of hexagon tiles allowing for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes for players to explore as they expand their empire. The brand new engine orchestrates a spectacular visual experience that brings players closer to the Civ experience than ever, featuring fully animated leaders interacting with players from a screen-filling diplomatic scene and speaking in their native language for the first time. Wars between empires feel massive as armies dominate the landscape, and combat is more exciting and intense than ever before. The addition of ranged bombardment allows players to fire weapons from behind the front lines, challenging players to develop clever new strategies to guarantee victory on the battlefield. In addition to the new gameplay features debuting in Civilization V, an extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements will also make an appearance.

Trust me: I’m truly excited about this. I play mostly Civ Revolutions on the iPhone but I’d be willing to sit down and waste a few months on Civ V on the PC.

NEW YORK, Feb 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — 2K Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (TTWO 9.58, -0.08, -0.83%) , today announced that Sid Meier’s Civilization(R) V, the newest entry from the genre-defining strategy-based franchise, is currently in development at Firaxis Games for PC. Civilization V reinvigorates the classic turn-based strategy genre with an astonishing new engine built from the ground-up for this flagship edition of the Civilization franchise. Players are introduced to an entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience providing hours of entertainment as players build and defend their empire on their quest to become the greatest ruler the world has ever known.

Civilization V takes this definitive strategy game series in new directions with the introduction of hexagon tiles allowing for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes for players to explore as they expand their empire. The brand new engine orchestrates a spectacular visual experience that brings players closer to the Civ experience than ever, featuring fully animated leaders interacting with players from a screen-filling diplomatic scene and speaking in their native language for the first time. Wars between empires feel massive as armies dominate the landscape, and combat is more exciting and intense than ever before. The addition of ranged bombardment allows players to fire weapons from behind the front lines, challenging players to develop clever new strategies to guarantee victory on the battlefield. In addition to the new gameplay features debuting in Civilization V, an extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements will also make an appearance.

“Sid Meier’s Civilization franchise has been recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all time with millions of units sold worldwide,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “Civilization V takes the franchise further by offering players a more immersive experience with deeper strategies; heightened tactical combat; vast, realistic landscapes to explore, battle over and claim as their own; and an in-game community hub where Civ fans can share content and compete against each other without leaving the game. This marks a new era that will forever change the franchise responsible for sleep deprivation and reduced productivity for nearly two decades.”

“Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenges for our team,” said Sid Meier, director of creative development at Firaxis Games. “Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we’re excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series.”

In addition to Civilization V, Firaxis Games is also currently developing Sid Meier’s Civilization(R) Network(TM), a Civ game for Facebook. With Sid Meier leading design, Civilization Network will offer yet another option for world domination to both the casual gamer and the biggest fans of the series. It’s another way to access the famously addictive world of Civilization.

via Gameriot

Typically when you’re looking at laptop coolers, most of what you’ll see will also double as a lap desk.  Which is good for some, but it’s not necessary for everyone.  If you’d like something a little more minimal, this one is the way to go.  It would be far easier to fit inside of your laptop bag too, which is a serious bonus.

They look like nothing more than a set of portable speakers.  When in fact they’re laptop coolers crafted with Swarvoski crystals to add a little more elegance.  Although it seems odd to add crystals to something that’s going to be underneath your computer, you might like the added sparkle.  These are completely USB powered and can be purchased for $49.99.  Which for having the added crystals isn’t a bad price.

Source: Gizmodiva

This video is pretty amazing and a real eye-opener at how pervasive green-screening has become in almost every scene in television these days. If it takes place outdoors, it is faked in one way or another.

In some cases you wonder why they even had to change the scenery. I guess even the most beautiful reality isn’t real enough these days. Gives me a whole new appreciation for actors these days. These guys and gals are way more talented then they get credit for.

Makes me wonder how far they will go.

[BB]

I should have known before I even checked just who this product would come from.  It just screams Hammacher, but somehow I didn’t figure it out till I looked.  This Solar Pool Heater will make sure that you never will have to go diving into an ice cold pool of water.  Instead it’ll stay slightly warmer to keep you from going into shock over the temperature.  Sure, it won’t turn your pool into a giant hot tub, but at least the water won’t initially seem icy.

Thankfully your pool will remain heated purely through the power of the sun.  The heater just attaches to your pool’s pump-operated filtering system.  The water is then warmed by moving through the heater’s coiled black heating system that’s exposed to the sun’s energy.  Those coils measure 20 feet long.  If you don’t like the speed that it warms up the water, you can hook up to four heaters to your pool.  You can purchase these for $199.95.

Source: RGS

Okay, what’s going on here? This is the headline of Kingston’s latest press release:

Kingston Digital Ships First 256GB USB Flash Drive in the U.S.

Right. What’s this, then? Commenters were reporting buying that thing, here in the U.S., months ago. But I guess it wasn’t actually released here, maybe only imported? Is this like how companies won’t let me review gadgets that are out in other countries but not my own?

And why would they replace a good-looking drive with this butt-ugly-Transformers-duffel-bag-style one? They both use the cheapest flash storage out there, and I doubt the interface tech has changed much in the last few months. Man, I’m never going to understand this industry.

Some of you may not know this, but film critic Roger Ebert has recently lost his voice due to a complication after cancer surgery.

If he still wishes to continue his career, he could just stick to writing, or he could get one of those text-to-speech devices like Stephen Hawking.

That, or work with Scottish company CereProc by combining the hours of recordings from At The Movies, Siskel and Ebert and the Movies, and Ebert and Roeper and the Movies to create a database for his voice and daily vocabulary. It would be relatively easy to make any word from the sounds of other words.

I suppose that this is a way to create a library for people who will be losing their voices, like Ebert. Of course, you would probably have to have a lot of vocal recordings to get that database. I’m not certain how many syllables and vowel sounds there are, but it sounds like a complicated process.

In a way, I suppose that this is a way of preserving someone’s voice for an eternity, really. I once heard that a company can use a celebrity’s image after he or she is deceased. This definitely explains how John Wayne can appear on Coors ads.

I suppose if you really had vocal databases of every person, then you could have late celebrities say anything you want. This would explain a recent ad for One Laptop Per Child with John Lennon.

Take this tech one step further, and deceased could cut some new tunes. Man, that probably isn’t right.

Source

Here’s a creepy tale involving a Pennsylvania school, and an abuse of technology and power. A Pennsylvania school district has been accused of spying on its students through webcams. Webcams in laptops which the school provided. Spying on them at home.

The district gave laptops to all of their students and were apparently able to activate the webcams remotely. Beware school officials bearing gifts…

It was discovered when a student was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home,”. The Vice Principal even used a photo taken from his laptop’s webcam as evidence. I wonder just how they think this behavior is justified. If a kid did this, they would want him thrown in jail, so I would hope the same applies to the officials involved.

[Boing Boing]

Imbued with a flower’s innate grace, the bouquet vase is available in two different sizes.

link

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A prototype version of Google Goggles was demonstrated by Google’s Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt at MWC 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. Google Goggles is a visual search application developed for Android 1.6 and above smartphones that allows mobile users to snap a digital picture and have Google return related search results based upon the image.

The new feature being developed no longer returns just related searches, but is able to recognize foreign words in the image and subsequently translate them although for the prototype, this is limited to just German to English translation.

The prototype works by making use of Google’s machine translation and image recognition services. More specifically, “on the simplest level, this prototype connects the phone’s camera to an optical character recognition (OCR) engine, recognizes the image as text and then translates that text into English with Google Translate.”

There’s no indication as to when Google may release this new product but by the time the service does launch, Google hopes to offer image to text translation for each of the 52 languages currently supported through Google Translate.

Once this service is fully implemented, it will simply enhance the entire experience of traveling abroad as you will be able to translate a sign, poster or any item that contains foreign language text.

Via: Google Mobile Blog

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© Coolest Gadget Reviews, 2010.


Coated brings you the coolest gadgets and best geek toys.

Google Developing Goggles To Translate Image Text |
Online News | Post tags: google

AT&T will be selling the Android-powered Motorola BACKFLIP starting March 7. This marks the first device sold by AT&T which runs the Android operating system. The price is $199.99 with a 2-year contract and a smartphone data plan.

So it hit up online or head down to a brick-and-mortar store on that date. Motorola debuted the new device back in January. It combines a reverse QWERTY flip keyboard with a custom Android (Android) operating system supporting the company’s MOTOBLUR technology.

[Mashable]

VUDU apps is going to start being a lot more available with the announcement today that Zoran, “the U.S. market share leader in flat panel televisions according to DisplaySearch,” is integrating VUDU apps and VUDU Movies into its SupraHD processor. This announcement comes on the heels of a recent deal with Entone to bundle VUDU apps with a variety of IPTV set-top boxes. All this in addition to existing VUDU integration with TVs from LG, Mitsubishi, Samsung, SANYO, Sharp, Toshiba and VIZIO means that VUDU is more and more available.

ZORAN CORPORATION ANNOUNCES INTEGRATED VUDU APPS REFERENCE DESIGN FOR RAPID DEPLOYMENT OF INTERNET CONNECTED HDTVS
SupraHD-Based HDTV Reference Platforms Designed for U.S. & Europe Available Q2 2010

Sunnyvale, Calif. – Feb 18, 2010 – Zoran Corporation (Nasdaq: ZRAN), the U.S. market share leader in flat panel televisions according to DisplaySearch, today announced that VUDU Apps, a platform for the delivery of Internet entertainment services on HDTVs, and VUDU Movies, the leading HD on-demand movie service currently available, are being integrated on Zoran’s advanced SupraHD TV processor design platforms.

The new reference designs, enabling the rapid deployment of Internet-connected HDTVs for Zoran’s OEM and ODM customers, provide integrated software that includes both Zoran’s TV Applications and VUDU Apps. Zoran customers that deploy VUDU-enabled HDTVs will provide TV viewers access to over 100 apps, ranging from news providers to popular Internet services and VUDU Movies.

Current VUDU Apps include:

• VUDU Movies, featuring the world’s largest catalog of HD movies, with over 3,000 titles, and HDX, the only streaming 1080p HD video with high resolution 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound available directly on Internet-connected televisions
• VUDU Ticker, an Internet powered real-time ticker that enables the display of user specific Internet content updates over live TV
• Popular Internet services, such as Pandora, Dailymotion, Picasa and Flickr
• Leading news providers, such as The New York Times and The Associated Press
• Popular Video podcasts such as Revision3 and DiggNation

“Providing a pre-integrated version of VUDU Apps, running on top of our most advanced HDTV processor platform, will enable our TV customers to deliver the kind of Internet-connected TVs consumers are starting to demand,” said Mustafa Ozgen, general manager Zoran’s Digital TV business unit. “Our highly integrated SupraHD product line provides the best cost-performance solutions in the industry, while delivering the high performance needed to support advanced applications such as VUDU Apps.”

“Solidifying our relationship with Zoran allows us to expand the extraordinary value of VUDU Apps to a broader range of HDTV OEMs and ODMs,” said Edward Lichty, VUDU’s EVP of Corporate Development. “By leveraging VUDU’s unique cloud architecture, Zoran’s HDTV customers’ products will be able to run a constantly expanding suite of applications and services without having to download or install new software in the field.”

About VUDU
VUDU is a leading provider of streaming media technologies and services that deliver Internet entertainment to broadband-enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray disc Players (BDP). VUDU is the creator of VUDU Movies, which delivers on-demand movies in HDX, the only format to offer streaming 1080p resolution and 5.1 surround sound. In addition, the company offers VUDU Apps, a platform to deliver streaming Internet applications to HDTVs and BDPs; examples of applications on the VUDU Apps platform include Pandora, Dailymotion, Picasa, Flickr, The New York Times, The Associated Press, VUDU Movies and many more. For more information, visit http://www.vudu.com/.

About Zoran Corporation
Zoran Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California, is a leading provider of digital solutions for the digital entertainment and digital imaging markets. With over two decades of expertise developing and delivering digital signal processing technologies, Zoran has pioneered high-performance digital audio and video, imaging applications, and Connect Share Entertain™ technologies for the digital home. Zoran’s proficiency in integration delivers major benefits for OEM customers, including greater capabilities within each product generation, reduced system costs, and shorter time to market. Zoran-based DTV, set-top-box, DVD, digital camera, multimedia mobile phone, and multifunction printer products have received recognition for excellence and are now in hundreds of millions of homes and offices worldwide. With headquarters in the U.S. and additional operations in China, England, France, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Sweden and Taiwan, Zoran may be contacted on the World Wide Web at www.zoran.com or at 408-523-6500.

It’s pretty amazing what they can do with prosthesis these days, but these mechanical arms and legs tend to drag a little as the human walks.

In order to make these prosthesis parts more in sync with humans, people from the University of Michigan and Delft University in the Netherlands are conducting some new experiments. These researchers are tying to create an artificial foot that can recycle the kinetic energy generated by the stepping of the foot itself.

Here’s the basic concept: this foot mimics the natural “push-off” of the human ankle, and then uses “a microprocessor to control the device and capture the energy that is normally dissipated by the leg”. Current studies with the experimental foot have shown that “energy recycling restored ankle push-off to normal and reduced the net metabolic energy penalty to 14 percent”.

I am told that this prosthetic leg requires a small battery to operate, and it runs off less than one watt of power. Of course, if you are harnessing the kinetic energy of walking, then is there any reason that we cannot set it up so that the walking and running will charge the battery?

Of course, I don’t really know much about this technology to assume something like that. After all, this is still concept technology. So if it is possible to charge the battery by walking, I’m sure they’ll figure that one out.

Source

AquaVim is known for making the best glass aquariums, particularly its seamless curved glass aquariums. It’s table aquarium series put you in a truly sit-back-and-relax mode after a long day from your work. Built-in ecological filtration system let you enjoy your aquatic animals virtually care-free year long. Extra sockets inside columns enable you to plug in your heater, air pump or other accessories without being noticed.

Coffee table aquarium

Healthy, luxurious far infrared warmth surounds your dog or cat as they relax in ultimate comfort. Non-contact radiant heat is the only heat that is completely safe for all animals. Plugs into standard outlet. 110v 180 watts.
Far Infrared has been shown to reduce pain, increase immune function, speed healing and reduce joint stiffness.

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