Gizmo Watch

Be it class, look, or usability, Kinesis has a track record of producing ergonomically impressive products. In line with the tradition, it has announced two new accessories- the new Freestyle V3 and Ascent Multi-tent- enabling the Solo keyboard to perk up your comfort and output. The V3 accessory clips effortlessly to the pedestal of the Solo Keyboard and permits nippy slant settings of 5, 10 and 15 degrees exclusive of the use of tools. The V3 can be used with or sans the Pivot Tether. Besides, discretionary palm supports grant auxiliary suppleness that offer an exceedingly sound typing platform. The Freestyle Ascent Multi-tent lets you with certain tenting angles that may be autonomously set for each keying component in 10 degree increments ranging from 20 to 90 degrees. It’s all set for a launch at the retail price of a very reasonable $24.95 for Freestyle V3, and $199 for Accent Multi-tent accessory respectively.

Source: SlipperyBrick

The days of cursing joystick/keyboard/gamepad may as well be over. A radical new shift in technology wants to put the onus on gamers’ mind for the right directions. OCZ technology has designed a device which it calls NIA or Neural Impulse Actuator. It is completely different from your usual gaming controllers in that it does away with buttons, dials, sticks, wheels and so on and so forth of any sort. Instead it puts body’s natural bio-signals to good effect and uses them to control various aspects of PC games. The Sunnyvale-based company claims to have developed a “brain-computer” interface for the retail market and puts it to test in gaming biz. So no thumbing action, and instead brain numbing action, quite literally! NIA consists of a box-like device accompanied by a headband. The headband translates bio-signals from brain, facial muscles and eye muscles. These signals can be linked to various keys using the configuration software. Thereafter NIA would translate signal into an appropriate gaming command. Read the detailed working here. The advantages that could flow from such an arrangement need not be spelled out. Yes tactile feedback would be missing but superior response rate would easily make up for that. We all are skeptical as to whether this would actually work as imagined, but if it does then By Jove do we have a total gaming experience on our hands or what!

Via

Microsoft Research has come up with a novel pixel design that could lead to displays that are faster, brighter and more power efficient than LCDs. The design, published in Nature Photonics, is much simpler and easier because it involves a pixel that uses a pair of mirrors to block or transmit light. Currently, LCDs hoard most of the market for television, computers and cell phones, but do not offer the best image quality since pixels do not turn completely off and take and take an average of 25-40 milliseconds to switch between colours, resulting in blurred fast-moving images. LCDs are also difficult to use in bright light. Michael Sinclair reports that the telescopic pixels switch completely on and off in 1.5ms ensuing in cost-efficient colour displays. The Microsoft pixel design also reduces the complexity of LCDs since red, green, and blue LEDs can be kept behind separate pixels, instead of behind each pixel, to have them sequentially light up to create different shades. The telescopic pixels are also brighter, even under light, since they allow 36% of the light through as against only 5-10% in pixels of an LCD. We hope this research results in something that is marketable and also affordable. This might replace the small desktop monitor on which one has to switch between windows, and one can have whiteboard-sized thin screen to work on.

Via: TechnologyReview

Personal mobility vehicles haven’t been too popular either because they are unaffordable or they are not functional enough. However, Toyota has unveiled a concept for its personal mobility vehicle that may soon change the way we move around inside the house. Toyota’s iReal travels at a speed of 20mph and lets you fetch beer or snacks from the refrigerator when you want to, for example while watching a movie. The concept also boasts of a battery life of two hours and comes with driving and walking modes. This armchair lookalike may not enter the market for a long time though. Though the vehicle has a promising market, technical issues and manufacturing issues might come in the way. Toyota though, may still take time to even give out any information about it’s manufacture.

Via: T3

The movie ‘Matrix’ and its sequels had spawned a legion of fans. Two kinds, actually! One that completely dotes on the usage of technology in its finest form and another, a die-hard partisan crowd that began to believe that we are perhaps slaves to machines and we need to get ‘unplugged’. For the latter, therefore, anything ‘machine’ is taboo. So, we have a treat meant exclusively for the geeks among you – a PC Case Mod designed around the Matrix Regenerator. The basic hardware requirements are a Pentium 4 3.2, MSI 875P Neo Mainboard, a Solarism 17″ LCD Monitor LM1730, 1 GB Corsair CMX512 3200LL, Crucial Radeon 9800 Pro 256, etc. And as we always say, let’s start from scratch by completely dismantling your original PC case. For the Reservoir, we use a Human Battery Pod, while Pink water wetter should provide a dash of Matrix reality to the capsule.

A highly sensitive bomb detector has been developed by physicists and may help combat terrorist attacks. The detector is equipped with a sensor and can detect hydrogen peroxide, which is usually present in homemade explosive devices. Homemade bombs were used in the London terrorist attacks. Even trace amounts can be detected by the sensor making it extremely effective. The sensor monitors the electrical conductivity of a thin film material, which responds to certain oxidizers by showing an increase in electrical current and decreases electrical current when reacting to ‘reducers’. It can detect even tiny traces of hydrogen peroxide (an oxidizer) and alerts. Cobalt, for example, would not cause the sensor to go into an alarm mode, as it is a reducer. The sensor chip, which is the same size that of a penny is cost effective when, mass-produced and can save many lives.

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Via: ScienceDaily

It seems US Army loves to live in the world of fantasies! Inspired by the fictitious “Terminator” and then perhaps illusioning their capabilities, army guys seem to have gone desperate to engineer artificially intelligent Terminator. This ironical “resolve” of the army has come forward in the form of an official document entitled “psychologically inspired object recognition system” and vows to build the same. This means army wants to build intelligent robots that could “identify” objects at present; perhaps “knowing” how to use them and “deciding” when to use them being the next stages. The document also plans to accomplish the project in three phases!

This document, though official, is perhaps the work of chaps who aren’t even slightly aware of the even the basics of robotics; forget the current state of this technology. Across the world, researchers have been toiling hard from the past two decades to artificially mimic the human thought and decision making process. To illustrate with an example just remember the Terminator, armed with a gun and chasing the girl on his motorbike.

General Motors has been always on the cutting edge of automobile technology making sure that they enhance the driving experience for one and all. Now they have decided that they will extend this to the aged drivers who have often been plagued by problems of clear visibility while driving due to aging problems. General Motors Corp. researchers are working on a windshield that combines lasers, infrared sensors and a camera to take what’s happening on the road and enhance it, so aging drivers with vision problems are able to see a little more clearly.

It seems that with each passing day man is getting closer and closer to making a humanoid that would pretty much be everything that he is except being organic in nature. Not to say that we are getting close that at a rapid pace, but it might be not too far off from today. In a step forward Hitachi Ltd exhibited its second humanoid robot, “EMIEW2,” at Hitachi uValue Convention 2008, the company’s private show that took place from July 17 to 18, 2008, at Tokyo International Forum.

Innovating upon the LED display screen technology, Korean company Dong Bang Data Technology has now announced the launch of a new movable LED display screen for the Korean markets very soon. Christened the FANTAVISION LED HDTV, the display will support 100~164-inch size thanks to its latest detachable design. With a special sound system also thrown in, the display will come equipped with two large speakers capable of delivering better stereo quality sound.