Archive for the ‘Electronic Gadgets’ Category
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently filed an emergency motion with the Newton District Court in Boston on behalf of a Boston College Student who was accused of criminal wrong-doing and had all of his computer and electronic equipment seized.
The warrant was issued based upon the “evidence” that the student was seen using a command line instead of the Windows GUI they teach at Boston College.
You can read the whole sad story at Boston College Campus Police: “Using Prompt Commands” May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity.
I think that anyone considering either attending Boston College or hiring a graduate of Boston College should think about how miserably low academic standards there must be if students in the Computer Science program are considered “hackers” if they have the skills necessary to use a command line.
The Hokkaido environmental summit proved to be a real eye opener as Sharp introduced an experimental 26 inch LCD TV which uses up around 30% less power than its mates. It has a contrast ratio of 10000:1 and the display panel is only 20mm thick. It seems they were aiming for the masses earning below $2/day to save on the electric bills.
Since the internal battery for the iPhone can’t be accessed you can get the iPhoneck backup battery, which just plugs in from the bottom and powers up the built-in one, when you run out of power. It can charge up to 60% of your iPhone’s battery life and fits flush in from the bottom side, without mutilating the iPhone design. It’s selling for $35.21.
Night time reading is a lot better thanks to the Twinbird LED Lamp. You can clamp it onto the bed post or something similar and you can rotate is 270 degrees and you can focus the light onto the book. This lamp is bright enough to provide light to both pages if you are not into folding the book completely. The Twinbird LED Lamp is sold only in Japan for about $84.
Targus presents us with the new model, AEM0702AP. So far, its easily available in Korea, I don’t know about the other places. These speakers are powered with AAA batteries. No word on pricing so far.
Dell’s been my favorite in terms of design and performance. They’ve brought out the new Studio Range.
The design is cool and its one of the thinnest they’ve brought out. Due to the wedge shape and hinge mechanism, the screen appears lower than usual. It also uses a cool back-lit keyboard for night browsing. Now that looks good!
It has basic features -
- 15.4″ or 17″ Widescreen Display
- Fingerprint reader for the security conscious
- Optional Blu-ray drive
- HDMI output to connect to your large HD screen
- 5.1 Sound
- Optional built-in mobile broadband (this is going require an additional monthly charge)
You can buy this from Dell’s site for $750
Daewoo Lucoms presents its low cost, education computer equivalent, Lukid. It has the Intel Celeron 900MHz processor and is powered by Windows XP. Also features a 9″ LCD display, 512MB RAM and 30GB hard drive. Lukid is retails for around $500 in Korea.
Something really cool about the time when you walk along the drive way with these pots around the place huh? Powered by the sun, no additional work is needed other than the nerves to enjoy the sullen beauty of the soft light.
The variety of the plants that can be grown is unsure but it shouldn’t really be a problem. The pot is being sold on Firebox’s UK site the white one is being sold for about $39 and the color changing for about $45.
Above is the Comcast Center in Philadelphia, and covers over 2,100 square feet of wall space with four-millimeter LED lights. The image quality and resolution is about 5 times that of a HDTV. Comcast paid Barco $22 million for the wall display and the automated control room, which handles about 27,000 gigabytes of information.
Camcorder pens often sacrifice the whole “writing” thing in the name of capturing video, but this one from BrickHouse Security does write, and has considerably bigger storage capacity than the old video pens. Two hours of battery time per charge, 30 hours of audio and/or video (4GB), and at a nice price of $250.
