Hasta La Gadget!

Sony may have given up hope on the future of Field Emission Displays (FEDs) — CRTs that rely on flat electron emitters, ditching the cumbersome tube and the bulk that goes along with it — but Futaba is still moving forward, demoing a series of displays for Engineering TV in a video embedded for your viewing pleasure below. The company isn’t exactly well-known in consumer display circles (head down to your local hobby shop for a schooling on its most famous products), but despite that seems to be no slouch, able to make these things as slim as 4.2mm while delivering the image quality and contrast ratios of a CRT, all at a lower energy consumption. Could this be the future of the car dashboard? Right now we’d just be happy with some more responsive servos for our RC10; we’d be even more of a force to be reckoned with at the local 1:10 scale dirt track.

Continue reading Futaba thinks Field Emission Displays are still the future

Filed under: Displays, Transportation

Futaba thinks Field Emission Displays are still the future originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The McGyver way to perform a tracheotomy is with a pen-knife and a Bic biro tube, but if you want to truly be ready for everything, you could drop considerably more cash on the $125 LifeStat Emergency Pocket Airway.

If we were to somehow succumb to an emergency requiring this kit, we’d surely be glad somebody was carrying it, but who, really, would wander around with a throat-drill on their keyring? I have been watching too many episodes of Criminal Minds these last weeks to think that anyone could carry this and have good intentions. Fortunately, there is an FDA warning to buyers, in all caps:

 

THE FDA AUTHORIZES THIS DEVICE FOR USE BY MEDICAL PERSONNEL, ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF ESTABLISHING AN EMERGENCY AIRWAY, AND IS NOT TO BE REUSED.

Shiver. We won’t cover the use of this here, as if you are qualified to own one you’ll know already. This reminds me of my time running a London cocktail bar. We were coming up with a new menu and brainstorming drink ideas. Mine contained rum, muddled with peanuts and the shells of shrimps. It would be served with a scalpel and a stiff drinking straw, and be called “The Throat Closer”. True story, although it didn’t make it onto the list.

Product page [Airstat via Cool Tools]

Cordarounds are biking trousers which solve two problems at once, only to introduce a third. First, oily trouser-cuffs: To protect your pants from your dirty chain you’ll need either a chain guard or a bicycle clip, neither of which is particularly cool. Second — being seen. Of course, lights are essential at night, but reflecting tape always helps, and if it is on your ankle it also moves and catchers a driver’s eye.

The Cordarounds both of these by turning the turnups into reflectors and thereby adding stiffness which stops the cuff rolling down:

 

With 3M Scotchlite sewn along the inner cuff, a quick upward fold of the trouser leg will render you nearly indistinguishable from a heroic firefighter (from the ankles down).

They also have pull out reflectors in the rear pockets, called mudflaps, for some extra visibility. And the problem? They’re cords, the least stylish pants material out there (after Nylon). At least those ridges run horizontally, not up and down. The pictured pants may be even worse, made as they are for the office — think corporate dress-down Fridays.

If you can stand it, or if cords actually are the fashion and I am just horribly out of touch, head to the site and pick up a pair for $90. The Cordarounds are only available online and made in, where else, San Francisco.

Product page [Cordarounds via Noquedablogs]

That Blockbuster plans to bring its On Demand service to TiVo is news enough — the Netflix rival certainly needs to shift its streaming movie service onto more devices than the proprietary MediaPoint player you currently need in order to use it.

In fact, this news should tickle TiVo owners, whose box is fast becoming the best single way to watch movies instantly via the internet. But the news that is catching everybody’s attention is a small fact that Blockbuster senior VP Kevin Lewis let slip when talking to Reuters — Blockbuster will stream content to “Apple devices". Sadly, Reuters didn’t quote directly, so we don’t know which devices exactly, only that they will be “the normal places that consumers want to watch movies."

This could just mean a Mac client, something it took Netflix a while to get around to. Or it could mean iPhone or Apple TV. Or it could mean absolutely nothing. Remember Adobe’s increasingly desperate bleats that it is bringing Flash to the iPhone, and that “Apple and Adobe are collaborating"? This “collaboration" was in fact wishful thinking on the part of Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayan.

Could it be that this is merely a Freudian Slip on the part of Lewis? That his desire to be on the iWagon is so great that it bubbled up from Blockbuster’s collective unconscious and spilled out all over the TiVo announcement? We don’t know, but if company philosophy is any indicator, we’d put money on a Netflix/AppleTV double-team instead.

What we do know is the the whole TiVo lineup will be able to use the Blockbuster service in the second half of the year. There will be 10,000 titles to choose from. Prices are yet to be confirmed, but they are likely to be similar to today’s Blockbuster.com prices, at $2-$4 for rentals and $10+ for purchases. The biggest shock, though is this quote from Lewis: “You have to think about what the consumer wants." Yes, he really said that.

Blockbuster aims beyond stores with TiVo deal [Reuters]

Original photo: John Pastor/Flickr

As nerds of feeble build and limited lung capacity, we generally like our portable gadgets to be as small as possible. Problem is, there’s a fine line between ultra-portable and un-useable. Take Evergreen’s $20 Micro USB Mouse… please. Our opposable meat-hammers would futilely mash away on this quartet of buttons — nevermind the scroll-ball. Oh it’s there all right, see it after the break.

[Via Akihabara News]

Continue reading Evergreen’s impossibly small Micro USB Mouse

Filed under: Peripherals

Evergreen’s impossibly small Micro USB Mouse originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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