Hasta La Gadget!

The California Air Resources Board will give four separate groups–Mebtahi Station Services, the San Francisco Airport, Shell Hydrogen,
and UCLA –a total of $1.7 million each to build four hydrogen refueling stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to AutoblogGreen.

The four
stations will be compatible with fuel cell vehicles like the Honda FCX Clarity–and give Jamie Lee Curtis more refueling options. The report said that the four stations will double the amount of hydrogen fuel currently available to the public–which is amazing when you think about the bang-for-the-buck quotient. Specifically, the four stations in total will provide up to 460 kilograms of hydrogen every 24 hours. That’s enough to refuel about 100 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles per day.

“Hydrogen is one of the many
fuels in California’s future,” said Mary Nichols, CARB’s chairman, in a statement. “We need to cultivate the
industry’s early growth.”

We’ve been covering the growing market of home lifestyle products being put out by companies that, for many years, focused entirely on toys for children. Sega Toys, U-Mate, Bandai, Takara Tomy, and more have been slowly growing product lines that appeal to the 30+ generation that grew up with gadgets and has cash to spend.

The new A.i.R. Project (Art in the Room) from Bandai is a perfect example of how lifestyle and wellness goods are growing in quality as well. Costing over $600, the ambiance-creating light system is digital art for the consumer, and was created by artist Taro Suzuki who has done many similar large-scale projects in the past.

The A.i.R. Project is more complicated than it looks. Inside each LED-lit square is a mini fan that, when triggered in combination with light patterns, starts blowing air to physically move the cloth cover. The result is a light sculpture that moves both with light and wind, and can be manipulated with internal sensors that detect touch on each side and moves the lights in that direction.

Verizon Wireless has unveiled its version of the HTC Touch Diamond, which will be available in stores and direct from Verizon’s Web site beginning tomorrow. As with other versions, the Touch Diamond features a 2.8-inch touch screen with full VGA (480-by-640-pixel) resolution, a 3.2 megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, and HTC’s TouchFLO interface overlay for Windows Mobile Professional 6.1.

The handset also includes visual voice mail, a VZ-Navigator-capable GPS chip, mobile instant messaging clients, and just plain looks cool. Unfortunately, looks aren’t everything. We’ve reviewed TouchFLO many times before, including unlocked and Sprint versions of the Touch Diamond. Suffice to say that it’s a powerful but flawed handheld, with a sluggish, uneven interface but plenty of high-tech features. I also reviewed Verizon’s version of the HTC Touch Pro, which adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard to the design.

As is typical for Verizon, the carrier is pricing the Touch Diamond on the high side at $299.99 with a two-year customer agreement. Actually, it’s even higher–that price includes a $70 mail-in rebate, which will come in the form of a debit card, so it’s actually $369.99 up front.

Nearly five months ago Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence embarked on a quest to replace a prosthetic eye with a wireless video camera. The idea was to turn himself into an ‘eyeborg’ and give him the ability to make movies all the time by just looking around.

Now Spence says he is moving closer to a prototype. Spence and his team have created a two-piece clear prosthetic eye and rigged it up to a wireless transmitter and a tiny camera–though he’s still finding a way to fit that into the prosthetic eye.

"It’s a lot of MacGyvering at this point that we are doing," says Spence.

We first wrote about Spence  in December as he was just getting started on his project. Spence lost his right eye at 13 and has  worn a prosthetic eye since then. But he says he’s determined to have a wireless video camera in there someday.

With help from three companies– OmniVision, RF Wireless and Varta
Microbattery–he has been trying to engineer a prosthetic eye with a
video camera in it.

"One thing that I have stopped doing for now is putting the
electronic components inside the eye because they get wax all over them
or get bent," he says. "But I have been successful in finding
components that can be small enough to create a custom design if we had
a greater budget."

The weak economy has slowed down Spence’s progress. Finding corporate sponsorships has been hard, he says, and few broadcasters have jumped to pick up some of the footage he’s shot.

Meanwhile, he’s fitted a LED light into his prosthetic eye so it gives off a eerie red glow. "The LED doesn’t do much," laughs Spence. "But at least it helps people understand visually what I am trying to achieve."

See also:
Eye Spy: Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket

Photo: Rob Spence

It was a long time coming, but we have a full review up of the very, very popular Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77. On the upside, it can now be found for $60 less than …