Hasta La Gadget!

LED data transmission used to be all the rage — we fondly remember beaming Palm Pilot contacts via IrDA. Then we got omni-directional Bluetooth and building-penetrating WiFi, and put all that caveman stuff behind us. But now, scientists the world over are looking to bring back line-of-sight networking, and the latest demonstration has Chinese researchers streaming video to a laptop with naught but ceiling-mounted blue LEDs. The Chinese Academy of Sciences claims to have realized a 2Mbit per second internet connection that transmits data simply by modulating the flicker of the little diodes, and imperceptibly enough to have them serve as room lighting as well. Like Boston University before them, the Chinese scholars see short-range LED networks controlling smart appliances. It’s not quite the gigabit speed you’d get from laser diodes, but this way you’ll get more mileage out of those expensive new bulbs, eh?

Chinese scientists demonstrate 2Mbps internet connection over LED originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 20:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Suteteko (ステテコ) have apparently been around since before the Meiji period, when Japanese wore them under their kimono or hakama. Now they are back, courtesy of as Corporation’s Steteco.com.

This new range of the traditional garment has been getting a lot of attention for its colorful and modern designs, utilizing old weaving techniques to provide practical clothes for the contemporary salaryman.

A sort of Japanese long john, suteteko double-up as underwear and casual bottoms. You wear them under your office pants, handily absorbing your clothes’ trapped heat (especially in the humid summer). Then when you get home you whip off your pants and simply relax in the suteteko.

They are made from a “crepe cotton” (綿クレープ) which keeps you dry and cool, absorbing heat and letting your clothes breath. UNIQLO have seen mammoth success with their Cool Biz range (plus their winter equivalent, HEAT TECH), but it seems there already was something like this in the Japanese wardrobe!

Previously seen as clothes for older men, suteteko’s popularity among the younger demographic has soared of late, courtesy of steteco.com’s image makeover. In the first four months of this year alone saw the tripling of the brand’s online sales and shipments to select shops and department stores, and now the makers are targeting female consumers too.

Polaroid has one of the world’s most iconic brands: The self-developing snapshots, with their classic white borders, are nearly as recognizable as the red Coca-Cola logo, the Campbell’s soup can or the Burberry plaid.

The company’s cameras delivered instant visual gratification long before digital cameras arrived on the scene, making them an early photographic sensation.

But Polaroid’s fortunes have waned. The company, which was founded in 1937, has declared bankruptcy twice and was sold to two different buyers. Its assets have long been dispersed, and its factories were shut down. Polaroid even announced in 2008 that it would stop making its instant film, prompting some enthusiasts to create their own Polaroid-compatible film packs.

Now a company called PLR IP Holdings has rights to the Polaroid brand and has said it will revive some iconic Polaroid cameras. The company recently introduced a new camera, the Polaroid PIC-300.

Last month, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based MIT Museum announced that PLR Holdings has donated a massive collection from Polaroid’s archives.

The archive has some fascinating objects. There are boxes of rare Polarized glasses dating from the 1939 World’s Fair, original newsprint sketches by Polaroid founder Edwin Land, a historic bellows camera the size of a filing cabinet and the SX-70 cameras that defined the instant-photography era.

Overall, the collection has more than 1,800 boxes containing 10,000 items.

“For anyone interested in science, technology, art or consumer culture, this is an unprecedented opportunity to look at a series of products and watch their design unfold from every aspect,” says Deborah Douglas, curator of the collection at the MIT Museum.

Polaroid is unusual among American companies in that it has extensively documented its products and maintained archives of its work, says Douglas.

“This is one of the top five company collections out there, along with IBM, Bell Labs, DuPont and Boeing,” she says.

You’ll just wave your iPhone at any Visa payWave terminal, which can already be found at some 32,000 retailers, and voila, you’ve made your transaction.

It’s not a major update by any stretch. But Sonos owners are accustomed to regular software updates that extend or enhance the functionality of their distributed wireless audio system… for free. A good thing since a four room system can easily set you back a few thousand dollars — a hefty price compared to some brute force solutions but relatively cheap compared to custom solutions offering similar functionality but with the additional burden of extensive in-wall wiring. Today’s Sonos 3.2 update delivers crossfading to smooth the transition between songs and more sophisticated alarm settings allowing you to wake to any of Sonos’ vast music delivery options at any time and in any room of the house. The gang from Santa Barbara also added Japanese and Simplified Chinese language support and tossed in access to the streaming iheartradio music service giving US owners access to exclusive content and some 750 national radio stations. But the flagship feature is probably the ability to join any two S5 speaker systems to create a stereo pair — one S5 serving the left channel and the other serving the right. A union meant to achieve a balance indistinguishable from that of heaven and hell, yin and yang, or Nilay and Paul. Read our impressions after the break where you’ll also find a spectacular press release using plain, bold, and italicized text!

Continue reading Sonos 3.2 update and S5 stereo pairing put to the test

Sonos 3.2 update and S5 stereo pairing put to the test originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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