Japanese researchers have cooked up a minuscule kinetic battery capable of generating more energy than anything of its kind. Through only the slightest vibrations, the tiny device cranks out 22 milliwatts—20 times more than anything similar before it. More »
You’ve seen so many Kinect hacks by now that you probably think you know them all — but wait, have you seen one that makes you look like Predator when he’s busy predatorizing the populace? Or one that lets you reenact your favorite Metal Gear Solid scenes with Snake’s camo turned on? Yup, a Japanese coder by the name of Takayuki Fukatsu has exploited the versatile openFrameworks to give Kinect a mode where it tracks your movement and position, but turns the dull details of your visage into an almost perfectly transparent outline. Of course, you’re not actually transparent, it looks to be just the system skinning an image of the background onto the contours of your body in real time, but man, it sure is cool to look at. You can do so for yourself with the video after the break.
Continue reading Kinect now offers a stealth mode, courtesy of optical camouflage hack (video)
Kinect now offers a stealth mode, courtesy of optical camouflage hack (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Technically speaking, Polaroid returned to instant photography earlier this year with the introduction of the 300, but we all know that thing was forgotten as soon as it was revealed. The famed camera outfit — despite being a shell of its former self — just dropped a luscious teaser into our inbox to let us know about an exclusive event it’ll be hosting at CES 2011 next month. The image you see above is severely distorted, but we did so to give you a better idea of what’s truly to come — unless that’s an outrageously shaped projector, we’re guessing it’s some sort of next generation instant camera. The slot on the bottom definitely helped push us over the edge, but if you’d rather cover the whole thing in mystique and guess for yourself, the un-doctored (er, unmutilated) teaser is just after the break. Oh, and we’ll be bringing you the blow-by-blow on what this thing really is on January 6th, hopefully with Outkast blaring in the background.
Continue reading Polaroid’s CES 2011 teaser hints at instant photography’s rebirth
Polaroid’s CES 2011 teaser hints at instant photography’s rebirth originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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CNET takes a look back at some of 2010’s biggest stories from the wireless industry. What are yours?
Originally posted at Dialed In
Considering Sprint’s heavy investment in Clearwire — and the fact that it shares its WiMAX network with the company — you can understand why it might be a little weary of letting other carriers in on the spectrum. That said, a Goldman Sachs analyst that apparently met with Sprint execs this week has said that they “have encouraged” a wholesale spectrum deal that would bring cash in from T-Mobile USA — a company that has yet to settle on a next-gen network strategy beyond HSPA+ — though it would ultimately depend on the price. Considering Clearwire’s somewhat bleak financial picture, it seems likely that Sprint’s looking at this as a do-or-die situation — it isn’t necessarily interested in dumping cash into the company by itself ad nauseam, but if it allows the company to falter, that could have unsavory consequences on Sprint’s own 4G ambitions. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
Sprint wouldn’t mind if T-Mobile bought 4G spectrum from Clearwire originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Bose, Altec Lansing, Logitech, and all the other high-quality iPhone speaker manufacturers better watch out; there’s competition in town, and this one doesn’t even need power to impress. The Phonofone III ($195 CAD) looks like a gramophone from the future. Just like the smaller, less elegant-looking Bone Horn Stand ($25), the Phonofone amplifies the volume emitted from your iPhone’s internal speaker without any electronics.
Though the Bone Horn only magnifies the sound to 13 decibels, the Phonofone III amplifies the speaker roughly 4x, or about 60 decibels. And, unlike the Bone Horn’s silicone body, the Phonofone is handmade from ceramic. If you think it looks heavy, you’re wrong; the Phonofone weighs only 1.75 lbs.
This is the third model in the Phonofone series from Canadian designers Science and Sons. According to TreeHugger.com, the first Phonophone was released three years ago. It had a larger body and an even heftier price of $875. You can see the Phonofone I and Phonofone II at Scienceandsons.com.
This is the first batch to be released, and there are only 50 pieces to be sold at the moment. If you’d like a Phonofone by Christmas, make sure to get your order in before December 5.
Some may think it’s too much to spend on a 230 (with shipping) iPhone speaker that has no other features besides making your music louder. For example, for about the same price you can get the Altec Lansing Mix iMT800 iPod dock for $199 down from its $299.95 list price at Amazon. This is a PCMag Editors’ Choice due to its tremendous power, built-in subwoofer, user-adjustable EQ, two aux inputs and cable for additional MP3 players, and its FM tuner.
Just think, you can get all that for the price of a really, really cool-looking iPhone “speaker.” So, the question is, do you choose beauty, over bells and whistles? Let us know what you would pick in the comments below.
University researchers think they’ve come up with a fix for augmenting GPS systems when satellite signals are blocked: a shoe radar system.
Verizon didn’t make any mention of it during it’s big announcement yesterday, but PC Magazine‘s Sascha Seagan has confirmed with the carrier that it will indeed be offering its 4G LTE service off-contract as well. That will actually come in at the same rates as the on-contract pricing — $50 for 5GB or $80 for 10GB, plus a $10 per GB overage — but you’ll have to shell out a full $249.99 for the modem, as opposed to just $99.99 on a two-year contract (after a $50 mail-in rebate).
Verizon confirms contract-free 4G LTE options: same rates, pricier modems originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Well, Google it’s been quite a ride–from your humble beginnings as a minimalistic search wonder to your ubiquitous email service to your 1984esque photographing every block in the industrialized world. But only now has the primary use of your suite of web-based tools been realized: tricking the vocalization function of Google Translate into beatboxing.
As far as I can tell, this reddit user was the first person to figure out that you can trick Google Translate into interpreting various nonsense words (“pv zk pv pv zk pv zk”) into very beatboxy notes. To make it work, one of the languages has to be German (if you just paste some “notes” in the first translate box, Google automatically detects most of the words as German). Then, just click “listen.”
It’s like the Fat Boys are living in your computer.
This little hacklette has become so popular that if you google the phrase “google beatbox,” the first link is Google Translate.
Many others have globbed on to the trick with their own library of sounds (here and here, for example). But it’s kind of fun to experiment around yourself to see what you can make one of the world’s largest corporations do against its will.
Thanks, internet.
In addition to its many artist charts, Billboard just added the weekly Social 50, which ranks artists based on their popularity on social media sites. Yep, social media rules the world.
Social 50 chart ranks artists’ popularity using a formula blending their weekly additions of friends/fans/followers, along with weekly artist page views and weekly song plays on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and iLike. The tally also includes the ratio of page views-to-fans/friends on YouTube and MySpace. The Social 50 emphasizes friends/fans behavior above other activities, followed by artist page views and the ratio of page views to fans and song plays.
So in essence, you, the social media addicted fan, help determine which artists makes the list through your interaction with their social media accounts. In the debut chart, the top five artists that consume the most of our time online are: Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Nicki Minaj. Others that made the the list include, Katy Perry, Kesha, Taylor Swift, the Glee Cast, and uh, Michael Jackson (is he still active on social media?).
If your fav didn’t make the list, get back on that social media horse and get following, liking, and listening.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
