Hasta La Gadget!

Although this is not the first time we’ve seen an efficiency increase in blue OLEDs, it’s worth noting that their proposed cap of productivity up to this point was a lowly five percent. It’s exciting to learn, therefore, about a breakthrough by professor John Kieffer and graduate student Changgua Zhen from the University of Michigan, which has resulted in them successfully increasing azure diode power efficiency by 100 percent. The duo, accompanied by some bright minds in Singapore, manipulated performance controllers by rearranging OLED molecules in a computer model, improving material characteristics. In simple terms though, we’re still looking at a measly ten percent efficiency, so we’ll see where they take it from here.

Scientists improve blue OLED efficiency, don’t promise everlasting light originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  University of Michigan  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on December 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

As websites continue to become more and more AJAXified I believe that bookmarklets are going to become a larger driving force. Some of you may not be familiar with bookmarklets, so I was trying to think of a good way I could explain them. When I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article I thought it couldn’t be said any better:

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page. Because Internet Explorer uses the term favorites instead of bookmarks, bookmarklets are also less commonly called favelets by users.

Bookmarklets can be saved and used like normal web page bookmarks. Therefore, they are simple “one-click” tools that can add substantial functionality to the browser. For example, they can:

• Modify the way a web page is displayed within the browser (e.g., change the font size, background color, etc.).
• Extract data from a web page (e.g., hyperlinks, images, text, etc.).
• Jump directly to a search engine, with the search term(s) input either from a new dialog box, or from a selection already made on a web page.
• Submit the page to a validation service.

There are all kinds of services that provide bookmarks, especially for browsers that don’t support extensions or add-ons, like Opera. The problem is trying to find ones that are actually useful to you. Below I have categorized the different bookmarklets depending on what you are trying to do. I have quite an extensive collection of bookmarklets that I have gathered over the years with my two primary sources being SquareFree and OperaWiki. I’ll be mashing the two sources together to bring you my favorites, and each one will have images signaling which browsers they work with (Firefox 2 , Internet Explorer 7 , and Opera 9 ).

Note: To use any of the following bookmarklets just hold down the left mouse button and drag the hyperlink to the bookmark toolbar in your browser. 

–Hyperlink Manipulation–

• Color code links  
  Makes all internal links on a site red, external links blue, and links pointing to the current page (internal bookmarks) orange.
• Hide visited hyperlinks  
  Removes all hyperlinks that you have already visited on a site, therefore making it easier to see which links you still need to open.
• Rewrite redirects  
  This script will rewrite all URL’s to point directly to the source instead of routing through a redirect URL.
• Increment URL  
  Increases the last number in the URL by 1. This will often work with sites where you go through multiple pages, and therefore simulates pressing the “Next” link.
• Decrement URL  
  Decreases the last number in the URL by 1. This will often work with sites where you go through multiple pages, and therefore simulates pressing the “Previous” link.
• Generate TinyURL   
  Creates a TinyURL for the current site.
• Linkify
  Make all plain-text URL’s into hyperlinks.

–Form Manipulation–

• View password  
  Shows password field in plain text instead of asterisks. 
• Remember passwords
  Some sites try to block passwords from being stored by using the “autocomplete=off” option in the form. If a website is blocking the storage of a password using this option (such as Yahoo! Mail) then it will remove it from the HTML so that the browser can store the password. 

 –Appearance Manipulation–

• Remove bloat  
  Eliminates all occurrences of Flash, Java, music, and third-party iframes.
• Disable StyleSheets  
  Turns off all stylesheets which might be useful for hard-to-read websites.
• Slowly load the site
  Choose how many characters to load on the site each second. Might be useful to test what your site looks like on a dial-up connection by setting the character limit to something low.
• Duplicate tab
  Opens the current site in a new tab. 
• Highlight search term   (submitted by “edwest”)
  Prompts for a search term that you would like to highlight on the current page.
• Ultimate Highlight   (submitted by “Chad-)”)
  Prompts for a search term to be highlighted. It will also display a box in the upper-right corner of the screen with the number of results on the page and a link to start a new search.

–Cookie Manipulation–

• Remove site’s cookies  
  Deletes all cookies created by the current site.
• View site’s cookies  
  View all cookies created by the current site.
• Transfer site’s cookies  
  Transfer cookies created by the current site to a different browser. This bookmarklet will give you the necessary code to re-create a specific cookie in a different browser.

–Other Bookmarklets– 

• Calculator  
  A popup window where you can enter in a simple calculation such as “7 + 4″ and have it return the sum of those two numbers.
• ASCII table  
  Shows the ASCII character table in a new window
• WebColors  
  Shows the 216 “browser-safe” colors with their corresponding hex codes.
• Scroll by Dragging   (submitted by “Chad-)”)
  Executing this bookmarklet will turn the cursor into a scroller and executing it again will return it back to normal.

There you go…now you can start to utilize the power of bookmarklets. If you’re a Firefox user, than many of the bookmarklets mentioned above can also be found in extensions, such as the Linkify. Personally I prefer to use the bookmarklets so that I keep my extensions list to a minimum, and also because I don’t want an extension analyzing every site that I visit when it really isn’t necessary.

There are many more bookmarklets available, so I tried to keep the list concise, yet thorough. If you know of a bookmarklet that you can’t live without, let us know so that we can add it to the list.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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It’s been a while since we gave Harry Winston’s Opus watch any play, but some timepieces are just too lavish to pass up. Case in point: the Opus Eleven, designed by temporal taste-maker Denis Giguet of MCT. Aesthetically speaking, it’s probably a touch too steampunk for some, but the way it tells time is straight up fascinating. Giguet points out the movement enlists 566 parts, a good deal of which are exposed in the main face — the center piece displays the hour, while the upper right disc shows off the minutes. Now, it might look like a relatively minimal watch for Harry Winston, but its case is made of 18k white gold and sapphire crystal, and the Opus Eleven’s definitely got a Winston-worthy price tag, ringing in at about $250,000. So if you’ve got a quarter of a mill just laying around, this is a definite contender for that stack of cash. Want to see all those tiny pieces in action? Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading Harry Winston’s Opus Eleven watch: mechanical masterpiece / bank breaker (video)

Harry Winston’s Opus Eleven watch: mechanical masterpiece / bank breaker (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 17:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CrunchGear  |  Watch Review Blog  | Email this | Comments

As any regular Car Talk listener will tell you, old Fiats aren’t exactly known for being the most durable cars in the world. A homeless man in Brazil took advantage of the discarded shells of these junkers and threw together a brand new car, built entirely from scrap. Starting with a 125cc motorcycle engine, Orismar de Souza was able to put together a working vehicle, capable of hitting 50mph on the highway and featuring such luxuries as a reverse gear and an actual car starter to replace the kickstarter of the 125cc engine. It also sports an in-dash stereo.

After panhandling in the streets for months to raise the $270 he needed for the car’s metal plating, de Souza built the body panels by hand, borrowing a chisel and hammer as tools for the job. Most of the other parts used in making the car came from old discarded Fiats. His previous experience with metalworking led him to be confident in his automotive creation, but that didn’t stop others from telling him that his project was just a joke. The looks on their faces after the car hit 50 must have been priceless.

The finished machine was able to help de Souza land both a home and a job, a fitting end to this inspiring DIY story. And I have a feeling his car is even more reliable than the ones he built it from. At least if it breaks down, no one will tell him he can’t fix it.

[via Hack-A-Day, Jalopnik]

Looks like the US International Trade Commission’s had a busy week in tech, as Bloomberg reports the organization has ruled on two longstanding patent wars involving Apple, Nokia, RIM and Kodak. While neither is out of the woods quite yet, two companies have reason to be pleased: Apple and Kodak. ITC Judge E. James Gildea ruled that five Nokia patents don’t apply to Apple products, making a ban on iDevice importation unlikely in the United States, and the commission has also agreed to reconsider Kodak’s case against Apple and RIM (regarding camera image previews) with its full six members present. Since nobody likes having their products seized at customs, even such preliminary verdicts can lead to large cash sums being paid out, and Kodak thinks it’s found a whopper here — Bloomberg reports that Kodak received a total of $964 million in licensing fees from Samsung and LG, and the company thinks it can suck $1 billion out of its latest pair of defendants. We’ll let you know how it goes down.

Kodak and Apple win early victories at International Trade Commission, big bucks hang in the balance originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  Bloomberg (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments