Ricoh’s new electronic paper promises greater brightness, enhanced color

Color E Ink technology still has some kinks to work out, but Ricoh thinks it may have just taken a big step forward with its latest display. The company’s electronic paper, introduced at SID this week, promises to reproduce images that are 2.5 times brighter than competitors’ offerings, while covering a color range that’s four times wider. To achieve this, Ricoh used a simple lamination method, layering three strips of electrochromic material between two substrates. Unfortunately, however, there’s no indication that the technology will be commercially available anytime soon, as Ricoh still needs to incorporate its e-paper onto more practical screen sizes, as well as enhance the display’s durability — both of which sound like pretty major hurdles to us. Full press release after the break.

Continue reading Ricoh’s new electronic paper promises greater brightness, enhanced color

Ricoh’s new electronic paper promises greater brightness, enhanced color originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 08:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Pre 3 listed for pre-order on Amazon.de: €449 for the best of webOS

We’re not dealing with price estimates anymore, here’s an honest-to-goodness pre-order for the HP Pre 3. Amazon Germany, a traditionally quick retailer to put device listings up, has added the webOS 2.2 QWERTY slider to its online catalog at a price of €449 ($640) — though availability is predictably undefined for now. Lest your memory needs a refresher since the Pre 3’s announcement back in February, this is a 3.6-inch smartphone with a WVGA (800 x 480) resolution, a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8x55 processor, 512MB of RAM, and a pair of cameras, the rear of which can record 720p video and 5 megapixel stills. To fill the time until a launch date is made known, why not consult our handy chart for a detailed look at how else the Pre 3 improves on its Pre-decessor.

[Thanks, Timo]

HP Pre 3 listed for pre-order on Amazon.de: €449 for the best of webOS originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 08:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BBC shows us what it’s like to live with a bionic hand

We’ve posted a fair share on bionic limbs and their advancements over the years, but rarely have we had the chance to see a video of one in real world use, on a real person. The BBC has shared a video of a man named Patrick using his bionic arm, which — long story short — was partially the result of being electrocuted at work. This is his second one to date and specifically, it’s a prototype Otto Bock mind-controlled prosthetic arm equipped with six nerve sensors that let him use the hand as if it were his own– it supports pinching and gripping with the fingers as well as lateral and circular movement of the wrist. Although the footage is a mundane roll of various day to day tasks — gripping a bottle to pour a glass of water for instance — it’s quite amazing to realize technology is helping him do things he’d otherwise be deprived of. We’d suggest checking it out at the BBC by clicking the source link below.

BBC shows us what it’s like to live with a bionic hand originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Go Wide and Get Wet: Lomography’s LC-Wide Film Camera Shoots 103 Degrees

The advancing wave of retro-nostalgia is growing bigger, and Lomography appears to be the slick surfer perched atop that wave, with its cool range of film cameras. Their new golden surfboard is the LC-Wide, a 17mm format-changin’ film camera ride. More »

How Instant Film Works, and Other Mysteries

Like the inner workings of magnets, the Polaroid’s internals are a magical mystery

Frikkin’ instant films? How do they work? Well, if you had thought to ask the good folks at Phototjojo instead of just shouting your mouth off like that, you would have found the answer in their excellent Photo Science guide. Spoiler: you don’t have to shake it.

You may have known that each Polaroid picture contains the chemicals needed to process it. What you probably didn’t know were the details. The large bottom border of a Polaroid doesn’t just give it its iconic shape. It also contains pouches of chemicals. When the photo is ejected from the camera it is squeezed between two rollers which burst the bags and smear the chemicals onto the photo, developing it.

You can see this for yourself by taking an unused Polaroid and squeezing the juice from these pustules with your fingers. The chemicals can be squidged around like paint inside the photo. I used to do this when I was a wasteful teenager (and photography student), and you can get some cool — but only semi-permanent — effects.

Sure, you may have know this already, but the real reason for posting about this was to use Photojojo’s excellent illustrations, above. Head over to the blog post to find out all about the camera obscura, photo paper, pinhole cameras and color filters. Who said learning can’t be fun?

Photo Science: How 5 Photo Techniques Work & How You Can Play With Them! [Phototjojo]

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Intel admits Apple ‘helps shape’ its roadmap, keeps foot lodged firmly in mouth

We knew Intel and Apple had a close working relationship when it came to developing Thunderbolt, but now an exec from Santa Clara has taken the declarations of mutual admiration to the next level. Tom Kilroy, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Sales and Marketing Group, told a Reuters tech summit that Apple isn’t merely important to his company’s plans, it actually “helps shape [Intel’s] roadmap.” Those are strong words coming from the world’s biggest maker of processor chips, one that you wouldn’t expect to be beholden to any hardware or software partner. Additionally, it marks the second time this week that Intel has indirectly slighted Microsoft, the first one being a damning analysis of Windows 8 on ARM by fellow Intel SVP Renee James. It’d be easy to conclude that we’re seeing cracks developing in the old Wintel bond, but we reckon it’s more likely that Chipzilla is simply finding the wrong words to express otherwise benign thoughts. Hit the source link for more from Mr. Kilroy.

Intel admits Apple ‘helps shape’ its roadmap, keeps foot lodged firmly in mouth originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 07:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aga Brings Touch-Screen, Instant-On Tech to Cast-Iron Ovens

Pretend you’re living in the 1940s, but without the inconvenience of waiting for anything, ever

An Aga kitchen range is many things. It’s an oven. It heats the home, and it makes a great place for the cat to cuddle up and sleep. What it isn’t is quick to fire up, or high-tech. A new model of the cult-favorite cooker will change that.

Aga’s run on gas or oil and — more recently — electricity. But thanks to their design and heavy cast-iron construction, they can take half a day to get hot, which is somewhat impractical. In the winter you leave them running and they heat the house and provide hot water. In the summer they’re just a pain in the butt.

The new Aga Total Control fixes this by putting electric heating elements in the doors and walls, so the cooker can be up to temperature in just eight minutes. It is also controlled by a touch screen, hidden behind a panel on one of the oven doors. This panel will also allow remote-control from other sources: Aga plans an iPhone app which will let you switch the thing on from work, for example, so the kitchen will be snug and warm when you arrive home.

The price for this technological anachronism will be £9,600, or $15,500. Given that the base model goes for an already steep £9,000 ($14,500), that’s not too bad.

Aga Total Control product page [(currently stuck in a login loop) AGA via the Telegraph and Twitter]

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Hacked Kinect duo teams up with HD projector to make 360 Snowglobe display (video)

Flatscreen displays? Decidedly old hat; students from Queens University have a better idea: snowglobes. Hacking together a 3D HD projector, two Kinect sensors, and a hemispherical mirror mounted inside of an acrylic sphere, “Project Snowglobe” has created a pseudo holographic display — presenting a 360-degree view of a digital object. The all-angles display is compelling, but it’s strictly a single-user affair; the object isn’t actually projected in 3D — it instead follows the movements of a lone Earthling, rotating and shifting position, in sync with the viewer. The display standard of the future? Maybe not, but pretty darn cool, all the same. Hit up the video after the break to check it out.

Continue reading Hacked Kinect duo teams up with HD projector to make 360 Snowglobe display (video)

Hacked Kinect duo teams up with HD projector to make 360 Snowglobe display (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 07:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Modders Make Android Work the Way You Want

In one of many tweaks to the Android interface, a customized boot screen features scrolling lines of code. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

CyanogenMod is one of the biggest hacks to ever hit the Android mobile platform.

It’s got an estimated 500,000 users. Many Android programmers use it as a starting point for their own coding projects. And according to the project’s founder, a number of Google employees have it installed on their Android devices.

Essentially, CyanogenMod is a tricked-out version of the software you’re already running on your Android phone.

Every Android-powered device comes running a version of the operating system, from 1.5 (Cupcake) all the way up to 3.1 (Honeycomb).

CyanogenMod replaces that stock OS with a custom build, letting you make adjustments to your phone that the official version prevents. It opens the door to more sophisticated custom wallpaper, changing the graphic that appears when the phone boots up, or more significantly, tethering your laptop to your phone’s data connection. With CyanogenMod installed, you can even overclock your phone’s CPU, so you can wring every last drop of processing power from it.

“You can customize the hell out of it,” says Steve Kondik, founder of the CyanogenMod project.

How a Hack Got its Start

Of course, it all began with a phone.

Debuting in 2007 as the flagship device for Google’s Android mobile platform, HTC’s G1 smartphone was the alternative to Apple’s immensely popular iPhone.

The G1 — also known as the HTC Dream — could be easily rooted, which meant giving you superuser access to the phone’s naughty bits. Essentially, it made customizing your G1 as easy as pie.

Steve Kondik had been waiting for a phone like the G1 for a long time.

“I had followed a few other Linux-based phones before,” says Kondik, citing offerings from Motorola and Nokia, “but they never had the sort of momentum that a company like Google could bring.”

And Google’s philosophy fit with what Kondik, a software developer working for a mobile content delivery company in Pittsburgh, was looking for: a more “open” platform for coders coming from a background in open source code, like Linux. Android, after all, is built on the Linux kernel.

‘You can customize the hell out of it.’

After each version of Android was made available for download to the public, Google pushed all of the code to an online repository called Kernel.org, free for all to poke, prod and play around with. Developers could take any and all of that code and modify it to their heart’s desire.

Which is exactly what Kondik proceeded to do. “I had been using desktop Linux for ages,” he says, “and I just tried using some of those concepts to tweak the code. I had no idea what I actually wanted to do with the phone.”

After finishing his first version of CyanogenMod, Kondik posted the file to XDA forums, a popular message board in the Android modding community. “All of a sudden, my single-page thread is one hundred pages long,” Kondik says.

Cyanogen Comes of Age

CyanogenMod was a hit. It racked up downloads from community members, each expressing how they liked the amount of control they finally had over their phones.

“As a mobile enthusiast, I like the ability to make changes to the way that my operating system runs,” says Chris Soyars, who works on CyanogenMod.

In essence, CyanogenMod’s popularity can be attributed to the very thing that draws so many to the Android platform: openness, flexibility, control. The Google-led Open Handset Alliance — a coalition of 80 carriers, manufacturers and tech companies all backing the Android platform — espouses these principles, as seen in the Open Source Project mission statement: “We wanted to make sure that there would always be an open platform available for carriers, OEMs and developers to use to make their innovative ideas a reality.”

Apple, on the other hand, fought aggressively to outlaw the practice of jailbreaking its phones, which is akin to rooting an Android device. The U.S. Copyright Office ultimately granted a three-year DMCA exemption for rooting phones, so iPhone users are free to jailbreak their devices without any legal repercussions for the time being. They don’t, however, have access to the operating system’s underlying source code to the same extent Android users do.

While Apple’s controlling, “walled garden” approach has obviously worked well for the company — the company has sold 100 million iPhones as of March of this year — Android has become the alternative solution for geeks and hackers who want more control over their devices.

For many, CyanogenMod is the key to unlocking that control.


Camera Reads Fingerprints From a Distance in Seconds

Your Jedi mind tricks will not work on me

In the future (or distant past?), Obi Wan Kenobi might not be quite so cocky about which droids you are looking for. If the Empire had equipped its weak-minded Storm Troopers with the AIRprint Fingerprint scanner, it would have seen his arrogant hand wave and recorded the prints of each of his self-important fingers.

The AIRprint may sound like something from Apple (actually, it sounds exactly like something from Apple), but is in fact a box that can read fingerprints from over six feet away. It uses two 1.3MP cameras which are each tuned to a different plane of polarized light, one horizontal and one vertical. The box sends out a beam of polarized light and while one camera sees peaks, the other sees valleys, effectively upping the resolution greatly. This allows it to photograph your prints from afar in around one second per finger.

The main use would be building security, speeding up scans and making them easier to do. Future versions of this experimental tech will be faster and able to scan a whole hand’s worth of fingers at once. When that happens, George Lucas may have to rewrite the famous scene.

Obi Wan: “These are not the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”

TSA Storm Trooper: “These are not the… Wait. Sir, please follow me.”

Obi Wan (waving hand): “You will not perform a body cavity search on me.”

TSA Storm Trooper: “Sir, please stop that. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

AIRprint project page [AOS via MIT Tech Review]

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