Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung is at it again this morning. Releasing another one of their comical and irreverent commercials showing just how awesome their Galaxy S III smartphone truly is. Calling the commercial “The Next Big Thing is Already Here,” clearly aiming at the iPhone 5 and all those folks waiting in line for days on end.

We knew this was coming, and mentioned it earlier last week. Samsung released the same type of edgy and very direct commercials with the Galaxy S II last year right around the iPhone 4S release date — so this shouldn’t really be much of a surprise. There’s no funny lines like, “dude, you’re a barista” like they had in the last commercial but you’ll still want to take a peek below and have a laugh.

Actually we take that back. Best line of the new Samsung TV spot is, “yea yea, but they make the coolest adapters.” Obviously Samsung is taking aim at the iPhone 5 here. Talking about 4G LTE finally hitting while SGIII owners have been enjoying it for a year, then they poke fun with NFC capabilities showing off sharing music playlists with a tap using S-Beam, or WiFi direct photo sharing.

Clearly Samsung is upset with the lawsuit settlement reaching the 1 billion mark, and this is surely just one of many new commercials we’ll be seeing from good ol Sammy coming soon. So the question is what will you be getting? Do you own the Galaxy S III, or have you been waiting for the iPhone 5? Take a peek at our hands-on and reviews of both devices below.

Samsung pokes fun at Apple with latest Galaxy S III TV spot is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

So the new iPhone 5 is the thinnest iPhone yet at under 8mm overall, but fancy a smartphone in the future which is as thin as your credit card? I personally would not want to use such a device since I tend to be rather careless and rough, which means I might end up breaking my smartphone in half by accident. Well, perhaps that might be the future with this new ultrathin flat lens that is distortion-free, and it would not only replace lenses in applications which range from smartphones to cameras and fiber-optic communication systems.

It must be said that despite the lens being ultra-thin, it will boast of a resolving power which actually approaches the theoretical limits that are set by the laws of optics. The lens surface will be patterned with small metallic stripes that are capable of bending light differently as one moves away from the center, resulting in the beam to sharply focus without having the images distorted. It goes without saying that a working smartphone with the thickness of a credit card is still far off in the future, if ever.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LG Optimus G more details – preview with videos, Handheld Nautiz X1: Meet the world’s toughest smartphone,

There was a time when you could buy something that was compact, fast, and beautiful. That time is over. “Smaller” is just a polite way to say “here’s the bad version for cheap people.” And that’s really awful. More »

Tablets these days can do a lot of different things, but NTT DOCOMO has a new tablet in the pipeline with a feature that we don’t see all that often: eye tracking. The eye tracking technology in NTT DOCOMO’s new ibeam concept tablet will be supplied by Tobii, and if you’re going to be at CEATEC in Tokyo at the beginning of October, you’ll get the chance to see it in action. It’s there, at booth #4B66, that NTT DOCOMO will be unveiling the prototype ibeam for the first time.

Of course, eye tracking tech probably isn’t going to sell millions upon millions of tablets in the blink of an eye, but it does have its uses. The ibeam uses the Tobii IS20, which is described as “the most advanced and compact eye tracker in the world,” in a statement released today. During CEATEC in Tokyo, NTT DOCOMO will be showing off examples of natural user interfaces for PCs and tablets that are centered around eye tracking integration.

One of the benefits of eye tracking integration is that users would potentially be able to control the ibeam tablet using only their eyes. This means that you could have true hands-free functionality, and we imagine that using eye tracking tech would prove to be a lot easier than using voice commands. At the very least, when using eye tracking tech, you won’t be caught in public shouting commands at your device.

The ibeam certainly sounds like an interesting tablet, but unfortunately we’re going to have to wait for the lion’s share of the details. Since it sounds like the ibeam is in the early stages of development – keep in mind that NTT DOCOMO will only be showing off a prototype at CEATEC – the tablet is probably still a ways off from hitting the market (if it ever does at all). Still, it will be exciting to see what the ibeam can do, so keep it tuned here to SlashGear for more information.

Tobii and NTT DOCOMO announce ibeam eye-tracking tablet is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) puts it into perspective right away: “Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth.” It’s important to hold that fact in mind, as we marvel at the first images from deep in the belly of our universe to arrive from the Chile-based Dark Energy Camera (DECam). As that name might suggest, peering at remote galaxies for purely visual gratification isn’t the camera’s primary purpose. The result of eight years of planning and hard work, involving engineers and scientists from three continents, the DECam is mounted on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Sitting atop a 7,200-foot mountain, the camera is part of the Dark Energy Survey, which intends to gather information on over 300 million galaxies. The goal is to better understand dark energy — a concept that represents our best explanation for why the universe’s rate of expansion is speeding up, rather than slowing due to gravity. Gaze past the break for the background on the project.

Continue reading DECam: Gazing deep into the final frontier in search of dark energy

Filed under: Science, Alt

DECam: Gazing deep into the final frontier in search of dark energy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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