Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen a few apps try to manage the ambitious feat of becoming the journal for your entire mobile life, but a new Apple patent suggests the company may be trying to build that kind of functionality right into iOS at the system level, in a way that keeps track of all your phone events, including when and where they happened. The system could help you recall when and where you took a photo, sent an email, received a phone call or even visited a webpage, and show that to you on a map or in a timeline-style list of events.

It’s an interesting patent with a number of possible practical uses. For instance, it could be used to help a device learn more about the specific habits and patterns of its particular user. If it can establish patterns in their behavior, it should theoretically be able to better predict and adapt to their needs. In the more near-time, and less sci-fi immediate future, the system could also make it incredibly easy for a mobile device owner to quickly search their interaction history and find all the contextual details around a specific event, which could be very useful if, for instance, your wedding florist is suggesting you never made a call changing your order six months ago.

Filters can be applied to the stored data to group events by time, location, application and according to a variety of other variables, so that users can drill down and find exactly what they’re looking for, even if they’re not quite sure what that is. The patent system also describes event databases that can be stored in the cloud, freeing up valuable local storage space on the device. The events logged can even be app specific, since Apple’s patent describes a method to invoke it via API, meaning you could theoretically note every time you posted a photo to Instagram, or read an article in Instapaper, too.

This is an a patent application that, while potentially incredibly useful, we likely won’t see make a public experience for at least a while yet. Users seemed uncomfortable with the fact that iPhones used to maintain a location database to help with location triangulation, for instance, so there would likely be apprehension about such an extensive logging tool, even if designed as a user-accessible feature like the patent described in this system. But it would be tremendously beneficial in cases of device theft, and when working with personal health monitoring tools, budget trackers and other types of journalling applications, especially in a time when the notion of the quantified self continues to have a big influence on consumer hardware and software development.

We all know how easy it is to come up with the title of “the most expensive (insert item name here)” by slapping on a few precious jewels, and you are good to go. After all, the Vertu range of mobile phones do a pretty good job at that – even though the innards underneath the hood are far from satisfactory, of course. Well, what about board games? I am quite sure if you were to have a diamond studded board game, you would most probably display it behind a secure glass cabinet instead of having your kids throw it around in a temper tantrum whenever they are on the losing end of things. However, this Scrabble board is very different from the rest – especially when Mind Sports International gave their take on a classic board game, updating it so that it remains technologically relevant in the 21st century.

For starters, this spanking new Scrabble board looks pretty ordinary from the outside at first glance, but it was specially constructed by using RFID chips within each tile, allowing it to detect just where each letter is placed, while transmitting the data to an online channel in a near instantaneous reaction. Not only does this allow folks to follow the game live in a different manner remotely, it also reduces the incidences of potential cheating. All the necessary electronics remain hidden from sight though, thanks to the raised platform.

The 100 letter tiles, as mentioned, will contain a unique RFID tag, while all nine circuit boards are connected to 225 RFID antennas – meaning one for each square on the board, where these will help monitor just where each letter is placed. Your tile rack is not just wood, as it contains RFID sensors as well, helping scan the play area for each tile, takes approximately 974 milliseconds while they are at it.

Just how much would such a Scrabble board cost you? Mind Sports invested more than £20,000 (around US$31,800) to construct each new board, not to mention taking months to test. You take a good guess at what the final sticker price will be like then.

Source
[ Most expensive Scrabble board yet copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Typically when NASA discovers a distant planet, as close as we get to seeing that planet is an artist’s rendering. NASA has been able to snap a rare direct photo of a planet that has been dubbed a Super-Jupiter. The planet is 13 times more massive than Jupiter, which is the largest planet in our own solar system.

The massive planet orbits a star called Kappa Andromedae, which has a mass 2.5 times that of our Sun. The massive planet and its parent star are 170 light-years away from Earth. The Super-Jupiter planet is so massive that astronomers have placed it on the edge of the classification system between giant planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs.

The official name for the planet is Kappa Andromedae b and researchers believe it likely has a reddish glow. The planet is known as Kappa And b for short. The scientists do say that calling the Super-Jupiter a planet isn’t definitive and other considerations could potentially push the object into brown dwarf territory.

The image you see above is a false color, near-infrared 3.8 µ image of the Kappa And system. The light from the host star in the center has been removed through image processing to show Kappa And b in the upper left corner of the image. The image was captured by the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in July of 2012. The planet orbits its parent star with an orbit wider than Neptune takes around our Sun.

[via Space.com]

NASA snaps rare direct photo of a Super-Jupiter planet Kappa Andromedae b is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Western Digital has given its Black line of internal hard drives an upwards bump with the introduction of a 4TB drive. This gives WD customers access to a performance-based 4TB drive, whereas previous offerings have been aimed at enterprise customers. The drive is available now, and is priced at $339, which includes a 5-year warranty.

The new Black 4TB HDD is a 3.5-inch drive, clocking in at 7200rpms, with 64MB of cache and 6GB/s, as well as dual-processors and dual actuator tech. Other Black drives in the series are available in 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB capacities, as well as the new high-capacity drive. Each one offers a SATA interface,

While the WD Black is a nice hard drive depending on your needs, nothing about it particularly stands out as unique. It is, perhaps, overshadowed by the more popular HDDs in WD’s catalog, including the VelociRaptor, which reaches a highly-impressive 10,000 rpms. Also in the works is the recently-announced helium-filled drive, which is supposed to reduce friction while increasing capacity.

The Black line of hard drives are tested and recommended for PC computers, including high-performance systems; they are not recommended for RAID environments, however. The drives feature WD’s various features, including Stable Trac, which reduces vibration in the motor shaft to improve tracking and performance. In addition, all the drives are put “through extensive Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T) prior to any product launch. This testing ensures our products consistently meet the highest quality and reliability standards of the WD brand.”

[via PC World]

Western Digital Black line gets 4TB drive is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Single serve French presses are far from a new innovation, but with the Minibru you don’t need a pile of separate hardware, or one of those ridiculous looking, over-engineered French press travel mugs. It’s designed to look like a regular old coffee cup, and keep the brewing process simple. More »