Hasta La Gadget!

Engineers say the final images produced by the new system contain 100 times more information than those produced by conventional microscope platforms.

(Credit: Yan Liang and Guoan Zheng)

Ah, physics. The cold, hard reality of how things work so often gets in the way of how we would prefer them to work.

But when it comes to the field of microscopy, which has been held back by the physical limitations of optical lenses, a group of engineers at Caltech say they’ve been able to use a computational approach to bypass these limitations — and that the final images produced using their new system contain 100 times more information. What’s more, the system costs just $200 to implement with a conventional microscope.

In a nutshell, the limitations of optical lenses have forced researchers to pick and choose between a system that gives them high resolution over a small field of view or low resolution over a wider field of view. See a little bit clearly or a lot coarsely.

“We found a way to actually have the best of both worlds,” Guoan Zheng, lead author of the new paper in Nature Photonics, said in a school news release. “The optical performance of the objective lens is rendered almost irrelevant, as we can impr… [Read more]

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Google is bringing more Glass Explorers into the program, and it’s doing that the best way it knows how: by letting current users invite a friend. Those among you old enough to remember when Gmail first started will remember this was once the only method to get on board with that service, and now Glass-owning folks can ask a single friend to join them in testing out Glass before its wide consumer release.

Current Glass members are getting emails from Google detailing how they can bring someone new on board, as Zagg’s community blog notes tonight. Explorers invited via this extension to the original program, which Google seeded via invites sent out to lucky winners selected from a Twitter hashtag-based competition, must be U.S. residents, 18 or older, and able to pick up Glass in person in SF, NYC or LA. Google likes to welcome new Glass users in person, as you might recall from the first round of device releases.

Glass will likely still cost the $1,500 the company charged its first round of Explorers, but the expansion of the program hopefully means we’re inching closer to the day when Google decides to make Glass available for the general public. That’s not happening until at least 2014, according to the latest from the company, however, and all that this latest program extension means is that Google is likely looking to draw feedback on the experimental platform from a wider group of beta testers.

New developments in the works for Glass include the native app SDK, which will allow software to run on Glass itself, independent of an attached smartphone. The so-called Glass Development Kit (GDK) isn’t yet out for public release, but it’s based on the Android SDK and Google is telling developers to try their ideas there first if they’re getting impatient. So Explorers old and new could have some exciting new software to play with very soon.

If you’ve been jonesing for some face computing, now’s the time to start harassing that Glass-wearing friend.

Here comes a new mobile Wi-Fi router from Elecom, the WRH-H300. Measuring W68.9mm x D64mm x H14.5mm and weighing 35g, this travel-friendly device supports for dual-band Wi-Fi access point (2.4GHz – 300Mbps and 5GHz – 300Mbps), has one Internet LAN port and one LAN port, and provides security through encryption using WEP (64/128bit), WPA-PSK (TKIP/AES), WPA2-PSK (TKIP), WPA/WPA2-Mixed (TKIP/AES). The WRH-H300 will go on sale from early August for 7,686 Yen (about $78) in black and white color options. [Elecom]

Expert Oriented in collaboration with GALAXY Microsystems have announced their new GeForce GTX 770 Hall Of Fame Edition Graphics Card. Codenamed GF-GTX770-E2GHD/SOC, the card features a 256-bit memory interface, a core clock of 1202MHz (1254MHz Boost Clock) and a 2GB of GDDR5 memory set @ 7010MHz, and features 3x mini HDMI and 1x DisplayPort outputs. The GF-GTX770-E2GHD/SOC will begin shipping from early August for 50,000 Yen (about $510). [Product Page]

A new mid-tower PC case ‘AS Enclosure S6G’ from Abee has just entered the market. Coming in shiny blue and shiny red color options, this aluminum PC case supports of both micro-ATX and ATX motherboards, and features a front-placed I/O panel with 2x USB 3.0 and 2x audio ports, two 5.25-inch external drive bays, two 3.5-inch internal drive bays (removable), two 2.5-inch internal drive bays (removable), seven expansion slots and has three fans (2x 120mm NANO TEK FANS – front, 1x 120mm NANO TEK FAN – rear). The AS Enclosure S6G is available now for 34,980 Yen (about $357). [Product Page]