Hasta La Gadget!

I’m sitting here, typing this post on my desktop computer, but more and more people are using laptops as their everyday machines. Heck, I use a MacBook Pro to get stuff done whenever I’m not at home. The trouble with laptops is that they can get pretty hot. Here’s a cool laptop stand, that packs down flat for easy travel.

Itamar Neiger’s minimal laptop stand can be made out of plywood or a foamed polymer sheet. The design was conceived to serve two purposes. To give laptops a better angle for typing, and to lift it off the working surface, allowing better ventilation and to prevent overheating.

The stand disassembles neatly and fits into itself, so it’s easy to carry around when you’re on the go. I need one – when can I 3D-print my own?

[via designboom]

A huge part of human history revolved around tying stones to sticks. We don’t do it much any more, but if we did, we’d be super good at it. These modern stone tools prove it. More »

The first version of the MacBook Air was prohibitively expensive, particularly because it was quite underpowered. The 2012 edition is much more practical, and with the release of the 11″ version, is more affordable as well. Computer Choppers is here to tip the scale back to the other end with their 24 carat gold plated MacBook Air.

This has to be the most functional piece of bling in the world.

According to Luxatic, pricing for the 11″ Air starts at $7,500 (USD), while the 13″ Air starts at $8,500. Power up your gold iMac or MacBook Pro and head to Computer Choppers’ website to order.

[via Luxatic]

The iPhone 5 already proved Apple’s desire to move away from existing processor designs and exert more control over these fundamental components. Is it too crazy to imagine that Cupertino would like the same sense of freedom with its laptops? Perhaps not, especially since the biggest company in the world just hired a guy called Jim Mergard, who helped to pioneer AMD’s low-power Brazos netbook chips and who had only recently moved to Samsung. A former colleague of Mergard’s, Patrick Moorhead, told the WSJ that he would be “very capable of pulling together internal and external resources to do a PC processor for Apple” — possibly based on a mobile-style SoC (system-on-chip) rather than a traditional PC approach. That’s pure speculation of course, but funnily enough it’s where Intel seems to be headed too.

Filed under: Laptops, Apple, Samsung, AMD

Low-power chip guru quits Samsung for Apple, with heavily implied implications originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It takes years for a person to learn how to write Japanese or Chinese characters. There’s good news though. Robots can do it a lot quicker. A research group has developed a ‘bot that can identify and mimic detailed brush strokes that are required to write these kinds of characters.

The Motion Copy System was developed at Keio University by Seiichiro Katsura. It stores the gestures associated with traditional Japanese calligraphy, and copies them. All that one needs to do to train the system is to guide the robot’s arm with their hand, and it can precisely replicate their recorded brush strokes. Unlike traditional system, the robot can record and reproduce the force applied to the brush similarly to when people touch something.

The calligraphy replication ‘bot was presented at the 2012 Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies in Tokyo, Japan.

[via DigInfo.TV via designboom]