Apr 14

Intel Talks To Potential Thunderbolt Buyers

Posted in: Apple, intel, thunderbolt, Today's Chili

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Intel is looking to expand the Thunderbolt brand, which means Intel wants other companies to buy into the new technology quickly. So Intel is doing something about it by sending interested companies kits about the Thunderbolt technology. As of currently, Apple is the only brand that is using the new technology.

Intel has not listed the names of the other companies who have expressed interest. However, we can assume that it will be other computer manufactures. That does not mean in the near future other uses will be found.

Intel has not said if any company is planning to use it besides Apple at this point, but it looks hopeful that it could wind up being a widely accepted technology.

Via Xbit Labs

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Apr 14

The SupaBoy Puts the SNES in the Palm of Your Hand

Posted in: Gadgets, gaming, Retro, Today's Chili, video games

SupaBoy Handheld SNES

If you fondly remember the Super Nintendo and all of the great, cartridge-based games that it had, the SupaBoy might be the handheld gaming system for you – especially if you still have tons of old SNES games lying around your house or in a box in your basement.  The SupaBoy will be manufactured by Hyperkin, a company known for third-party retro gaming gear, and will be compatible with real SNES cartridges. 
The SupaBoy will feature a 3.5-inch color LCD in the center, a rechargeable battery that runs for about 5 hours, and AV out so you can connect it to a real big-screen television if you’re tired of playing your old SNES titles on a small set. You can even connect two SNES controllers to the ports on the front for multiplayer action. 
Hyperkin tweeted about the product a few weeks ago, and followed up by announcing its plans to release the device in the United States this summer. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but old school gamers are likely to pick this one up. 
[via Joystiq]
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Apr 14

Smart, Self-Driving Wheelchairs on the Way

Posted in: Robots, science, Today's Chili, Weird News

Smart Wheelchair

While the promise of self-driving cars may be mere years away, those people who have a powered wheelchair to get around town hopefully won’t have to wait much longer before their chairs can do the work for them as well. 
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University are using robotics to build smarter wheelchairs – wheelchairs that still respond to human commands, but won’t go rolling off of a cliff by themselves even if the human operator holds down the accelerator and the on-board camera sees there’s a hazard ahead. 
The goal is to make wheelchairs safer even if the human operator is incapacitated or the controls malfunction. Researchers hope to program powered wheelchairs with rudimentary artificial intelligence so they know the difference between real and reasonable human control commands and nonsensical ones that are at best silly and at worst harmful for the driver. 
The wheelchairs can be controlled via conventional joystick, or even XBox controller. You can see a video of one of the chairs in action behind the jump.
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Apr 14

AMD Redesigns Vision Brand

Posted in: AMD, Today's Chili

amd_vision_logo_2.jpgAMD is looking to give the Vision brand a new lease on life, which means new chips are to be released under the brand new Vision line. The new chipsets will include Fusion Accelerated Processing Units that will be used in new desktops, along with laptops later on this year.

With the new chipset line, AMD is updating the stickers that clearly mark what processing unit your system uses. Two new stickers are being released, which include an eye-catching red, and fun patterns on the two stickers. One will be for the GPU, while the other will be for the actual CPU unit.

AMD hopes that the news stickers will bring brand awareness. AMD has not given any info about when the stickers, and, computers, will debut later on this year.

Via Xbit Labs

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Apr 12

Digitimes Squashes iPad 3 Rumors

Posted in: Apple, ipad 2, Today's Chili

ipad 3.JPG

A few months ago, right before the iPad 2 was due to be released, a flurry of rumors started that Apple may release another iPad model before the end of the year. One analyst explained their thoughts were that Apple would eventually want to move to a September release schedule for the iPad, which matches the timeframe we usually see new iPod models. Another source pointed to an unnamed Apple staff member who claimed “If you like the iPad 2, wait until you see the iPad 3!” 
Digitimes, for its part, put the kibosh on those rumors this week, claiming that it’s highly unlikely that Apple will cannibalize its current iPad2 sales to bring out an iPad 3. Digitimes says the original rumors hinged on the iPad 2 being some kind of bridge product between the original iPad and something drastically new, but the iPad 2 is doing just fine of its own accord. 
According to the same article however, Apple is asking its touchscreen manufacturers to investigate the feasibility of making touchscreens that are higher resolution than the current iPad 2’s display, which may lend some credence to the rumor that the iPad 3 will have a Retina Display, but according to the report that work is in the very early stages and not likely to yield a new product this year.
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Apr 09

NASA Hopes Cessna’s Aircraft Skin Will Protect Future Flights

Posted in: NASA, science, Today's Chili

NASA Airline Skin

Every aerospace engineer or physicist has thought at some time or another about how well a conductive film on an airplane would work to detect impacts, lightning strikes, and other damage to the surface of the aircraft. With Southwest Airline’s recent trouble with holes in its aircraft fuselages, the need for a system that can warn pilots or ground crews to damage on the airframe could be more than useful.
That’s why NASA’s awarded a $1.9 million research contract to develop a protective, self-healing external “skin” for aircraft that will consist of an energy absorbing foam and a conductive sheath over it that will provide on-board instruments a constant feed of updates to the health of the aircraft. 
The film is named STAR-C2 (Soothing, Thermal, Absorbing, Reflective, Conductive, Cosmetic,) and Cessna hopes that the coating will be ready to start protecting NASA craft around 2030 or 2035, which is about when we should start expecting to hear about commercial applications of the technology.
[via Wired]
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Apr 06

Richard Branson Launches Virgin Oceanic for Undersea Exploration

Posted in: science, Today's Chili

Virgin Oceanic

If you thought that Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s fledgling space tourism company, was a tenuous idea, you won’t be any more impressed by Branson’s newest venture: Virgin Oceanic. Make no mistake, the project is very real: Branson and fellow explorer Chris Welsh both plan to pilot solo submarines to the deepest parts of the world’s largest oceans, including the Mariana Trench and the Puerto Rico Trench. 
Branson has even partnered with Google to assist with the charting and mapping of the sea floor during this and other missions planned by the initiative. There were no indications in the announcement that it would go commercial in the near future or that future submarines would offer to take wealthy passengers the same way Virgin Galactic has promised to book sub-orbital space flights. 
According to a post at BoingBoing, Branson says his real passion is to address the fact that human beings have yet to see the world’s deepest places, and have mapped a paltry 3 percent of the ocean floor with unmanned craft. As usual, the submarines to be used in the initiative spare no expense when it comes to technology: they use carbon fiber and composite materials for the hull, and even feature a winged design to glide through the water. 
Click the jump to see the teaser trailer for the project.
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Apr 04

Air Zealand Introduces “Cuddle Class” Seating

Posted in: Today's Chili, Travel, Weird News

Cuddle Class - ER300

Flying in economy is bad enough on any flight, but imagine flying across the Pacific Ocean in what can be a 12 to 16 hour flight in cramped seats. Most long haul flights like that actually give you relatively comfortable seats even in the back, but Air Zealand has upped the ante with their newly introduced “cuddle class,” which allows you and a significant other to share a kind of couch/bed called the “Skycouch,” and a lie-flat style of seating that leaves room for two people to get close. 
Many long flights offer bed-style seating, where there’s enough room for passengers to lay their seats out flat like a bed and get a good night’s sleep when they’re traveling from London to Tokyo, for example, but these are the first types of seating that allows you to cuddle up close to your significant other during the flight. 
The new seating classes are available on Air Zealand’s new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, and will be available for passengers traveling from New Zealand to destinations like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Vancouver. 
[via Gizmag]
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Apr 02

New Mobile Chipset Annihilates Current Crop of Smartphones

Posted in: Android, mobile, processors, qualcomm, snapdragon, Today's Chili

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The new dual-core Snapdragon chip by Qualcomm will make your smartphone jealous. Judging by benchmarks conducted by AnandTech, the new MSM 8×60 absolutely blows away the competition, scoring almost double the Google-flagship Nexus S in GLBenchmark, a standardized method of testing graphics performance. This makes due on both the company’s claim to put together a dual-core Snapdragon and to push the system’s clock speed to 1.5 Ghz The blog was given a developer phone containing the new chipset, clocked to full speed at 1.5 Ghz. The system also runs at a more modest 1.2 Ghz, a variant that seems more likely to appear in handsets in the near future given battery-life constraints.

One of the most important factors in the chip’s performance is a new graphics core, an updated version of the Adreno core that accompanies the HTC Inspire 4G and MyTouch 4G. This new Adreno, the 220, is roughly two to three times faster than the previous Adreno 205. Perfect for the boost in performance you need for the smoothest Quake fragging around. No word on when this chipset will appear in actual phones, but the system seems ready to dominate whenever handset makers decide they’re good to go.

[via Engadget, AnandTech]

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Mar 31

Samsung Starts Building 22-inch Translucent LCD Displays

Posted in: Displays, LCD, samsung, Today's Chili

Samsung - Translucent LCD

Remember that video about how everything in the future would be covered with interactive glass? Samsung doesn’t seem to think it’s too off base: they’ve begun mass production of 22-inch translucent AMOLED LCD displays in both monochrome and color models. The new displays aren’t completely clear, but they’re translucent enough for a viewer to be able to make out objects and people on the other side of the display while there’s an image on the screen. 
Samsung sees the technology as useful for shop windows, billboards, or show floors and showcases where companies want a way to demonstrate their product without obscuring the view past it, or that just want to show off. 
The displays aren’t too bad by traditional LCD standards either: they offer 500:1 contrast ratios and run at a native resolution of 1680-pixels x 1050-pixels. Add this to the fact that it doesn’t use a backlight and you have an energy efficient, very futuristic LCD panel. 
There’s no word on exactly how much the translucent LCDs will cost, or who will really buy them: it will almost definitely be a while before they make their way into homes and businesses. Still, it’s clear that they’re coming, at least for some applications. Check out a video of the new panels in action behind the jump.
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