Hasta La Gadget!

Good news, air travelers: it’s now easier to hide your shame. The Transportational Security Administration this week showed of a new, more modest version of its controversial full-body scanners in that bastion of good taste, Las Vegas.

The TSA finally answered the massive negative backlash over intrusive body scanners by updating the devices to feature more generic images of the person being scanned. Once in the scanner, the device’s display offers what ABC describes as a “generic, chalk-like outline of a body.” Any perceived “threat” will appear as a red box located on the outline in the position it appears on the traveler’s body.

The new scanner software is currently being tested at Vegas’s McCarren Airport. Further tests will occur at Atlanta’s Hartford Jackson and Washington’s Reagan airports. If the tests prove successful, it will be tolled out to all millimeter wave machine scanners–that’s 239 of the 500 machines currently deployed in the US.

Intel is known for its amazing chipsets that make using the computer even better, but nobody is perfect, nor is any company. Intel recently confirmed that its newest chip, called Sandy Bridge, has a flaw, and Intel has stopped all outgoing shipments of the chip.

The issue appears to be common with this generation of chips. Apparently, the chip’s Serial-ATA (SATA) ports can degrade over time, which can cause further issues. Intel does have a plan in place, but the company estimates it could cost Intel $700 million to make all of the needed repairs.

Intel has reported that they have started designing the newer model that does not have the defect, but the new chip will not start shipping until late February. However, Intel also stated that full shipments will not be sent out until April. The company has also agreed to offer replacements to PC manufactures that have built their systems with the defected model of Sany Bridge processors. Intel says it expects to lose $300 million in its first quarter because of this problem.

Via CNET

NFC technology might still be months away from being called the next big thing, but researchers are already looking to turn it into a useful tool for collaboration on smartphones. NFC, or near-field communication, is already a part of Google’s Nexus S, and rumors suggest Apple might bring it to the next-generation iPhone to use in mobile payments. Stanford researchers are looking to take it beyond the usual embedding of NFC tags in objects to add a social, communicative element to the technology.

After creating a customized version of the Android OS with support enabled for peer-to-peer mode NFC, the researchers collaborated on a whiteboard app just by tapping two Nexus S phones together. Think Google Docs, but between phones using NFC. Having the two phones in close proximity let the NFC chips pair the handsets, then data was shared using a platform called Junction. The researchers said Junction will allow collaboration and app-sharing not just on NFC between phones, but also between laptops, desktops, TVs and whatever other devices can run the software. If this little experiment is any indication, the not-so-distant future might see us transferring our work between gadgets with just a tap, thanks to NFC chips.

[via Stanford, Engadget]

Microsoft’s Kinect has already brought us invisibility, motion-tracked underwear and giant animated Minecraft cats. Now, it’s taking us to a galaxy far far away, thanks to researchers from the MIT Media Lab. Using Kinect and a PC equipped with three off-the-shelf graphics cards, the researchers were able to create a three-inch holographic Princess Leia running at around 15 frames per second, according to the university’s news office.