Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve seen some impressive projection screens in the past, but I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve seen a screen that’s made up of thousands of moving styrofoam cubes.

The Hyper-Matrix Cube Wall was created by Korean interactive artist JônPaSang for an installation for the Hyundai Motor Group. It’s a massive grid of mechanised white 30cm x 30cm (appx. 1 foot x 1 foot) cubes which can move in and out to form images. Overall, the wrap-around display measures a whopping 45 meters (~148 feet) wide by 8 meters (~26 feet) high. According to my math, that means there’s about 3848 cubes.

As you can see from this video from the guys over at Mechatronics, it’s quite an incredible display:

Nifty. But where’s the projection, you ask? Well, since the Mechatronics guys were most interested in showing us the mechanical aspects of the rig, they cut off the presentation right before the projection portion. Here’s another clip which shows off the entire show:

Pretty cool, no? That part with an individual image on each cube is pretty sweet. Though there appears to be a single cube on the left wall of the screen that’s stuck in that second clip. It’s really bugging me, and if I have to know about it, so do you. If you want to know how this massive installation was built, here’s one more video clip for you to watch:

I’d love to see them do more projection mapping type effects on the screen. I can only imagine the cool pixel art shows one could do with all of those blocks. I’m up for a giant game of Super Mario Bros… or even Pong.

Now we’re intrigued. It’s a common (if unconfirmed) belief that the next iPhone will support LTE-based 4G, but the Wall Street Journal now understands through the ever-present “people familiar with the matter” that Apple is taking 4G worldwide. Where the current iPad only supports two LTE frequencies and drops to HSPA+ outside of the US and Canada, the new iPhone will supposedly cover parts of Asia and Europe as well. The exact countries haven’t been outlined, although it’s easy to imagine Apple going for those countries where 4G speeds matter the most: there’s been rumblings of talks with KT and SK Telecom in South Korea, but we could also see France, Germany, Japan and Scandiavian countries in the mix. The rumor hasn’t been confirmed, of course. That said, the iPhone was already purported to be using a new cellular chipset — and a number of carriers, most often in the US, have long said they won’t carry new smartphones unless LTE is part of the package. We’ll know the full scoop on Wednesday.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

WSJ: 2012 iPhone to support global 4G LTE originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 18:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When is a pair of speakers not a pair of speakers? When it’s a pair of dice, that’s when. And that’s exactly what you’ll get if you buy a set of BonoBoss’ dice speakers.

The concept for the BonoBoss speakers came out of Korea’s sadi (Samsung Art & Design Institute), and they really do look like a couple of oversize black dice. The sides of the BOS-S300D dice speakers has dice-like pips on it, though the front houses a full-range 2.5″ driver instead. The clever design even incorporates its controls into the “five” side of one die. Power is driven by a 2 watt class-D amp, and they’ll connect to any device with a standard 3.5mm audio connector.

They’re currently available only in Korea, where you can find them for 27,200 KRW (~$24 USD) over at the EarlyShop. Though I’m hopeful somebody at one of the casinos in Las Vegas is reading this and will decide to import a bunch to sell in their gift shop. Too bad they don’t come in white though.

While Qualcomm let the Snapdragon out of the bag a little early, LG’s now caught up and launched a (Korean-only) teaser site for its next LTE smartphone. Promising a second-generation quad-core experience, the new flagship device will offer better power management and graphics performance thanks to the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset beating away at its core. There’s space on the site for another five videos, which should hopefully give us a little more detail than what we’ve been able to glean from FCC filings. Thumb your Korean dictionary ready and check out LG’s first taster after the break.

Continue reading LG teases its new quad-core superphone: Snapdragon S4 Pro is awesome, device still vague (video)

Filed under: Cellphones

LG teases its new quad-core superphone: Snapdragon S4 Pro is awesome, device still vague (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Aug 2012 08:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve actually stopped using my 160GB iPod Classic, ever since I got my iPhone 4S, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for dedicated music players – if done right. While a lot of people use their smartphones to play their favorite tunes, others still prefer standalone media players.

Korea’s Cowon just released their X9 media player and it sports a large 4.3-inch touchscreen display. You can choose between 8 GB, 16 GB or 32 GB of internal memory, but you can augment this with a microSD card. The player includes a variety of sound processing modes including simulated 3D surround, virtual listening environments, and BBE enhancement among others.

The X9 is supposed to be able to deliver 110 hours of audio playback, or 13 hours of video playback on a single charge, and it takes 4.5 hours to juice this thing up. The X9 starts at $229.99(USD) for the basic model and goes up for more storage.

[via Ubergizmo]