Hasta La Gadget!

How fitting is it that a high school student may have found the answer to longer lasting and faster charging mobile devices? The promising invention was made by Eesha Khare, an 18-year old student from Saratoga, California. It’s a supercapacitor that, according to Intel, “fits inside cell phone batteries, allowing them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds.”

Supercapacitors have significantly higher durability and rate of charging (and discharging) compared to rechargeable batteries, but the downside to them is that they have a low energy density. That’s why they’re mainly used in devices that need short bursts of power. But in the video below, which was uploaded by Santa Barbara Arts TV on YouTube, you’ll hear Khare mention that her supercapacitors have “a special nanostructure, which allows for a lot [sic] greater energy per unit volume.”

For her invention, Khare won $50,000 (USD) and was awarded one of the runners-up honors at the 2013 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The first place went to a 19-year old who developed an AI for a low-cost self-driving car. But Khare bags the top prize in my book. Not that it’s worth anything. My book doesn’t even actually exist.

[via Intel & Santa Barbara Arts TV via Raw Story]

I’ve shared a couple of wild concepts for cameras here before. This one made by students from the University of Design Schwäbisch Gmünd is also highly unusual, but it’s also something that might actually make sense for most photographers. It’s called the Aspekt, an MILC camera with swappable components.

As you can see in the image above, Gabriel Brückner, Johanna Gedeon, Christoph Hiebinger, Bianca Koch and Jessica Lederer imagine the Aspekt as having separate components for the CPU, the 24mp CMOS sensor, the battery (which is connected to a camera grip) and a viewfinder with an OLED monitor and controls. Other modules that could be added to the Aspekt include a module with a Thunderbolt port and one with slots for external storage.

According to designboom, the team’s main goal with the Aspekt was to design a camera that will “enable users to attach older lenses which are not supported by SLR devices.” But wouldn’t it be neat if you could also upgrade your camera piece by piece like a desktop computer? Or if you could mix and match its parts to suit your needs? Or if it could transform into a giant robot that you’ll use to defend Earth from an alien race, only for you to find out later on that you’re half-human and half said alien race, so you venture to your other home planet and abolish the oppressive class system there with the help of your giant camera robot?

[via designboom]

Google Glass made the world at large aware of the existence and potential of augmented reality headsets and heads-up displays. Surely we’ll see more and more similar devices appear. In fact, one such device could launch before Glass. It’s called the Recon Jet, a nerdy accessory for jocks.

Recon Instruments, the company behind the Recon Jet, clearly designed the headset to augment sports and other outdoor-related activities. It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and all the other sensors and connectivity technology that Glass has. But instead of projecting its monitor through a prism, the Recon Jet’s display is directly situated at the front of the device. This makes it more visible than the resulting transparent display on the Glass. Recon Instruments placed the Recon Jet’s display below the user’s right eye because according to the company’s research it was the least obtrusive location.

Here’s Mashable’s interview with a spokesman from Recon Instruments:

Without knowing the final specs of both devices, it’s hard to say if the Glass can also do everything that the Recon Jet can. It’s also equally important that Recon Instruments get the support of app developers. One thing’s clear: there’s never been a better time to make prescription contact lenses. Except for the time when there weren’t any prescription contacts.

[Recon Instruments via Mashable via Reddit]

Archos has been making Android tablets for almost as long as Android has been around. The company has unveiled a new tablet called the Archos 80 Xenon that promises some nice features in a very portable form factor.

Archos says the $200 tablet was specifically designed for on-the-go access and experience and offers integrated Wi-Fi and 3G mobile network support. The tablet is designed to accept any 3G SIM card with no provider restrictions. That should mean you can pop your SIM card out of your existing device and plug it right into this tablet to get online while traveling.

The Android 4.1-based tablet features a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon CPU and and 1GB system memory. Its eight-inch multitouch IPS screen has a resolution of 1024 x 768. The tablet also comes preloaded with media center applications and can run most of the popular Android applications out there. Internal storage is 4 GB and a MicroSD memory card slot is available for expansion up to 64GB. The tablet also has integrated GPS/A-GPS capability with full support for Google Maps.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of it is that you can’t always trust the reviews you read on apps on the Google Play store. There a number of reasons why people would post inaccurate reviews from jealousy to downright stupidity. I’d wager that a lot of the negative reviews you see on some applications are people who simply don’t know how to use them. Google has announced via the Android Developers Blog that all Google Play developers can now reply to user reviews.

Clearly that means the flame wars are about to begin. You can bet that when a developer sees someone leaving a idiotic negative review about their application, they will reply. Now the trolls can be trolled. The ability to comment on user reviews for developers also opens the door for developers to respond to good reviews and feature suggestions.

I wonder if the fact that a developer can now reply to a negative review might prevent some people from posting negative reviews. One of the reasons so many trolls troll online is because there is typically no way for people to know who they are so the poster doesn’t have to face anything uncomfortable because of their review.

I think this is a good thing, developers should be able to respond to reviews good and bad. What do you think? Is this nothing but a loss of anonymity for users or a good way to help cut down on bogus reviews?