Mar 11
No, this portrait isn’t made up of thousands upon thousands of magnetic sculpture beads. The metallic wonder’s lifelike contours and shimmer comes from painstakingly hand-placing 13,000 variably sized platinum beads.
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Dec 31
Here’s one of the latest offerings from one of our favorite geeky jewelers, Paul Michael Bierker. It’s a ring that looks just like Wonder Woman’s tiara. It has five custom cut rubies and can be made from sterling silver, gold, palladium or platinum alloy.
But don’t even think about using it as a tiny boomerang. The cheapest version of the ring costs $595 (USD); the most expensive version is a godlike $12,550. Fly your invisible browser to Paul’s Etsy shop to order the ring.
[via Fashionably Geek]
Oct 06
Some bounty hunters are all rough and tumble. Brash and bold. Others are calm and collected. This is the ring of choice for them. With one of these rings, you’ll look stylish and gentlemanly even when firing a blaster or lugging a frozen body around.
This White Hunter Gents’ ring is 14 karat, with 10 karat red and green gold and sterling. There are many custom configurations to choose from. It is high quality, you even if you end up in the stomach of the almighty Sarlacc, this ring will survive, while your bones rot. The 14K version will set you back $1895, while 10K gold costs $1650, and the sterling silver one goes for $875. These models come with real Black diamonds and Paul Michael Design can also do them with black onyx too.
For those of you who haven’t collected your pay for your bounty yet, there’s also a version with a black synthetic enamel inlay, starting at just $350 in silver – though it goes all the way up to $2500 in platinum. There’s also a smaller version for the bounty huntin’ ladies out there.
There’s also a band made up of multiple Fett faces, which goes for just $265 in sterling silver.
These rings are too awesome for words. So I am just gonna shut up and count my money!
Sep 03
We like strapping things to our heads that replace the bad sounds with good ones, so we’re very excited about Creative’s new headsets. The company is launching a pair of audiophile-quality cans, as well as one for the audiophile on a limited budget. First up, there’s the Aurvana Platinum and Gold, which come with active noise cancellation, NFC and HD Voice. Then there’s the ShareMe technology, which lets two users wirelessly listen to one audio source, which’d be ideal for watching a movie on a long train journey. The Platinum will retail for £250 and the Gold for £180, while the more modest Live! 2 — which packs leatherette ear pads and 40mm Neodymium drivers — will set you back £110, with all three launching in October.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video
May 10
After years of fighting against the digital tide, the RIAA announced it’ll now factor online audio and video streams when considering tracks for its Digital Single Award. The certification has heretofore been given to digital tracks that have gone Gold or Platinum, but only for downloads: 500,000 for Gold, 1,000,000 for Platinum and 2 million-plus for multi-Platinum. But under its new policy, 100 streams count as one download, meaning that it could reach those thresholds with a mix of streams and downloads, not just the latter. The new approach is “an approximate barometer of comparative consumer activity; the financial value of streams and downloads were not factored into the equation.”
All told, these include streams from services like MOG, Rhapsody, Slacker, Spotify and Rdio along with video sites like VEVO, YouTube and MTV.com. Under the new system, 56 titles have already gone Gold and beyond, with 11 receiving their first ever digital song cert. A couple of first-timers include Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” which went Platinum and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” that went multi-Platinum. While we can’t say if music services will make everyone happy, it’s clear streaming’s here to stay. Hear that, iTunes?
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Verge
Source: RIAA
Feb 18
French portable media player, smartphone and tablet manufacturer Archos intends to expand their horizons where the tablet market is concerned, with three new additions to the Archos Platinum tablet range. You will find that Archos did not skimp on the hardware this time around with all three tablets, considering how they carry the Platinum name, they ought to live up to a certain level of reputation as well.
The entire Platinum range from Archos will share a High-Definition IPS display with capacitive multi-touch screen to keep it abreast with the latest developments among other manufacturers, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor with an 8-core GPU that ought to make it more than capable of handling 1080p video decoding without batting an eyelid, 2GB RAM, full access to all 700,000 plus applications on the Google Play store, Archos Media Center applications to keep you and the family occupied, front and back cameras, mini-HDMI and a microSD memory card slot, with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as the operating system of choice.
The Archos 80 Platinum will come in an 8” tablet form factor, boasting a 1024×768 resolution IPS screen, and should be out already for $199 a pop. As for the Archos 97 Platinum HD, this will be a larger tablet with a 9.7” display at a stunning 2048×1536 resolution, and will be comparable to the Retina display found in the iPad, although it clearly comes out the victor where pricing details are concerned. Out this month as well, the Platinum 97 HD will retail for $299.
Last but not least would be the largest model of the lot, the Archos 116 Platinum, which is an 11.6” tablet that boasts of a Full HD, 1920 × 1080 resolution IPS display, which is quite unlike anything currently on the market. The Archos 116 Platinum will be the late bloomer here, arriving only this coming April for $349 a pop.
Press Release
[ Archos expands tablet horizons with Platinum series copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Feb 04
What’s black and white and pink all over? Well, not too long ago, the answer to that was the Droid RAZR M. As of today, however, Motorola’s nearly bezel-less Jelly Bean handset will also be pretty in platinum. Available as a special edition for Best Buy, the Verizon-locked device has been given a steely makeover, but that’s not to say the M’s been scrubbed of all its flair. Turn the phone on its side and you’ll note its hardware keys now pop with a blue hue. Apart from the cosmetic overhaul, not much else on the 4.3-inch device has changed. So, if you’re still game for a solid Android mid-ranger, you can snag this freshly embellished phone for $50 on a two-year contract at the source below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Verizon
Via: Droid-Life
Source: Best Buy
Feb 03
Chips that have 3D elements to them are very much real. Moving data in 3D hasn’t been truly viable until now, however, which makes an experimental chip from the University of Cambridge that much more special. By sandwiching a layer of ruthenium atoms between cobalt and platinum, researchers found that they can move data up and down an otherwise silicon-based design through spintronics; the magnetic field manipulation sends information across the ruthenium to its destination. The layering is precise enough to create a “staircase” that moves data one step at a time. There’s no word on if and when the technique might be applied to real-world circuitry, but the advantages in density are almost self-evident: the university suggests higher-capacity storage, while processors could also be stacked vertically instead of consuming an ever larger 2D footprint. As long as the 3D chip technology escapes the lab, computing power could take a big step forward. Or rather, upward.
Filed under: Science
Source: University of Cambridge
Jan 10
The Daily Roundup for 01.10.2013
Posted in: Today's Chili 
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Jul 16
Researcher calls platinum wrong for fuel cell development, looks elsewhere for efficiency
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Hearing that fuel cells aren’t the most efficient thing in the world shouldn’t take you by surprise, but a determination by one Alfred Anderson just might. The chemistry professor from Case Western Reserve University is now making a case for using something other than platinum as the “catalyst most commonly used to convert chemical energy to electricity.” According to him: “Using platinum is like putting a resistor in the system.” To be fair, Anderson still isn’t sure which material should replace it, but he’s adamant that wizards in the field should be spending their time looking for substitutes instead of tweaking platinum further. Currently, he’s working with other researchers in order to find something that’ll one-up what we’re using today, and if you’re into oodles of technobabble, you can dig into the ins and outs of his claims in the source link below.
Filed under: Science
Researcher calls platinum wrong for fuel cell development, looks elsewhere for efficiency originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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