Hasta La Gadget!

Back in March of this year, we mentioned that the FAA had agreed to re-examining restrictions on gadgets during commercial aircraft flights. The FAA announced this week that it has formed a government-industry group to study the use of certain consumer electronics devices during flights. This could mean that you no longer have to stow your electronic devices during certain stages of commercial flights.

The new group will investigate which new technologies passengers will be allowed to use during flight and when it’s safe for passengers to use them. The good news is that the FAA apparently isn’t considering allowing voice calls to be made during flights. This is good news because if voice calls were allowed I think airlines would need more air marshals to prevent beat downs on overly chatty passengers.

I’m sure we can count on still having to turn our devices off when the aircraft is taking off, if for no other reason than to provide fewer distractions to passengers so they’ll pay attention to the program the flight attendants put on about safety. The group is soliciting input from the public as long as the suggestions have nothing to do with making voice calls using cell phones acceptable during flights.

[via TheNextWeb]

Pictures have revealed that Sony is
preparing an apparently powerful hybrid tablet computer with a
built-in retractable keyboard and the full Windows 8 operating
system.

We see plenty of pictures of athletes pushing their physical boundaries every day, but it’s difficult to know what they’re really feeling from pictures alone. That’s why researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS have created a super small, intelligent camera that can record other metadata aside from just HD images and video. They’re calling it INCA, and it’s an Android based camera that comes complete with “a diversity of sensors that provide data on GPS position, acceleration, temperature and air pressure.”

It’s easily mounted on a helmet, allowing viewers to see the events through the athlete’s eyes. It isn’t limited to what it can do by its tiny size, however, as it also comes with the ability to connect wirelessly to other devices through Bluetooth or WLAN. This means an athlete could connect the camera to a harness to track heart rate, and the INCA can also work with “object recognition and voice detection systems.”

Of course, the hardware it comes equipped with only skims the surface. Since it’s Android-based, the INCA can meet the needs of many different situations through apps. Fraunhofer says that the camera is “powerful enough to handle professional film and TV productions” and process that video in real-time despite its small, 2x2x8 cm size. Don’t let the size fool you however, as the INCA is capable of handling less-than-pleasant conditions. The INCA can handle bouts with sand, dust and cold, which means that it isn’t going to cut out if athletes are using it to broadcast an extreme sports competition.

Wolfgang Thieme, who managed the group of researchers that developed INCA, says that the camera can offer so much while being so small because of its OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) processor. “As the heart of the camera, this is comparable to a CPU that you find in any ordinary PC,” Thieme said. “The difference is that additional function blocks for various tasks have been integrated into the OMAP. Without these blocks, the system would neither record HD video images nor process and issue them in real time.”

INCA isn’t available at the moment, and Fraunhofer’s announcement gives no indication of when it will be. The announcement does say that attendees of IBC in Amsterdam will be able to try it out though, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for more news around then. Stay tuned, because this could potentially give us a new and interesting way to watch sports.

New INCA mini-camera gives metadata on your favorite athletes is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
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For serious users looking to keep
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Most security systems are only good at dealing with break-ins after they happen, but this security system stops burglars dead in their tracks and does its best to prevent break-ins. It does this with some impressive and completely fake defense systems.

You won’t find a better security system than this one from Global Link. It has laser beams that sweep across the walls of the room. Flashing lights. And an alarm beeps, psychologically intimidating burglars.

Between the visible and audible presence of the system, burglars will give your place a pass and search for easier targets. The Global Link LaserScan is available over on Amazon for $195(USD), where you can find the following hilarious (and likely fake) review:

“I recently bought one of these as I don’t exactly live in a select neighbourhood. It arrived promptly and the instructions were very easy to follow and I had it setup in no time at all, the problems started when I turned it on. I had somewhat of a shock when the laser beam was directed straight into my eyes which immediately blinded me, after stumbling backwards and tripping over the cat I hit my head on the wooden table behind which promptly rendered me unconscious. I awoke some time later to find most of the contents of my flat had been removed.”