Hasta La Gadget!

The SHOWWX+ pico-projector from MicroVision could be the ultimate movie-accessory for your iPad. The laser-projector hooks straight into the dock-connector of your iPad (or other iOS device) and throws an image onto the wall, giving a picture of up to 100-inches. The plus-sign in the name designates that the new projector is 50-percent brighter than its predecessor, so you might be able to get that 100-inch image without closing all the curtains and killing the lights.

The dream is that you can turn an iPhone or iPad into the center of a home-theater setup: a big-screen picture courtesy of the pocket-sized projector, and external, wireless sound thanks to the new AirPlay feature of iOS 4.2 (AirPlay will beam sound that is synced to a movie, something which even the Mac won’t do without third-party software).

The specs: The SHOWWX+ puts out 15 lumens with a 5,000:1 contrast ratio (depending on ambient light, of course) in a 16:9 aspect-ratio. While that wide-screen format is wasted on the iPad, you can hook the projector up to any device that will feed it a composite video signal. Cables for both this and the iPad come in the box, and a VGA adapter for your computer can be bought separately. Resolution is 848 x 480, not high-def but then, neither is your iPad (the iPad outputs its native native 1024×768 resolution via the VGA-adapter). One big advantage of the laser projector is that it has “infinite focus”, which means it will work on curved walls, or even give a sharp picture if you haven’t got it perfectly perpendicular to the screen.

Is the SHOWWX+ worth its $450 price-tag? We’ll find out soon enough: There’s already a test unit winging its way from MicroVision to Gadget Lab Spain.

SHOWWX+ product page [MicroVision. Thanks, Gretchen!]

See Also:

• CES 2010: Laser Pico Projector, Netbook E-Reader Combo – Video – Wired
• Pico Projector iDevice Dock Beams Movies, Games
• Pico Projector Film Fest Turns Ice Sculpture Into Screen …
• Pint-Sized Pico Projector Parties in Our Pants
• Beambox Pico Projector Boosts Lumen Power, Adds iPod Scroll Wheel …

Would you pay $230 for a nine-inch auxiliary touch-screen monitor? Nope, me either, but that doesn’t stop the iMo eye9 from being pretty damned neat. It hooks up via a single USB-cable and gives you a 1024 x 600 screen off to one side on which you can place all the essential little windows that usually get lost behind less important stuff, like work.

The selling point is the touch capability, which should let you just reach across and quickly update your Twitter, say. It also comes with a 1.3MP webcam, which slots into a standard jack-socket on the monitor’s edge. That means you can push Skype calls off to the side while you get in some serious solitaire time.

The iMo eye9 comes with a stand to hold it horizontal or vertical, and you can also spring for an ugly-but-useful flexible mounting-arm with a suction cup on its base ($40).

Apart from the price, there’s a lot to like (although remember the touch-screen is resistive, not capacitive). If you already have a 10-inch tablet computer though, there are apps available to do this for you. And one last tip: Trying to use a touch-screen alongside a mouse-driven screen will confuse you, fast. I sometimes use my iPad like this, but it drives me crazy.

iMo eye9 monitor product page [Mimo Monitors. Thanks, Kevin!]

See Also:

• Tiny External USB Monitor Costs Almost $50 per Inch
• Mini USB Monitors Give Pleasure with Every Tiny Inch
• How Much?
• Veebeam Uses Wireless USB to Stream Media From PC to TV

Some tablets and smartphones ship with an AMOLED display. Newer ones are shipping with a “Super AMOLED” display. What so super about it, and what does all this alphabet soup even mean?

The short version is that a Super AMOLED touchscreen display integrates touch sensors with the glass surface panel, eliminating at least one layer of glass and with it, a layer of air. That’s what makes Super AMOLED super. Only Samsung makes it.

Super AMOLED schematic from Samsung

I said “at least one layer of glass” because AMOLED itself eliminates at least one layer in a display. The current Galaxy Tab, for example, uses a TFT-LCD (Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) screen. Until very recently, TFT-LCD has been the state of the art in thin color displays and is still the only cost-effective option in the vast majority of displays larger than a smartphone screen.

TFT-LCD has approximately four layers: a backlight, a TFT color filter, a touch-sensor panel, and an outer glass screen. AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) eliminates the separate backlight. AMOLED, however, is known for having problems with glare and readability in direct sunlight, even relative to average LCD screens. By minimizing the number of reflective surfaces and power necessary to achieve vivid color, Super AMOLED was designed in part to address this.

Samsung introduced Super AMOLED to commercial devices this year with the Samsung Wave, which ran their own Bada OS. The Android-powered Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones made the displays popular, and it’s since appeared on Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 handsets as well.

There are other advanced color technologies in the market, all of them super, and all of them extra-expensive: Super LCD recently joined Super IPS and Advanced Super View. But only Super AMOLED has really captured the popular imagination.

A 7-inch Android tablet with an AMOLED display would probably be a serious advance over its current LCD screen. But if it’s “just” AMOLED, something about it would just seem … less than super.

See Also:

• OLED Shortage Forces HTC to Switch Displays
• Samsung Omnia 7 Windows Phone Launches Early
• Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 Packs Intuitive, Visual Punch
• Samsung Android Phone Captivates AT&T
• Sporty New iPods Tout Tiny Touchscreens, Retina Display
• Better Than Retina: The Next Big Display Technology
• Samsung Galaxy Player, Better Than iPod Touch?
• Samsung Teases 10-Inch Galaxy Tab with Ultra-Light Resin Screen

With every new Apple product there are usually some wrinkles to be ironed out, and the 11 and 13-inch MacBook Air have proven to be a little more wrinkled than most. Both models of Apple’s new slimline notebook have been suffering display issues. Now, Apple has acknowledged the problem in internal memos with instructions to help the Geniuses fix things.

The 13-inch MacBook Air suffers from “horizontal flickering” on the screen when it wakes from sleep or if you hot-plug an external display, and both the 11 and 12-inch models can experience a display that is “fading dark to light colors repeatedly after waking from sleep.”

The memos, snapped off Apple Store screens and acquired by the Boy Genius Report, say that the problems will be fixed in a future software update. Until then, if you have these troubles. save yourself a trip to the Genius Bar and fix them yourself. Apple says you should close the lid and sleep the computer for 10 seconds. This will power-cycle the screen and get things back to normal.

Apple Confirms MacBook Air bugs internally [BGR]

See Also:

• Lack of Flash Gives MacBook Air Two Extra Hours of Battery Life …
• Why Apple Saddled the MacBook Air With Weak CPUs
• Macbook Air
• Hands-On With Apple's New MacBook Airs
• New MacBook Air Disses Adobe Flash

A bottle of ink may not exactly seem like the key to bigger, better, and cheaper OLED displays, but that’s just what Plextronics is promising will result from its new “next generation” Plexcore OC NQ ink. That’s particularly notable because it’s a non-aqueous, inkjet-printable ink, and is intended specifically for use with so-called solution-processed, phosphorescent OLED technology (as opposed to the vapor processing now commonly used), which at least some folks are betting on as the next big thing for OLED manufacturing — recent tests have also shown significant advances for the technology, including a lower operating voltage and boost in lifetime over previously tested systems. What’s more, while it’s still in the testing phase now, Plextronics says it expects the ink to be broadly available to manufacturers sometime next year, which should mean that actual OLED displays using it will follow sometime thereafter.

Continue reading Plextronics rolls out next-gen OLED ink, promises bigger, better OLED displays

Plextronics rolls out next-gen OLED ink, promises bigger, better OLED displays originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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