Jul 15

Eternaleds debuts world’s first liquid-cooled LED light bulb

Posted in: green, LED, light, Today's Chili

We know you probably wouldn’t answer “What’s the perfect companion to a liquid-cooled PC?” with “a liquid-cooled light bulb,” but amazingly enough, that’s a viable answer starting today. Eternaleds is stepping up big with planet’s first liquid-cooled LED bulb, the HydraLux-4, which will arrive in warm white and daylight white and should save you bundles on your energy bill over the next score. The company asserts that these bulbs produce “360 degree lighting” and can emit the same amount of illumination as a 25W incandescent with just 4W of energy. Each bulb is rated for 35,000 hours of use, and considering that a single one costs only $1.75 per year to run (at eight hours per day), we suppose the stiff $34.99 sticker is somewhat warranted.

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Eternaleds debuts world’s first liquid-cooled LED light bulb originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 02

IDEA’s Solar lamp glows like a Sputnik heatshield

Posted in: Japan, light, solar, Today's Chili

While the original Sputnik burnt out after only 3 months in orbit, here’s an homage that promises to be rather more resilient. IDEA, Japan’s answer to you know who, is offering a 30cm tall (11.8-inches) self-sufficient ambient light that pretty much does its own thing. Integrated sensors detect when the light should be on, while inconveniences like power cords and on/off switches are completely done away with. The light’s batteries are recharged by the sun at a rate of 2 to 5 hours sunlight for 8 hours operation, while its waterproof design means it can be dumped outside to collect rays during the day and even provide garden lighting at night. It’s quirky, to be sure, but the obvious design cues taken from the Russian satellite should make true geeks smile with glee. You can find a gallery of the various color choices courtesy of Engadget Japanese below, and if you’re passing by the land of the rising sun later this month you can snap up your very own solar light ball for ¥1575 ($16).

[Via Engadget Japanese]

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IDEA’s Solar lamp glows like a Sputnik heatshield originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 30

Sanyo’s Eneloop lamp heals your ecological soul

Posted in: light, Today's Chili

We’ve been fans of Sanyo’s rechargeable Eneloop batteries since they first entered the market in the lazy NiMH and NiCd days of 2005. We remember this because we, like Eneloops, don’t suffer from the memory effect of our predecessors. Ok, ok, that date’s in the press release but that doesn’t change the fact that Eneloops will maintain their charge over time even when stored, ununsed in a drawer now does it? Anywho, Sanyo just announced its rechargeable Eneloop Lamp that serves to light your home when upright or your path when held like a flashlight — automatically, just as soon as it passes the 90-degree mark. It also features a healing function that waxes a cool blue light into the tragic abyss of your misery and despair. The internal AAs recharge in about 12-hours when set atop the included induction charger. Fully charged, you can expect between 3- and 45-hours of white light, 12- to 16-hours of the blue stuff, and about 6 hours in flashlight mode. No price was given but it’ll be on sale in Japan starting September 11th.

[Via Akihabara News]

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Sanyo’s Eneloop lamp heals your ecological soul originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 31

Ultra-powerful laser could make incandescent light bulbs more efficient

Posted in: green, laser, light, nanotechnology, research, Today's Chili, university

Look, LED light bulbs are fanciful, great for Ma Earth and a fine addition to any home, barber shop or underground fight club. But let’s be honest — even the guy that bikes through blizzards to get to work and wears garb that he grew in his basement isn’t apt to shell out $120 a pop to have what’s likely the most efficient light bulb American dollars can buy. Enter Chunlei Guo from the University of Rochester, who has helped discover a process which could morph a traditional incandescent light bulb into a beacon of burning light without using nearly as much energy as before. In fact, his usage of the femtosecond laser pulse — which creates a “unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament” — could enable a bulb to increase output efficiency in order to emit 100-watts worth of light while sucking down less than 60-watts of power. Per usual, there’s no telling when this new hotness is likely to hit the commercial realm, but one’s thing for sure: we bet GE‘s paying attention.

[Via Physorg]

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Ultra-powerful laser could make incandescent light bulbs more efficient originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 May 2009 16:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 21

Aussie whiz-kids can cram 1.6TB on a DVD-sized disc, go Outback tonight

Posted in: light, nano, nanotechnology, research, storage, Today's Chili

Don’t take it personally, Blu-ray — we still love you and all, but there’s just something dreamy about baking 1.6TB of information onto a blank piece of optical media we can actually afford. According to a new report, a crew of researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have exploited the properties of a certain gold nano-rod that will theoretically enable them to shove 300 DVDs worth of data onto a single disc. Calling the method “five-dimensional optical recording,” the technique “employs nanometer-scale particles of gold as a recording medium,” and according to developers, it’s primed for commercialization. Essentially, these gurus have figured out how to add a spectral and polarization dimension, giving them the ability to record information “in a range of different color wavelengths on the same physical disc.” As for the chances this actually makes it out of the laboratory and into the lives of real humans? Slim, Jim.

[Thanks, Sam]

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Aussie whiz-kids can cram 1.6TB on a DVD-sized disc, go Outback tonight originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 06:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 20

First Philips Lumiblade OLED lights arrive

Posted in: light, OLED, philips, Today's Chili

Philips has always pushed OLED lighting concepts, and it looks like the company’s Lumiblade products will be the first to start shipping. The folks at OLED-Info got to play with some pre-production samples, and while they’re definitely cool and impossibly slim, there are some notable drawbacks: the rectangular panel has some unfortunate “speckles,” and overall they’re just not very bright on their own, so you’ll need quite a few for an actual lamp. Still, we’ve no doubt OLED lighting will soon be everywhere, so hit read link for a quick glimpse of the future.

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First Philips Lumiblade OLED lights arrive originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 May 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 11

Nanocrystal breakthrough promises more versatile lasers, world peace

Posted in: laser, LED, light, OLED, science, Today's Chili, university

For the longest while, scientists have been flummoxed by the incessant coruscating emitted by individual molecules; no matter their methods, they could never quite seem to overcome a troubling optical quirk known sensibly as “blinking.” Thanks to a brilliant crew at the University of Rochester, however, we now understand the basic physics behind the phenomenon, and together with a team from Eastman Kodak, a nanocrystal has been created that can constantly emit light. In theory, the discovery could lead to “dramatically less expensive and more versatile lasers, brighter LED lighting, and biological markers that track how a drug interacts with a cell at a level never before possible.” Indeed, one could envision that future displays could be crafted by painting a grid of differently sized nanocrystals onto a flat surface, making even OLED TVs look chubby in comparison. Now, if only we had a good feeling that such a device was destined for a CES in our lifetime…

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Nanocrystal breakthrough promises more versatile lasers, world peace originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 May 2009 08:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 03

Researchers develop technique to unscramble light for a much sharper picture

Posted in: camera, light, research, science, Today's Chili

Trying to circumvent the need to choose between getting a wide-angle shot and zooming in for details, a team of researchers at Princeton led by electric engineer Jason Fleischer have developed a new method to get the best of both worlds, by passing the light through a “nonlinear crystal” that would normally distorts the picture. A computer algorithm then pieces together the data and, as they claim, produces a wide-view image that also manages to capture the finer points otherwise missing when using conventional techniques. The goal is to build “super-resolution” microscopes for better medical diagnostics, but the group also sees uses in the fields of data encryption and lithography / microchip production. Is it too much to ask that our next Canon or Nikon have this a standard feature?

[Via PhysOrg]

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Researchers develop technique to unscramble light for a much sharper picture originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 May 2009 07:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 30

Mr. Brightside USB keyboard light illuminates your keys, taste in music

Posted in: light, Today's Chili, usb

Have you ever found yourself furiously typing in the dead of night wishing your keyboard had its own personal light? Well, Mr. Brightside is here to help. This little guy is a USB keyboard light sure to take away your extremely minor lighting gripes, and it’ll look good doing it. Mr. Brightside comes in lime green, pink, black and blue for the many shades of your moods. They’re available now for $20.22.

[Via Coolest Gadgets]

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Mr. Brightside USB keyboard light illuminates your keys, taste in music originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 27

Kenwood lights up your life with prototype OLED-illumed speakers

Posted in: light, OLED, speaker, speakers, Today's Chili

Details are scarce on these new speakers from Kenwood, but if you find yourself frequently faced with a lamp-or-noise dilemma, we might’ve just stumbled upon the solution. The prototype flat speakers, developed by Junji Kido of Yamagata University in Japan, are inexplicably surfaced with white Lumiblade-style OLED lights — we’re not sure what that does for the sound, but we probably won’t be trading in our studio monitors in anticipation of this brightly lit conjectured future.

[Via OLED-Info]

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Kenwood lights up your life with prototype OLED-illumed speakers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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