Phillips Pocket Sized PicoPix 2480 Projector

Anyone in the market for a pocket sized pico projector might be interested in the new Phillips PicoPix 2480, which was first unveiled back in February of their year and measure just (W x H x D) 190 x 80 x 190 mm.

The Phillips PicoPix 2480 is equipped with a 80 lumens LED bulb whilst on power or 55 lumens when powered by its internal battery, enabling you to project an image up to 120 inches or 320cm across.

The PicoPix is not equipped with high definition support but does provide a resolution of 854 × 480, with a contrast ratio of 1000:1. Its internal battery will provide enough juice for up to 2 hours of viewing and the integrated Media MP4 Player allows you to play media directlyfrom an SD card or USB stick.

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3D chocolate printer now available for pre-order

Last summer, a group of scientists from the United Kingdom first unveiled a prototype 3D printer that prints edible chocolate. Now, according to the BBC, the 3D chocolate printer has been perfected and is now available for pre-order.
The device, which is named Choc Creator, enables users to “print their own custom-made sweets, layer by layer,” said the BBC on Friday. It is reported that the device works like any other 3D printers, but instead of using plastic to print out its designs, it uses chocolate.
The device had drawn the interest of a number of companies while it was still in its development stages and now, we are going to be able to see it live by the end of the month.
University of Exeter’s Dr. Lian Hao, the person in charge of the project, said that he founded Choc Edge to capitalize on retailers and merchants’ interests.
“We’ve improved and simplified the machine, so now it is really easy to use,” said Dr. Hao. “You just need to melt some chocolate, fill a syringe that is stored in the printer, and get creative printing your chocolate.”
One of those who are interested in the tech is Thornton’s, which is the largest retailer and manufacturer of chocolate goods in the United Kingdom. Dr. Hao said that he was approached by representatives from the company after they unveiled the prototype.
What do you think of this cool device?

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April 2012's Hottest Gadgets

Etón Rukus Solar

Sunlight can double the Etón Rukus Solar speaker’s battery life to more than 10 hours. A 40-square-inch monocrystalline solar panel provides the 7.4-volt battery with power to play songs from a Bluetooth-paired phone or MP3 player. A low-power E Ink display shows battery status.
Etón Rukus Solar $150 (available May)


 

Helly Hansen H2 Flow Jacket

The H2 Flow jacket’s unique fleece lining helps keep wearers warmer than other shells. The lining has some 230 13- to 30-millimeter air pockets, which trap heat much the way the spaces between down feathers do. The holes also let cool air rush in quickly when the wearer unzips the jacket’s front vents.
Helly Hansen H2 Flow Jacket $180 (available Sept.)

Simple.TV

With the Simple.TV box plugged in at home, viewers can watch or record live TV anywhere. The box connects to a TV signal via coaxial cable and to the cloud via Ethernet. When logged into their device through Simple.TV’s iPad or GoogleTV app, users will eventually be able to stream live TV and DVR’ed shows they’ve saved on the company’s cloud servers.
Simple.TV $149 (plus $5/month subscription) 

Samsung Series 7 Gamer

Samsung built its new 17-inch laptop with a dedicated gaming mode. A toggle on the right side of the keyboard simultaneously deactivates the trackpad to prevent errant mouse clicks and turns on a red backlight to highlight the WASD action keys. There’s also a library mode, which dims the screen and mutes the sound.
Samsung Series 7 Gamer $1,800 

Craftsman Electric Pressure Washer and Steam Cleaner

Craftsman’s pressure washer is the first to include a steam-cleaning unit to help get grime off grills and patio furniture. For pressure washing, the machine’s pump converts residential water pressure to 1,700 psi. To generate steam, the machine passes water through a 1,500-watt heating element before compressing it.
Craftsman Electric Pressure Washer and Steam Cleaner $220 

Adidas Terrex Fast X Mid GTX

Rocky trails can be rough on a backpacker’s knees. Adidas’s Terrex boots reduce the strain associated with heavy foot strikes. Each boot has a plate in the heel that slides forward with every footfall, more evenly distributing the force of impact. The plates rebound between steps.
Adidas Terrex Fast X Mid GTX $175

GiiNii AudioBulb Mini

The AudioBulb Mini combines a 35-watt-equivalent LED with a compact speaker driver, allowing users to add music to a room without taking up extra space. At about five inches tall, the bulb is small enough for table and floor lamps, unlike other speaker-toting bulbs. Users employ a dock, paired over the 2.4-gigahertz frequency, to control the volume and brightness.
GiiNii AudioBulb Mini $90 (bulb only) 

LG LFX31935

LG’s fridge can bring room-temperature beer to 42ºF in five minutes. Users place a can in a compartment and start a high-pressure fan that blows cold air from the freezer below onto the can. Meanwhile, a motor rocks the drink holder to prevent the formation of ice crystals.
LG LFX31935 $3,500 (available midyear) 

SuperTooth Disco2

A pair of Disco2 Bluetooth speakers can play back well-separated dual-channel audio from a paired mobile device better than your average boom box. With two of the seven-inch towers, users may be able to assign one to the left audio channel and one to the right.
SuperTooth Disco2 $100 each 

  

Sony XBA-NC85D

Most noise-canceling earphones contain their audio processing circuitry in a small box strung onto the cable, adding heft to otherwise lightweight pairs. Sony engineers downsized the drivers in the new XBA-NC85D earphones, leaving extra space for a silicon microphone and a quarter-inch noise-canceling processor in each bud.
Sony XBA-NC85D $500

Espro Press 10-cup

Filters on traditional French presses don’t catch all the coffee grinds, leaving mud at the bottom of a drinker’s mug. In its new 10-cup press, Espro added a second filter that’s 12 times as fine as a standard one, so plunging the filter through a brewed pot will trap what a single filter can’t.
Espro Press 10-cup $100 

  

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IBM's building an air-breathing EV battery that goes 500 miles on a single charge

IBM's planning an end to range anxiety with a EV power pack that runs on air and travels 500 miles on a single charge. "Lithium Air" batteries draw oxygen into a nano-structured carbon cathode, where it is stored and reacts with lithium ions and electrons to generate electricity. When you plug the vehicle in, the unmolested oxygen is released back into the air as if it was breathing. The technology's significantly lighter than what's found inside a Chevy Volt and IBM has enlisted the help of chemical giants Asahi Kasei and Central Glass to turn it from successful experiment to fully-fledged product by 2030. If you'd like to learn more, we've got a gallery of candid pics from inside the testing lab, explanatory video and, yes, even a press release full of information for you to steep your brains in

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Reinventing the battery: Donald Sadoway at TED2012

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

“The electricity powering the lights in this theater was generated just moments ago,” says MIT professor, Donald Sadoway, now on stage at TED2012 to talk power. “The way things stand, electricity demand must be in balance with electricity supply.” The problem is: coal and nuclear plants can’t address demand fast enough. How do we deal with the problem of intermittency?

Sadoway thinks he has the answer, and in this hugely well-received talk, he outlines his invention of a liquid metal battery he thinks might act as a blueprint for the future. “If we’re going to get this country out of its current energy situation, we can’t conserve our way out, we can’t drill our way out, we can’t bomb our way out. We’re going to do it the old-fashioned American way: we’re going to invent our way out, working together,” he says to whoops of applause.

Realizing the critical importance of the humble battery as a way to help with the energy crisis — and that, nonetheless, there is simply “no battery technology capable of meeting the demanding performance requirements of the grid,” Sadoway started to think differently. “We need to abandon the paradigm of chasing the coolest chemistry to chase down the cost curve by making lots of products,” he says. Instead, he wanted to invent to the pricepoint of the electricity market. ”If you want to make something dirt-cheap, make it out of dirt. Preferably dirt that’s locally sourced.” He also decided to be seemingly perverse in his hunt for potential electricity storage, looking at a source that neither generates nor stores electricity but in fact consumes huge amounts of it: aluminum production.

And that’s how and why he discovered a way to sandwich necessary salts with both high- and low-density metals to harness the potential of aluminum smelting in the name of creating an electricity storage device. He didn’t necessarily think it would work — nor did any of his students, those he gathered to share in his “passion for science in the service of society, not science in service of career building.” Cutely, he paraphrases JFK at Rice University in 1962: “we choose to work on gridlevel storage not because it is easy but because it is hard.”

Yet, to date they have enjoyed some serious success, and have already developed various liquid batteries, from the “shotglass” up to the 16-inch “pizza”, which produces one kilowatt-hour of energy. The 36-inch-wide “Bistro Table” is not yet ready for prime time, but a future variant is designed to produce the daily electrical needs of 200 American households with a battery that is “silent, emissions free, has no moving parts, is remotely controlled, and is designed to the market price point, without subsidy.” Cue applause.

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Coffeepot for the Lightsaber Man

Folks who love to cross tech with traditional are going to adore this MEM-COFFEE Set! Boasting a fully ceramic body, the sheer exterior is devoid of any buttons or panels. Instead a laser projected multi-touch interface allows you to brew your cuppa java delight. Modern yet reminiscent of your ‘grandma’s old coffee pot’, coffee addicts are going to want this!

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Urban Origami Bike

The Rollin’ bike design focuses on two of important features helpful to the urban commuter: a stylish, super-lightweight body and a stationary lock integrated into the frame. The frame, which takes more inspiration from contemporary interior design than sporting design, is laser cut from a single sheet of aluminum that has been folded for added stability. The integrated lock is an easy and accessible way to ensure the bike will never go without protection from theft.

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Samsung PN60E8000 PLASMA TV

The good: The Samsung PNE8000 series exhibited outstanding overall picture quality, characterized by exceedingly deep black levels, accurate colors, superb video processing and very good 3D. Unlike LCDs, as a plasma it has superb off-angle and uniformity characteristics. Its massive feature set includes a touchpad remote, IR blaster, two pairs of 3D glasses, motion and voice command and the industry's most capable Smart TV platform. This Samsung is also one of the best plasma designs around.

The bad: Samsung charges too much for extra features that are largely unnecessary and poorly implemented. Its picture delivers slightly worse shadow detail and bright-room performance than some competitive plasmas, and its maximum light output is somewhat dim.

The bottom line: The expensive Samsung PNE8000 series comes through with stellar picture quality, but its main appeal is to people who crave the latest gadgetry in their plasma TV.

The Samsung PNE8000 is easily the most full-featured plasma TV on the market; no other can touch its sheer doodad-ification. It's the opposite of a "dumb monitor," building in not only the most app-happy Smart TV suite available, but also voice and gesture control, account sign-in via facial recognition, a camera, a microphone, an upgradable dual-core processor and a beefed-up Web browser. Its box is also accessory-packed, from the second touch-pad remote to the Bluetooth IR blaster to the two pairs of active 3D glasses. It's as if Samsung took every feature that could possibly appeal to anyone and added a few more.

Samsung didn't neglect the picture quality of its flagship plasma, either -- in short, it's spectacular. That brings up an interesting question, one I suspect most buyers who fell asleep during the paragraph above might be wondering (when they wake up). "Can I get that same picture quality, minus a boatload of doodads, in one of Samsung's less expensive plasmas, namely the PNE7000 or PNE6500 series?" Last year the answer was yes. This year the jury is out until I review those two, but at least one sign already points to yes, and I know for a fact that a model like the Panasonic ST50, which also earned a 9 in picture quality, offers better bang for the buck. But if you have money to burn and want as "loaded" a plasma TV as you can get, the PNE8000 series is your boy.

Design
If not for the funky splay-legged chrome-plated stand, the PNE8000 would have the best styling of any plasma TV I can remember. Samsung finally ditched the gray frame color for actual black and thinned the frame a hair or two compared with the "D" models from last year. The transparent edge is even narrower and sleeker, and next to the ST50, the whole package is more refined and classier by a solid notch. Like most modern panels it's thin, too; our 60-inch review sample measured just 1.9 inches deep.

Samsung's 2012 TV menus look the same as last year and remain among the easiest to use. They're bright opaque blue with rounded edges and good-sized text. Each major menu item gets a text explanation, and I noticed really snappy response time despite constant animations.

Although the stand could be less weird, the rest of the set's exterior is stellar.

Aside from Smart Interaction (see below), the other major step-up difference between the PNE8000 and the significantly less expensive PNE7000 is the remote control. In addition to a standard clicker, there's another that omits numerous buttons in favor of a touch pad that's supposed to ease navigation of the menus and Smart TV functions, especially the Web browser. It's a great idea in theory, and I loved that its Bluetooth connectivity meant I didn't need line-of-sight to the TV.

Samsung includes both a standard remote (not pictured) and a second touch-pad model.

In practice the touch pad is frustrating to use, alternating between too-twitchy and unresponsive. The clicker is denuded of most buttons, relegating the number-pad to a kludgy onscreen version and eliminating the Menu key altogether. Lack of buttons also necessitated selecting from annoying onscreen mini menus for things as basic as Pause, Menu and Chapter Skip. In short, I'm not a fan, and defaulted to using the standard clicker when I could. For using the browser, the 'pad is better than gesture control, but not by much.

I ended up using the normal remote whenever possible, although it's still not very good. The grid of buttons lacks sufficient differentiation, too many promotional keys are onboard (e.g., Family Story and Camera), and the central Smart Hub button is annoyingly just a logo. At least there's full backlighting, a feature absent from the Touch remote.

I also tested Samsung's optional wireless keyboard with touch pad ($99). Its touchpad is much more responsive than the one on the remote, and the full-sized QWERTY keyboard makes data input a cinch (but not in the dark; again, there's no backlight). Unless you're intending to use the browser extensively, however, it's not worth getting. 

Key TV features
Display technology	Plasma		LED backlight	N/A
Screen finish	Glossy		Remote	Touch pad
Smart TV	Yes		Internet connection	Built-in Wi-Fi
3D technology	Active		3D glasses included	4 pairs
Refresh rate(s)	60Hz, 96Hz		Dejudder (smooth) processing	Yes
DLNA compliant	Photo/Music/Video		USB	Photo/Music/Video
Other: Smart Interaction suite includes voice and gesture control, facial recognition via built-in camera and microphone; dual-core processor; Smart Evolution kit; Bluetooth IR blaster for external device control; Bluetooth Touchpad remote and standard multibutton IR remote; AllShare Play; optional wireless keyboard with touch pad (VG-KBD1000, $99)

Features
The Kitchen Sink award for 2012 goes to Samsung PNE8000 plasma and UNES8000 LED TVs. I doubt any more feature-festooned TVs will appear this year, so this plasma deserves its 10 in this category.

Samsung includes a battery-powered Bluetooth-to-IR blaster that allows the TV to directly control a cable box and/or Blu-ray/DVD player. The idea is to use voice and gesture commands, as well as the touchpad remote, with these external devices. It's a nice idea but when I tried it with a DirecTV HR24 satellite box and LG BD690 Blu-ray player, it didn't work nearly as well as third-party universal remotes like Harmony.

A Bluetooth-to-IR blaster allows cable box and Blu-ray control, but can't handle audio devices yet.

Setup was tedious (pairing the blaster to the TV via Bluetooth took forever; it took three tries to get the right channel lineup; the TV initially said "source not connected" even though my player was plugged in), many direct commands (like a link to my DVR's recorded programs) are unsupported and, worst of all, I had to use the balky Touch remote for everything, which meant fiddling with onscreen menus instead of hitting buttons directly. There's also no way to control an external audio device yet (so Volume and Mute affect only the TV) and power is not switched automatically. When I went from using the Blu-ray player to watching TV, the player remained turned on and spinning, whereas any decent universal remote automatically switches off devices that aren't in use.

The PNE8000 is the only 2012 Samsung plasma to get the company's dual-core processor, and the only plasma that can be upgraded via the Smart Evolution feature. Samsung says the TV's processor and memory can be swapped out and upgraded at a later date (as early as 2013) and for an unspecified fee to allow improved functionality.

Otherwise the PNE8000, PNE7000 and PNE6500 all share very similar feature sets, andaccording to Samsung there shouldn't be much picture quality difference between the three. All offer a 1080p/24-friendly CinemaSmooth mode, the same Real Black Pro screen filter, and the same plasma panels. An engineer told me that the dual-core processor on the E7000 and E8000 might improve color accuracy to a certain extent, but I doubt it's major.

Samsung goes one better on TVs that have built-in Wi-Fi, allowing its sets to act as wireless access points. I really liked this extra since, if you take the time to run Ethernet to your living room to connect to the TV, you can get an additional WAP there to provide your nearby wireless devices with a stronger signal.

Two pairs of active 3D glasses are included in the box.

Like all Samsung 3D models, and unlike other major-brand TVs that use active 3D technology, the PNE8000 actually includes 3D glasses -- two pairs are packed into every box. The specs that came in my review sample's box were actually the SSG-3050GBs from 2011, not the newerSamsung SSG-4100GBs from 2012. Both retail for a scant $20 and look exactly the same - the main difference is that the 2012 glasses support the universal standard, so they should actually work with so-certified 3D TVs like 2012 Panasonics. I don't have access to a set of SSG-4100GBs, so I couldn't test interoperability by press time. I also wouldn't be surprised if Samsung began packaging the newer glasses with its 3D TVs later in the year -- but for now, I was told all 2012 TVs will come with the non-universal 2011 glasses.

Smart Interaction: Smart Interaction is Samsung's unique new feature that leverages the built-in camera and microphone to attempt to recognize your gestures and voice to control and interact with the TV. It's found on this plasma as well as Samsung's UNES7500 and UNES8000LED TVs. I've already written an extensive hands-on about the voice and gesture command system, so I'll just quote from there:

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