Hi-tech Frontier

Spherica Camera Concept for High Quality Images Spherica is a Sphera VR-X camera system which contains a patent innovation and functional design solution. You will be able to enjoy high-quality spherical images and videos free from parallax distortion with this patent optics. You will have to hold the camera straight up in order to capture a photo and the detachable display will allow you to view the result by moving the screen around. This digital camera is able to catch not only part of a picture, but the complete surrounding. This camera can benefit with its unprecedented features to all range of people such as insurance surveyors, real estate agents, travelers, security personnel and many more. ##CONTINUE##

Burnham Eco Pavilions Award-winning architects Ben van Berkel (UNStudio) and Zaha Hadid have recently disclosed their designs for a couple of eco-pavilions that will be on everyone’s attention in the celebrations of Burnham Plan Centennial this summer in Chicago. The main goal of both pavilion’s design is to realize the importance of imagining a superior future for all. The Curvilinear pavilion designed by Hadid will be developed with stretched fabric over a frame made of aluminum. The tent-like shape has been planned to be collapsible and re-installed without any difficulties. On the other hand, Van Berkel crafted out various materials for his design including wood and steel.

Dynamic Lamp Glows When You Spin It I don’t know about you, but I find those dynamo powered flashlights pretty useless. The minimal amount of light they put out just isn’t the worth the endless cranking or shaking needed to keep them powered. But spinning a mapless globe to produce light? Well that’s something I can easily do all night long! Thankfully, that’s exactly what Karin Johansson has created with her Dynamic Lamp. It looks like a run-of-the-mill globe, minus the map graphics, but thanks to a dynamo hidden inside it will actually softly glow when you give it a spin. Now it’s not exactly as portable as a flashlight, but it can be used anywhere since it’s not tethered to a power outlet. And as you can see in the video I’ve included after the jump, it actually doesn’t take that much of a spin to keep it glowing for quite a while.

Peugeot Clear concept car Small in size just enough for one the Peugeot clear is a classy model that creates a divine beauty and permeates an aroma of excellent design in its features. Suitable for incredible speed it has an electric motor that heightens the electrical systems to work fluidly and almost effortlessly. The hydrogen and oxygen cylinders are well placed to improve the engine function on a car that uses little fuel. Heat in the sleek car is a thing of the past with the tunnel cooling radiators owned by the concerted elements of fuel. Peugeot clear is the newest sensation of affordable individual designed car.

AMD debuts world's first air-cooled 1GHz GPU The last time a GPU milestone this significant was passed, it was June of 2007, and we remember it well. We were kicked back, soaking in the rays from Wall Street and firmly believing that nothing could ever go awry -- anywhere, to anyone -- due to a certain graphics card receiving 1GB of onboard RAM. Fast forward a few dozen months, and now we've got AMD dishing out the planet's first factory-clocked card to hit the 1GHz mark. Granted, overclockers have been running their cards well above that point for awhile now, but hey, at least this bugger comes with a warranty. The device doing the honors is the ATI Radeon HD 4890, and it's doing it with air cooling alone and just a wee bit of factory overclocking. Take a bow, AMD -- today's turning out to be quite a good one for you.

Logitech's totally rad G19 gaming keyboard now on sale For no particular reason -- let's just blame blatant capitalism in the face of uncertain times -- Dell's online store has a 30 day exclusive on Logitech's new G19 gaming keyboard, and just started selling the thing at $180 a pop, or $260 when bundled with the G9 laser gaming mouse. Sure, that might sound like a lot of money, but just remember the next time you reach a weathered, calloused index finger across your keyboard to toss your last grenade at a grim virtual enemy: you could've paid $180 to do the exact same thing while listening to Korn.

UMID M1D No, we still have no details on any upcoming releases of UMID's M1, but it seems that a slightly stripped down version -- the M1D -- is about to appear in Korea. This Mbook boasts a 1.1GHz Atom CPU (the M1 has a 1.3GHz Atom), and lacks both the webcam and the DMB module. Other than that, we're looking at the same cute little guy we've come to know and love. The M1D is launching in Korea next week -- but still no word on if or when it'll ever make its way to the States or elsewhere, or its official price.

Slimmer PS3? Rumors of some sort of Sony announcement at E3 have been floating around for a couple weeks now, and it certainly seems like something's afoot -- hot on the heels of that officially non-existent white US DualShock 3 appearing this morning, we're hearing that a revised PS3 is in the works. It's not clear exactly what's going down, but the hot whispers right now say that it's the long-rumored slimmed-down redesign of the current console, not just a color change or storage bump. That makes a certain amount of sense, given the endless chatter of a price cut and Sir Howard Stringer's recent comments about the system being too expensive -- a trimmed-up redesign is right on schedule with those smaller Cell and RSX chips, and it could still possibly include some of that rumored motion-sensing hardware while driving down costs. On the other hand, after all this speculation and hype it would be a total Sony move to just pump out the same machine in a differen...

MSI X-Slim X340 gets reviewed, loved on - despite the 'flexy' keyboard We've had our eyes on MSI's answer to the MacBook Air (yeah, we said it!) for a while now -- and that includes a shady, late night hands-on photo session live from the Neville Island Motel and a horrifying back-alley vivisection, to boot. Now it looks like the crazy kids at Laptop are dead set on having their say on the X340 13.4-inch ultra-portable -- and why not? The more the merrier! According to the reviewer, what this character lacks in processing power, it more than makes up for in price, weight, and battery life -- at 2.9 pounds the device is certainly lighter than the Air, and its over three hours on a single charge are none too shabby. Even the 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo processor (coupled here with 2GB memory and running Windows Vista) is characterized as "snappy." Sadly, the keyboard is said to be flimsy and graphic performance pretty weak -- but still, at $899 (price as reviewed) this i...

Wooden e-book? A luddite's dream of the future? E-readers aren't for everyone, apparently. Clever hands fashioned this Kindle out of wood -- cutely called the Amazon Kindling -- using a laser cutter. You might only be able to read the same page of The Count of Monte Cristo so many times, but at least the battery will never punk out on you!

HifiMAN HM-801 PMP promises to make audiophiles happy, wallets hurt Audiophiles can be a particular bunch when it comes to portable media players and, at the very least, can often be found carrying a not-so-discreet portable amp around with their PMP. This new HifiMAN HM-801 device aims to make their lives a tad easier, however, with it combining a Burr-Brown PCM1704 DAC and a OPA627 op-amp in a single modular unit that'll also let folks swap in their own amp of choice if they so desire. As you might expect, however, while it doesn't cut any corners when it comes to sound quality (including full support for FLAC and lossless WMA), it's pretty no frills otherwise, with no video support or other media-related features to speak of, and no internal storage of its own (you'll have to rely on SDHC cards). At $700, it unsurprisingly also doesn't come cheap, although Head-Fi.org forum members that pre-order it in advance of the June release can at least save $100.

HP Mini 1151NR netbook Turns out the rumors were true. Verizon's getting into the netbook business starting May 17th with the release of the HP Mini 1151 NR. Specs for this 10.1-inch, 3G-capable portable are exactly what we heard via leaked documents, but for those just joining us: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, two USB 2.0 ports, 802.11b/g, SD slot, and Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3. As for the pricing, it's not quite as bad as previously suggested -- $200 after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year commitment. Frankly, we'd prefer paying a little more upfront on Verizon's MiFi 2200 EV-DO router and a netbook / laptop of our choosing, with the same Mobile Broadband data plans, but hey, we can't disagree with having more options.

Boston Dynamics-designed RiSE V3 robot climbs poles, haunts dreams The folks at Boston Dynamics have already made quite a name for themselves in the world of creepy robotics, but it looks like they're not ones to keep all their know-how to themselves, and they've now lent the University of Pennsylvania's Kod*lab a hand with this new RiSE V3 pole-climbing robot. That, as you've no doubt surmised, is a followup to RiSE V1 and V2, which were developed without the help of Boston Dynamics and were more suited to climbing flat surfaces than poles. In addition to a vastly different leg mechanism, this latest model also makes use of some brushless DC motors that increase the power density to let it climb poles at rates up to 22cm per second, which the researchers say make it well-suited for a wide range of tasks.

Toshiba's Dynabook SS RX2 with world's first 512GB SSD With 512GB SSDs already announced it was just a matter of time until OEMs slapped that slim slab of solid state silicon into a laptop. Now our patience has paid off with Toshiba's 12.1-inch Dynabook SS RX2/WAJ; a world's first laptop to feature Toshiba's own 512GB SSD. Oh sure, ASUS announced its S121 with 512GB SSD back at CES but Toshiba's laptop is the first to actually ship. Remember, the Core 2 Duo SU9400-based SS RX2 is already the mother of ultra-portable badassery with a 12-hour battery stuffed into a slim 19.5 ~ 25.5mm sled weighing just 1.1-kg (less than 2.5-pounds). But with the SSD alone priced at about $1,500, well, you can guess how much the SS RX2 will cost configured (hint: over $4,000).

Microsoft's Future Home actually makes your computer a big ass table The problem with most so-called "homes of the future" is that they come off looking like a theme-park vision of the space age (read: the 1970s). The Microsoft Home, however, manages to piece together a realistic vision of our homes on a 5 to 10 year horizon -- a timeline just long enough to allow the nascent technologies of today to go mainstream. As such, it's no surprise to find dwellers interacting with the environment through gestures and voice to control interactive cooking surfaces in the kitchen and the digital wall paper in the kids' room. More prophetic perhaps, the promise that "one day your computer will be a big-ass table" appears to be coming true in the dining room.

Novatel's MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router What one CDMA carrier can do, another can do better, right? Eh, not quite, but they can stare each other down holding the exact same weapon, just daring each other to make the next move. Just a week after Verizon Wireless launched the MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router, Sprint has decided to offer up the exact same product for use on its network. The battery-powered box, engineered by Novatel Wireless, enables users to connect up to five WiFi-enabled devices to Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network, and it'll be marketed in stores as the Sprint Mobile Hotspot. According to the carrier, its unit will be the first in the US to support MiFi's GPS capabilities, allowing users to take advantage of select location and mapping applications. It should be noted, however, that Sprint's service plans differ quite significantly from those offered up by VZW. The up front cost is the same at $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate (on a two-year agreement),...

Samsung's SCH-W760 features night vision cam for Blair Witch-style video calls On the surface, the new SCH-W760 looks like a totally typical midrange Korean domestic market slider: 3 megapixel camera, DMB reception, Bluetooth, and a semi-notable 2.8-inch AMOLED display. You know, the usual. A closer look reveals one very interesting feature, though -- it features a front cam sensitive to infrared spectrum so that you can hold grayscale video calls in complete darkness. Beyond scaring the poo out of friends with your spooky, grainy, low-res visage and holding the occasional video conference from the confines of an unlit closet, we have absolutely no idea what practical value this offers -- but look, ridiculous features are what exotic new handsets are all about. Well played, Samsung. The W760 hasn't yet been officially announced, though it'll apparently be coming to SKT, so keep an eye peeled (and bring a flashlight).

HTC Magic hands-on Our pals from Engadget Spanish got a HTC Magic in their hands, and we have to admit it's quite a looker. The similarities to the G1 / Dream are obvious (besides the fact it doesn't have a physical keyboard, of course). On the downside, they found that inputting text while on portrait mode is a little complicated due to the size of the keys and the accelerometer seems to be a little slow -- besides those minor issues, though, the Magic has been well received in Spain.

Panasonic's TX-P42G10 plasma A little skeptical of rave review the HD Guru gave to Panasonic's NeoPDP-equipped G10 plasma? After reviewing the smaller 42-inch TX-P42G10 from the G10 plasma series, the good folks at TrustedReviews have another data point for you. The set turned in a solid performance without blowing away the reviewers -- which to our reading back up feelings around these parts that plasma still has an edge over LCDs in some performance areas, including black levels, off-axis viewing and motion resolution. It's interesting that even though the review itself is pretty reserved, the set scored very highly (9 out of 10) in the "image quality," "value" and "overall" categories. It sounds like TrustedReviews was torn between pulling the trigger on the G10 or waiting a few weeks for the V10 models -- a feeling we know all too well. Hemming and hawing aside, it sounds like the mid-tier G10 sets (below the V10 and Z1 lines) have plenty t...

Chiron Transportation to Minimize Ecological Damage To meet logistic purposes, the flexibility of commercial road vehicle is essential. But transportation by road is one of the major reasons of environmental pollution and the planet is paying a high price to increase the economic efficiency. Chiron is a means of transportation designed to minimize the ecological damage which combines the flexibility of road vehicles with the environmental suitability of the railway. This design incorporates the latest 21st century engine that applies an algae-powered fuel cell which will surely increase the business efficiency by minimizing the fuel cost. Moreover, this concept includes satellite tracking system to navigate the supplementary dimension of railroad.