By modifying a laser pen and using a detector you are able to play music over distances that could reach half a mile. To do this the laser needs to be modified by using amplitude modulation. This is then pointed at the sensor which picks up the changes, converts it in to a signal that can be used as music. As with anything with a laser in, be careful when you try anything and do not look at the laser as it could damage your eyes.
To build the device you need to gather together a few components such as a potentiometer, toggle switch and a phototransistor to name a few and then follow the instructions over at Instructables.
The HTC Kaiser has now launched in Europe. It has been a long awaited smartphone. It is 3.5G compatible and runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional, has a built in QWERTY keyboard, GPS, 3 mega pixel auto focus camera, Bluetooth, 128MB RAM, Wifi b/g and a 2.8 inch display. The phone will be available on Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica Group and Vodafone.
This is one particular phone I am going to try get my hands on when my upgrade is due in a month or 2. Having the keyboard and large screen as well as built in GPS makes this phone a great phone to have.
Vodafone is about to upgrade its mobile broadband service which will see download speeds jump from 1.4Mbps up to a possible 7.2Mbps over a HSDPA. To add to this download speed they are also making the upload speed to be an impressive 1.44Mbps which is very good in my opinion. The upgrade is for those paying 25 GBP per month and will initially be available in parts of London and some of the major airports.
Connectivity at this speed will only be found in 3G covered areas while the 2G network coverage will provide speeds at GPRS levels. Unfortunately 7.2Mbps will not always be met although it is a possibility. Speeds will normally fall in between 1.7Mbps to 5.5Mbps. Along with having high speeds Vodafone have a fairly good usage cap of 3GB per month which should be more then enough for most browsing.
Watches are getting very interesting over the last few years which LED watches becoming quite popular from Tokyo Flash. Often they are made from slightly different materials to get a sleek look. The latest I came across was the 900 Abacus watch which uses a ball and magnet to tell the time. There are no hands or numbers on the watch. To tell the time you take a look at the magnetic sphere which moves around the face. The sphere is not fastened down and when you walk around the sphere moves around freely under the glass till you hold the watch flat. At this point the sphere rolls to the correct time. As it only has 1 sphere, it only tells time by hours which means you need to roughly estimate how many minutes past the hour it is.
The watch is also water resistant down to 30 meters.
The watch prices will start just short of $150 with more information available at Questodesign.
Over the last year I have heard a couple of rumors floating about regarding the Sony PSP mobile phone. Currently the ideas are just concept which has inspired the picture above to be created. As can be seen it takes the current Sony Ericsson square looking type phone and includes a large screen and controlls. I am not sure if this concept or any concept will go ahead for the PSP phone, but we can hope for it. The idea could do real well if a cybershot camera, walkman type phone and PSP could be crammed in to the same package. All it would then need is wireless and VoIP and all would be perfect.
The phone above is by Wilcom and is shaped like a battery and uses a AAA battery to get its power. The AAA battery can power the phone for 250 hours on standby with about 5 hours of talk time. On the feature side this phone is about as basic as you can get these days. It has no screen, no MP3 player built in, no 3G access and not much else.
I am not sure how a phone like this will fair in the industry. It isnt the type I would go for as I like to have quite a few features packed in to a mobile phone. I am sure it might catch some peoples attention though.
A cool app I came across today shows visually, using Google Maps, on where to point your satellite dish. To get it to work you need to enter your address and tell it which, from the many, of the satellites you are trying to point towards. Once the details are entered you click go and a blue line on the map shows which direction your satellite dish should be pointing to get the correct signal. Not only a map is available though, you can also use the satellite imagery on Google maps so you can see an image of the street you are on and which way you should be looking at with the dish.
I do not use satellite my self, so cannot verify the accuracy. However, the owner claims amazing accuracy and has now included the elevation and skew calculations at the bottom of the map.
I came across a cool video today from SIGGRAPH 2007 which shows a process to manipulate images with out having to chop them up the usual way. The process uses gradients to find continuous lines of pixels which can be removed without effecting the subjects of the image. When the subject of the image does get manipulated for some reason, a marker can be put on to the image telling it to preserve that part. Also, objects can easily be removed by marking them negatively. The software will then take the gradients near by to fill in the gaps.
This type of manipulation will be very useful for websites which can be displayed on various sized screens such as high res large monitors right down to pocket pc sized screens. The full effect of the image could be displayed with out cropping out the main parts of the image.
The FrogPad is a mobile keyboard which does not use the conventional QWERTY keyboard layout. Instead, the FrogPad has 20 keys but still promised easier use then a standard keyboard. The keyboard is to be used one handed allowing you to hold documents in the other hand. It is small and measures 5 x 3.5 x .4 inches and connects via Bluetooth to any Bluetooth device that supports the HID Bluetooth profile. According to ThinkGeek, you will be typing at 40 words per minute with in 10 hours of using the keyboard. Compare this to the 56 hours needed to achieve the same on a QWERTY keyboard it seems like the FrogPad is the way to go.
The FrogPad will set you back $149 for the right handed Bluetooth version with cheaper prices for the USB left and right hand version. For some reason there is no left hand Bluetooth version listed.
The HIPerWall pictured above is capable of displaying imagery at a 200 million pixel resolution. The display measures 23 ft wide by 9 feet tall and has 50 LCD panels which appear to be the Apple 30 inch cinema displays. To make use of such a high resolution, a software app was developed and it allows Google Earth to be used on the HIPerWall. Previously, images had to be stitched together to get the huge, high resolution versions. They were not done in real time and had to be done manually which took a long time. Calit2 worked with Google to create software which could utilise the 50 displays in real time allowing researchers to do a huge amount of work and observation in a fraction of the time.
The desk pictured above was created by Matt Tovey. It is made up of 434 discarded Itanium CPUs which at the time of production in 2006 were worth $800k. If the chips were to be powered up and put in computers the total computing power would be 2.8 TFLOPS which is a lot. The desk is made from a plain desk which was covered in the Itanium CPUs and then wooden edging was added as well as a glass top. What would be cool is the desk actually working and being powered up. Computers embedded in to desks could be the next big thing
The PSP has been subject to a number of mods and hacks over the last couple of years. Most of it (if not all) has been down to software and the running of homebrew software. The latest hack is the PSP touchscreen which was created over at Spark Fun Electronics. The PSP touchscreen is a layer that sits above the screen which senses when it is touched. Match this up with an interface and you have a fully fledged touch screen PSP. The screen overlay touchscreen costs just $23.95. There is no mention of compatible software yet and I am sure some kind of homebrew will need to be used to make use of it. Hopefully we will see something soon.
This calculator has buttons shaped like eggs and made of rubber. It does all that a normal calculator would, but adds more fun to the equation. The eggulator runs on batteries which are replicable and the eggulator measures 3.5 x 3.25 inches.
This Planetarium Tellurium took 10 years to make due to the complex and precise movement that is needed. By using a going train and winding barrel this unit is the most accurate clockwork version of its kind. For easier viewing the earth has been made larger. Normally it would be 109 times smaller then the sun, but this would make it difficult to see what is happening. To get the planetarium-tellurium to work a lever system is used which can keep the device going for 15 days.
For a more precise explanation check out Horomundi.
Inside this pen is a fishing rod which can extend to 4 foot long (1.2 meters). It is made of a telescopic aluminiun rod which when contracted it measures just 20.5cm wih the pen lid on. Along with the pen you get a mini sized reel which has a brake/clutch and can be used both for left and right handed people. The rod comes supplied with 25 meters of 2.5kg line with a hook. All that is needed now is a place to stash the bait and you are set. When ever the urge to fish strikes you, then you will be set.
The pen sized fishing rod costs 24.99 GBP from Expert Verdict.
