Worm Geek

There is some kind of trend in technology development into very big or minute devices. This one is definitely in the large scale scope of multi-sensor displays.

So what actually is the mTouch? It is a coffee table with incorporated 32″ or 42″ sensor display produced by Merel Technologies. It support Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, has USB ports and multi-format card reader. The computer characteristics are: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.8 GHz) processor, 4 GB memory and 320 GB HDD.

Although the mTouch is still in development stage it already has some nice applications including gestures and objects recognition, multimedia functions, Internet and social networks integration.

MTouch will be available in July in custom colors and on price of only 3200 or 4200 USD for respectively 32″ and 42″ models.

Do you wish when you look out of the window to see some beautiful view like waterfall, or seaside, or jungle, or sunrise, or … well you name it. Now you can have your dream view with the new virtual window named “eScape” created by Sky Factory company.

The virtual window is actually a 40” LC display placed in wood or brushed aluminum trim, that display videos from different places so you can choose or even change your view. The videos are 1 to 8 hours long and have sounds for additional impact.

The display has 1920 x 1080 resolution and comes with video player, sound system, mounting pan and control system. There is possibility for remote control via ethernet.

Many people like home cinema systems based on projector. And of course the progress changed projectors from huge, noisy and heat emitting devices to small, noiseless and cute gadgets with the dimensions of an cell phone, there are even phones with incorporated projectors!

The last developments in the field were presented and announced on SID 2010 exhibition (more…)

The summer is knocking on the door and of course this means vacations to the seaside or lakes or at least some hours by the pool. And for sure you would like to have all the nice summer moments captured on photo or video, so you will need a waterproof camera. Probably this was the idea of Toshiba when they developed the Camileo BW10 camcorder.

Although Toshiba creates waterproof camcorder for the first time they obviously succeeded – in the last year company representatives estimated more than double price for such improvement. In the reality the cost of Camileo BW10 is about 185 USD.

Camera can work inside the water (but not deeper than 2 meters) it records MP4 video in 1080p standard and may take photos with 5 megapixel resolution. The sensitivity of Camileo BW10 matrix is up to 1600 ISO. Unfortunately there is no optic zoom, but Toshiba tried to compensate with 10 times digital zoom. The records can be stored on SD, SDHC or SDXC cards with up to 64 GB memory.

The first sales will start in Great Britain in june, where the cost will be 130 pounds.

We are so used to associate the term “hybrid” with “cars”, that when I heard about “hybrid HDD” my first thought was “What? Electricity plus fuel!?!”

Actually the new Seagate hybrid combine the best sides of SSD performance and the low cost of classic hard disk drives. The new gamma is called Momentus XT and consist of 2,5″, 7200 rpm HDD plus 4 GB solid-state memory.

Task distribution between the two types of memory is implemented by Adaptive Memory technology, allowing to determine the file usage frequency so that most used files are moved to SSD part. This means that normally all files are stored on the hard disk, but if there are several requests for a file the system will automatically transfer it to SSD in order to achieve faster access.

There is yet another positive feature – Momentus XT does not require any additional programs. Estimations are that the performance of this type of hybrid drive would be about 4 times higher than the performance of standard 7200 rpm HDDs.

And of course the price of the hybrid will be most advantageous: 113, 122 and 156 USD for 250, 320 and 500 GB respectively. Asus has already announced that it will propose hybrid drives as an option in their Republic of Gamers (ROG) G73Jh notebook.

Probably you have already heard about Cerevo Cam – the first camera to support video upload (via Wi-Fi or 3G). Unfortunately this function was available only in Japan, but now the developers from Cerevo issued an upgrade: video transfer to www.ustream.tv site.

The new product is called Cerevo Cam live! and is the first device ever capable of direct video upload to ustream without use of computer or other additional equipment. Video transfer is in CIF format (352×228), batteries endure about 4 hours of videotranslation. Other standards supported by the camera are HD (1280×720), WVGA (800×480) and “web” (320×240).

Technical features are: 9 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi 802.11n (b/g/n), 3G HSUPA support, USB port, MicroSD memory slot and 2,4″ display. In Japan the price for Cerevo Cam live! is about 216 USD, including additional lenses and 4 GB MicroSD stick.

Recently HP announced development of solar energy powered wristwatch for military purposes. The main feature will be a flexible display with special PowerFilm cover to supply the watch.

HP emphasis on the reliability – autonomous power supply, durable  materials and a lot of envisaged handy for soldiers functions like: data acquisition, GPS map guidance on display, automated synchronization, etc. So far HP didn’t announced if the watch will be able to connect to Internet and what type of OS it will use.

The name of the new product is Dick Tracy, after the comic hero who use a watch with radiostation and videophone. The concept device is estimated by the end of the year.

On the other side the Ministry of Defence’s press secretary notified, that the Ministry did not purchased the development of new watch and she is not aware of the project.

Puget Systems – the company that developed mini computers Echo I and Echo II, introduced the new PC from this line: the new computer with assumable name Echo III. New desktop has compact black corpus Lian Li PC-Qo8 with the following dimensions: 33.2 x 27.9 x 40.6 cm.

Dimensions of Echo III

The new little black box runs on Intel Core i5 or i7, mounted on Zotac H55ITX-A-E mini ITX motherboard with Intel H55 chipset. It has one PCI-E x16 slot and support up to 8 GB DDR3 memory. Puget Systems managed also to find space for a closed loop liquid cooling system, thus making it new computer not only small but also noiseless.

The Echo III mini-PC has 10 USB 2.0 and one RJ45 Ethernet ports, HDMI and optic audio outlets. There is an option for Wi-Fi adapter and Blu-ray disk drive.

Sounds like a powerful big desktop PC, but of course the price of cosines is not so small – basic configuration of Echo III with quad-core Intel i5 processor, 4 GB DDD3 memory, GeForce 250 video card and 500 GB HDD is about 1500 USD.