Developages - Development and Technology Blog

This speaker system might look fragile but the only thing that will break in its presence is your bank - it costs a cool $168,000. Manufactured by Hario, a glass maker based in Tokyo, the conical speaker system called Harion (translates to “the king of glass”) is made of heat-resistant glass. It’s composed of a center speaker, a sub woofer, a couple of acrylic tweeters, and a couple of mid-range speakers.

The speaker system proved so hard to build that it took 23 subcontractors and a total of three years and eight months to come up with a finished product. And yes, the Harion was crafted by hand; it should be considering the price. According to Japan Today, a company executive thinks that if a minimum of ten orders are put out for the system, the price could be lowered to $105,000 per.

Original post by Mariella Moon

Japanese company Landport launched the Cube, a speaker that’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Perfect for fans of extreme portability, Cube Speaker measures 26mm on all sides and weighs 16 grams. It has an output of 0.8 watts and connection to source of music such as media players is via 3.5mm jack, so it can accommodate a range of devices.

The Cube Speaker has a built-in lithium-ion battery that is charged via USB connection to a computer. A total of two hours charging is equivalent to four or five hours of playtime. To be available in black, white and pink, Landport’s Cube Speaker will start shipping this December in Japan for $25 a pop. No word yet on global availability.

Original post by Mariella Moon

OK, so it’s not really called SpongeBob Speaker Pants, but it should be. The SpongeBob Speakers and Sponge Dock, from Npower, is a fun way to play any of your digital audio players or computer.

SpongeBob comes with two eyeball speakers, which can sit inside the foam dock or taken out to sit on a flat surface. The eyeballs don’t just sit though: They can roll around with your music. You have the option to play your music without moving eyeballs, or you can switch the eyeballs to “rock” and watch as they roll around your table. I had to make sure to really push the speaker cable into the speaker to make sure it worked on “rock” mode.

There’s a small docking area at the top of SpongeBob’s head for you to rest your audio player in. The sound isn’t great, but it’s a fun toy. The speaker dock goes for $39.99 and can be found at Toys ‘R’ Us.

Take a look at our exclusive video of rolling SpongeBob eyeballs after the jump.

Original post by Jennifer Bergen

Is it just me or does it seem easier than ewww.lanl.gov/index.shtmver to be an astronomer? There was a time, if you wanted to use a telescope like the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile (pictured above) you’d have to travel to Chile and brave the elements to get to its mountaintop perch. Opening the roof to let the telescope poke through also let the cold come in (current weather conditions here). Heat? Please! You don′t want to distort the path of the photons heading into the lens.

The days of photographic plates are gone. Now astronomers can view from afar–in fact they can live regular daytime hours like the rest of us if they want! Unfortunately, as life gets better, technology is making the astronomer less important in deciding where the telescope will gaze.

“On the night of February 6, 2006, Los Alamos astrophysicist Przemek Wozniak was awakened by a cell-phone call from RAPTOR, the small robotic optical telescope array on Fenton Hill, about 30 miles from Los Alamos in northern New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains. RAPTOR had found something strange–a rapidly rising light signal coming from the position of a very short gamma-ray burst detected and located. These bursts announce the birth of stellar-size black holes and are the most powerful events since the Big Bang.” - Los Alamos National Lab release

NASA finds the gamma-ray bursts with the help of a satellite, but the bursts only last a few minutes. Developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory the ROTSE-I (Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment-I) telescope had been able to hone in on a burst in ten seconds, faster than mere mortals can react… if they would have reacted at all. People have a tendency to discount things that are anomalous or happen infrequently. And since ROTSE-I’s replacement RAPTOR has cut the time to eight seconds there’s even less time for error, or thought.

“If humans had been in the loop they would have said, as we did, ‘Gamma-ray bursts don′t act like that. Forget it. And RAPTOR wouldn′t have found anything.” - Tom Vestrand, Space and Atmospheric Sciences

We′re not done yet. RAPTOR will soon be replaced by RAPTOR-K with better optics and more processing power. It won’t be necessary to wait for a satellite signal to search for gamma-ray bursts. RAPTOP-K will just keep an eye-on-the-sky bringing in tens of thousands of images a night, or about a terrabyte of data per week–analyzing it almost instantaneously. But what will make this a game changer is its ability to scan, compare it with a database and mine for ongoing gamma-bursts autonomously without the need for human help. It is astronomy without the astronomer!

Original post by Geoff Fox

Although the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn has completed its four-year nominal mission, it’s gone into overtime, with NASA continuing to send it on close flybys of Saturn’s moons. On October 9, Cassini passed a mere 25 miles above the icy surface of Enceladus, and will make another close pass (this one at 197 miles) of this enigmatic moon on Halloween.

Although Enceladus is small (310 miles in diameter), it’s geologically active, emitting heat and spewing jets of microscopic ice particles, water vapor, and organic molecules through its “ice volcanoes.” Its terrain is surprisingly varied, including cratered areas, smooth plains, and networks of cracks and vents, including four linear features dubbed the “Tiger Stripes,” which appear to be the source of the vapor plumes. The Boston Globe has put together a dazzling collection of Cassini images of Enceladus including the one shown above, complete with explanatory notes.

Post by Tony Hoffman

Original post by Gearlog

If you’re a business traveler making frequent trips overseas, you know tracking your roaming phone calls is like trying to herd cats it can get out of hand fast. DeFi Mobile wants to ease that pain by allowing unlimited, international calls — sent and received — over Wi-Fi-equipped phones. That’s not all. The cost is just $40 a month, flat.

For it to work, you need a phone with the DeFi software installed. Currently it only runs on select Nokia handsets like the Nokia 95, N82, ᭎, those with integrated Wi-Fi, and the Symbian S60 operating system. If you don’t have one — and if you live in the U.S., chances are slim — DeFi suggests buying one unlocked at partner Communication Xperts (lowest price for a DeFi-friendly handset: $325 for Nokia ➧).

DeFi has relationships with Wi-Fi network providers like FON, T-Mobile, AT&T, and many more, especially with aggregators of such networks in Europe (the company is in early talks with U.S. aggregators like iPass and Boingo). When the phone comes within range of a Wi-Fi access point, it knows — say at your home, office, or a public hotspot that has a DeFi presence — by auto connecting.

You receive one phone number for your $40. Spend an extra $10 a month to get three phone numbers, each registered for different countries. That way people calling you may make a local call to your phone — even if they’re in London or Madrid, but you’re in San Francisco. Any call to any of your three numbers forwards to that same phone. If you are not within range of a Wi-Fi node you can’t take a call, but there’s voice mail accessible via a Web interface.

With no Wi-Fi–if you′ve got service with a GSM provider like AT&ampT or T-Mobile–you can still use the Nokia phones (subject to the carrier fees). There isn’t any seamless hand-off like with T-Mobile @Home. In fact, CEO Jeff Rice says biz-traveling beta users apparently didn’t want that feature, preferring to know precisely when they switched from Wi-Fi to GSM.

Making outgoing calls on Wi-Fi via DeFi is meant to be indistinguishable from dialing out on the cellular network. It could keep DeFi from working on certain platforms, specifically the VoIP-unfriendly iPhone (but it’s too soon to say yet). Work is definitely underway to bring the DeFi software/service to Android and Windows Mobile phones in the future.

Original post by Eric Griffith

Brian Heater, Lance Ulanoff, PJ Jacobowitz

We ventured all the way across town during evening rush hour yesterday to check out the latest holiday goods from a slew of tech companies at Pepcom’s annual Holiday Spectacular. We saw Treos, SpongeBob iPod speaker docks, flying RC Tinkerbell toys, and so much more.

Check out some of our favorites, after the jump.

Expresso Bike: Like riding bikes but hate all that fresh air and scenery? The Expresso Upright and Recumbent bikes are claimed to be “the first and only Web-enabled cardiovascular exercise machines to engage and immerse riders using the latest interactive technology.” The bikes offer 30 virtual courses and come with a 17- or 19-inch LCD monitor. Prices range from $5,145 to $5,295.

HP: HP’s snazzy new HDX X18-1020US is an 18.4-inch media-centric notebook. It comes with NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics, two 250GB hard drives, and a standard LightScribe Blu-ray drive.

N-Power: SpongeBob SquarePants Eyeball Speaker Dock. Equal parts cool and creepy, this $39.99 speaker dock comes with a pair of rocking and rolling eyeballs.

Palm: The ultra-popular Centro next to its new cousin, the Treo Pro. The Pro offers one-touch Wi-Fi, integrated GPS, and a world phone. The device will be available for a suggested $549.

PetNovations: The PetNovations rep who spoke with me must have uttered the word “poop” two dozen times during his pitch. In his defense, the guy was trying to sell me on his high-tech cat litter box, the CatGenie. This $329 device washes and dries its proprietary litter–and flushes itself automatically.

RIM: RIM showed off the first-ever Blackberry flip phone. The Pearl Flip 8220 is a quad-band EDGE smartphone with a SureType QWERTY keyboard, built-in Wi-Fi, and a number of other standard Blackberry features.

Samsung: The 𒻤 features a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, access to Sprint TV, a 2-megapixel camera, and expandable memory up to 16GB. It will be available later this year.

WowWee: The consumer robotics company showed off a slew of familiar robotic faces, like the Tri-bot and Femisapien. The newest product is this Tinkerbell Easy Flier. She’s light and durable, with the same dual-wing design as WowWee’s Dragonfly and runs off three AAA batteries. Find her this fall for around $40.

Original post by Brian Heater

So it’s official: Verizon Wireless will be the exclusive carrier of the first touch-screen Blackberry, the Blackberry Storm. Right now, though, the state of Storm on Verizon’s Web site is rather shaky; if you search for “storm” on verizonwireless.com, you get the attractive banner shown above, but the banner links to http://estore.vzwshop.com/storm/ which at the moment is a dead link. Maybe it will all come together in the morning.

We’ve heard a lot of rumors and seen a lot of leaks about the Storm, and you can follow those on more rumor-friendly sites. I′m very much looking forward to testing out the Storm’s haptic touch screen, which should hopefully give you the feeling that you’re pressing physical keys when you’re just tapping a touch screen. Keyboards are very important to Blackberry users, so that’s got to be one that the engineers at RIM are just agonizing over.

There are no reliable dates or prices for the Storm yet.

Original post by Sascha Segan

All right everyone, settle down. You were all wrong to openly mock John McCain’s perceived lack of technical expertise. The man may have admitted publicly that he’s never checked his e-mail, but he would never let something so trivial as that come between him and the creation of one of the early 21st century’s most popular pieces of consumer electronics.

According to McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Republican presidential nominee was actually the driving force behind RIM’s uber-popular BlackBerry smartphone. When asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser pointed to his PDA.

“He did this,” said Holtz-Eakin, referring to his BlackBerry during a press conference this morning. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”

In related news, I’m fairly certain that Barack Obama can materialize iPhones out of thin air by blinking his eyes.

Original post by Brian Heater

BlackBerry users have a reputation for being hyper-productive business professionals that are almost pathologically tied to their smartphones. As of today, however, they can be Slackers, too. Research In Motion has announced a partnership with Slacker.com that will let BlackBerry users play Internet radio stations.

You can stream music, or even better, cache stations and individual songs on your BlackBerry’s memory card, so you can listen when you have zero bars of coverage. Just listening to stations is free, but you need to subscribe to Slacker’s premium service ($10 a month) to save individual songs.

As a doting owner of a Blackberry Curve 8330 and a daily listener to Slacker Radio, I am pretty psyched. This is the kind of app RIM needs, to win the hearts and thumbs of consumers and compete with the iPhone 3G. I’ve played with the service very briefly, and the interface looks pretty clean and easy to use. I can’t speak to the audio quality yet, but I guarantee it will sound better than the music most current BlackBerry owners listen to on their phones–which is to say, none.

Original post by Dan Costa

The Geek Squad Froze a laptop (positioned at the bottom of the image) to demonstrate how users can salvage it when it becomes too cold.

We got to spend some time with the Geek Squad down at the Black Bear Lodge today. They showed us some cool ways to tweak our home and personal tech. Everything from computers, HDTVs, cameras, and cell phones were present. Check out some good tips after the jump. Then you may want to head over to our solutions page for more expert help.

Kyle Monson’s old Kodak point-and-shoot could not be fixed by the Geek Squad–notice how the lens cover is jammed.

With the claim that if they’d be able to fix any broken gadget of ours, I took Monson’s old Kodak point-and-shoot to meet their challenge. Disappoint slapped me in the face when I was told that it couldn’t be fixed there and that they would have to send it out to their main headquarters for fixing.

Notice the saturation and contrast differences of the man’s jacket in the HDTV on the left and on the right. Geek Squad agents calibrated the television on the right so that viewers would be able to see all details with more clarity.

However, something really neat that they showed us was that your HDTV can be calibrated according to the room that it’s in–meaning that instead of looking super-saturated the way they usually do in Best Buy, it can be adjusted so that all details can be seen. The adjustments caused very subtle image noise that one cannot see unless looking very closely, but the overall image was still improved.

They also demonstrated how to salvage your phone, camera or other personal handheld device from water damage. First, users should always remove the SD cards, batteries, SIM cards, etc. Afterwards, put the device in a clear Tupperware bowl with silica gel packs (or actually, beef jerky) and close the lid. It was recommended that it should be left alone overnight and then removed carefully from the bowl. Another way was to bury it in a bowl of dried rice for a couple of hours. If the LCD does not work, then you can most likely bring it in the Geek Squad where they should be able to fix it.

Most impressive was the frozen laptop they presented. The Geek Squad said that if you keep your laptop in the car or in a very cold area for an extended amount of time that you should remove the battery and wait for both the laptop and battery to get back to room temperature to use them again.

Original post by Chris Gampat

Darker black levels
Improved SD processing
Colorful picture

—Robert Heron

For the full-length, free-verse Panasonic TH-46PZ85U VIERA Plasma 1080p HDTV review check out PCMag.com.

Original post by Blogging Molly

Last night, LG showed off its fall consumer electronics and digital appliances line at the Morgan Library in Manhattan. Their big show stopper was the Network Blu-ray Disc Player, capable of playing Blu-ray movies, but also able to connect to Netflix’s movie library for instant movie streaming.The concept and user interface is identical to the Roku Netflix box (minus the Blu-ray player) which we reviewed a few months ago. Pricing was not stated and availability was labeled “Fall 2008.”

Pics after the jump.

The BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player is NetFlix Instant Streaming Ready.

The only other new product showcased was an HDTV with LED backlighting, which provided a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.No pricing but said to be available in the Fall.

If you’re into digital appliances, they showed off a kitchen oven that had a touch screen.We’ll see if we can get one of those in test.

Post by PJ Jacobowitz

Original post by Gearlog

In need of a port
Time for a solid switcher
IOGear comes through

—Robert Heron

For the full-length, free-verse IOGEAR 4 Port Automatic HDMI Switch review check out PCMag.com.

Original post by Blogging Molly

PC Magazine readers have spoken. 20,000 of them rated support for tech products ranging from from desktops to media players. This time readers evaluated their experience with over 19,000 PCs (both desktops and notebooks)–and that was just the beginning. They’ve also rated the reliability of company support for printers, cameras, cellular phones and their providers, HDTVs, VoIP, ISPs, and more.

Certain companies remain consistent leaders; but many smaller vendors don’t make the cut at all due to the 50 response minimum. For example, Sony might make the overall list for desktops but not the list for desktops less than a year old. Not enough readers rated Sony in the latter category to be considered.

It’s interesting to note that Windows Vista appears to be growing on people, although readers still preferred XP. Tables are available for statistics on cell phones/services, desktops, cameras, HDTVs, ISPs, media players, notebooks, printers, routers, and VoIP. From well-known services like FireDog and Geek Squad to smaller outfits like SupportSpace, you’ll get all the info you need.

Original post by Chris Gampat