Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Philips’ Brilliance iCT sure had a nice run, but no sooner than it hit the spotlight, Toshiba has arrived fashionably late to steal a little thunder. The outfit’s $2.5 million AquilionONE outdoes Philips’ iteration by doing 320-slices instead of “just” 256, enabling doctors to see the entire heart while making patients hold their breath for merely “a second or two.” Put simply, the machine should allow for heart disease to be spotted in its earliest stages without putting individuals through a lengthy tribulation, and the ultra high resolution 3D images it produces will allow medical personnel to quickly determine if there are any problems that need to be dealt with. Currently, the system is being tested at Toronto General’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, but word on the street has the unit being readily available next summer.

[Via Diagnostic Imaging, thanks lmwong]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Being the 800-pound gorilla that it is in the TFT-LCD biz, we’re not too shocked to hear that Samsung is quite pleased with its newfangled flat-panel digital X-ray detector. Reportedly, the creation is the “world’s first” (ahem) to use thin-film transistor technology, which translates into sharper images and cost savings for the end user. Sammy claims that its new FPXD setup can produce “ultra-high definition images” to the tune of 3,072 x 3,072 pixels, and executive vice president Yun Jin-Hyuk even insinuated that this development would “help the X-ray detector market become completely digitized within a few years.” Of course, we’re sure that folks in this segment will indeed be thrilled to hear that “no film or development process is needed” in the new system, and better still, it should be ready to rock in Q1 of next year.

[Via Yahoo / AFP]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

Naming a product “Kindle” might be a bit unusual for a company named after a giant waterway. Did Amazon have visions of Fahrenheit 451 for its electronic book reader? Perhaps, at $399, the product is aimed at those who have the kind of paper to burn that is legal tender for all debts, public or private and not involving iPhones.

Regardless, Kindle is far from the epilogue for paper-based books and won’t materially alter the course of Amazon’s river of reading revenue for some time. On the other hand, the grapheme-strewn box of Kindle notes the word can also mean to “inspire” or “stir up.” And the oddly-shaped tablet’s wireless commerce capabilities herald big changes for several related industries.

Kindle, as Sony recording artist and pop chart fugitive Billy Joel might have said in 1989, didn’t start the fire. Amazon has become the second player to enter the embryonic electronic ink-based book reader market in the U.S. after Sony’s introduction of its Switchie award-winning Reader. Both products offer excellent readability using electronic ink display technology and are tied to stores controlled by their manufacturers.

Continue reading Switched On: Rainforest fire (Part 1)

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Greenpeace posted the latest edition of its “Guide to Greener Electronics” yesterday, which ranks the top 18 consumer electronics companies by their policies towards toxic chemicals and recycling, and it looks like the rankings have shifted slightly since last time — Sony Ericsson and Samsung have tied for the lead with a 7.7 out of 10 rating (taking over from Nokia, which fell to number 9 with a 6.7) and Sony is sitting pretty at number 3 with a 7.2. Apple, which has taken some lumps in the past few months, is right in the middle of the pack with a 6, but most surprising is Nintendo, which came in absolutely dead last with a big ol’ 0 — looks like Mario wasted a little too much water in Sunshine, eh?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: iPod Family, Cool tools, Hacks, How-tos, iPhone

Not all preferences appear in your iPhone Settings application. As I discussed rather thoroughly in my Modding Mac OS X book, it’s not that hard to dig through applications and discover undocumented–or in this case unpromoted–preferences that add spice to your Mac or iPhone. I decided to put the iPhone’s SpringBoard to the test. That’s the app that runs your main home page. This core application contained over a dozen user-settable preferences. I tested them all and selected my six favorites. If you have access to the command line, you can start having fun with these settings yourself. This post shows you how.

Continue reading A half dozen fun undocumented iPhone preferences

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Filed under: iPod Family, Bad Apple, iPhone

Fortune’s Big Tech blog has posted an interview with Greg Joswiak, the head of iPod and iPhone marketing. In the interview, Joswiak talks about the evolution of new iPod features and how Apple has taken the device beyond just a simple music player.

Of particular interest (at least to me) is Joswiak’s mention of iPhone application development and sales. He talks about his excitement in bringing “legitimate” developers into the iPhone application space (heh) and promises digital application signatures. Although he spins this as a way to ensure the application on your iPhone is the correct application that the developers intended to ship, it’s also pretty obviously a way to ensure that the application on your iPhone has been vetted by Apple. The apps will conform to a development environment that maintains “security and reliability” while offering “some really cool things”, i.e. no unlocks and a possibly limited subset of the development space.

One thing the article makes clear is that the SDK will not be invitation only. Joswiak says the SDK will bring in grassroots small developers as well as “legitimate” developers, a move he sees as “awesome”.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Practical? No. Still, there’s something about this Shimura full metal iPod jacket which makes us want to love it long time. It ships direct from Japan for something like ¥17,900 (about $165). Yeah, that’s bit fubar.

[Via Akihabara News]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

So you want to get your girl something gadgety for the holidays, but don’t quite know what. We’ve got you covered. In addition to our own thoughtful ideas, we also roped in Engadget-ladyfriends Veronica Belmont and Jill Fehrenbacher to make some suggestions and ensure we’re not too far off base. (In other words, if you’re looking for a totally trite list of pink gadgets you’ll want to look elsewhere.) Of course, unlike buying gadgets for dude-friends, you shouldn’t expect to pick something from this list and call it a day — always be prepared to supplement with dinner, some time in the park with a bottle of wine, that shirt she’s been dropping not-so-subtle hints about, etc., and you’ll do just fine this season.

P.S. -Don’t worry about mom though, we’ll be covering gift suggestions for her soon enough.

Continue reading Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: for her

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’ve seen a couple innovative wind power solutions pop up, but none that claim to offer the benefits of maglev wind turbines, which use full-permanent magnets to nearly eliminate friction by “floating” the blades above the base. According to developers, the technology is capable of scaling to massive sizes, with a proposed $53M turbine able enough to replace 1000 traditional windmills and power 750 thousand homes. Additional benefits include the ability to generate power with winds as slow as three miles per hour, operational costs some 50 percent cheaper than windmills, and an estimated lifespan of 500 years. That all sounds great, but the real proof will come when these things get put to use, which may happen sooner than you’d think: Development is proceeding rapidly in both the US and China, with Chinese power company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology currently building a $5M factory to produce the turbines in capacities from 400 to 5,000 watts.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Stringer-san, Hirai-San, everyone at Sony, say hello to your new part owners: Dubai International Capital, run by UAE Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. According to the Journal the investment is for a stake under 5% of the total company since there were no legally-required Japanese security filings to indicate otherwise. No real idea how much this chunk of Sony went for, but whatever it cost we’re sure it was only a drop in the bucket for a dude with enough money to make Billy G. and Carlos Slim scoot over a seat at dinner. BTW, Sheikh RRAM (can we call you that?), do us a solid and get Sony to resurrect Aibo and QRIO, cool? Much love. [Warning: subscription req’d for read link]

via [WSJ.com end engadget.com]

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