Paul Best

Quick click access to mobile services

By Paul Best

00:56 May 5, 2009 PDT

It’s not only that mobile phones are enormously powerful communication tools – it's the highly personal way we use and customise them that is emerging and catching the attention of mobile operators. Australian communications giant Telstra is one that has seen the need to simplify how we access mobile services, launching a new mobile user interface – called TelstraOne Experience – that lets its customers access their favourite applications and services with one click. Read More

Pixel building aims to be world's first carbon neutral office development

By Paul Best

23:57 May 3, 2009 PDT

Australian developer Grocon plans to build the country’s first carbon neutral office building on a former brewery site in the city of Melbourne – and possibly the first of its kind in the world. According to the developer, the $6 million, four-storey building has been designed to generate more energy on the site than it uses, offsetting the carbon emissions produced to operate it – and, in time, the greenhouse gases generated in making and installing the construction materials. Read More

Bang & Olufsen launches a whale of a TV for a whale of a time

By Paul Best

02:14 April 30, 2009 PDT

If Bang & Olufsen’s spanking new BeoVision 4 103-inch plasma TV were a mouth it would swallow you whole – and you wouldn’t even touch the sides going down. That’s how big it is – and one of the biggest going around – with a pretty big price to match. Read More

China launches rival to Blu-ray

By Paul Best

19:23 April 29, 2009 PDT

Chinese electronics manufacturers TCL and Shinco have launched the first generation of players for China’s own newly developed high-definition video format, China Blue High Definition (CBHD), which is set to rival the existing Blu-ray disc (BD) technology and galvanize the local market. While CBHD and BD have features in common – both use a blue-violet laser to read 12cm high-capacity optical discs – the main difference is centered on price. In China, CBHD players are expected to retail for up to 40 percent less than the cost of BD players. Read More

Ultimate 3D design navigation tool

By Paul Best

00:14 April 27, 2009 PDT

To the untrained eye, the 3Dconnexion SpacePilot PRO looks and sounds like a pretty slick game control. But you’d be wrong. The mouse is, in fact, a serious tool for design engineers to navigate about and control three-dimensional computerized models. Read More

New LG TVs first consumer electronics device to playback DivX Full HD video

By Paul Best

23:10 April 26, 2009 PDT

The DivX video codec – which uses MPEG-4 compression – has been a popular feature in an enormous range of electronic devices, especially digital televisions, because of its ability to balance high-quality video against a significantly reduced file size. Now, LG Electronics is planning to launch a new line of digital TVs that can play back full DivX HD 1080p videos – the first device series in the world to do so, according to digital media company DivX. Read More

Shfud for thought

By Paul Best

21:59 April 26, 2009 PDT

If you can’t cook, it’s still possible to do it in style with a set of these kitchen utensil designs, called Shfud (pronounced sh-food). According to the designers Shfud is “about creating new motions in the kitchen that will inspire new ways of preparing food and a new generation of chefs”. The Shfud designs consist of a chopping ball, cutting blade and grater. Read More

New solar technology tests the waters with promises of cheaper energy

By Paul Best

02:06 April 23, 2009 PDT

A new solar technology is not only taking a fresh approach to capturing the sun’s energy, it is also promising to produce electricity at a comparable cost to fossil fuel generators. Made predominantly from plastic, the liquid solar array power generator (LSA) has one very obvious defining feature compared to most of the technologies we've encountered - it floats on water. Read More

More than meets the eye: Xonix 5-in-1 video sunglasses

By Paul Best

20:06 April 22, 2009 PDT

OK it’s not on the Inspector Gadget scale of ingenuity, but five cool functions in one pair of sunnies from the Xonix Watch Company still gets the gadget gene in us twitching. When you’re not simply wearing them to shield your eyes from the sun – which is one of its functions – the sports-designed sunglasses also serve as a video recorder, camera, music player and memory storage device. Built-in memory of up to 16GB caters for up to eight hours of AVI format video capture or up to 160,000 images depending on the resolution, which peaks at a less than awe-inspiring 2.0 megapixels. Read More

Smart Animals Scanopedia teaches kids about animals while they have fun

By Paul Best

23:37 April 13, 2009 PDT

If you have kids of your own, you’ll know instinctively the easiest way to encourage little ’uns to learn is through engagement and interaction. Toymakers know this, too, and have been quick to use various technologies to develop new lines of educative products. The Discovery Channel-branded Smart Animals Scanopedia, an electronic talking animal encyclopedia, joins the growing list of electronic toys that try to both teach and entertain. Read More

Filmmaker takes a new look at the world through Eyeborg project

By Paul Best

15:37 April 9, 2009 PDT

After years of wearing a patch to hide his disfigured right eye, damaged as a child in a shooting accident, Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence was forced eventually to replace the eye with a prosthetic one. The camera on Spence’s cell phone, though, gave him a rather novel idea. What if he could build a miniature, wireless video camera into his prosthetic eye?

What followed has become the Eyeborg Project, the progress of which can be now followed online. Read More

Shimano's Dura-Ace Di2 electronic shifting to give road racers a time advantage

By Paul Best

01:18 April 8, 2009 PDT

Japanese bike component manufacturer Shimano seems to have the pro-cycling world in a bit of a spin with its newly launched electronic Dura-Ace road racing components. It’s still early days but already the Dura-Ace Di2 – which stands for digital integrated intelligence – is receiving favorable reviews, with talk of significantly slicker, cleaner gear changes and one expert opinion describing the electronic component series as “revolutionary”. Read More

Engineers develop cheap flexible loudspeaker that's only 0.25mm thick

By Paul Best

22:32 April 6, 2009 PDT

A loudspeaker that’s so flat and flexible it can be tacked to a wall just like a picture? That’s precisely what engineers at Warwick Audio Technologies in the UK have cooked up. The speaker – dubbed the Flat Flexible Loudspeaker (FFL) for obvious reasons – is less than 0.25mm and thin enough to be concealed inside office ceiling tiles, cars or printed with a design and attached to any flat surface, like a wall. Read More