Computers
USB drives have become so prolific in recent years that they've become practically disposable. Now, one company has created a different type of flash drive that can literally be crumpled up and thrown in the garbage. With an embedded silicon chip, intelliPaper seamlessly turns an ordinary strip of paper into a fully functioning USB drive. Read More
Philip M. Parker, a marketing professor at INSEAD (the European Institute of Business Administration), has written and patented a system that uses an algorithm to automatically compile data into book form. Between his works and those of his research group (ICON Group International), he has over 900,000 books currently for sale on Amazon. More than a smart search engine, his system only requires a few minutes or a few hours to scan the databases relevant to any given topic and organize that data into a technical report. Next stop? Romance novels. Read More
In common with many of today's digital content junkies, I get my daily entertainment fix from a computer screen and not a TV. Even if I could afford to buy into the jaw-dropping Ultra HD image quality I witnessed from the giant goggle boxes being showcased by Toshiba, Sony and LG at IFA 2012 in Berlin a few months back, they'd likely spend much of their time powered off. As such, the upcoming release of a 32-inch 4K2K computer monitor from Sharp would be of great interest, were it not being aimed specifically at the business community in Japan. Read More
You just never know when you might find yourself in a situation where your computer needs to be doused in water or run over by a pickup truck. The original waterproof Stealth WPC-500F had you covered for the water situation, but the latest model adds the strength to withstand the weight of a pickup truck running it over. Read More
The maker of the display cells used to create the world's biggest multi-touch wall and the interactive Twitter Wall installed at CES 2011 has just announced the release of 42- and 55-inch MultiTaction display cells, fully integrated with Windows 8. Read More
About this time last year, Lenovo made a bid for the title of creator of the world's smallest desktop PC, with the launch of the IdeaCentre Q180. Now, an equally diminutive replacement is making a grab for the very same title. The IdeaCentre Q190 is reported to offer up to 80 percent faster processing performance over last year's model, is available with double the system memory, and up to 1 TB of HDD storage. Read More
The smallest gesture can hide a world of meaning. A particular flick of a baton and a beseeching gesture can transform the key moment of a concert from mundane to ethereal. Alas, computers are seriously handicapped in understanding human gestural language, both in software and hardware. In particular, finding a method for describing gestures presented to a computer as input data for further processing has proven a difficult problem. In response, Microchip Technologies has developed the world's first 3D gesture recognition chip that senses the gesture without contact, through its effect on electric fields. Read More
AdTrap aims to block all internet advertising
Most of us are bombarded by advertisements in one form or another throughout the day. While there’s not a lot we can do about the ads in the subway, or placed up on billboards, the internet is another matter. AdTrap is a new low-power, zero configuration device which promises to banish adverts from computers, tablets, and anything else connected to the local network. Read More
Since unveiling the very first cinema-proportioned HD TV back in 2009, Philips has been leading the charge to get the distinctly oblong screens into our living rooms. Yet despite the powerful draw of immersive movie-theater-like viewing goodness, the buying public's cash (for the most part) continues to be thrown at 16:9 aspect screens. LG is trying another approach to kick start the ultra-widescreen invasion, by launching the world's first 21:9 aspect computer monitor. In addition to its obvious appeal to digital film buffs, the 29-inch EA93 is also being pitched at power users who currently multi-task across multiple displays (in my case a hotchpotch setup of 4:3 and 16:9 mixed displays). Read More
Nuance Communications has updated its leading speech-to-text application Dragon Dictate for Mac to version 3, and Gizmag goes hands-on to investigate whether it can finally offer software-based dictation which is both practical and appealing, when compared to manual typing. Read More
