Archive for February, 2010

Students at Harriton High School in Lower Merion School District near Philadelphia are given Apple MacBook laptops to use both at school and at home. Like all MacBooks, the ones issued to the students have a Webcam. And, in addition to the students’ ability to use the Webcam to take pictures or video, the school [...]

Good news: if you thought the current CompactFlash 4.0 storage limit of 137 Gbytes was too restrictive, the new CF 5.0 standard should shatter that barrier for a good long time. The CompactFlash 5.0 standard creates an upper boundary of 144 petabytes, an almost unfathomably high capacity of storage: almost 147,500 terabytes. One and two-terabyte [...]

Weekend trips are hip: heaps of tourists travel to Paris, London or New York every end of the week in order to capture the main attractions with their cameras. But what is the purpose of those trips? Is it all about the „been there, done that” or is there more about getting to know a [...]

A new technology developed by Toshiba Corp. could turn cellphones into virtual secretaries capable of providing information to help users plot their next move. The technology, which could be available for practical use by the end of this year, enables cellphones to “predict” the user’s actions based on behavioral patterns monitored by such programs as [...]

This power-saving device, inspired by the behavior of a leech, physically disconnects consumer electronics from the outlet. once full of blood, a leech will simply fall of its host to digest. this product mimics the leeches inelegant yet efficient solution for over-consumption. it is hard to tell when electronics are or are not taking energy [...]

Electronic reading, whether it be via slate, phone or dedicated e-reader, has been a huge development as of late. It comes as little surprise, then, that Nintendo has announced its 100 Classic Books cartridge for release in the US on June 14. Containing 100 public-domain books packaged in a relatively attractive library format, the collection [...]

Say the word “toy” to a techie, and his mind will think one thing: robots. But all infrared-loving, artificially-intelligent smart-toy-ogling tech-savvy aside, new toys can instill as much “ooh! shiny!” as even the hottest cellphone. And we’re not just talking about robots: This week, the International Toy Fair hit NYC, and PopSci.com found 20 funky [...]

A new Gartner report indicates that worldwide mobile phone sales to end users grew 8.3 percent in Q4 2009, compared to the same period a year ago. Total sales for the year were down slightly at 1.21 billion units (down 0.9 percent from 2008). But given the huge slump earlier in the year, this is [...]

Barnes & Noble is throwing its considerable weight around and getting into the still somewhat niche e-reader game. With the Nook, e-readers have a chance to hit a mainstream demographic like never before. Running Google’s Android operating system, and boasting dual screens — one E ink for reading and the other a color, touchscreen capacitive [...]

The Nexus One began life as a rumor that Google would finally get serious about creating an Android-powered “Googlephone” — a device not just designed to blow the world away with high-end specs, but to fundamentally change the way phones and wireless plans are sold and marketed. It turned out that was only partially the [...]