Tell You What Technology Can Do

Mood Lighting Kalediosopic Critters
Party lighting could mean candles and Christmas lights. Better yet, how about some glowing creatures that look like cousins of Casper the Friendly Ghost? They come in four moods -- chipper, peppy, dizzy and gloomy -- which will probably reflect your mood cycles through the evening. So bring on the kaleidoscopic critters, add the mirror ball, the pocket DJ system and the cocktail fountain, and it will be one helluva party.

Sony Dancing Egg Rolly
Need a party attraction? How about a dancing egg that flashes and rolls to the beat of the music it's emitting from its own flapping speakers? The Rolly dancing robot from Sony may be entirely useless, but it's good for a few laughs. It could be an icebreaker, too: If everyone is standing in the corners, roll this out on the dance floor and watch the crowds follow.

Cobra XRS Radar/Laser Detector
New Year's Eve can see more cops per square foot in your town than a drug bust on a Baltimore street. Even going 55 miles an hour in a 50-mph zone is enough to get the red and blue lights flashing behind you. Before you hop into the car, turn the radar detector on and give yourself some advance notice about upcoming speed traps. A warning though: Radar detectors are illegal in some states.

Illuminated furniture is quite a rage these days so, why not get yourself a lighted prayer rug. Britain-based Turkish designer Soner Özenç has created a lighted sajjadah or prayer rug. Hmmm...Technology intervened in the world of the spiritual too! Built on intricate technology, the Sajjadah 1426 (signifying 2005, which is 1426 according to the Islamic calendar), combines the best of Muslim culture, ingenuous art and electroluminescent phosphor printing technology. If you think all that the wonderful piece of art does is glow, think again. It not only creates a divine aura while a devotee is deep into his namaz, it actually guides him to determine the right direction towards the sacred Mecca. And how does it achieve this end? The lighted motifs of the rug turn brighter the closer the rug is turned toward the direction of Mecca! Though we might be tempted to believe so, this is not due to any divine intervention. The embedded compass module works surreptitiously behind this phenomenon. I would say it’s a beautiful idea. It looks pretty stunning in the dark.

We recently wrote about a projection interactive table, Catchyoo iTable, where I lauded its interactivity, as well as its superiority to fixed interactive tables. Therefore, when I saw the Interactive Scape, the comparisons naturally continued, and I examined this new fixed interactive table to see how functional it is, as well as how it stacks against the iTable. I am pleased to announce that the Interactive Scape is an excellent interactive table. It performs just as well as the Microsoft Surface, except with a much larger surface (compare 58in with 30in), giving more room for group interaction. Just like the Microsoft Surface, it communicates with other devices using bluetooth and wireless interface.

The sophisticated and affordable IK-HD1 HDTV system utilizes Toshiba’s proprietary 3CCD prism block technology, delivering true color, bright contrast and extraordinary detail from the small cam head. Features include 1920 (H) x 1080 (V) resolution at 30 frames per second making this system highly suitable for reality TV, specialty broadcast, sports, news, commercials and many other high definition video imaging applications.

A C-mount lens flange and RS232C serial interface and multiple outputs for HD-SDI (SMPTE 292M), analog RGB, or Y/Pb/Pr are standard. Accessories for the system include a 4 mm or 15 mm lens and camera cables in 3-, 6-, 10- or 30-meter lengths. Toshiba’s IK-HD1 HDTV cameras have been recently used on the New American Gladiators and Cash Cab TV shows. For more information, please visit www.cameras.toshiba.com.

Toshiba Imaging Systems Division (Irvine, CA) is world renowned for the best 3CCD video systems and its legendary and comprehensive tech support. More information about the advanced video imaging technology, high definition, high resolution color 3CCD video cameras and Toshiba’s remote head cameras is available at www.cameras.toshiba.com.

The title of world's thinnest LCD HDTV seems to have changed hands once again. After Hitachi held on to it for almost half a year, along came Sony and launched the incredibly thin KDL-40ZX1, whose panel is just 9 mm thick (while the device itself reaches just... 28.8 mm) but still capable of displaying high-quality images at full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution.



First and foremost, let's see what the most important features of the LCD panel are. Beside providing a total viewing area of 88.6 x 49.8 cm and a diagonal size of 101.6 cm (40 inches), the panel has some pretty OK viewing angles as well, namely 178 degrees on both horizontal and vertical directions.

The contrast ratio is of 3000:1, and the device also comes equipped with a LED backlighting system and 120Hz MotionFlow technology, as well as BRAVIA Engine 2 image processing. And just in case you were wondering, yes, this thing works with just about any type of video signals, whether we're talking about 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p or 480i.

The audio department is also pretty well represented, since the LCD HDTV from Sony has been equipped with two 5W speakers and one 10 W subwoofer, which will probably prove to be quite enough for most users (although true audio/video addicts will most likely add a Blu-ray home cinema as well).
The connectivity options of the KDL-40ZX1 are also extremely impressive. Thus, the device has several HDMI slots, Component video input, S-Video input, audio inputs and outputs, a USB port and, even more interesting, a built-in Ethernet interface (10 BASE-T/100BASE-TX) and a built-in modem (up to 2400 bps). As you've probably guessed already, the latest two options are designed especially in order to allow users to connect to the Internet and access various types of content from online services.

Sony's new ultra-thin KDL-40ZX1 will arrive in Japanese stores at some point in November for an estimate retail price of around 4,500 US dollars, but it's quite likely that the rest of the world will have to wait until early 2009 in order to be able to enjoy this technological wonder.

A new transparent, composite plastic as strong as steel and as thin as a sheet of paper has been developed by materials scientists.A new transparent, composite plastic as strong as steel and as thin as a sheet of paper has been developed by materials scientists.CHICAGO: A new transparent, composite plastic as strong as steel and as thin as a sheet of paper has been developed by materials scientists.

The plastic could be used one day to produce lighter, stronger armour for soldiers or police and their vehicles. It also has potential to reduce the energy required to separate gasses in chemical factories and improve microtechnology such as microchips or biomedical sensors.

The material, which is described today in the U.S. journal Science is already being developed for practical applications and could become commercialised within a year or two, said lead author Nicholas Kotov.

"We're still at the exploratory stage, but the machine is now being built in our lab to build pieces as big as one metre by one metre," he added.

Brick-and-mortar molecular structure

Producing a composite material out of nano-sized building blocks that can maintain its strength at such large sizes has long confounded scientists. The U.S. experts managed to do it by mimicking the brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells.

Kotov's engineering team, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, built a robot that stacks the nanosheets like bricks in an alternating pattern and uses a glue-like polymer to create cooperative hydrogen bonds between the layers that can easily reform in another place if the bond is broken.

It takes a few hours to build up the 300 layers needed to make a thin sheet of the plastic as the robot's arm dips in an out of vials of glue and a dispersion of clay nanosheets.

"When you have a brick-and-mortar structure, any cracks are blunted by each interface," Kotov explained. "We've demonstrated that one can achieve almost ideal transfer of stress between nanosheets and a polymer matrix."

Made out of clay and a non-toxic glue similar to that used in school classrooms, the material is cheap, biodegradable and requires very little energy to produce, said Kotov: "It's as green as you can imagine."