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Posts Tagged ‘prototypes’

BMW key-card unlocks car & works as contactless payment system

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 21st 2008 No Comments

BMW and NXP Semiconducters have announced what they’re calling the world’s first multi-functional car key. Currently in prototype form, the key features contactless payment, personalized access control and public transport e-ticketing for when you’ve left your 7-Series in the parking lot. Future functionality could include general shopping, paying for gas, parking fees and road tolls. Using the same credit-card form-factor as other contactless car keys, the BMW prototype aims to replace not only your keys but your cash.

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Panasonic 5-hour Fuel-Cell notebook battery by 2012

By Chris Davies on Monday, Oct 20th 2008 1 Comment

With the news last week that Toshiba could have a fuel cell powered device on the market by Christmas, today it’s the turn of Panasonic to make some methanol promises. It won’t be a fight for a spot underneath the tree between the two companies, though; Panasonic say they’ll have fuel cells, capable of running a laptop computer for five hour, on the market by 2012.

panasonic fuel cell prototype 1

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Sleep mask is for sleepy train passengers

By Brenda Stokes on Friday, Oct 17th 2008 No Comments

If you have to take a train a lot in order to commute to work or around town, you no doubt get sleepy sometimes. That’s why Pyocotan, a manga artist, has come up with “Noriko-san,” a sleek mask that relies on the kindness of other passengers to work.

noriko san invention1

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Objet Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer creates prototypes on the fly

By Brenda Stokes on Wednesday, Oct 15th 2008 No Comments

3D printers have been around for quite some time, but they’re just now getting streamlined enough to fit in an office space. That’s what makes the Alaris 30 Desktop 3D printer from Objet stand out.

printer 480x373

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Samsung & LG Display showcase OLED & AMOLED panels

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Oct 15th 2008 No Comments

The International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) 2008 kicked off in Korea yesterday, and both Samsung and LG Display brought along their latest OLED-based displays for a little screen-quality sparring. LG tried valiantly, with their 19-inch OLED panel, but Samsung’s smaller, 14-inch panel fought back with the lower power-requirements of AMOLED while their larger 31-inch full-HD panel won the war of inches.

lg display 19 inch oled display 480x406

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Digital Cube Telson UMPC with 3D video camera set for release

By Chris Davies on Friday, Oct 3rd 2008 No Comments

Telson’s 3D UMPC prototype, last seen in June, could be closer to a commercial release than expected, after new company owners Digital Cube announced their intentions to bring it to market. With a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1.2GHz VIA C7-M processor, 512MB RAM and 30GB hard drive, the Telson device’s particular talent is its 3D screen and – courtesy of a newly unveiled attachment – 3D video capture.

Telson 3D UMPC 1

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Hitachi concept WOOO camcorder can stream HD video on TV wirelessly

By Daniel Lim on Thursday, Oct 2nd 2008 No Comments

Hitachi at CEDIA 2008 showcases a concept digital camcorder that is capable of streaming HD video to a TV display wirelessly. The prototype video camera captures video on its HDD in HD MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format, and has an SDIO standard IEEE802.11g module to transmit live feed or captured video to TV via an access point.

woo camcorder wireless 11

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JVC Pseudo 3D glasses are a step up from the 3D glasses of yore

By Brenda Stokes on Thursday, Oct 2nd 2008 1 Comment

A lot of prototypes for all sorts of devices are showing up at CEATEC in Japan this week. One such prototype is a pair of “pseudo 3D” glasses from JVC that convert 2D video in real time to something that resembles 3D.

jvc tvd 01 480x360

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Sophia Peartree MID reference design: touchscreen, Atom & SSD

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Oct 1st 2008 No Comments

Sophia isn’t a name you’ll likely be familiar with, unless Mobile Internet Devices are your bread & butter, but you may nonetheless be interested in their Peartree MID reference design. On show at CEATEC 2008 today, Ubergizmo got some live shots of the lime-green touchscreen device. The specs are impressive for the size: an Intel Atom CPU, 4GB SSD storage and 5-inch WSVGA display (1024 x 600) display.

peartree mid 1 480x320

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Microsoft Research Codex: dual OQO touchscreen digital book

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Oct 1st 2008 1 Comment

Ken Hinckley, of Microsoft Research, has been working on a dual-touchscreen multi-tasking prototype called Codex, taking two of OQO’s Model 2 UMPCs and using intelligent software to manage how information is spread between the displays. Rather than manually positioning different windows on a single large screen, Ken’s concept recognizes that, say, reference and in-progress documents are more appropriately separated for efficiency; it can therefore automatically adjust them to fit the two touchscreens.

microsoft research codex 1 480x360