Devices Site

Remember last week’s post about the toy gramophone which records not onto a wax cylinder but instead onto a coffee cup? Make magazine’s Phil Torrone took a trip to Tokyo and visited the toymaker, Gakken. Here’s the video of the “Edison-Style Cup Phonograph Kit” in action.

And if you don’t care about a gadget which will record audio onto a plastic cup (in which case you might be reading the wrong blog) then watch it for the Gakken guy singing “Hey Jude”.

Thanks to Make you’ll no longer need to trawl Ebay to get one. The magazine’s online store is selling them for $35.

Product page [Make]
Edison-Style cup phonograph kit [Make]

Blu-ray’s triumph over HD-DVD might be short lived, according to THX chief scientist Laurie Fincham. Speaking to Home Cinema Choice Magazine, Fincham speculates that the format of the future will be… No format. People will use Flash memory for movies, either bought pre-loaded or via download.

I think it’s too late for Blu-ray. I think consumers will only become interested in replacing DVD when HD movies becomes available on flash memory.

We agree, although we’d add that it might not be plain old Flash used to carry titles around but instead Flash based media players, like the ipod Touch. One of Fincham’s predictions, though, sounds a little wrong-headed.

In the future I want to be able to […] walk into a store and have someone copy me a movie to a USB device. Stores will like that idea, because it’s all about having zero inventory.

That won’t happen. First, who will walk to the store when they can download? Second, the system is open to abuse. Movie companies will never let stores just copy files onto a customer’s thumb drive. How would they count sales? The death of the spinning disk, though, is almost certainly nigh.

THX Chief Scientist: …it’s too late for Blu-ray [DVD Town via El Reg]

For the millionth time I’ve been wondering, how come no one has ever put out a low-end phone with at least one high-end feature, like a 5-megapixel camera on a monochrome display candy bar, or an mp3 player in a cellphone-and-flashlight in one? Well, my wondering ends today, as Nokia has officially announced an expected Q2 release of the Nokia 6300i, an upgrade to the original slim Finn.

Actually, not much has changed with the Nokia 6300i, design-wise and feature-wise. But I think the one thing it adds to the table will really help in changing the “game.” That’s because the Nokia 6300i is now equipped with Wi-Fi, and that lets it connect to wireless networks and make VoiP Internet calls. It’s bound to have the same OS (Series 40 3rd Ed.) and dimensions as the Nokia 6300 and will be available for approximately EUR 175 ($270.00).

Surely a lot of conservative types will long for a device like this, but one has to question how well Wi-Fi would work on such a small phone. I’m not sure how convenient web browsing would be on a 2-inch screen even if it’s QVGA. And of course, how long will the battery last with the added power-sucking abilities of Wi-Fi? I remember my old Nokia 6300 barely lasted me 8 hours of “moderate” use. Nokia had better include a better battery back in the 6300i or else, a lot of people will ignore it.

Via [IntoMobile]

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Posted Mar 28th 2008 2:29AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Misc. gadgetsWe knew the Army’s supposedly-dead Land Warrior high-tech uniform program still had some life in it, but now it appears that good marks from tests in the field might mean it’s going to make a full recovery. The Army sent the 4/9 Infantry (aka the “Manchus”) off to war loaded down with the 16-pound Land Warrior kit, and after some on-the-fly adjustments that made the gear lighter and more functional, the soldiers had talked Land Warrior up to the point where the 2nd Infantry Division’s 5th Combat Brigade Team has now officially requested 1,000 more Land Warrior rigs. The main change is the removal of six pounds of inessential gear, but the crew in the 4/9 also requested and added in a “digital chem light,” which allows buildings and waypoints to be marked in green on an electronic map, and restricted Land Warrior deployment to team leaders and above. There’s still some tricky funding problems to solve — some $102M needs to be set aside for the request — but the Land Warrior project managers say it’s looking promising. Now if we could only get some of that HUD monocle action on the civilian side, our morning coffee run would be a lot more interesting.

Posted Mar 28th 2008 8:39AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Isn’t it nice to watch a sexy concept makes its first, quivering steps towards retail? You’re looking at the graduation design project of Joris van Gelder: the Remote for B&O. The idea was to create a remote control for kitchen use. As such, it’s meant to be (mostly) touchless in order to keep the remote free from bacteria or ether, depending upon your situation. The remote responds to finger gestures and lifts and falls in concert with the volume. Two videos after the break: the first showing the concept followed by the working prototype.

[Via BEOWorld, thanks JK]

Remote for B&O from Engadget on Vimeo.

Posted Mar 28th 2008 7:20AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
var If OJ made one thing perfectly clear, it’s that the word “reason,” at the root of “reasonable doubt” has lost all meaning in the US court system. So what do you think will be the outcome of a new lawsuit claiming that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is a Doomsday machine? The suit filed in Hawaii’s US District Court by Luis Sancho and a former nuclear safety officer by the name of Walter Wagner, seeks to put the already delayed LHC launch on hold pending a new safety review. It’s worth noting that the same doomsday scenarios of micro black holes and strangelets (think: the Midas Touch of death) have been raised by Wagner previously with the launch of other accelerators — they’ve also been summarily dismissed by the scientific community as “beyond reasonable.” It’s also worth noting that the 27km-long LHC crisscrosses the border between France and Switzerland, not the US. An initial conference on the lawsuit is scheduled for June 16th, a few months before the first collisions are scheduled to begin and well before LHC is capable of its 4 trillion electron-volts maximum power. Peter Higgs, we feel your pain.

[Thanks Aaron, Original Image courtesy of Ute Kraus]

Since the iphone was released, there are certain segments who still fantasize about the iPhone nano although that doesn’t look as though it will be rolling out anytime soon. Here’s an iPhone nano concept for you to ponder over - using it in landscape mode will leave you with a rather wide-looking handset. I think it is best to just stick with the current iPhone design at this point in time until the folks at Cupertino think of something better. Let’s not rush what is supposed to come naturally now, shall we?

The Killer Bee is set to replace the current ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is being used by the US Marine Corps and Navy. What the Killer Bee offers is a longer flight time and range - capable of hitting more than 100 miles, carrying a higher payload capacity in order to unleash a greater destructive power upon the enemy. Interestingly enough, the bent tip of the wings provides greater stability during tight turns while solving the problem of antennae placement. It uses infrared sensors and a live video system to track objects, be it day or night, while an on-board laser makes it capable of firing precision guided minutions with impunity. Good thing there will still be wars around in 2011 when the Killer Bee is unleashed.

The Stickybot robotic lizard takes the gecko as its inspiration, and the Pentagon has taken a very strong interest towards it. After all, the military arm of the government hope to have it serve as a spy, worming its way to the homes and buildings of potential rogue nations that threaten national security. This robot is able to climb glass surfaces at the rate of a meter per second thanks to nano-scale hairs on the bottomm of its toes. Hopefully this robot will be able to move naturally, and what happens when someone thinks that this is the real deal, only to discover that it is nothing but a voyeuristic robot all this while? Perhaps Pentagon would like to include some sort of self-destruct feature inside to prevent any reverse engineering.

The Japanese always have the most funky toilet, and the Nankai Electric Railway Co. is going to up the ante by offering water-free urinals at 18 men’s toilets in stations along its lines. Before you start to wrinkle your nose in disgust, check out the main reason for this seemingly unhygienic move. For starters, how does saving 22,000 tons of water and about 6 million yen in utility bills sound to you? These upgraded urinals won’t stink either, since they are covered in a low friction material that ensures condensation does not build up on them, doing away with the need to flush after use. After all, urine will be deposited into special cartridges which help reduce odors. It will take a mental paradigm shift to accept this idea, but it looks like it will work for me. I wonder if they have made provisions for people who love spitting their phelgm into urinals…