Bridgestone shows off ultrathin, full-color e-paper

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays

Just last year Bridgestone was feelin' pretty good about itself for unveiling the "world's thinnest" sheet of two-color e-paper. These days, the outfit is busy showing off a new version that measures in at just 0.29-millimeters thick and is capable of displaying 4,096 colors on an eight-inch display. In case that wasn't enough, the company is also touting what it calls the "world's largest full color e-paper that is A3 size, which is equivalent to a 21.4-inch screen." As you'd expect, the latter is expected to be used solely for advertising and could hit the market as early as next year, while the former technology is set to be commercially available in 2009. [Warning: read link requires subscription]

[Via Japan Today, image courtesy of NewLaunches]

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Brando SATA/EIDE to USB 2.0 Cable

Brando is offering a converter cable to make all your internal SATA/EIDE devices USB 2.0 compatible. The cable works with all hard drives, CD drives and DVD drives. It's no slouch on the performance side either, with a tested transfer rate of 165.3Mbps. The unit also comes with AC power adapters so you don't need to power it with a computer.

We think it may be a little risky schlepping a bare drive around with you all the time without protection of any sort, but we've never been the kind to take chances with our data. Our precious, juicy data.

Brando SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Conversion Cable Review [Bona Fide Reviews]

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Cellphones: Sagem Porsche P'9521 Hands On (Verdict: Nifty)

from Gizmodo by Charlie White

We're jealous. The guys at the Brit division of Crave got their greasy paws on that gorgeous Sagem Porsche P'9521 cellphone we showed you the other day. Making us feel even worse is the fact that they liked it a lot, writing in their dignified-sounding British way, "It's not just a piece of rubbish with a Porsche logo on it—it is in fact a rather nifty clamshell handset."

One of the pics showed us something we didn't realize before—you know that highly visible Porsche Design logo on the lid? The numerals on its outside screen are displayed in a similar typeface. That's a cool detail. Our major complaint about the phone is its outrageous $1634 price. [Crave UK]

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New Screens: Samsung's 40-inch TFT-LCD is Just One Centimeter Thick

from Gizmodo by Addy Dugdale

Samsung is to unveil a bunch of new screens in Japan at the end of this week, including the 40-inch beauty you see here, with a thickness of just 1 cm. The first of the Korean electronics giant's next wave of large-screen TVs, the 40-incher is as thick as a 10- to 20-inch LCD desktop monitor, and has a bezel of just 14.6 mm, reduced from 30 mm. LED backlighting reduces power consumption to around 90 watts. Another pic, and info on what to keep your eyes peeled for in Yokohama this week below.

15.4" LCD with active white-LED backlight. 22" desktop LCD with DisplayPort interface 46" digital information display (1500nits) 7" mobile display with touch screen 2.1" LCD with sensor-based automatic brightness control 14.3" plastic display 8.1"e-paper 14.1"active-matrix OLED. [via Press Release]

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Western Union hopes to enable mobile money transfers, scammers rejoice

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Just when you thought those Nigerian scammers were simply running out of avenues to coerce you into cashing some counterfeit check for $4.98 billion, along comes this. Western Union is apparently buddying up with 35 or so cellphone operators to "develop a system that would allow consumers to transfer money from country to country via their mobile phones." Reportedly, the outfit has successfully tested the service in a number of US cities, and if everything goes as planned, it could launch in Q2 of 2008. Notably, it still sounds like an actual human will be a part of the process, as the system will purportedly "connect the user to a company operator to complete the transaction." Quite frankly, we appreciate the convenience of such a service, but don't you go falling for any sappy stories of long-lost cousins needing your help to funnel in millions as you ride to work, alright?

 

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