Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, February 04, 2008

Maxablaster mega-flashlight is a step away from lightsaber

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/228267673/

You thought the goggles did nothing before? Shine the 38-million-candle Maxablaster (which, we hear, has been bumped up to 52m in a recent build) and watch as faces melt Raiders of the Lost Ark style under its concentrated mercury arc plasma bulb powered by a 54 battery pack. Right now it's just the pet project of a Dutch engineer by the name of Ralf Ottow, which is probably for the best, since this would be far more effective at boring holes in concrete than lighting any scene.

[Thanks, Trev]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Researchers devise method for colorizing metals, alchemists swoon

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/228352853/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Unfortunately, Dr. Chunlei Guo of the University of Rochester hasn't yet figured out how to turn scrap metals into gold, but he, along with Dr. Anatoliy Y. Vorobyev, has discovered how to colorize a variety of metals. By utilizing a "femtosecond laser processing technique," the duo has crafted a method for turning even aluminum into aluminum with an impeccable gold finish. Furthermore, they've also been successful in turning tungsten dark blue, leaving reason to believe that nearly any metal could be altered to appear as a different color. Ah, just imagine what these folks could do with your MacBook Pro.

[Via The New York Times, thanks Jonathan]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Intel launching Tukwila: world's first 2 billion transistor chip

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/228827280/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We first head of Intel's quad-core Tukwila back in 2006. Now, it's launching at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. Expected to arrive in the second half of the year, the 2GHz Itanium processor packs in more than 2 billion transistors. Unfortunately, it's headed straight to the raised-floor room, not your consumer-class desktop. The good news for IT types is that the proc doubles the performance of Intel's enterprise-class, 9100-series Montvale processors with just a 25% increase in power consumption. So, we looking at 4 billion transistors by 2010 Mr. Moore? Probably, Tukwila is still using 65-nm processes as opposed to Intel's new 45-nm technology.

[Via ZDNet Australia]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Asus' quad DVI-packing EAH3870 X2 1GB TOP gets previewed

Posted Feb 1st 2008 3:57PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

As if a regular Radeon HD 3870 X2 wasn't enough to make you envious, the folks at HotHardware have now gotten their hands Asus' new EAH3870 X2 1GB TOP behemoth, which increases the insanity of the dual-GPU card even further with a full four DVI ports. In addition to making that lone s-video port look woefully out of place, those'll let you push out more pixels than you'll ever likely need across four monitors, with none of the compromises associated with lesser multi-monitor solutions. What's more, Asus' card is apparently even lighter than the original reference design for the HD 3870 X2, and you can rest assured that it'll be overclocked right out of the box. No word on a price or release date just yet, but HotHardware is promising to deliver a full review of the card if they can ever pull themselves away from their bank of monitors.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Hands-on with Sigma's DP1

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/227236635/

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Sigma was showing off their digicam slab of tech, the DP1. To the untrained eye, it doesn't look like much. But Sigma's put the same 14.1-megapixel APS-C sized Foveon CMOS sensor used in its SD14 DSLR into this tiny package. There's a f/4, 28-mm (in 35-mm equivalent terms) lens, but what really impressed us was the build quality on this unit -- not a creak or bit of flex to be had on the camera. It's definitely a high-end piece of photo jewelry.

Gallery: Hands-on with Sigma's DP1