Sunday, June 05, 2011

Champtron's 65-incher can recognize two-finger touch, make for a decently spacious second screen (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/05/champtrons-65-incher-can-recognize-two-finger-touch-make-for-a/

If you can never have enough screen real estate while working, you might want to give Champtron's 65-inch behemoth a look. It's a 1080p Sharp panel imbued with the ability to recognize two touch inputs at a time -- which can be fingers or "any" other sort of stylus -- which should prove pretty damn useful when you're trying to Photoshop a little extra sheen atop Steve Ballmer's glorious dome. As an added bonus, the dimensions of this screen make the Windows 7 UI extremely finger-friendly. Hell, it borders on being fist-friendly when exploded to a 65-inch size. See video of this champ after the break.

Continue reading Champtron's 65-incher can recognize two-finger touch, make for a decently spacious second screen (video)

Champtron's 65-incher can recognize two-finger touch, make for a decently spacious second screen (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 8:29 PM

MasterImage touts 4.3-, 7- and 10-inch glasses-free 3D displays, interest from 'first tier' device makers

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/05/masterimage-touts-4-3-7-and-10-inch-glasses-free-3d-displays/

MasterImage and its parallax barrier 3D technology have been around for a while. Though nothing major -- excepting the Hitachi H001 in Japan -- has ever come of this company's efforts, it's back at Computex this year with a trio of reference display, showing off glasses-free 3D at 4.3-inch, 7-inch and 10-inch form factors. Resolution on both the 7- and 4.3-inch panels is 800 x 480 at the moment, but there's a 1280 x 800 7-incher in the works that could be ready for production by the end of this year. The parallax barrier allowing for the autostereoscopic effect to happen adds only 1mm to the screen's thickness, though it does halve vertical resolution -- meaning an 800 x 480 screen will only show a 400 x 480 image when flipped to 3D mode. MasterImage builds the LCDs and controllers in these 3D imagers and is currently in discussions with what we're told are "first tier" manufacturers of both smartphones and tablets. You can see the 7-inch display on video after the break -- we found it able to match the 3D effect produced by displays requiring glasses, which is a good thing in relative terms, but as you see above, the two frames can and do get split up if you're not perfectly positioned to soak up the third dimension.

Continue reading MasterImage touts 4.3-, 7- and 10-inch glasses-free 3D displays, interest from 'first tier' device makers

MasterImage touts 4.3-, 7- and 10-inch glasses-free 3D displays, interest from 'first tier' device makers originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms f! or use o f feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 8:29 PM

Visualized: Acer's Iconia Tab A500 is 'a better choice' than the iPad

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/05/visualized-acers-iconia-tab-a500-is-a-better-choice-than-the/

We were making our way through Taipei's sublime metro system this week and what did we see on the side of the stairway? Why, it was a collection of iPad images, but rather than an Apple-funded advert, this was an Acer-instigated bit of spec sheet trash talk. The captions beneath the images read, in order: "no open operating system, no high resolution display, no Dolby Surround Sound, no Flash, no microSD, no USB port. Why do you want to choose this type of tablet?" Gracing the opposite wall was the tablet that ticked the "yes" boxes to all those items, Acer's own Iconia Tab A500. Perhaps once Acer figures out the answer to its own question, it can stop overhauling itself and get back to the job of chopping the iPad's market share down to size. Check out the full ad in the gallery below.

Visualized: Acer's Iconia Tab A500 is 'a better choice' than the iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 8:29 PM

Friday, June 03, 2011

Microdrones' flying robot films African wildlife, finds peace with nature

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/03/microdrones-flying-robot-films-african-wildlife-finds-peace-wi/

Sit back, relax and grab a cold one, because you're about to take an aerial tour of the Serengeti, courtesy of that flying drone you're staring at. Developed by Microdrones, this MD4-100 quadrotor was recently sent off to Kenya, where it gathered footage for a TV nature documentary produced by TBS Japan. By hovering over the terrain, the craft was able to get relatively up close and personal with zebras, elephants and other wildlife, without creating the same kind of disturbance that heavy duty, camera-laden trucks can wreak. Presumably, that's because the animals have no idea what to make of a flying robot, though part of us wants to believe there's some sort of full-circle, techno-evolutionary dynamic at work here, momentously bringing bot and beast together in some sort of pre-apocalyptic symbiosis. But that's just us. Hover past the break to see the video for yourself.

Continue reading Microdrones' flying robot films African wildlife, finds peace with nature

Microdrones' flying robot films African wildlife, finds peace with nature originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 11:46 AM

EnerJ power-saving system prioritizes CPU voltage, may reduce energy consumption by 90 percent

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/03/enerj-power-saving-system-prioritizes-cpu-voltage-may-reduce-en/

It takes a lot of energy for computing systems or data centers to patch up critical errors, but what if we devoted less power to fixing less urgent issues? That's the basic idea behind EnerJ -- a new power-saving system that could cut a chip's energy consumption by 90 percent, simply by prioritizing critical problems over those that are less threatening. Unlike, say, liquid cooling techniques, the University of Washington's framework focuses exclusively on the programming side of the equation and revolves around two interlocking pieces of code: one that handles crucial, precision-based tasks (e.g., password encryption), and another designed to deal with processes that can continue to function, even when facing small errors. The system's software would separate the two codes, meaning that energy from one section of the chip would never be used to fix a major problem that the other should address, while allowing engineers to more efficiently allocate voltage to each region. The system has already cut energy usage by up to 50 percent in lab simulations, but researchers think the 90 percent threshold is well within their reach, with computer engineering professor Luis Ceze (pictured above) predicting that the system may even be able to increase battery life by a factor of ten. The team is hoping to release EnerJ as an open-source tool this summer, but for now, you can find more information in the PR after the break.

Continue reading EnerJ power-saving system prioritizes CPU voltage, may reduce energy consumption by 90 percent

EnerJ power-saving system prioritizes CPU voltage, may reduce energy consumption by 90 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 11:46 AM

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