It's slightly thicker than a normal netbook, but the insides are pretty much the same: Windows 7, 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 processor, maximum 4GB RAM, and 160GB hard disk. How battery life would be affected remains to be seen.

It's tough to judge the sound quality from the brief video taken by Engadget, but we're going to assume that speech is audible (not speaking Japanese, it's hard to measure clarity of speech) and oddly directional. Even one step away from the predetermined sweet spot leaves the listener unable to hear anything from the speaker. We don't know much about the tech—the speaker might have to be a certain size in order to work, which would be a bummer for portable gadgets, but the tech does have a ton of potential for annoying the crap out of you with ads. [Engadget]

That's definitely the biggest OLED screen I've heard of. Of course, the individual panels are a bit of a cheat—and mean you only see a red, green and blue matrix until you're at least 2 feet away—but Mitsubishi imagines the tech being curved around buildings, trains and buses in Japan.

OLED screens are capable of much higher resolutions than regular stadium-style LED displays, but have two fatal flaws. They're super expensive, and OLED degrades. The expected life of an OLED panel is only about 20,000 hours (roughly 2.5 years for a 24/7 advertisement). Gorgeous as they are, that expense is why you're not reading this on an OLED screen right now. [OLED-Display.Net and Network World]

The K01 (shown above) is a QWERTY slider with a 4.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, and is about 15mm-thick. Previous roadmaps suggest it could arrive this year, and will have a 1GHz processor, and 3.2-megapixel camera.

Meanwhile, all reports indicate that this is the K02— a clamshell device with a 3.5-inch (800 x 480) resistive touchscreen. Last we heard it had a QWERTY keyboard on the inside (and a secondary LCD on the outside), but as you can see, it's now looking more like a Nintendo DS-style dual screen device. Interesting. It's also tentatively expected early next year.

Over at Akihabara, you'll also see pics of the Toshiba L01—a tablet-like slate with 7-inch (800 x 480) screen that also doubles as a digital photo frame. Like the K01, it could arrive by year's end.

Everything points to these being WinMo 6.5 devices, but I wouldn't be surprised if any models arriving next year sneak in Windows Mobile 7. [Akihabara News via Electronista]

DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction of methanol, water, and air—the only by-products are a small amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide. Japanese wireless carrier, KDDI, has combined the fuel cell with a Lithium Ion battery to better handle the phone's spikes in power demand.

This combination gives the prototype phone about 320 hours of power. That's around 3 days longer than an equivalent handset. And instead of taking an hour or so to recharge, a few squirts of methanol only takes seconds. Right now the prototype is thicker than we demand of today's phones, but the two companies hope the technology will eventually make it into portable gadgets like phones and media players.

Of course, Toshiba promised to start selling a DMFC battery charger by September, and there's still no sign of it. Good to see they're making inroads, though. It's pretty interesting tech. [PC World and DVICE]

He's actually controlling an MP3 planer with his eyes.

There's no camera involved here, no optical recognition of any kind. The two earphones inside his ears—developed by NTT DoCoMo—can detect the eye movement using electrodes so sensitive that they can detect how his eyes move—just by being in contact with his head.

I don't know about you, but I think that's quite wicked. I may end up with a huge headache, but it's cool nonetheless. [Pink Tentacle]

Like Lenovo W700, one screen can slide behind the other if you don't need to use both. It's slightly thicker than a normal netbook, but the insides are pretty much the same: Windows 7, 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 processor, maximum 4GB RAM, and 160GB hard disk. How battery life would be affected remains to be seen.

Kohjinsha didn't say if it plans to actually start selling the concept (or how much it would cost), so if dual-screens are your thing, you best hope gScreen gets its act together. [Akihabara News]

The Cell processor also provides self-congruency for improved image quality at the edge of the picture, enhanced color and brightness balance, and a super-high luminance of 1250cd/m². A 7-speaker sound bar is attached underneath the display, and network functionality includes DLNA support, and an HD Web browser based on Opera.

The Cell chip is housed in an external box about the site of an older Blu-ray player. That's also where a 3TB hard disk is installed to allow the TV to time-shift up to 26 hours of programs from up to 8 channels simultaneously. (1TB of storage is reserved for longer-term recordings). Another neat visual trick: the 55X1 can show eight channels on screen at the same time—and step through each without the delay common with rival HDTVs.

The TV is on show at CEATEC (Japan's version of CES), and will go on sale there in December for 1 Million Yen (about $11,115). Toshiba hopes to sell about 1,000 models a month before the 55X1 arrives in the U.S sometime in 2010.

Toshiba also gave some insight into its future plans for CELL processor-based TVs. It talked about using the chip in a range of concepts, including a 3D TV, and a 4K x 2K model that upconverts 1080p to 3840 x 2160. Holy crap. More please. [Toshiba via Impress AV Watch]

The mirror isn't a mirror at all but a huge touch-based LCD equipped with cameras, so you can touch icons of clothes and see an animation of how you would look without having to try them on. This is the first step towards robopocalypse, if you ask me, but the models in their pristine all-white apartment don't look too scared.

For live video, the camera runs its own IPTV server, which compresses the video down to H.264 in real time before sending it out to a compatible TV. The folks at Tech On are claiming this all goes down over 802.11g, though (and not n), so quality may not be the best. Cool capabilities to have built-in, though. And if anyone has a line on IDing the liquid-filled banana being filmed in that image, please share with the rest of us. [Tech On]

Users keep their eyes on the TV and have their finger motions tracked by an on-screen “virtual thumb.” The remote can also sense left- or right-handed users and utilize multitouch data entry, zoom, and quick scroll. Effective and it won't scare away your less-than-technologically-adept grandmother. Unfortunately, Panasonic didn't give a release date for the gizmo or comment on whether it will ever be mass produced. [Engadget]

Video you're watching is optimized for size depending on your distance from the wall. And when you walk away, it follows so that you never miss a commercial (Stay-With-Me-TV). IP cameras allow for life-sized videophone conferencing and remote learning. One of the niftiest functions is virtual photo manipulation, like in the cliched movie with Tom Cruise, allowing selection, rotation, zooming and discarding of images by arm motions alone (Easy-Gesture-TV). Panasonic allowed members of the public to try this out at CEATEC. The interface is basically intuitive but takes a fair bit of practice to master (the demo guy also admitted to aching arm muscles, and he's got another five to ten years to go before commercialization).

The tech uses range imagery sensors and what's called Time of Flight light tracking for real-time 3D image processing. Finally, LifeWall can act as wallpaper or decor, giving the room a new look whenever fancy strikes. Exposed brick, anyone? - Tim Hornyak

The plastic glasses are still pretty dorky, but viewing is painless - even without the specs (the video is only blurry around the edges). The system can convert conventional or high-definition 2D video (from video cameras, players, games and other sources) to high-def 3D with 1080p signals in real time via a small processor unit.

DVD movies would work well on the system, but not animated films, said Yasunari Suzuki of JVC's Technology Development Division. The firm has no immediate plans to commercialize the converter, but the know how has been licensed to Canada's Sensio Technologies Inc. and JVC is in talks with other players.

Photos and story by Tim Hornyak.

After all, this is the highest resolution DSLR in its class on the market. The dual Bionz processors allow 5 frames per second burst, but the enormous file sizes can eat up memory on your cards—you'll fit only 105 RAW images on a 4-gig compact flash card. Another great feature is that the SteadyShot anti-vibration feature is in the camera—not the lens—which helps if you're using older Minolta lenses on it. I also liked the large, comfortable eyepiece—it makes my ancient Nikon D70 feel like a pinhole camera—and the very bright,100% coverage viewfinder. The controls around the 3-inch, 270dpi LCD screen were quite intuitive. A handy preview function activated with the depth of field button allows you to adjust white balance and other aspects before taking the actual photo. But make no mistake, this camera is a brick—the magnesium alloy body and rubber housing alone (minus batteries and accessories) weighs 850 g, and will strain your arms if you're not used to lugging heavy lenses and bodies. Still, the Alpha 900 should win over some film die-hards who have been waiting for full-frame sensors in DSLR cameras.

Sony Alpha 900 full specs available here.

Photos and story by Tim Hornyak.

There are more cool KDDI phone concepts in collaboration with Yamaha here (in Japanese; click on middle pic under Special Event, then the origami-like musical instrument phone prototypes at the bottom, see also the movie clips - view by clicking black rectangle in the prototype screen - the cellphone instruments are way cool) – Tim Hornyak

For those who don't need a whole keyboard full of OLED buttons, Nikkai is showing off standalone units at CEATEC. The buttons are bulkier than anything on an Art Lebedev product, and seem to have three input states: depressed, tilted left and tilted right (or up and down, depending on orientation) which makes makes for what amounts to a highly versatile and communicative switch. A second type of button is a simpler in/out configuration, albeit with a larger screen.

I'm sure there's a highly practical application for such technology, but for the demonstration Nikkai just built them into a giant, OLED-infested control panel that looks to have been ripped from the basement of the Kremlin, circa 1985. Despite being too big to integrate into a traditional keyboard, the buttons will likely shine in the hands of DIYers if they're ever made available to consumers. [Akihabara]

They're reticent to give up too many details about an expected release, but due to the complicated manufacturing process it's doubtful that they have a date to hide yet. Also, the lack of competitive capacity claims is suspicious and little disheartening. But hey, cheer up! At least they're trying, right? [PCWorld]