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New Mediamesh and Illumesh Technologies Turn Entire Buildings Into LED Ads

AG4 and GKD Metal Fabrics, a German architecture and design company and a woven metal fabric company, respectively, have designed Mediamesh and Illumesh—an LED technology to turn regular building sides into gigantic colorful ads. These two new methods of cabling and lighting let developers place LEDs even over windows—which was verboten before—thanks to the fact…

Lenovo’s L220x Monitor the First 22-Inch with a 1920 by 1200 Pixel Count

Lenovo’s 22-inch monitor is the first to have a 1920 by 1200 res screen, good for HD content. And it supports auto-rotation of the screen from portrait to landscape mode and 92% color gamut. Too bad the HDCP compliant monitor doesn’t have an HDMI port or component inputs, alongside its VGA/DVI jacks. Most consumers are…

T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve 8320 Gets HotSpot @ Home Compatibility

The PinStack forums got some leaked retail partner docs from T-Mobile today confirming the T-Mobile BB Curve 8320, and also showing that it has HotSpot @ Home Service. HS@H lets you use one cellphone to make calls on both the cell network and your home’s Wi-Fi, handing off “seamlessly” between the two. Adding the Curve…

Countertop Pizza Oven

If your life’s dream is to cook a pizza in something that only slightly resembles a pizza oven, this Da Gennaro is your ticket to paradise. The oven’s small enough to fit onto a counter, but big enough that it takes up a whole lot of your kitchen space. As for how well its programmable…

Crown7 ‘Electronic Cigarette’ Delivers All the Nicotine with None of the Smoke

Do all these smoking bans have you feeling down? Do you miss being able to puff away on your death sticks with impunity, no matter where you were? Well, this Crown7 “electronic cigarette” will allow you to enjoy some piping-hot nicotine wherever you are, be it a place that allows smoking or not. It’s basically…

What’s the Best Handset Under $100?

Paying special attention to high-end US phones, its easy to miss the little handsets meant to appease the stingy buyers of America. What is the best handset for less than $100 these days? Off the top of my head, I’d say the Sony Ericsson W580, which is $80 after rebate, or one of the Samsung…

Wi-Fire Wi-Fi Booster Tested (Verdict: Almost a 5x Boost)

The 1000-foot range and 3x signal boost hField Technologies claimed for their Wi-Fire signal boosters seemed like spec inflation, but Macenstein took precious time away from taking pictures of bikini ladies and tested it out. Their findings? An almost 5x boost. They would have hit the 1000-foot range as well if it weren’t for line-of-sight…

Is Sony In Negotiations to Sell Cell Manufacturing Plants?

Sources say Sony’s thinking about selling off their Cell CPU manufacturing plants, as evidenced by their recent canoodling with Toshiba. These plants would be the same ones where Sony currently produces the processos used in the PS3—you know, the Cell processors. If true, this sale would help Sony free up $860 million in free cash…

Kensington Introduces sd200v Video USB Dock and Other Notebook Accessories

Kensington’s new $139 sd200v is a single hub that can manage your keyboard, mouse, printer and iPod, plus speakers, microphone and even a VGA monitor, all tied to your laptop by a single USB cable. The catch is that the DualView DisplayLink USB video connection is Windows-only, and it’s not likely to be high on…

iPhone Kinda Gets OS X Dashboard Widgets

Erica over at TUAW just managed to get OS X Dashboard widgets working on the iPhone. We say kinda, because some apps (Weather, ESPN and Calendar) work fine, but others work horribly. To get it on your iPhone, you have to upload the Widgets.app, copy over a support folder from your Mac, and then copy…

Intel’s Robot Arms Look With Their Eyes, Not With Their Hands

The problem with robot claws and hands is that they really don’t know how hard to grip an object unless they’re either pre-programmed or they test out the hardness themselves. The latter isn’t a great idea if the object is, say, your arm, so Intel’s invented a process to scan the object beforehand with sensors…

Infiniti’s Around View Camera System, When Looking Out Your Window Just Won’t Do

Infiniti’s unreleased 2008 EX35 has lots of fun new features like self-healing paint and automatic folding rear seats. It even has something called the Around View camera system. It basically works just like those backup cameras that started showing up a few years ago, but now you can see to the right, left and front…

Homemade Pigeon Deterrent Keeps Flying Poop Machines Away

We already saw one homemade pest deterrent in the form of a squirrel catapult, but squirrels aren’t the only pesky animals around. Apparently, pigeons like pooping wherever they please, including in this guy’s pool. He wanted to stop that, so he set up a sprinkler-powered pigeon deterrent. It keeps his pool poop-free while also providing…

Taito Touchscreen Arcade Card Battle Game Looks Like MS Surface

Japanese arcade fans should get ready to pull out their lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, because this Taito touchscreen arcade game looks pretty awesome. The Engrish Google translation leaves us wondering at how exactly the game works, but from what we can gather, you put real cards onto the virtual board, which makes stuff…

Target is doubling the amount of shelf space allocated to Blu-ray movies. Take that, HD DVD! [TG Daily]

Korean McDonald’s Becomes First Restaurant to Offer RFID-Based Transactions

Soon you’ll be able to skip the lines at Korean McDonald’s. Instead, just sit down, pull out your cellphone and pop in an RFID adapter to place an order. All you need is a phone that is compatible with the RFID adapter and can download the McDonald’s ordering application. The idea of a fully autonomous…

Kensington LiquidFM Transmitters Seek Clearest Channels, Transmit Track Names and More

Today Kensington introduced its LiquidFM line of FM transmitters. The top tier products have QuickSeek, the technology the company first launched in May: With the touch of a button, it will find the three cleanest frequencies for you to set your radio on. The LiquidFM Deluxe for iPod ($99) will not only transmit the music…

Total HD Dual-Format Discs Gets Delayed ‘Indefinitely’

Bad news for people looking forward to Total HD discs so they can abstain from the idiotic HD format war currently raging: Total HD has been delayed indefinitely. The format, which was to include Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other, had already been delayed once from end-of-year 2007 to sometime in…

French iPhone Launching Without 3G or Unlimited Data

TechCrunch France and Crunchgear have two bits of information on the French iPhone that’s sure to disappoint: no 3G and no unlimited data plan. We’ll find out more at the Apple Expo in Paris later this month. [Crunchgear]

Coolness Roundup: Home Theater Hands-On

This week on the 103rd edition of the Coolness Roundup, Stephen describes how he built his off-the-shelf home theater that looks and sounds great. This episode is packed with tips for building or upgrading your home entertainment system, proving that it’s not all that difficult to build a home theater that’s better than any commercial…