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With its sassy orange and black body, the Predator is Acer’s riposte to HP’s Voodoo and Dell’s XPS and Alienware lines. Running an Intel Quad-Core processor, the desktop PC also has liquid cooling, a Blu-ray Disc drive and four swappable SATA disk drives, and uses Nvidia’s SLI graphics technology. Full stats below the gallery. Windows…
Being of a scientific persuasion myself, I couldn’t help but chortle at this promotional video for the TI MSP430 Ultra Low Power microcontroller unit. Sure, the neat little device sucks really low current and is used in a wide range of gizmos like smoke detectors and the recent amazing Audeo voiceless translator. We talk a…
This Montegiro Lusso turntable looks like it should be teamed with something ’60s and space-age from Pierre Cardin and worn atop the head. It consists of three height-adjustable cones made from alternate layers of acrylic and aluminum, and a larger, inverted cone, on top of which sits the platter. The turntable rocks a 10-inch Da…
This week at TreeHugger: The solar industry is trying to keep one step ahead of government regulators by creating a solar panel recycling scheme. IBM has leveraged its computer-chip cooling know-how to make a solar concentrator able to magnify the sun 2,000 times! This might look like giant hard candy floating in the ocean, but…
It may not be quite as sophisticated or cerebral as Starfleet’s bio-neural computing gel packs, but scientists have made a start towards this sort of tech by making bacteria solve a math problem. The team from Davidson College and Missouri Western State University added genes to the harmless Escherichia coli, normally found wiggling its way…
Effective over up to an acre of land, this battery-powered garden gadget allows you to commit mass mosquito-cide using a tank of propane. Silent and odorless, the trap emits octenol (something that mozzies find sexy, aspazzarently) to lure the beasties close to the machine. Once there, a vacuum gathers them into the “removable catch basin”,…
TokyoFlash—always guaranteed to surprise us with impossible-to read watch designs— has just stumped up it’s newest offering, which this time looks like some kind of organic cell pattern. It’s dubbed “Infection”… and you can just imagine the advertising tag can’t you? Yep: “No one is immune to infection.” The time is revealed by 12 red,…
Demonstrating that fab things come in small packages is this Sony lay-dee, who’s proffering one of the five golf ball-sized speakers of the HT-IS100 home theater sound system for your loving eyes to inspect. It’s a 5.1-channel, three-HDMI input system and will be released in Japan on July 15 at a cost of around $870.…
The September 5, 1925 Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV) ran an article titled, “Expect Movies to be Produced in Every Home,” in which Cecil B. DeMille predicts not only home movies of the future, but the rise of the amateur filmmaker as a force in the film industry. Alongside D.W. Griffith’s 1923 prediction of future private…
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a process in which you run an electromagnet over parts of the brain, which essentially turns them off. You may have LOL’d at the idea of Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo erasing Jim Carrey’s brain while dancing around in their underwear, but this brain altering technology is no joke. While effects…
At SID 2008 this week AUO announced the launch of curved displays, LCD panels that are just over a half millimeter thick and TFT multi-touch panels. The curved displays are said to be the first built on glass substrate (honestly, that’s way over my head, but I’m sure a few of you will care). Because…
While working on the W890i review, I came across a video of Brian using a Sony Ericsson W880i and found the icons to be extremely familiar. A few seconds later, I realized they bear a striking resemblance to those found on the recently announced BlackBerry Bold. And not that it’s a huge deal or anything,…
Remember the Xbox Live Anywhere service that Microsoft demoed two years ago? It was pretty neat, the idea being that all your devices can be tied into the Live network we know and love. But it more or less fell off the radar earth, until today at the Electronic Gaming Summit, when Microsoft’s Jeff Bell…
Imagine if airplanes could miraculously heal cracks or holes in the skin during flight. Obviously, that would go a long way in boosting airline safety, not to mention the confidence of passengers. Interestingly enough, researchers in Britain are attempting to make this dream a reality using a technique that utilizes composite materials that “bleed” when…
Instead of blowing out all the stops with a big mama pajama queen of all Blu-ray players, Denon appears to be playing the Pioneer card by launching the $750 DVD-1800BD player. It’s lower in price than its $1,200-and-up predecessors, and only meets the mandatory 1.1 spec (that is, picture-in-picture but no Ethernet) rather than full-blown…
There is no doubt about it—space saving design is a big selling point these days. Take this ironing board ladder for instance. It combines the functionality of a step ladder and an ironing board in a single unit that can fold away for easy storage. It seems like a great idea, but there is something…
Yesterday we came across a DIY hack that helps you turn your Guitar Hero instrument into a MIDI controller and today we have a kit that will help you covert your old PS2 controllers (standard, knockoff, or wireless) for a similar purpose. When hooked up, it will allow you to do things like control pitch…
Originally free for its U-Verse subscribers, AT&T is now making all of its Wi-Fi hotspots free for subscribers to its LaptopConnect mobile broadband service. Now you won’t have to waste precious chunks of your allotted 5GB a month anytime you’re in range of a McDonald’s or Starbucks. Free Wi-Fi for all AT&T smartphones is expected…
When we saw that 24-carat gold iPhone last month, we thought it was too tacky gold for everybody except for Mr. T. Apparently we were wrong. Twenty people have bid 55 times to plunk down real money—and at least two are willing to pony up over two grand—for this gaudy slab of soon-to-be-outdated tech. Or,…
A new study has found that carbon nanotubes—if inhaled—could be as dangerous as asbestos. This is not only problematic for a future of semiconductors that would like to exploit the technology, but the goods already on the market now that use nanotubes in composite mixtures, like baseball bats and tennis rackets. To test the nanotubes,…