Logitech

Logitech G13 Gameboard

[Pro Gaming Controller for Mac & PC]

The Logitech G13 advanced Gameboard is the company’s latest gaming peripheral to be unveiled. This game pad from Logitech aims to offer gamers - both hardcore addicts and casual gamers - excellent functionality in a sleek design.
The Logitech G13 is ergonomically designed and navigating the board is intuitional. The joystick on the left side of the keyboard allows you make maximum use of your thumb’s dexterity

The Logitech G13 features:

Three gaming modes
25 programmable keys
Programmable analog stick
87 game-controlling options
Allot custom profiles to buttons for select games
Create macros for a game while playing the game
A 160 x 43 GamePanel LCD for live stats, system information, and communication with other players
Pre-configured settings for games such World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and many others.
Backlit keys useful in low-light or lightout play conditions
Onboard memory useful in configuring multiple player profiles
Weight of the G13 gaming pad is nicely distributed so it won’t move or slip when you play
Inspite of its sleek design and cutting-edge features, with a price tag of nearly $80, the Logitech G13 is twice as expensive as other branded gaming pads. The price of this gaming pad may prove to be an impediment in getting gamers to leave their keyboards for the gaming pad.

Internet Car Radio

Internet Car Radio From Blaupunkt and miRoamerBlaupunkt and miRoamer launched the world’s first in-dash internet car radio at the CES held earlier this month. Blaupunkt provides the hardware for this exciting idea which frankly in our opinion should have happened earlier. The internet sets you free and now you’re free to access internet radio in all its limitless glory while driving on Route 66, the Grand Trunk road, the Silk Route, or up Kensington High Street.
You can access endless music channels, news, talk stations, AM/FM, etc from all around the world. As of now internet connectivity is through an external device such as 3G/HSDPA/HSPA devices via Bluetooth. When connecting to the internet via an external device the existing mobile service provider serves as the default network. Later models will come with an in-built modem. Bluetooth connectivity means you can access the phone, your address book, and navigation device.
The two prototype models named the New Jersey 600i and the Hamburg 600i will connect the car owner to miRoamer stations numbering in tens of thousands.
You can create a profile and then add playlists on miRoamer.com, these can be accessed while on the road. This saves time as you can directly access stations instead of having to search for them via the device.

Intel My Wi-Fi Personal Area Network

Intel’s new My Wi-Fi technology enables the creation of a Personal Area Network [PAN]; basically your own personal Wi-Fi network which you can use to connect your laptop with eight other clients or better still share an incoming internet connection with those eight clients and pay for just the one connection.

If your laptop is based on the Intel Centrino 2 processor then a simple wireless driver and software update will have My Wi-Fi running on your machine. My Wi-Fi allows a dual interface in which your computer stays connected to one access point as well as clients connected in the PAN. This is made possible with the help of the Intel 5100 Wi-Fi and 5300 Wi-Fi Link adapters to enable both wireless LAN and Wi-Fi PAN connections simultaneously. Running the two networks simultaneously and separately opens up interesting sharing and networking possibilities.

My Wi-Fi works with all Wi-Fi equipped consumer devices. Intel has attempted to address the issue of security with a “push-button encryption” that lets both devices talk to one another in a secure mode.

Twitter Botanicalls

Twitter Botanicalls Kit

[Get Plants Tweeting You To Water Them]

Yesterday we covered the Tweet-a-Watt Kit that serves to tweet your household’s power consumption in a little KWH tweeting action and now, thanks to this Botanicalls Kit, you can have your plants tweeting you to inform you of their soil moisture levels and even tweet you to tell you they need watering (or just tweet you to offer thanks for having watered them).
Stemming (pun wholly intended) from a collaboration between Rebecca Bray, Robert Faludi, Kate Hartman and Kati London, whose prime aim appears to be ’successful inter-species understanding’, the Botanicalls Kit acts as a networked communication system for your plants consisting of a moisture sensor which communicates with Twitter via your Wi-Fi network via an integrated Ethernet connection - thus allowing your plants to keep you updated via Twitter, wherever you may be, with respect to their current status.If you are interested in the resulting communications, the inventors have a plant going by the name of Pothos who’s not only live on Twitter but has already gained over 2,970 followers as it offers tweets such as ‘Water me please!’, ‘You didn’t water me enough’ and ‘thank you for watering me.’ (as well as offering numerous moisture level updates).
So now, thanks to this and the aforementioned Tweet-a-Watt kit, you can have your home tweeting its power consumption as your plants remind you to water them and, somewhere in all of this, you may even add a few tweets of your own (perhaps if only to explain to your followers why your energy usage is so high or why it is that you’re patently ignoring your plant’s requests for a drop of the wet stuff.

You can update yourself with Pothos’s current status by following its twitter updates here (at the time of writing its waiting to be watered) or you can learn more concerning the Twitter Botanicalls Kit by linking through to the Botanicalls website

Video Camera Pen

Video Recording Ball Point Pen

[4GB Spy Cam Makes You Look Like a Nerd]

We’ve featured a fair few spy cams here on TFTS - who could possibly forget such gems as the Spy Cam Hairdryer, the Spy Cam Calculator and, of course, the Spy Cam Belt Buckle, to name but a few - but, of them all, this Video Recording Ball Point Pen strikes us as being the most accomplished covert ops surveillance gadget that we’ve featured to date.
Unfortunately, in order to gain the best vantage point when out on your clandestine missions, you’ll have to swallow your pride and go for the nerd look (the pen in breast pocket look has never been particularly appealing, has it?). But, well, if you want to make it as a spy you have to learn to sacrifice your personal pride on occasions in exactly the same way Bond never actually does. I know this because MI5 have approached me at least once in the past but, alas, I failed the entrance exam’s practical in (stupidly, looking back at it) actually managing to get a laptop packed with top secret info from A to B without loosing the damn thing on public transport. Oh well.Anyway, less of the digression.
This spy cam pen, known merely as the Video Camera Pen, can purportedly record up to two and a half hours of video - in 352 x 288 resolution - in AVI format, with audio, thanks to packing 4GB of integrated storage capacity and, along with offering the capability to capture audio ranges up to 50′ the pen, far from being a dummy, actually works (and is refillable, perhaps even with invisible ink).
Coming with integrated USB connectivity allowing you to upload you covert surveillance videos to your laptop (which you’ll consequently loose if you’re in any way connected with the UK government) the Video Camera Pen will set you back just shy of $130.

AMD Graphic Cards

AMD Release ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

‘TeraScale’ Graphic Cards [AMD ATI RV770 HD4870 & HD 4850]

AMD have officially launched their new ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series of graphics cards offering up to an astounding 1.2 terraflops of processing power in the case of the new flagship HD 4870 card which, apart from sporting 800 stream processors totalling some 956 million transistors and next-gen GDDR5 memory, is, according to AMD, more than twice as fast as their ATI Radeon HD 3870 GPU.

The New DirectX 10.1 / OpenGL 2.0 top of the range ATI Radeon HD 4870, which is powered by the TeraScale graphics engine and employs AMD’s new RV770 graphics processor, comes with 750MHz core speed and is the first GPU to utilise the new GDDR5 standard memory providing twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3 (circa 3.6 gigabits per second) whilst the ATI Radeon HD 4850 offers core speeds of 625MHz paired with the aforementioned GDDR3.

AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 Series Key Features:
=>TeraScale Graphics Engine - The new TeraScale graphics engine features over one teraFLOPS, nearly one billion transistors and 800 stream processors so you can enjoy the high resolutions and fast frame rates previously only available with dual-card systems.
=>Advanced Memory - GDDR5 memory provides twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3. =>Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering - High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
=>DirectX 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
=>ATI CrossFireX Technology - ATI CrossFireX technology with up to quad GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are.
=>PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
=>Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.
=>Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) - AVT allows you to convert videos to H.264 and MPEG-2 formats up to 19x faster than when using a just CPU.3 Full 1080p files can be converted to H.264 and MPEG-2 up to 1.8x faster than real-time.3
=>Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond.1
=>Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling. The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
=>Dynamic Contrast - Dynamic Contrast automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to consistently deliver a crisp, vibrant picture.
=>HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.
=>Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics cards deliver high performance when needed and conserve power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.
=>More Performance Per Watt - ATI Radeon HD 4800 series delivers up to 2x the performance per watt of AMD’s previous generation GPUs.

Both AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4870 and their ATI Radeon HD 4850 GPUs have begun shipping as of today and will set you back around $300 and $200 respectively.

Tech lighting device

New materials boost efficiency of blue OLEDs by 25%

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory announced a new host materials for a blue phosphorescent OLED boost efficiency by at least 25 percent and help solve "weakest link" in development of cost-effective white OLEDs.

The weakest link in OLED research is the absence of an efficient, long-lasting blue light to accompany the red and green," said Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientist Asanga Padmaperuma. Development of better host materials to manage the flow of electricity through the device could help solve that problem.

Padmaperuma and his collegues have designed, synthesized and tested new materials that improve the power efficiency of blue OLEDs by at least 25 percent.
The most promising technology is the organic light-emitting diode, or OLED. These multi-layered devices produce light by running an electrical current through a specially engineered host material into which light-producing phosphorescent molecules are embedded or "doped." The white light envisioned for large-scale applications, such as rooms and buildings, consists of red, green and blue light.

Modistech to unveil ultra-thin OLED lighting device

Philips show transparent OLED lighting prototype

Scientists at Philips Research are currently progressing towards the development of transparent OLEDs. Now Philips show us some picture from the new windows as light application.
This means OLED panels could function as ordinary windows during the day and then morph into panels of light after dark, either by imitating natural light or by emitting attractive interior lighting.

During the day, people would be able to create their own private area by turningtransparent glass walls, windows or doors into walls of light whenever they liked. Transparent OLED panels are expected to emerge onto the market within the next 3to 5 years.

Tech Mobile

Logic Wireless Logic Bolt Mobile Phone

Enormous changes are available in the mobile phones by means of technology. The handsets are also designed with overwhelming features and new designs. Some of the advanced features existing are touchscreen, WiFi, 3G, GPS and HSDPA. Logic Wireless Logic Bolt Mobile Phone is said to be the first projector handset introduced in the mobile market. This handset has dual usage; it can be used as a mobile phone and also as a projector. The display size of this mobile phone is 2.4” touchscreen with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels.The projector works with the help of the Bluetooth in this GSM device and it operates on quad band network. Also the users can enjoy taking quality pictures with the help of 3MP camera. Talking about the display it is available in different sizes with a range from 36 inches to 64 inches which depends upon the lighting conditions. The total resolution of the display is said to be 640 x 480 pixels. Storage capacity is one of the main factors that one has to look on before going in for a mobile phone and based on that, it comes with an onboard storage of .
This can be expanded up to 20GB, which is easily supported to all devices. Analysing this mobile phone based on the features that are available, this is best suitable for the business users. With the help of projector option and good storage capacity, the business people can store all data for power point presentation and videos too. This mobile phone can be easily connected to other devices with the help of Bluetooth technology.Read expert reviews on Blackberry, Doro, Garmin, Emporia, MWg mobile phones and compare mobile phone offers at Missphones, mobile phone comparison site.

Samsung YP-CP3 PMP Leaked

P2club web site announced to upcomging a Samsung touchscreen PMP known as the YP-CP3. The device comes packed with a 3.0″ touchscreen (400×240 resolution), a retro joystick controller, FM tuner, voice recorder, a microSD slot, MP3 player, WMA, Ogg, WAV, FLAC, RM, MPEG4, WMV, SVI, RMVB and text support.

Touchscreen Tech

Pulsing Touchscreen Tech Spells Out Braille




A new kind of touch-screen technology could bring Braille to cellphone displays, allowing the blind to read mobile content — if they do a little extra learning first. Best of all, it can be done with existing screens.


Researchers at the University of Tampere in Finland took a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and wrote custom software that would vibrate the piezoelectric layer in the touch-screen to mimic the bumps felt in the 3x2 matrix of dots that make up a Braille character.


When the reader puts his finger on the screen, raised dots are “displayed" by a fast, intense vibration. Gaps are represented by a lower level, longer lasting buzz. According to the New Scientist, when a sequence of six dots is pulsed at 360 milliseconds apart, each character could be read in little over a second.


Because of the temporally linear nature of the pulses, even those used to the parallel delivery of normal Braille had to do some work to learn the new sequence, but it didn’t take long. The technology could be added to any phone with a piezoelectric layer in the display and screen-reading software would be even simpler to implement than text to speech.
The project is still experimental, but with so few barriers, it could become real very quickly.

Waterproof Digital TV

Waterproof 1Seg Digital TV From Panasonic

Panasonic has launched two waterproof, portable VIERA LCD displays, the SV-ME750 and SV-ME700 models. Both of the two models mentioned above are 5-inch Panasonic 1Seg broadcasting portable TV with 480×272 resolution. Each device is equipped with the ability to play music files in MP3, WMA or WAV formats, or display pictures in slideshow. The only differences between the two of them is the fact that the more advanced model, the SV-ME750 is also capable of recording TV broadcasts on SD/SDHC cards and includes 2GB SD Card. The all new Viera will be available in black, pink and white and will hit Japanese stores later this month. The SV-ME750 will retail for 45,000 yen ($500) and 38,000 yen ($420) for the SV-ME700.

Digital Vision AB

Digital Vision AB (publ) Completes Successful Reorganization

Digital Vision’s reorganization has been successfully completed, its goals have been met and the company can continue to run its operations with increased financial strength. The reorganization has been implemented without a composition, which means that all trade creditors will have their debts repaid in full. The company’s suppliers will, during the coming days, receive payment for their outstanding invoices from the time before the reconstruction, and the holders of convertibles will receive the interest payments withheld during this period.

“This is of course a great day,” says Klas Åström who now takes over as CEO. “The reorganization has been a success on many levels and we are now in a very good position. Since the reconstruction began almost six months ago, we have implemented many improvements in our operations and have laid the foundation for the new Digital Vision. The focus has been on product innovation, cost reduction and cash flow and we have further strengthened the financial procedures and enhanced our sales channels. Added to this, our financial situation is now secured, as the recently undertaken share issue is closed.”

While the company was under reconstruction, the following actions have been taken:

• Appointment of new CEO and new CFO
• Reduction in operating costs and financial costs
• Total review of the business model and sales strategy
• Cash issue of about 35 million SEK - with preferential rights to existing shareholders to avoid dilution
• Offset issue of 40 million SEK - lowering the debt burden and reducing financial risk

Through the share issue, the company has received several new strong and committed owners. Since cash is now secured, the company can continue major development projects and focus on long-term growth.Digital Vision AB shares (ISIN code SE0000556292 and order book ID 3571) will now be moved from the observation segment back to the ordinary list on the NASDAQ OMX exchange.

“During the time that I have been working with the reorganization, I have come to know the company, staff and products very well,” Klas Åström continues. “Our team is extremely capable and have a huge desire to make Digital Vision a success. We have a strong product portfolio and are active in a market that is growing. Despite the difficult situation the company has been in, the good relationships with both customers and suppliers has been maintained. I see excellent opportunities to project our technology into new markets and I look forward to continuing to deliver products of superior quality.”