Hitachi’s gone disco to explain the new hard drive technology, which allows for 10x the capacity. See the linked flash movie. Cute! 🙂 Here is the link.
Tag Archives: technology
Real world force field
Real World Force Field: Check out this video from Fox News. It depicts a force field which causes rockets and other attacking weapons to explode before they reach its target. It seems that it’s all done with computers. Something like a laser beam shoots onto the tip of an incoming projectile, causing it to explode.
It’s very interesting technology, but I think “force field” is a misnomer when used to describe it. There isn’t really any force field that is passively destroying incoming projectiles. This involves active technology which targets projectiles with laser beams.
The Navman iCN750 GPS/Digital Camera Tags Pictures w/ Coordinates
Navman is set to introduce a GPS unit that combines standard turn by turn navigation with a built-in digital camera. Pictures snapped by the Navman iCN750 include a Geocode tag embedded in the picture, listing the longitude and latitude. This is meant to help you sort pictures by exact location. The camera (or GPS, depending on what you want to call it) has a 4-inch touch screen, preloaded maps, and the latest SiRF StarIII GPS chipset. The GPS/Digital camera (no word on megapixels) can be powered by either a power adapter or internal battery. The iCN750 should be available this may for around $800. Very cool!
Minuscule headset powered by novel battery
I was in my car, driving back from lunch, when I got a call on my cellphone. I’m holding out on buying a Bluetooth headset, because they look ridiculous. So I still have to answer the phone the “old fashioned” way, by flipping it open and pressing Speakerphone. I know, what tough luck… But I realized that these wireless/Bluetooth headsets could be made really tiny, and could fit in the ear, if the battery could be made really small. Sure, it’d be a hassle to change the battery, but what if you didn’t have to? What if the battery charged itself? How could that happen? Well, let’s look at three existing technologies on the market today:
- “Perpetual motion” watches: you know, the kind that charge themselves from the movement/agitation of your hand. They’ve been around for a while.
- Microphones: both dynamic and condenser types… They use a vibrating wand or membrane to generate an electrical signal. They’ve also been around for a while.
- The balance pebbles inside your inner ear: okay, this is more like biological technology, but I do find it interesting that they can move and touch nerve sensors, generating electrical impulses that tell your body how to balance itself.
Given these three very interesting methods of generating energy or electrical impulses, why can’t we make a really tiny battery that can charge itself from the movement of our body, our body heat, or the vibrations caused by our voice? We could be charging the battery as we speak, as we move, etc.
This sort of battery could be used in a tiny headset that could be placed in the ear, or in some other fashion, but the point is, it would be really small, almost unnoticeable. I wouldn’t look like a geek, with a big Bluetooth headset strapped to my ear, a menacing blue light flashing on it, as if I were an android. I’m sure many of you share my feelings here. Instead, I would use a small device, no bigger than the tip of my small finger, or even smaller, that could go inside the ear, or hook right outside the ear canal with a thin wire that goes behind my ear. It would let ambient noise pass through unchanged, but would block it when I’d be using my cellphone.
Wouldn’t this be cool?
Are you interested in using this idea? Then please see my rules about using it.
Music players should match genres with equalizer presets
This idea is so simple I can’t believe it’s not already in use! There I was during lunch, listening to my iPod in Shuffle mode, and it dawned on me how annoying it was that if I wanted to change the Equalizer present, I’d have to maneuver through several menus, then when it advanced to the next song, which might be of a different genre, I’d have to adjust the Equalizer once again. Since I didn’t want to bother, I left the Equalizer on None, but how much better would it be if these Equalizer modes could be automatically changed!
It’s so simple, too! They’re already named about the same as Genres, and so all the player would have to do is to look for an Equalizer mode that matches the Genre of the music currently playing. When I’m playing Pop music on my iPod, the Equalizer should automatically switch to the Pop settings; by the way, if you haven’t noticed yet, my last name is Pop. 🙂
There should be some level of tweaking though. I should be able to select different Equalizer presets for different genres, and I should be able to edit presets, as well as create new ones. These last two options are already available in most music players, but what I’m trying to get across here is that they should work together with the genre/equalizer matching.
I look forward to seeing this feature in upcoming versions of the popular music players like iTunes or WMP! I think it should also be integrated into the portable players like the iPods, which were really the impetus for this idea in the first place.
Raoul Pop 