Now, we have seen our fair share of unique computer cases in the past, as well as other home devices that sport decals which hark back a couple of decades to merge the old and the new, but what we have here is a bit of video game legend coupled with an everyday object which is guaranteed to elicit at least a comment from guests who drop by your place. I am talking about the aquarium which you see above – it resembles one of the end of a generic Mario level, with bricks to bump, a Goomba to stomp on, a Super Mushroom to grab, as well as the famous flag pole that helps you net additional points the higher your starting point is. Got to love all of the bricks that have been lovingly and carefully laid out to reconstruct a Mario level, although I am not quite sure whether the fish appreciate or are even aware of the geek speak amount in this living room showpiece.

Moving on with the times, the word ‘grill’ no longer means a piece of equipment that you use to cook meat in a certain way, and neither does it signify a verb. In fact, ‘grills’ these days can be referred to what rappers wear on their teeth – which is basically a gold or platinum piece of jewellery. I suppose it has something to do with the kind of wealth flaunting culture, but that aside, Aisen Chacin has come up with a singing grill – calling it Play-A-Grill. Aisen is an artist at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, where his Play-A-Grill creation is said to be able to transform jewellery into a tongue-controlled MP3 player.
Read full post →Play-A-Grill transforms bling into an MP3 player

Yes, we have seen some pretty mean looking all-in-one computers in the past, but a TV? Sure, there were instances of a built-in DVR or DVD player, but those are not exactly mainstream offerings, and the screen sizes that came along with it did not really impress. Mitsubishi might have a behemoth of an all-in-one TV here, where the LaserVue 55LSR3 comes with a 55″ display which ought to keep many an eyeball happy, in addition to incorporating Mitsubishi’s Real LaserVue technology. Just what kind of specifications does the 55LSR3 pack? We are looking at a dazzling array of 10 speakers to get you started, while the DIATONE NCV Technology is said to deliver a unique and deep sound without having to blow thousands of dollars on a high end audio system. Not only that, there are 3 internal Digital TV Tuners underneath the hood, a whopping 1TB of storage space thanks to its internal hard drive, and a Blu-Ray to boot, making this clearly one of the more versatile TVs out there (in Japan, at least)!

Are you on the lookout for the Lenovo IdeaTab S2109, and are currently residing in the US? Well, this is a little bit of good news to offer you some mid-week cheer, as the Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 has finally arrived Stateside in order to provide an alternative to the mighty iPad from Apple. I know, it will definitely not be able to offer you a similar experience as that of using an iPad, but at least it is decent enough size-wise, sporting a 9.7″ display at 1024 x 768 resolution, tipping the scales at 1.3 lbs, and is a thin puppy at 8.9mm. Coming in an unibody shell, Lenovo’s IdeaTab S2109 will feature a quartet of speakers as well as a microHDMI output for you to view your Full HD videos on a large screen display without missing a beat. Expect to see it run on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system right out of the box, where the dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor ought to get the job done fast enough for most tasks. The asking price? $349 a pop.

Those of us wearing glasses tend to be subject to taunts at the playground, being called all sorts of names in the process as other kids mercifully tease the weaker members or “outcasts”, but as we grow up, we know that wearing glasses are also handy in attracting certain demographic of the opposite sex. Heck, glasses design has come a long way as well, where some of them are far out sexy these days. Unfortunately, the problem with wearing a pair of glasses is this – you will need to go for annual eye exams to see whether there is a need to change the lenses to coincide with your visual power. Enter this pair of glasses that enables you to adjust the correction manually, delivering the sharpest view possible at all times (within reasonable bounds, of course).
Read full post →User-adjustable glasses is adaptable

I have watched Alvin and the Chipmunks in cartoon form back when I was a wee lad – and for those who read this and wonder just what this old geezer is talking about, claiming that Alvin and the Chipmunks started off as a motion picture, all I can say is, there is still plenty for you to learn, young padawan. Back to Alvin and his merry Chipmunks – strange to see how they have made a relatively successful re-entry into today’s culture, where their three movies actually grossed over a billion dollars in the process. This has caused Archos to sit up and take notice, hoping to ride on the chipmunk wave by offering the Arnova Child Pad that will tie in with the home video release of Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.
Read full post →Archos Arnova Child Pad unveiled

So we listen to music from an MP3 file or a CD most of the time, and watch movies on Blu-ray, DVD or head to the cinemas. How about changing the way we do the latter, through inhaling some gas? No, I am not talking about doing anything illegal here, but it seems that scientists have managed to come up with a way to stash away video in a totally new format – gas. This is the first time in history where images are stashed in a non-solid format, and can be played back afterwards. Titled “Temporally Multiplexed Storage of Images in a Gradient Echo Memory”, it is a start, but you cannot expect a modern movie to fit into a single gas canister as the technology involved is not that advanced just yet. Basically, information is stashed away in small vials of rubidium, and light is beamed into a 20cm long tube. In order to play back those memories, a magnetic field is flipped backwards, while the control beam is turned back on, enabling the atoms to begin moving in the opposite direction. This gas stores ‘quantum’ information, and once it is refined – if ever, it might prove to be a basic building block for future computers. Hopefully someone can make a more practical use of it first instead of just expounding theory…

Verizon Communications wants to serve its customers better from next month onwards (which is happening in a couple of days’ time, actually) by delivering superior home Internet download speeds of up to 300Mbps. Should this happen, and the real world performance figures jive as close as possible to what was advertised, then it is safe to assume that this will most probably be the highest speed US residential service to date. Other rivals in this highly competitive area that Verizon is involved in include Cablevision Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., and Comcast Corp., not to mention being the very same rivals in the TV segment as well. According to Verizon, this new 300Mbps speed is meant for downloading files or video streaming purposes, and when it comes to upload speeds, you can theoretically hit 65Mbps, making it useful for sending large sized files to another computer from the comfort of your own home. There is no word on pricing for the new service though, so we will have to be patient on this one. [Press Release]

HP Labs’ research has come up with something that will definitely pique your interest – architecture for a data center which is said to require no net energy at all from traditional power grids, calling it the Net Zero Energy Data Center in the process. This architecture will merge with holistic energy-management techniques so that organizations are able to reduce total power usage by up to 30%, at the same time lowering their dependence on grid power as well as costs by over 80%. Thanks to the HP Net-Zero Energy Data Center research, HP intends to offer businesses and societies alike worldwide the possibility of operating data centers using local renewable resources, hence doing away with traditional dependencies including location, energy supply and costs.
Read full post →HP shows off Net Zero Energy Data Center architecture

Remember the first generation iPad that we talked about recently, which sported a couple of dock connectors since it was a prototype model? Well, someone in the US must have felt that it was worth $10,200 over eBay, which is a huge leap from the sub-$5,000 price point that it stood at when we first ran the story the other day. I guess there is always a price for everything, and this being an Apple product, it is no doubt a high profile device that deserves one’s attention. Still, that kind of money does start to sound a little bit crazy, but perhaps the new owner is hoping to be able to keep it long enough for the final sticker price to go up a whole lot more sometime in the future? Apple normally tries to stop auctions on their prototype devices, and with CEO Tim Cook sharing on how they want to double down on secrecy, it was surprising to see that Apple failed to shut down the auction for this first-gen iPad prototype.