Say hello to Intel's latest portable PC concept: the "metro notebook", an ultra-thin, ultra-light laptop for the ladies. Designed to be carried over the shoulder, the sub-0.7in thick, 1kg device sports an always-on secondary display for fast info updates.

The Core 2 Duo-based machine's small screen is a colour non-volatile e-ink display that continues to show content - email, calendar entries, eBooks, etc - even when the power's cut. The e-ink screen is mounted on a leather wrap-around cover which connects to the laptop through a dock connector that's also capable of hosting USB traffic.

The unit's primarily designed for entirely wireless communications with reconfigurable antennae able to switch between the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and WiMAX links the laptop's envisaged to maintain.

Intel also said it envisages the machine shipping with a inductive connection-less charging pad, allowing the batteries of phones and PDAs to be recharged just by placing them on the notebook.

[Source: reghardware]

Electric-Guitar Shaped CD Player

If you don’t know how to play a guitar but you really wish you did, then that’s not a reason why you can’t own a guitar and be a laughing stock for projecting it merely as a showcase object in front of all your skilled friends. Yes, what if your guitar plays musical notes on its own..! Well…don’t get any ideas…there’s nothing magical ( I was just making you curious ). It’s actually an electric-guitar shaped CD player from Ngai LUEN.

The manufacturer has earlier won accolades for it’s whole range of audio/video products shaped like Cans and Bottles, Helmets, Balls and now the magnificent of them all, Cans and Bottles, Helmets, Balls and now the most alluring of them all, a Guitar! This full-sized replica of real guitar features AM/FM Radio, front loading DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 Player, real time clock, sleep function and remote control operation.

The guitar comes with its Wall Mount and Stand. Ngai LUEN displayed this new design at Hong Kong Electronics Fair 2007.


[Source: bornrich]

Funny Foods

Elephant Dream

Elephants Dream is the world’s first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please, under a Creative Commons license. The short film was created by the Orange Open Movie Project studio in Amsterdam during 2005/2006, bringing together a diverse team of artists and developers from all over the world.

An old classic: TRON

Tricky golf game

Logistics

[More picture]

Hackers Dissect Apple TV to Create the Cheapest Mac Ever

Apple TV is dead, long live the Mac Nano. Sort of.

Just two weeks after Apple released its streaming media box to the public, hackers successfully installed OS X, Apple's desktop operating system, on the $300 device, making it the cheapest PC Cupertino has ever sold.

"The breakthrough is done, OS X runs on Apple TV!" wrote "Semthex," the anonymous hacker responsible for the mod, at his website. "Now we got (the) low-budget Mac we ever wanted."

The add-on may be of limited appeal to everyday users. It involves a laborious 13-step procedure, and the resulting installation is unable to take advantage of all the Apple TV's hardware. Without video acceleration, games can't floor the graphic chip's throttle. There's no audio or ethernet support either, making the box useless for its original purpose as a media hub.

Over the past week, however, enthusiasts worked to solve these problems, exchanging ideas over IRC and testing new versions of specially tailored system software Semthex created, which is necessary to bypass built-in restrictions on installing the full version of OS X.

[Source &More: wired]

Mobile calls could be free, thanks to advertising

Over in Europe a mobile virtual network operator called Blyk is planning to offer a free mobile phone service funded by advertising. It is a concept that deserves to be taken very seriously.

Blyk (www.blyk.com) plans to launch in the UK in mid 2007 and then to expand into other European countries. And if you are tempted to dismiss it as a crackpot with little chance of getting of the ground, think again.

The concept is not entirely new, as I wrote back in 2005, commenting on the launch of just such a service for fixed line phone calls, from Communitel it was tried in Australia in the early nineties. However the investment and the scale of Blyk's planned operation is of an entirely different order. As is the potential for two way dialogue between advertiser and target that SMS and today's web-enabled phones offer.

[Source & More: itwire]

Yahoo's Alpha in beta

Yahoo has opened its Australian-developed Alpha meta-search engine for public beta testing.

In addition to returning results from Yahoo's own search engine, Alpha also searches for user-generated content at Flickr, Yahoo!7 Answers, YouTube and Wikipedia. Results also come from Yahoo!7 News search, and sponsored search results complete the standard line up.

Results from any these services can be revealed or hidden with a mouse click.

Users with a Yahoo account can select which of these sources are used for their searches, and may add custom information sources providing the sites or search engines concerned support OpenSearch.

Layouts and custom sources may be shared with other users.

According to Yahoo!7 search engineer Brett Poole, Alpha was "born out of pizza and furious coding" as part of Yahoo's annual Hack Day.

Yahoo7 is a joint venture between Yahoo and Seven Network (Australia's largest commercial television network and a major magazine publisher).

[Source: itwire]
Other (related) search engine: http://rollyo.com/

Volcanic destruction

Knut is supa