Nanosensors are arrays of wires that can capture and detect a single molecule, which would made them excellent bomb sniffers. Nanosensors exist, technically, but they’re extremely difficult to manufacture and extremely delicate. However, thanks to a new technique created by HP, scientists have been able to make nanosensors as quickly but not quite as easily as they would make a standard circuit board.
According to one of the researchers, Regina Ragan (formerly with HP and now a professor of chemical engineering at UC Irvine), at some concentrations of platinum, the metal seems to form clumps, leaving parts of the wire uncoated. After the researchers exposed the nanowires to plasma, the uncovered parts of the wires were etched away, leaving tightly spaced platinum nanoparticles each about eight nanometers across. The technique could be easy and inexpensive to scale up because it uses common commercial techniques for deposition and etching, and requires few steps, Ragan says.
This is very similar to the techniques used to etch silicon chips and is much easier to use than the current methods which require multiple steps and are not foolproof. Pretty high tech, but it looks like we’re headed in the right direction.
It’s Chicago only right now, but a new car-sharing service is in the works. Similar to Zip-Car, I-GO allows you to pay a one-time $75 enrollment fee and then $6 an hour plus $.50 per mile for access. It’s non-profit, so you get that warm fuzzy feeling while burning fewer fossils because they use Honda Civics sedans, Honda Civic Hybrid sedans and Honda Elements. The service appears to have been around for quite a while, but it’s only recently blipped our radar. Has anyone tried it? How is it different from Zipcar?
Here’s some serious W00Tness. Skype has launched its 2.1 Beta for PocketPC which includes:
One click Skype access: A Skype icon on the device home screen allows users to view and call contacts easily.
Multi-person chat: Users can have multi-person chat sessions using animated emoticons with colleagues, friends and family and when mobile users are offline, chat messages will automatically update the next time user logs in.
Enhanced contact list: Users can now see their contacts avatars and mood messages.
Profile personalization: Users have the ability to take a picture with the camera on their mobile device and immediately update their profile.
Nothing earth-shattering, but you’ve got a bit of UI tweaking and some definite improvements on the contact list.
Oh ho ho. Silly rabbits! Those kids at iBloggedThis posted a video of a Mac Mini puking up an XP disc. Next: a SPARC Station takes a dump on an Indigo box!
A few weeks after announcing the mini-mini-C300, Pantech visits Canada with the PN-3200. This clamshell phone is fairly basic – CDMA, GPS and Bluetooth – but it’s being launched with TELUS, Canada’s second-largest carrier. Pantech has consistently produced drool-worthy phones for Asia and Europe, so it should be great to see them sail over to these shores. This phone isn’t particularly beautiful, but it’s the thought that counts.
There’s something eye-catching about the brushed steel look of this Godot Aria M9500 4GB MP3 Player, which can store nearly a thousand songs in MP3, OGG or WMA format. Plus, it has an FM radio on board, audio bookmarking and a convenient line-in recording feature that lets you encode analog sources into MP3.
Too bad its smallish 4 GB of storage is in hard disk form—we prefer the durability and smaller form factor of flash memory. Never mind that, though, we just like the way this thing looks. Available now, it’s priced around $151.
We’re hearing a lot of talk about gigantic-screen TVs, some of them costing upwards of $50,000, but if you’re using a projector, you can have a humongous-sized screen at a tenth of that price. This 100-inch selectively-reflective Xscreen from Planar has a built-in optical filter, reflecting light from the projector while absorbing room light. Perhaps its most appealing attribute is its uncanny similarity to a 100-inch plasma display.
The idea solves one of the few drawbacks to using a front projector: the room must be darkened in order to enjoy a bright and contrasty picture. Now all you have to do is hope no one notices that projector hanging from the ceiling or sitting on the shelf on the back wall. A slight drawback to this shrewd scheme is the Xscreen’s price, $4871, but that’s still considerably cheaper than that 100-inch plasma display.
The SwissMiniGun seems impossibly small, but it’s actually a precision-made pistol that shoots live ammunition. The 2.16-inch Colt Python replica shoots tiny bullets that are scarcely a third of an inch long at a muzzle speed that’s probably not going to kill you, but might put an eye out if you’re not careful.
Made with the same technology used to create Swiss watches and jewelry, the SwissMiniGun is available in steel, and there’s even a highly detailed gold model with diamonds on the handle. The microgun’s Swiss makers aren’t talking price, at least not on their website.
With all the buzz lately about exploding laptops and excruciatingly hot MacBooks, I suspect we’re going to start seeing a lot more products like this. The Lapinator is composed of the heat resistant 3M Thinsulate fiber and a comfy cross-linked molded foam bottom. Though it might not be too successful against the shrapnel of an exploding Dell battery, it looks like it should effectively deflect the heat issues of the current MacBooks.
The 13″ Lapinator is available for $25, while the 18″ Lapinator Plus sells for $30. At any rate, its quite a good deal cheaper than the medical bills you might incur without one.
Digitimes is claiming the Microsoft HD DVD will be $200 by Christmas 2006. Microsoft hasn’t issued an official statement, and were quite silent about the pricing last week during the HD DVD demo.
Digitimes also reports that the Taiwanese game industry as a whole—developers and game service providers—are saying this is a smart strategy to include the HD DVD separate instead of on-board like the Sony PS3. This will, in the manufacturers’ opinion, allow Microsoft to have much lower production costs and undercut Sony.
We should have more official word on the HD DVD pricing as the holiday season gets closer.
Apple has been stepping up its campaign to stomp down on other companies’ use of the word “Pod” in any of their products. Lately, they’ve sent a cease and desist to Mach5Products, which makes the “Profit Pod”, and to TightPods, who make slip-on covers to protect laptops and MP3 players.
We can see why Apple’s doing this, as trademark dilution isn’t is a place no company wants to go. However, in Mach5Products’ case, the owners claim that they thought of the name back in 2001, before they heard of the name iPod. But will that make a difference? Probably not.
If you’re looking for a high end PC-based Media Center, the Navio 902T2 has a 7-inch touch-screen LCD, 1TB of storage space, 2GB of RAM, a Pentium D950 Dual Core processor, and a DVD Burner for archiving all your shows. Add to that a Sigmacom X1 HDTV tuner and GeForce 7900GTX, it’ll serve up enough power for playing PC games as well as movies.
Even with all these high-end parts, the $4,995 price seems a bit steep. The 7-inch LCD is a luxury item, which probably won’t get much use since you’ll use the actual TV to view the Media Center 2005 interface on, and the remote to control it—making the touch-screen a wasted feature.
Hitachi claims that it’s finally going to break the terabyte barrier on desktop hard drives later this year with the first 1TB hard drive. They’re already manufacturing 500GB drives, and Seagate is already making 750GB drives, so bumping it up to 1TB shouldn’t be that big of a problem.
These drives will not only go inside your desktops, they’ll be included in TVs and TiVos, letting you record entire seasons of shows in HD quality. We’re always on the lookout for more storage here at CrunchGear, so let us know if you’ve seen any good deals on hard drives lately. The cheapest we’ve seen on Newegg is $139 for a 400GB Western Digital.
If anyone has any reason why a mouse should not be united with a Skype phone, speak now or forever hold your peace. Nobody? Good. Just like the USB Hub + Bluetooth Dongle and the Security Camera + Heater, this thing takes two things we like and combines it into one thing we love.
The mouse works like a regular two-button, scroll-wheel mouse, but when you flip it over there’s a keypad and call/end buttons. There’s no screen, unfortunately, so you’ll have to cycle through your Skype contacts on your monitor instead.
The only downside we can see to this is that the keyboard and mouse is probably the dirtiest part of your desk, so that would probably be a bad idea to put it up to your mouth. Just saying.
This Bluetooth GPS Receiver works over Bluetooth, which means as long as you have a Bluetooth capable device—cell phone, PDA, or laptop—you can get GPS data anywhere. With the right software installed on those mobile devices, you can even use this combination as a navigation system.
The BS4100 itself has 16 hours of battery life, 3 LEDs to indicate its status, and can be powered by a USB port. It even comes with a car charger and a skid-proof pad so you can mount it on your dashboard. There’s no pricing information on their site, so you’ll have to email in for a quote.
Business Week’s Olga Kharif wrote yesterday about several cellcos that are prepping at-home services. For a flat-monthly rate, this new functionality will allow users to synch their mobiles with their landlines in order to send and receive calls without depleting cellular minutes.
T-Mobile is currently testing a service in Oregon that utilizes a wireless router. As this image from the Samsung T709 indicates, the T-Mobile router presumably allows users to route calls through Wi-Fi. AT&T on the other hand is preparing two options. One will direct calls through Internet telephony, while the other will route calls to their landline, which seems to defeat the point of the service. If users are required to maintain a landline in order to receive calls on it, it wouldn’t be any more cost effective than just eating wireless minutes.
If you’re trying to incorporate two products into one, a USB hub and a Bluetooth dongle makes sense in all temperatures, but a security camera and a heater only makes sense in Alaska. The camera has a 1/3″ color CCD image sensor, and can withstand temperatures down to -40°F.
The heater is useless in more temperate climates like Texas, unless you’re mounting this inside your freezer to keep your meat safe. Available now for $399, but needs a 24VAC, 50W power supply which is sold separately for $19.
Although this actually a three-port USB hub instead of a four-port one (one’s used to provide power), we’ll forgive the mislabeling since it also functions as a Bluetooth 1.2 dongle. Instead of having to spend $19 on a Bluetooth dongle to connect your cell phone or Bluetooth headset, just grab one of these at the same price. Consider the hub as a bonus.
The only feature on this phone that’s important is the fact that it’s a Hello Kitty phone. All the other stuff, like the 130×130 resolution, 32-chord ringtones and, well, that’s about it. There’s not much to do with the phone other than to ogle the kitty, which is just fine with Hello Kitty enthusiasts.
The phone will be on sale, most likely in Japan, starting this month. But if you’re really into Hello Kitty, you’re already used to importing all your goods from there anyway.
We may not know much about fashion, but we know that wearing a 320×240 LCD as your belt buckle doesn’t quite fit the standard definition of “fashionable”. For those who disagree, the Egokast fits directly onto your belt and supports MPEG-4/AVI/JPEG/BMP/MP3/WMA files and has comes with a 512MB SD memory card for storage. It lasts four to five hours, which is just long enough for you to get your ass beaten on the subway.
And the price? $289. Yeah. We’re not buying one of these either.
Nanosensors are arrays of wires that can capture and detect a single molecule, which would made them excellent bomb sniffers. Nanosensors exist, technically, but they’re extremely difficult to manufacture and extremely delicate. However, thanks to a new technique created by HP, scientists have been able to make nanosensors as quickly but not quite as easily as they would make a standard circuit board.
It’s Chicago only right now, but a new car-sharing service is in the works. Similar to Zip-Car, I-GO allows you to pay a one-time $75 enrollment fee and then $6 an hour plus $.50 per mile for access. It’s non-profit, so you get that warm fuzzy feeling while burning fewer fossils because they use Honda Civics sedans, Honda Civic Hybrid sedans and Honda Elements. The service appears to have been around for quite a while, but it’s only recently blipped our radar. Has anyone tried it? How is it different from Zipcar? 
Here’s some serious W00Tness. Skype has launched its 2.1 Beta for PocketPC which includes:
A few weeks after announcing the 
There’s something eye-catching about the brushed steel look of this Godot Aria M9500 4GB MP3 Player, which can store nearly a thousand songs in MP3, OGG or WMA format. Plus, it has an FM radio on board, audio bookmarking and a convenient line-in recording feature that lets you encode analog sources into MP3. 
Digitimes is claiming the Microsoft HD DVD will be $200 by Christmas 2006. Microsoft hasn’t issued an official statement, and were quite silent about the pricing last week during the HD DVD demo. 
Apple has been stepping up its campaign to stomp down on other companies’ use of the word “Pod” in any of their products. Lately, they’ve sent a cease and desist to Mach5Products, which makes the “Profit Pod”, and to TightPods, who make slip-on covers to protect laptops and MP3 players.
If you’re looking for a high end PC-based Media Center, the Navio 902T2 has a 7-inch touch-screen LCD, 1TB of storage space, 2GB of RAM, a Pentium D950 Dual Core processor, and a DVD Burner for archiving all your shows. Add to that a Sigmacom X1 HDTV tuner and GeForce 7900GTX, it’ll serve up enough power for playing PC games as well as movies.
Hitachi claims that it’s finally going to break the terabyte barrier on desktop hard drives later this year with the first 1TB hard drive. They’re already manufacturing 500GB drives, and Seagate is already making 750GB drives, so bumping it up to 1TB shouldn’t be that big of a problem. 
If anyone has any reason why a mouse should not be united with a Skype phone, speak now or forever hold your peace. Nobody? Good. Just like the 
This Bluetooth GPS Receiver works over Bluetooth, which means as long as you have a Bluetooth capable device—cell phone, PDA, or laptop—you can get GPS data anywhere. With the right software installed on those mobile devices, you can even use this combination as a navigation system.
If you’re trying to incorporate two products into one, a 
Although this actually a three-port USB hub instead of a four-port one (one’s used to provide power), we’ll forgive the mislabeling since it also functions as a Bluetooth 1.2 dongle. Instead of having to spend $19 on a Bluetooth dongle to connect your cell phone or Bluetooth headset, just grab one of these at the same price. Consider the hub as a bonus. 
The only feature on this phone that’s important is the fact that it’s a Hello Kitty phone. All the other stuff, like the 130×130 resolution, 32-chord ringtones and, well, that’s about it. There’s not much to do with the phone other than to ogle the kitty, which is just fine with Hello Kitty enthusiasts. 
