MIUTech HDPC gets redesigned and upgraded... Again!

MIUTech HDPC gets redesigned and upgraded.. Again! According to Pocketables, the Korean Company MIUTech is looking for a retailer / agent to pick up there revived and redesigned MID/Cell Phone concept. (Sounds like this is right up Dynamism's ally) Being a phone and PC it packs 2 of everything: 2 Screens 4.8-inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen for PC and a 2.4-inch AMOLED (320 x 240) for the phone. 2 CPUs: 1.6GHz ATOM & ARM9 core processor taking care of the cell phone. And 2 OS's(!!??): Windows XP as its primary computer OS & Windows CE for its phone OS.

This thing is bigger than a 1980's cell phone at 6.06" x 2.95" x 0.91" and really should not be considered a phone. A hint to MIUTech, just make a smart phone smarter. It is unlikely people would be seen in public putting this pig next to to their ear. While the redesign looks better than the previous concept, the device still looks confused, complicated and the keyboard would probably be a total pain in the butt to use having to reach in to use it.
More at Pocketables.

10 minute video of the Yuneec E430 the world’s first commercially produced ‘Electric Aircraft

10 minute video of the Yuneec E430 the world’s first commercially produced ‘Electric Aircraft. Be warned, the music is terrible. From the companies website:
"The E430 is a twin seat, single engine, LSA class aircraft designed to be simple to use, easy to fly and with virtually zero vibration, it's very smooth.
Low noise, no emissions, no fuel, extremely low maintenance and best of all. . . . . it’s environmentally friendly. Electric flight, once seen as futuristic, has arrived and with E430’s flight times of between 1.5 and 3 hours (depending on configuration) electric flight now becomes a realistic power source for sport aviation. Charging times of 3 hours for as little as $5 make electric a really low cost way to fly and with only 2 main moving parts in the motor (the bearings) the reliability and maintenance are like nothing seen before. Add to that the delight of smooth, quiet powered flight or silent using its 25:1 glide ratio - the E430 is in a class of its own.
Pricing should start at about $85,000 USD.
Yuneec

Watch out Kindle, e-books to get cheaper and better in 2010

Watch out Kindle, e-books to get cheaper and better in 2010. According to Nikkei's Tech-on, the black-and-white ePaper developed by E Ink Corp of the US. E Ink has been the only company to commercialize ePaper suitable for use in eBook readers. Basically a monopoly. This situation will change significantly from 2009 through 2010, because it seems likely there will be a sudden increase in the number of ePapers available. Depending on which specific ePaper a manufacturer of readers chooses, it will be possible to totally change reader characteristics, and finally manufacturers will be able to roll out their own unique product concepts. This will mean an escape from E Ink's monopoly.
Than can someone please make an ebook reader that can read PDFs, Word Files and in general just have an open format. (coping be damned!)
Much more at Tech-on

Look Ma, No Hands! Amazing story of Jessica Cox makes all your excuses look lame.

AVweb has a great story about Jessica Cox, the first person with no arms to be granted a light sport pilot license by the FAA. Look Ma, No Hands! Amazing story of Jessica Cox makes all your excuses look lame.
More at AVweb

Kohjinsha SK3: new budget models

model : SK3KX06L (black)/SK3WX06L (white)
Windows XP Home
Intel® Atom™ processor Z520 (1.33GHz)
1GB RAM [DDR2-533] no upgrades :(
60GB Hard Disk
Keyboard: Japanese International (84 keys)
GPS / Bluetooth: no
WLAN : IEEE802.11 b/g/n, 100Mbit LAN
7" touch screen (1024x 600)
no TV tuner
3M pixel +300K pixel web camera (two cameras)
analog VGA out (for projector etc)
Mic (mono, internal) and phones (stereo jack)
2x USB, 1x SD (SDHC complaint), 1x ExpressCard/34 slot
100-240V ac adapter (world voltage)
size : 193mm x 132mm x 21.6 - 30mm (H)
700g weight with battery
battery: 7.4V 2300mAh

Price will be from 49,800 yen [$530 USD / 370 Euro]
Ships world-wide from "end of August"

Kohjinsha EX6, 11.6" touch screen netbook

Kohjinsha has released their newest netbook the EX. The EX stands out from the crowed netbook pack with a rotatable touch screen, pointing stick controller on the bezel, 2 web cameras, integrated DVD-RW drive and high resolution 1366x768 LDC. Other standout features for a netbook are the Express/34 slot, Fingerprint reader, 1GB LAN, 801.11 N WiFi and 2GB RAM. The EX weights in at chubby 1.7kg (about 3 pounds) and is said to have a 4.5 hour battery life(?!).
Compare with the Gigabyte T1028X which is a similar device...
Kohjinsha's pricing for the high end model will start at about 69,800 YEN. There is a low end model which starts at 59,800 yen without Bluetooth or fingerprint reader, Available at Conics.net at the end of August.
Specs below:

Windows XP Home
Atom N270 [1.6GHz]
945GSE Express chipset
DDR2-533MHz RAM [1 or 2GB]
11.6" touchscreen [1366x768]
86 key, 17.5mm pitch JP international keyboard
160GB 2.5" sATA 5400 rpm HDD
DVD multi burner
1Gbit LAN
WiFi b/g/n
Bluetooth ver 2.0+EDR
Express card 34
Dual camera (front+back)
Stick pointer (on side of screen)
Rotation, shutter and multi-rocker buttons
Track pad pointer
2x USB 2.0 ports
1x SDHC, 1x microSDHC
1x analog VGA out
size: 300 x 231.5 x 26-33.8 mm
weight with battery: 1.7Kg
battery: 2600mAh [14.8V]

Price from 59,800 yen
[ $635 USD / 445 EURO]
Ships world-wide from "end of August"

Dell mini 9, end of life, but Touch breathes life BACK!

If the Dell Mini 9 is your idea of the ultimate netbook, then this will wet your whistel !

SaruTek shows us how to install a touch panel into Dell's mini 9

Japan's "Sarutek" Shows us how to Touch Acer Aspire One

Acer Aspire one is a cool little netbook, but a Touch screen makes it even cooler!

SaruTek has them and just posted a video on how easy it is to install...

7" convertable mini laptop: Kohjinsha SK3 , unboxed for all.

Kohjinsha's latest offering: the SK3

only available in black, the SK has some design changes over the previous model (SC)

skip to the video for more info...

Panasonic Toughbook CF-R8 Jet Black test run

Panasonic have had the R8 out for a while now, but this one is special...
it's all black, and we like it!

compare the Panasonic R8 with eeePC 901 and Dell mini 9 (video)

breif product review (video)

Display Size (inches) 10.4 XGA (1024x768)
HDD Size 500GB (as tested) / or SSD
Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.6 GHz
RAM 2-4GB, DDR2 PC2-5300
O S Windows Vista (Business) / XP Pro
Battery (max) 8hrs
Weight 0.93kg

Size (mm) 229 x 42.5 x 187

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars

Traditional rockets burn chemical fuel to produce thrust. Most of that fuel is used up in the initial push off the Earth's surface, so the rockets tend to coast most of the time they're in space. Ion engines, on the other hand, accelerate electrically charged atoms, or ions, through an electric field, thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction. They provide much less thrust at a given moment than do chemical rockets, which means they can't break free of the Earth's gravity on their own. But once in space, they can give a continuous push for years, like a steady breeze at the back of a sailboat, accelerating gradually until they're moving faster than chemical rockets.

Scientists have discovered a remarkable, unexpected and cheap way to store hydrogen fuel– using carbonized chicken feather fibers.

The problem of storing hydrogen as fuel has traditionally been a perplexing and expensive dilemma. For instance, a car with a 20-gallon hydrogen storage tank made from carbon nanotubes or metal hydrides– two of the best ideas so far– would add $5.5 million or $30k respectively to the price of that vehicle. A storage tank made from carbonized chicken feathers, however, would only mark up the cost a measly $200. The green bio-material would also help solve the problem of how to dispose of the 2.7 billion kilograms of chicken feathers generated each year by commercial poultry operations.

Enter scientists at the University of Delaware, who while researching the potential of keratin derived from chicken feathers to improve the performance of microcircuits, unexpectedly discovered that by heating the keratin fibers they could strengthen its structure enough to compare to the strength of nanotubes. In other words, the hydrogen storage capacity of the strengthened keratin was essentially equivalent to that of carbon nanotubes, but using nothing more than chicken feathers as raw material. In addition to hydrogen storage, the new method could turn chicken feather fibers into a number of other eco-products like hurricane resistant roofing, lightweight car parts, as well as the aforementioned bio-based computer circuit boards. Furthermore, utilizing this technology would be recycling at its best. Previously, there has been no major use for all the feathers leftover from chickens in the poultry industry.
More at Clean Technica

Behind The Wheel Of The AIRpod

The MDI AIRpod is a concept vehicle designed to run solely on compressed air as means of transportation, though no production models had been released. As the AIRpod nears actual production, MDI has begun inviting journalists to take a whirl in a prototype model. The first thing you might notice is that the AIRpod doesn’t much appear to look like a car. You enter through the front of the pod via a hatch that opens up-and-over the vehicle. As I mentioned earlier, you steer with a joystick rather than steering. The concept originally also used the joystick for propulsion, but the system proved awkward so instead there are small pedals for acceleration and stopping. Though there is seating for four full-sized adults, three of them have to enter through a rear hatch and sit on a rear-facing bench seat. You also probably noticed that instead of the typical four-wheel layout, the AIRpod is set up more like a tricycle. Everything is designed to conserve weight, and the AIRpod manages to tip the scales at just 485 pounds. The MDI makes a whooping 6 horsepower and 11 ft-lbs of torque. With one person in the AIRpod, the top speed hovers somewhere around 30 mph (production cars should go as fast as 50 mph, according to MDI) and also has a range of between 90 and 125 miles.
Much More at Gas 2.0

Biofuels could clean up Chernobyl 'badlands'

CONTAMINATED lands, blighted by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, could be cleaned up in a clever way: by growing biofuels. Belarus, the country affected by much of the fallout, is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years. A 40,000 square kilometre area of south-east Belarus is so stuffed with radioactive isotopes that rained down from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 that it won't be fit for growing food for hundreds of years, as the isotopes won't have decayed sufficiently. But this week a team of Irish biofuels technologists is in the capital, Minsk, hoping to do a deal with state agencies to buy radioactive sugar beet and other crops grown on the contaminated land to make biofuels for sale across Europe. The company, Greenfield Project Management, insists no radioactive material will get into the biofuel as only ethanol is distilled out. "In distillation, only the most volatile compounds rise up the tube. Everything else is left behind," says Basil Miller of Greenfield. The heavy radioactive residues will be burned in a power station, producing a concentrated "radioactive ash". This can be disposed of at existing treatment works for nuclear waste, he says.
More at New Scientist

Why A Low-Calorie Diet Extends Lifespans: Critical Enzyme Pair Identified

Put Down That Doughnut and READ THIS! Experiment after experiment confirms that a diet on the brink of starvation expands lifespan in mice and many other species. But the molecular mechanism that links nutrition and survival is still poorly understood. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a pivotal role for two enzymes that work together to determine the health benefits of diet restriction. When lacking one enzyme or the other, roundworms kept on a severely calorie-restricted diet no longer live past their normal lifespan, they report in the June 24, 2009, advance online edition of the journal Nature. "The only other known factor regulating longevity in response to diet restriction operates at the very end of the signaling cascade," said Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and senior author Andrew Dillin, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory. "These two enzymes are further up the ladder, bringing us closer to the receptor that receives the signal for throwing the switch to promote a healthy lifespan." Identifying the receptor may allow researchers to design drugs that mimic the signal and could lead to new treatments for age-related diseases. This could enable us to reap the health benefits of calorie restriction without adhering to extreme diets in which the satisfying feel of a full stomach is strictly off limits.

More at Science Daily

Solar Rivalry Heats Up Over Tandem-type Panels at PV Japan Trade Show

A tandem-type panel consists of different kinds of solar cells and can convert light in a wider wavelength range to electricity. The exhibited tandem-type panels were composed of amorphous silicon and microcrystalline silicon and expected to be used for industrial photovoltaic systems. A number of "tandem-type" amorphous silicon thin film solar panels were exhibited at PV Japan 2009, an exhibition of photovoltaic technologies that is running from June 24 to 26, 2009, at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
AMAT showed off a tandem-type thin film solar panel using an 8.5-generation, 5.7m² glass plate. Ulvac announced the "CIM-1400," plasma CVD equipment for tandem-type solar panels as the existing production line for thin-film solar cells enables the line to manufacture tandem-type panels. Oerlikon Solar announced a tandem-type panel with a conversion efficiency of 11%. And finally, Sharp, displayed a tandem-type thin film solar panel that is 1,409 x1,009mm in size. It features a module conversion efficiency of 9% and a power generation capacity of 128W.
Much More at Tech-On

Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics. Because algae does not require any farmland or much space, many energy companies are trying to use it to make commercial quantities ofhydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. But harvesting the hydrocarbons has proved difficult so far. The ethanol would be sold as fuel, the companies said, but Dow’s long-term interest is in using it as an ingredient for plastics, replacing natural gas. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae.
Much More at the New York Times

Yuneec Chinese Electric Airplane Info & First Flight

AVWeb.com has a nice video on a new electric experimental being developed in China for the US market. "Yuneec Chinese Electric Airplane 54 hp two seat aircraft undergoing first flight and flight tests, summer 2009. http://www.avweb.com video by Glenn Pew for AVweb http://www.glennpew.com"

DigiCube MIDPhone-50 @ Computex 2009

DigiCube's MID based on Z500 series Atom CPU (1.1 or 1.6GHz / US15W) looks and feels surprising similar to the Sharp D4 we played with last year...
except the 420g MIDPhone-50 has 3.5G (voice ready)...

On the downside the 1800mAh battery is expected to be only good for 1 - 2 hrs, and no option at the moment for a larger battery.

A Docking station was shown in photos giving extra USB / LAN / LCD connections and battery charge stand features (again all quite similar to the D4 :)

JKKmobile will have a nice video online soon...

Mio Litepad N890 @ Computex Taipei 2009

NEW from Mio : Litepad N890:

GPS receiver (MioMaps for nav.), 3.5G Broadband, 25mm thick, 880g with 3 cell battery, Rotation sensor, Splash and shock roof.

1GB RAM/8-32GB SSD/1.6GHz Atom/WiFi/Bluetooth.

Video here