Well, looks like we can have a rolled up, pocket friendly e-book reader soon by Polymer Vision. The product is called aptly, Readius. Apparently, 2 years ago Philips came up with the idea and it’s only now that the idea became something concrete.

This rollable pocket book has 16 shades of grey, have a battery life that lasts up to 10 days, 4 gig of internal storage and GPRS, EDGE, and DVB-H.

Polymer Vision is actually hoping to integrate its e-paper technology into mobile handset displays in the near future. Sadly, there still didn’t seem to be any hints of a release date for the nifty pocket reader, but be sure to click on through for the very long awaited pictures of the Readius in action.

I got that quote off Engadget. Well, it seems like this rollable pocket book thing is still at its early stages of release. It would be cool to read off the latest Harry Potter book on this baby. It looks pretty sweet too. See for yourselves!

Source: Engadget

Over the weekend (on January 13th, to be exact), FujiFilm released their latest FinePix digital camera model in Japan, the BIGJOB HD-3W. The name cracks me up, but I’m a Terry Pratchett fan. Despite the silly name, it is a very interesting camera.

Firstly, it is waterproof and dustproof (although waterproof to what depth, I don’t know) with a great 28~84mm wide angle lens with 3x optical zoom. The 6 megapixel CCD creates 2,816×2,112 pixel images – a great all-rounder camera.

It is physically quite a big camera (128.3×45×80.5mm – which explains the BIGJOB moniker) and on the chunky side, thanks to it’s waterproof feature. The camera is powered by 2 AA batteries.

One feature I really like: it comes with 27MB on-board memory which is great for those times when you realise that you’ve left the flash memory in the computer back home.

One feature that annoys me: unfortunately, as with all FujiFilm cameras, it uses the proprietry xD flash media, not the more-or-less open – never mind cheaper – SD card.

Priced at around ￥69,800, if you don’t mind being forced to buy the xD media, then this is a great family digital camera.

Link:
FujiFilm (in Japanese)

I am an iPod groupie, like i said previously and now that the iPhone is out, I am ecstatic! Did you guys see how it looks? It’s exactly like a touchpad on the iPods and you can scroll, click, push, type, do everything at the tip of your finger. Don’t even think about looking for any buttons except for the on/off button maybe…everything else is done on the touch screen.

It just looks sexy as hell…. i waaaaaaannnnntt!
The iPhone runs on a system that combines only the best features from the BlackBerry, Apple iPod, Palm and Windows mobile. So, technically, the best features from each of these gadgets means the iPhone doesn’t do everything but it does everything else that’s fun very well! That’s what a phone is for, isn’t it? Multi-purpose so that when you’re bored it can entertain you to the very least. It’s definitely a fun phone to have but right now patience is the key as it won’t be out for the general public consumption till June 2007 and Asia may not see the phone till 2008! Oh well….too bad, at least Canada will see it soon! yay! Now i gotta save money.The size of the iPhone is about the size of an iPod – 4.5 inches tall, 2.48 inches wide but still very slim at 0.46 inches thick. Airtime for this baby, is officially 5 hours (this also includes video time, yes it play videos too!) and if you’re using it for music only, it’ll play for 16 hours. I think that’s about the same time as the older version of the iPod Nano. iPhone comes in two storage sizes; 4Gig and 8Gig for $499 and $599 respectively.

For more information on the spec and accessories go to iPhone

I’m a Panasonic fangirl. Of all the Japanese electronics brands, Panasonic wins for me (Nintendo falls under gaming brands). Sony come up with great technology but then proceed to screw them up somehow (overpriced, released too late, proprietry media) while Toshiba… well, let’s just never speak of that again. Sanyo has won a few brownie points, especially with their Xacti brand of camera/video hybrids, but for now Panasonic reigns supreme.

So I always keep a look out for any new Panasonic electronics. This week, it’s two new video cameras, although the only difference between them is the media used. The VDR-D310 has a 3CCD sensor for optimum image recording, 3 recording modes (XP at 10Mbps, SP at 5Mbps and LP at 2.5Mbps) and now has a DVD burner which can accept DVD DL, DVD-R/RW and DVD RAM.

This means Panasonic is moving away from MiniDV tape media (although not too quickly, as the NV-GS320 is the same camera but with MiniDV capabilities) and I think it’s about time too. DV technology has been around since 1994 and is getting redundant. Tape technology will never be as good as non-magnetic media.

As most video cameras these days do, these two come with a digital photo camera built in, with 3.1MP capability and Panasonic’s image stabiliser technology. The cameras weigh around 500g. No word yet on prices.

Link:
Panasonic

OK, so it’s not exactly origami, it’s papercraft. And it’s not exactly TV, but you can watch “movies” like Kill Bill, Dirty Harry and Dr Stangelove on it.

The papercrafters at Stane’s Island have put together this little DIY “television” project. The boxes have a theme depending on the movie and some low res footage from the films are rolled up inside.

Warning: Pencils are not included.

Links:
Sharp Pencil Quality TV via Gizmodo

Actually, the title is a small lie. Today’s gadget was actually a Christmas present from my lovely housemates.

It’s a Hoover Duck! It plugs into a USB 2.0 socket (it must be USB 2.0 because it draws power from the computer) and when you press the button on it’s back, it becomes a mini vacuum cleaner for your keyboard and general computer area. And yes, it sucks up the dust and food crumbs through it’s beak!

Unfortunately it’s not terribly powerful but it is more convenient than dragging out the big vacuum cleaner, plugging it in, putting on the correct attachment and then sucking up your mess. It’s handy in a nacho spill emergency.

My duck’s name is Wade, in case you were wondering.

Earlier this month, Hitachi announced a major breakthrough in hard disk technology, using perpendicular recording (writing data vertically instead of horizontally) to cram up 10 times more data on a disk. They even made a cool little flash musical that you should definitely if you haven’t yet. And now Seagate, Toshiba, and Fujitsu are going this way too. Seems like good news to me if we can have 300Gb the size of an iPod mini (for the price of an iPod mini) sometime soonish…

Via Engadget

KDDI will introduce a mobile information handset for the World Expo 2005 in Aichi. The device features both PDA and mobile phone functionality. It runs on Windows Mobile 2003, has 3G (CDMA 1X WIN), wireless LAN, and bluetooth connectivity. There will be 5,000 devices available for visitors of the World Expo. The device can be used to retrieve information about the Expo, gather points, do m-payments and for e-mail.

There are two types: Orange (picture below) and Blue (next pic).
The devices have a CPU Intel PXA270 520MHz processor, an internal memory RAM 128MB, Flash ROM 64MB, USB port, mini SD-card slot. The display is 2.8 inch (240 x 320 dots, 65k colours).