Best Gadgets World

Looks like our friends in Redmond, Washington are at it again with the globular display simply known as the Sphere.  The Sphere is like Microsoft’s Surface, literally taken to the next dimension. 

It was developed by Global Imagination, and customized by Microsoft.  It is expected to make its first public experience today at Microsoft’s Faculty Summit, but the Seattle PI was given a first look.  I have included a YouTube video of a spokesman demonstrating its features below. 

One of these features is a photo viewer that allows some interesting dragging capabilities.  In fact, if the user puts his or her hand on the photo, it will be instantly transported to the other side of the big silver ball. 

It also can project a globe that the user can spin just like a real one.  The video capability is also quite interesting as a user can take footage from a 360-degree camera and “spin” it to get whatever angle he or she wishes. 

It even has this weird pong game done in three dimensions where the ball is stopped with a person’s hand, but this didn’t look easy to play.  However, I can’t wait to see the possibilities of spherical video games. 

I believe the company is considering using the Sphere for public terminals. If one person is using the Sphere on one side, the other person cannot see what’s on the other side, thereby guaranteeing complete privacy.

Well, I’m sure Microsoft is still toying with this one.  We’ll see if it comes into the general market soon. 

Via [Engadget]

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A final US release date still has not been announced for the blackberry Bold, but that does not seem to matter to Tiger Direct. They have just recently added the Bold to their website as a pre-order item promising delivery in September.

The Bold is a little on the pricey side at $649.99, but all things considered its not that bad of a price for an unlocked handset that is as hot as the Bold. It also looks like Tiger Direct is expecting to receive their shipment ahead of the actual availability date, because they mention that any pre-orders will ship on the “street date.”

Product [Tiger Direct] Via [Into Mobile]

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Oh, tech manufactuers… why do you think that making a phone or a hard drive look like a powder compact is the way to our hearts? Nothing makes me more annoyed - except covering everything vaguely girl-oriented in pink, perhaps.

As Engadget gleefully reports, Samsung has designed a concept compact hard drive that looks similar to a piece of make-up - and this picture shows it surrounded by make-up, to prove the point. You know, ‘cos we women are so crazy about cosmetics, we’ll buy anything if it looks like we can paint our faces with it.

So far though, this is just a concept - and maybe it should stay that way. I think the design is sleek and all, but I don’t agree with making tech designs gender specific. (Don’t small, sleek designs appeal to men, too?)

How about letting us all buy what we want, whether we’re male or female?

One of the mystifying design decisions about the iPhone when it first came out was the omission of a simple copy and paste command. This design decision further solicited head shakes when iPhone engineers left it out again in the 3G model. What’s going on with Apple that they don’t see the simple benefit of copy and paste? Well, thanks to an application known as Magic Pad, iPhone users don’t have to be limited by Cupertino’s lack of vision on this issue.

Made by software developer Proxim, Magic Pad works similarly to the existing iPhone “Notes” application, but it has several notable enhancements including multiple font support; rich text options such as underlining, italics, and strikethroughs; and afore-mentioned copy/paste. In addition, Magic Pad works courtesy of its simple toolbar interface hovers above the keypad. Users employ a magnifying glass to access any text, highlight it, and then copy it into a clipboard to be pasted and altered as needed. And although the copy/paste feature doesn’t work from application to application (yet), it is indeed an important start and provides iphone users with the hope that future versions will be able to crack that barrier and give users what they always wanted … the ability to copy and paste at will.

And just maybe Cupertino Steve will realize that we really do need that feature after all and simply incorporate it into the next firmware update.\

Hat Tip – CNet

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by Darren Murph, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 7:55AMA bit earlier this year we heard that Panasonic (Matsushita’s red-headed stepchild) was vying for a little recognition in the OLED TV game, but outside of that, details were scarce. Now, however, we’re being told that the outfit is planning to start selling 40-inch OEL (organic electroluminescent, better known as OLED ’round these parts) televisions “as early as 2011.” Reportedly, it will be investing “several billion yen” to construct a prototype production line for OEL panels “20-inches and larger” that will go into service next spring. We’d be pretty stoked if the final product were within sight, but make sure to ring us early on next decade to make sure we haven’t completely forgotten about this here promise.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Peepholes are all very well, but you actually have to leave your chair to find out who’s calling, and that’s never good. Thankfully, there’s now a more high-tech option for the sedentary (or peephole-lacking) among us.

The Secure Sight records all your visitors, whether you’re in or out, so you can see who’s calling right now as well as who came by when you were at the market. (Better than TV!) You fit the camera to your door and put the viewer wherever is convenient.

Personally, I’d also put a sign up to let people know they’re on candid camera, so you don’t get any pesky accusations of eroding civil liberties… and also I’d consider upgrading to 4GB with an SD card.

Via Apartment Therapy.

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 5:23AM
Engadget Chinese received the slide image above showing ASUS’ Eee PC roadmap. Go ahead count ‘em up, we’ll wait… Right, 23 Eee PCs before they’re done, some of which we’ve already seen. The “extreme slim and light” S101 and S91 models, however, are new and tantalizing Eee PC “Ultimate” series additions and should compete nicely with the Dell E Slim. Really though, 23 models ASUS? Guess we shouldn’t be surprised, after all, this is the same company that offers more than 50 models (not just configurations) of laptops.

Read — Engadget Chinese
Read — ASUS Notebook list

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Filed under: Laptops

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 4:55AM
The Tesla roadster goes from 0 to 60 in 3.9-seconds (by December anyway) and costs $100,000 if you’re lucky enough to get dibs on the 10 or so electric cars delivered so far. Come to find out, it also goes from 30 to 0 in a nausea-filled second when ground to a halt of twisted carbon-fiber beneath a Mercedes. The image above was snapped by Alex Volkov at the scene of a Friday evening accident in San Francisco. Of course, this isn’t the first wrecked Tesla we’ve seen. According to Fortune, ousted Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard saw his car rear-end a truck while on router for delivery to Eberhard’s home. While the cause of this new accident isn’t official, a few eye-witnesses said that Tesla #6 had gone “unnoticed” as it went “bumper-to-bumper between the cars.” Interestingly enough, the Tesla’s air-bags never deployed. One thing seems obvious: we expect to see more crashes from the silent, ultra-low-profile Tesla street-racer as it attempts to compete for space on roads dominated by SUVs, Hummers, and Testosterone.

Read — SF Tesla Crash
Read — Fortune

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Filed under: Transportation

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jul 28th 2008 at 8:54AM
If you’ve been paying attention, you remember all those blurry-vision pictures of an upcoming Dell mini desktop called the Studio Hybrid. As it turns out, those spy images were more than speculation, as an anonymous reader tipped us off to one of Dell’s internal customer service session pages that guides the rep through some wireless keyboard and mouse resynchronization steps. The Dell Studio Hybrid appears to be codenamed “Nausicaa” (if image filenames are to be believed) and will ship with a wireless mouse and keyboard. It seems Dell believes that customers will need some help setting up these potentially finicky peripherals. As for when this new mini-desktop will be available, we’re still in the dark on that, but a back-to-school number this like wouldn’t be such a bad idea. We’re not sure how long the page will remain up once our readers have poked at it, but we captured the images in a handy gallery for that inevitable moment.

UPDATE: Looks like the Studio Hybrid will also be available with a Blu-Ray drive and user-changeable color panels to match your design scheme. It will also launch within the next two weeks, if our other anonymous tipster is to be believed.

Gallery: Dell Studio Hybrid

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Filed under: Desktops

by Paul Miller, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 12:01AM
Like most product from Dell these days, there’s little surprise left in Dell’s Studio Hybrid desktop lineup of eco-friendly little PCs. First unveiled as a bamboo-clad concept in April, the computer is finally being released by the hardware giant with a starting price of $499, with interchangeable sleeves of Bamboo, Emerald, Quartz, Ruby, Sapphire, Slate and Topaz — the latter six being of the shiny plastic ilk. Dell isn’t slouching on specs though, and seems to realize the potential of the Studio Hybrid — which can be stood vertically or horizontally — in the living room. There’s an HDMI port standard, along with options for WiFi, a wireless keyboard and mouse, Blu-ray and a TV tuner. Dell doesn’t ignore the “green” roots of this project, either, and is including a system recycling kit, along with the natural reduction in packing and manufacturing materials. The Studio Hybrid should be available today.

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Filed under: Desktops