fanny gadgets
‘Handwriting’ recognition offers accurate way for dating stone tablets
Archaeology 101 will tell you that accurately dating an object is critical to understanding its meaning and value. When it comes to stone carvings, this typically requires a researcher with plenty of energy, time and skill, but scientists at the National Technical University of Athens have now developed a computer algorithm that promises to revolutionize the entire process. By overlaying digital scans of known inscribers’ work, the Greek team are able to recognize stylistic idiosyncrasies and thereby identify the author of a carving. Their accuracy was confirmed by a recent ..read more
Palm Pre in cahoots with Dutch provider Hi?
The GSM version of Palm’s Pre looks all set for a UK announcement next week on O2. Now we get this, a Pre spotted on the support site for Dutch carrier Hi in The Netherlands. Fine, but what you may not know is that O2 and Hi (part of KPN) are also deeply intertwined with Telefonica — O2 being owned by Telefonica and KPN being an “integrated carrier” with a long history of Telefonica courtship rumors. So, putting two and two together might equal a September launch if that ..read more
iPhone 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot ahead of Dev Team
Be warned, this is beta stuff and we haven’t been able to test it ourselves. However, a number of breathless tipsers and commenters are reporting a successful jailbreak and unlock of their iPhone 3GS. The magic begins with a 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot. See, George is fed up with the Dev-Team’s insistence on waiting until Apple releases iPhone OS version 3.1. As he puts it: Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats ..read more
Packard Bell imedia lineup gets an Acer-inspired refresh
Packard Bell recently overhauled its logo in an effort to keep up with the times, but are its offerings up to the same task? The new imedia lineup immediately recalls the recently announced M-series desktops from Acer, and that’s no accident. The innards are remarkably similar too, with the top models sporting Core 2 Quad or AMD Phenom II X4 processors, a 1.5GB GeForce GT230, HDMI out, Blu-Ray combo drive and a maximum of 8GB DDR3 memory and 1TB of storage. While none of the specs are on the blistering ..read more
Video: Self-Portrait Machine binds your hands then bends your will
Drawing faces is hard; and as children suckled at the teat of MTV we posses neither the patience nor the discipline required to learn the skill. So imagine our surprise to discover the Self-Portrait Machine, a device that snaps your photo and then forces you to draw your own face by dragging your bound hands around until the portrait is complete. Jen Hui Liao’s project is the result of an observation that “our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship.” So it’s like art and the ..read more
Sprint swaggers, promises to be first to release 3G Femtocell in US
While AT&T’s still claiming MicroCell will be out before the year’s up, Sprint’s bringing out the big words by boasting to Unstrung it’ll be beating everyone to the market with its 3G femtocell solution. Company VP of device and technology development Mathew Oommen is pretty light on some of the finer details — like actual release date, hardware supplier, pricing scheme, and pretty much every other piece of information we’d want — but he did imply there’d be multiple options available for the CDMA EV-DO Rev. A extender, including a ..read more
The Daily Roundup: here’s what you might’ve missed
Psystar bounces back from Chapter 11, intros new high-end hardwarePsystar’s new Open(7) hardware runs Intel Nehalem Xeon, which should provide a nice performance jolt to hackintosh land. Sony exec says UMD-less PSP was “always the plan”Sony “needed to prepare the right environment for it first - things like the transferal of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as Media Go.” Apple patching nasty iPhone SMS vulnerability Given the hype surrounding Apple’s iPhone, we’re actually surprised that we haven’t seen ..read moreDARPA contractor shows off tiny robo-hummingbird UAV
We’ve seen plenty of tiny UAVs (or NAVs — Nano Aerial Vehicles — as they’re also known), but none quite like the robo-hummingbird that’s been in development at DARPA-contractor AeroVironment for the past couple of years. While we haven’t heard much about it during that time, the company recently completed its most advanced prototype to date, dubbed Mercury, and it’s taken advantage of the opportunity to show off all the progress it has made. As you can see in the video after the break, the bot is able to fly ..read moreEMTEC dips toes into nettop market with Ion-based G Box
We’re used to seeing nettops from the likes of Asus and Acer, but EMTEC’s the newcomer in this field and let’s see what we’re working with. At about one inch thick by TechDigest’s estimates, the G Box (working title) certainly compact, and we definitely give points to it running NVIDIA’s Ion platform, Windows XP, at least six USB ports, and a 160GB hard drive. Unfortunately, there’s no HDMI port — that’s coming in a later model — and at £179 ($293 US), we’d be hard pressed to pick this over ..read more
Ask Engadget: Best Bluetooth mouse out there?
We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Sang-Jung, who is desperately in search of the perfect cordless critter to take some of the strain away from that trackpad. “I’m heading to university next year, and I’ve purchased a MacBook. I’m also taking my four year old desktop, just in case I’m left with no computers when the MacBook is being repaired or whatnot. With only two ..read more
