Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Stiletto Shoe Speakers Pump Out Six Watts

You can even make them play heel-clicking sounds, if that floats your boat.
The shoe speakers are a pair that are actually USB-powered speakers. Like most other speaker sets, they draw power from the nearest USB port, and receive audio through a 3.5mm jack. The speakers look like shoes well enough that it's a not a leap to consider wearing them (though you shouldn't), though we find it disgusting if you plan to take them off during work and place them on your desk.

These Stiletto Shoe Speakers are of course available in a variety of colors. Buyers can choose a red, pink, or black pair to suit their wardrobe—or desktop—fancy. The only problem? A relatively weak six-watt output, and a limited 200Hz to 5000Hz frequency range, not to mention the £25 ($37.50) price tag.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Intel May Soon Abandon Celeron Microprocessors

Those Celerons aren't going to be kept up in the technology line up.

Intel's Celeron brand was mocked for its vegetative name when the CPU launched, but eventually the last laugh belonged to the chip as it proved to be a formidable overclocker and value proposition as the Celeron 300A wrote itself into the history books.
The Celeron brand eventually made its way into notebooks as entry-level solutions for mainstream computers. Sadly, the Celeron never achieved any sort of cult status as an overclocker in the mobile space, but it's still been a nice little chip that got the job done for most casual computer users. But that time could be coming to an end.
DigiTimes once again cites Intel's partners as telling it that the Celeron brand will be phased out in 2011. In its place, Intel will fill the gap with low-end Pentium and dual-core Atom offerings.
Intel denied that it would be phasing out the Celeron at all, but X-bit labs claimed that roadmaps it had seen showed that the Celeron wouldn't be receiving any upgrades to Clarkdale/Nehalem or Sandy Bridge cores. This could mean that once Intel phases out Core 2 technology, the Celerons will go with it.

iPhone 4 Cable Catches Fire, Burns Owner's Hand

Apple recently announced that the iPhone 4 is its hottest iPhone to date, selling faster than any other iteration of the phone. However, one AT&T customer recently discovered just how hot the phone really is when he burnt his hand on the bezel.
Boy Genius Report cites an AT&T insider who provided the following images along with a story of a user whose iPhone 4 caught fire. The incident appears to be either a problem with the USB port the device was plugged into, or the iPhone 4's dock connector port (an Apple Store confirmed that it was a result of "a defective USB port and not some sort of user error"). Judging from how melted the iPhone-end of the cable is, it looks as though the port on the phone was the problem.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Solar-Powered Plane Flies Even at Night

Next up: a round-the-world solar-powered plane.
Years of hard work and testing have finally paid off. The Solar Impulse, a plane powered solely by solar energy cells, successfully flew through day and night. It spent the early morning of July 7 slowly climbing to an altitude of 8,700 meters to charge its batteries. 4:40pm saw the Solar Impulse take a long controlled dive to 1.5km, then continued flying at through the night without depleting its power reserve.

Friday, July 9, 2010

3D Displays May Be Hazardous to Young Children

Could this be a problem with the 3DS?

3D is all the rage right now, with cinemas and home theatre equipment both beefing up with glasses-mandatory viewing. Even gaming on-the-go is heading that way too with Nintendo's upcoming 3DS handheld.
While 3D gives us a neat effect while watching Toy Story 3, taking the kids to see that one over and over again, and eventually when it's on Blu-ray Disc, isn't a good idea at all.
According researchers who have been examining 3D video for years, the exposing children under the age of seven could affect their vision in a bad way. You see, our 3D human vision relies on our two eyes sending an image to our brains, which then makes stereoscopic sense out of it. This gives us depth perception – something that our brains only fully develop by the time we hit six years old.
Some of us aren't able to fully develop stereoscopic vision due to malaise in children called strabismus, sometimes known as lazy eye. This condition is treatable by training the nervous system to 'learn' stereopsis.
More than 15 years ago, Sega was toying with a VR headset that would give the wearer 3D images near the eye; but following a test by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) at Palo Alto California, Sega was warned that the peripheral should not be given to kids – a tough order given that the video game market at the time was catered to a younger audience. The project was ditched, and 3D VR headsets slowly disappeared from the market.
Now that 3D is back, bigger than ever, the risk is even greater for young viewers. Adults are believed to be mostly safe from 3D effects, though most will likely find that they reach a point of fatigue before long anyway.