By Andrew Liszewski

Forget gold or platinum, the real bling these days is carbon fiber. It makes everything from high performance sports cars to even wallets seem infinitely more awesome. And now Bluetrek is capitalizing on its inherent cool factor, and other benefits, with their new Carbon Bluetooth headset.

Looking like it was mocked up with a couple of toothpicks and a mini marshmallow, the Carbon weighs in at just 5.9 grams but still manages to squeeze in all the important features one would expect to find in a moderately capable BT headset these days. Including Bluetooth 3.0 support, the ability to pair with 2 devices at once, a mechanical on/off switch (yay!), the company’s Noise Lock noise cancelling technology, simplified pairing and a 4.5 hour talk time with an on-screen battery status indicator when used with the iPhone. Available now, directly from Bluetrek, for $69.99.

[ Bluetrek Carbon Bluetooth Headset ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The world’s most feature-packed SD memory card just got a bit more capable today as Eye-Fi has officially launched their Mobile X2 version featuring their new ‘Direct Mode’. The new mode, which was first shown off at CES earlier this year, lets the Eye-Fi card connect directly to an Android or iOS mobile device by creating its own wi-fi network, so the card and your smartphone/tablet can communicate even if you’re out in the middle of nowhere.

Direct Mode will also be available for the company’s existing Eye-Fi X2 cards via a firmware update available sometime next week, though users excited to try it out will still have to wait for the accompanying iOS and Android apps to hit their respective app stores. The new mode is pretty exciting though, as it lets users almost instantly see their shots on a larger display if they’re using it tethered to a tablet, and if the device happens to be equipped with 3G mobile data, the shots can then be automatically sent to an online gallery.

The new Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card which features 8GB of storage and the Direct Mode functionality already built-in will be available starting April 17 for $79.99.

[ Eye-Fi Mobile X2 ]

By Chris Scott Barr

As the old joke goes “there are only 10 types of people in this world: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.” If you happen to fall into the latter group (and consequently don’t get the joke), you might want to pass on this LED Binary Watch. Mostly because you aren’t going to be able to read it without a bit of studying. Otherwise, you might find this little timepiece amusing, and wear it proudly as a symbol of your geek pride.

I’ve seen a number of other binary watches before, but they usually try to hard to look futuristic for my taste. This one keeps the usual round face outlined in stainless steel with a leather band. The face is still pretty geeky, what with the exposed circuitboard and LEDs. The nice thing is that even if you’re not fluent in binary, you should be able to read the time, as they’ve conveniently placed the numbers by their respective LEDs. Just add up the numbers under the lights and you’re good. Just $70 puts one of these on your wrist.

[ ThinkGeek ]

By Andrew Liszewski

My continued love of LEGO has me desperately hoping this Construction Toy concept by Wouter Scheublin becomes a reality some day, for the simple fact that it lets you build things you can actually ride on! Like with LEGO, the idea is to create a kit that provides enough modular pieces to build a myriad of pedal-powered creations from bicycles to go-karts. Obviously the use of nuts, bolts, gears and chains will probably ensure the kit isn’t particularly kid-friendly, but it’s not like having to learn to use tools to put it together is a bad thing either.

[ Wouter Scheublin - Construction Toy ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The digital switchover put a lot of analog TV sets out of commission, but for years and years prior to that day new sets sold had to include digital tuners. So I think a good majority of the TVs in use around the country were ok once it happened. That wasn’t the case with handheld TVs though. Classics like my good old Sony Watchman were instantly rendered unusable, and until recently there really weren’t any alternatives for people who preferred watching broadcast TV on a portable device, instead of streamed or downloaded media which is far more popular these days.

But RCA hasn’t given up on us yet. At NAB they’ve just announced a new family of portable TVs that are compatible with standard digital TV broadcasts as well as the newer Mobile DTV format which is being rolled out across the country. Not to be confused with portable media players, these devices are only designed to tune in local broadcasts as far as I can tell, and are completely lacking in any storage or media slots for playing downloaded content. But as a result of their minimal functionality, they’re also pretty affordable.

The cheapest of the lot, the DMT335R (pictured in the upper left) has an MSRP of just $119 and includes a 3.5-inch LED backlit 320×240 LCD display, hybrid DTV tuner and can run for about 4 hours on a set of 4xAA batteries. At the next level is the similarly-sized DMT336R (pictured on the right) which adds color options, an FM radio tuner and a built-in rechargeable li-poly battery providing 4 hours of battery life for $159. And finally, if you prefer a big screen experience, relatively speaking, the DMT270R (pictured lower left) has a whopping 7-inch, 800×480 LCD display, all of the best features from its smaller siblings (minus the FM tuner) and a price tag of just $179.

[ RCA Mobile DTVs ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Pentax seems to have decided that one of its niches in the digital camera market will be to allow consumers to customize the look of their hardware. Their NB1000 literally lets people reshape the camera through the use of Nanoblocks bricks, and their RS1500 lets users customize the look of it via skins.

So as part of a tie-in with the upcoming Warner Bros. Green Lantern blockbuster, Pentax will be releasing a special limited edition ‘DC Super Heroes’ version of the RS1500 that comes with seven different skins including the Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Superman, Catwoman and The Joker. They’re also throwing in a less-than-super 4GB SD card and a Green Lantern protective case. Specific pricing info for this collector’s pack is still TBA, but given its ‘limited edition’ status it will probably be a bit more than the camera’s $149.95 MSRP.

[ PR - Pentax - Optio RS1500 DC Comics Camera ] VIA [ Freshness Mag ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It’s admittedly a pretty niche piece of software, but if your job happens to have you keeping tabs on a large herd of zebras, or other animals that can be identified via unique striping on their bodies, you might want to look into StripeSpotter. Developed by the Computational Population Biology laboratory at the University of Illinois, and the Equid Research and Conservation laboratory at Princeton, the software is able to identify and catalog animals in the wild using nothing more than a digital photo from a run-of-the-mill P&S camera.

Researchers just have to highlight a portion of the animal where the striping is most prominent, making sure to crop out areas of the photo that might lead to confusion. The stripe pattern and the photo will then be indexed, and if a match already exists in the system, the information and metadata from the previous sighting will be loaded. And since it’s designed to be used by conservationists and researchers, the application is provided for free on Windows, Mac and Linux, and is even open source.

[ StripeSpotter ] VIA [ MSNBC ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m a bit of a fidgety type, and from time to time I’ll find myself drumming along to random songs on random surfaces with my fingers. And thanks to Korg, even just pounding away on a table can sound like I’m skillfully playing a conga drum with their new Wavedrum Mini synth. By itself, using its pressure sensitive pad, you can sound like you’re playing a myriad of different drum types thanks to its library of 100 professionally programmed sounds which can be further enhanced with 10 different effects like delay, chorus, reverb filters and pitch-shifters.

But if pounding away on its pad just doesn’t feel natural to you, the Wavedrum Mini comes with a sensor clip which can be attached to almost any surface, like a table, your shoe, even other instruments, providing an endless source of places to drum along on. It also allows you to build up your own rhythms to play along with, up to 25 seconds in length, and on a set of 6 batteries you can expect to get about 4 hours of play time, though an AC adapter is also an option if you’re in the studio. Available sometime in the 3rd quarter of this year, pricing TBA.

[ Korg Wavedrum Mini ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Future-proofing might not be a feature Apple’s known for, with new versions of their products being released on an annual basis. But Sony realizes that video and film professionals dropping thousands and thousands of dollars on a camera might not be so keen on replacing it sooner rather than later. So their new CineAlta F65, which was just announced at NAB, features an 8K, ~20MP CMOS sensor even though in its current state the camera is only able to capture footage with resolutions up to 4K. So down the line, if and when there’s a demand for 8K, the F65 is already able to deliver.

The camera’s also able to capture footage at 120fps with 16-bit RAW output, and if you crunch the numbers even just recording at 24fps in RAW mode it will fill up a terabyte of storage every 50 minutes. And according to Sony’s press release the F65 “is also the first to provide a dedicated green photosite for each pixel in the 4K output image” which supposedly captures twice the amount of green data than traditional sensors, making the footage particularly ideal for post-production work like visual effects or color correction.

[ Akihabara News - Sony brings at NAB an 8K Monster with the F65 CineAlta ]