Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Great news! You no longer have to go to an expo/world’s fair/amusement park/science center to experience one of those omni dome theaters. The TOOB provides the same basic experience, though on a considerably smaller scale. Created by Alexander McDonnell, the TOOB consists of a half-dome movie screen that’s large enough for a couple of people to sit in front of, as well as a specially shaped mirror that reflects the image from a projector onto the dome’s surface. And since it’s powered by a regular home theater projector (instead of proprietary hardware) you can use it with any video source like a DVD player or a gaming console.

According to Cool Hunting, the home version of the TOOB, which measures 3-feet by 6-feet with an 18-inch reflector, sells for $1,440, but the hardware can be rented and is also available in a considerably larger 8-foot by 16-foot inflatable version for use outdoors.

[ TOOB ] VIA [ Cool Hunting ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Given the choice I would probably opt for a really great Superbowl party rather than going to the actual game, but what makes a ‘great’ Superbowl party? Well if this thing happens to pull up in front of your home on Superbowl Sunday morning, then it’s safe to say you’ll be enjoying a great party.

At 12.8 meters wide and 7.2 meters tall the Iconic 100 from The ADI Group is the largest mobile LED screen in the world, though in this case ‘mobile’ is a relative term since it folds up into a tractor trailer (the whole process takes about 24 minutes) and requires something with a little more oomph than your minivan to haul it around. It does weight 33,000kg after all. The display’s got a decent resolution of 720P, an on-board production suite for switching feeds on-the-fly and its own generator which means it won’t leave you with any nasty surprises on your power bill if you do happen to rent one for a weekend.

[ Iconic 100 HD LED Screen ] VIA [ Wired Gadget Lab ]

By Evan Ackerman

As much as I love my netbook, the tiny size and convenience does come with drawbacks, not the least of which is the lack of screen real estate. Taking out my netbook after working on a pair of 30″ HD monitors at the office can be a shock, to say the least. The Mimo mini USB monitor provides an extra 800 x 480 pixels, which is a significant addition to the screen of any netbook, and it runs purely off of USB: no batteries or power cords and there’s a video card inside. It has reasonably decent brightness and contrast and can be used in either horizontal or vertical orientation. At 1.3 pounds, it’s light enough to carry around with your netbook, but the $130 pricetag is a bit steep… Especially considering that you can get a second netbook for about twice that much, or a full size external monitor for less. Oh well, that’s the price you pay for convenience and portability, I suppose.

It’s rather remarkable just how much the Mimo USB monitor looks like the D-Link SideStage USB monitor, which is supposed to come out at the end of the year for about the same price. It’s got pretty much the same specs, down to the weight. Not sure what’s up with that, but the most relevant point I guess is that the Mimo is available now. Or, at least sooner than the end of the year, at ThinkGeek.

[ ThinkGeek ]

By Evan Ackerman

Cell phones are arguably separated into three categories: iPhone / Palm Pre / BlackBerry, phones that suck are functional for people who don’t care, and everything else. In the everything else category, what distinguishes one phone from another is often (for better or worse) looks, and a company called Kent Displays may have trumped that category with a phone that changes color.

The entire outer surface of this prototype phone is actually a display, called a cholesteric liquid crystal display. Sounds tasty, right? It is tasty… The display is durable, can be molded into any shape, and (eventually) will display 4,000 colors at a high (but unspecified) resolution. A jolt of electricity changes the color, and that’s all it takes: once the color is set, no power is required to keep it up.

This is, of course, the type of thing that you’re not likely to see anytime soon, but it does exist. Is it cheap? No idea about that either, but I’d be willing to pay a premium for a phone that I could set to match my mood. I’m feeling mauve today, how ’bout you?

[ Tech-On ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Sharp has announced that they’ve developed a five-primary-color display that is capable of reproducing more than 99% of real surface colors that the human eye can discern. The new display features something the company calls “Multi-Primary-Color Technology” which is a combination of special image processing circuitry, as well as the addition of cyan and yellow to the standard red, green and blue pixel structure. Unfortunately there’s no photos of the new display just yet, but a prototype will be shown at the Society for Information Display (SID) symposium being held in San Antonio from May 31 to June 5, so hopefully a few shots will turn up.

[ Akihabara News - Sharp Develops Five-Primary-Color LCD That Faithfully Reproduces Real Surface Colors ]

By Andrew Liszewski

A group of researchers at the University of Tokyo, led by professor Takao Someya, have developed an organic electroluminescent display that can be stretched and folded like rubber. The new ‘displays’ were created by spraying a layer of carbon nanotubes with a fluoro-rubber compound that results in a conductive material that also happens to be stretchy. At the moment the 10cmx10cm prototype has a resolution of just 256 monochrome pixels, allowing it to display basic imagery, and it’s good for about a thousand folds before the display starts to degrade.

This new material actually makes me wonder if the ’soft screens’ that Arthur C. Clarke mentions in some of his later works are not that far off, and I’m sure the NBA has to be excited at the prospect of being able to run advertisements on the actual basketballs during a game.

[ The Mainichi Daily News - Researchers develop EL display that can stretch like rubber ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Up until recently my computer has been in close proximity to my TV, but now that they’ve parted ways, I’ve lost the ability to easily connect them up without having a VGA cable running between rooms. But that’s exactly the problem the Wireless USB to VGA adapter from IOGEAR solves. The USB adapter pictured on the right connects to your PC or laptop, while the VGA adapter on the left connects to your external display, getting rid of those unsightly cables in-between.

Now the range is limited to about 30 feet but you can push a half-decent resolution of either 1600×1200 (UXGA) or 1680×1050 (WSXGA+). The IOGEAR site also claims you can stream videos up to 720P in resolution, though the range is then limited to about 15 feet, and you’ll need a system with at least a 2GHz CPU. But even with those limitations it seems like a nice alternative to trying to hide cables under a rug, and you can order one directly from the IOGEAR website for $229.95.

And on a side note, even though I find it hard to believe, this is officially my 3,000th post here on OhGizmo! Thanks to everyone who checks out the site every day, I hope I’ve educated or entertained at least some of you. And thanks to David for hiring me all those years ago, and to my fellow writers here at OG! and to all the gadget bloggers who help make this job as entertaining as it is.

[ IOGEAR Wireless USB to VGA Kit ] VIA [ Jonzee ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’re looking for the ultimate home theater display and don’t mind having to deal with a few seams here and there, you might want to take a look at NEC’s new MultiSync X461UN displays. They’re specifically designed for use in large video walls, where a single LCD display is both impractical, and astronomically expensive. Each 46 inch unit features an ultra-narrow bezel which results in a screen-to-screen distance of just 7.3mm. And since you can combine up to 100 displays (10×10) in a single grid, that gives you a total screen area of about 645 square feet.

Each screen features a native resolution of 1366×768 (WXGA), a maximum brightness of 700 cd/m2 and a “typical” contrast ratio of 3000:1. And since nothing looks worse than a video wall with a different color tint on each display, there’s also an optional SpectraView II color calibration solution available which ensures “color uniformity and fidelity across individual and multiple screens, creating a perfectly matched image in tiled environments.” The MultiSync X461UN should be available sometime in April and has an estimated price tag of $6,000.

[ NEC MultiSync X461UN ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

Here’s a quick and easy way to get everyone in your household to hate you… The Screen Time Manager allows you to ration the amount of time that people are allowed to use display devices, including televisions and computer monitors. Each person gets their own pin, which they have to input into the device whenever they want to watch something. The Screen Time Manager then allows the TV or whatever to be turned on for the amount of time that you’ve specified, whether it’s hours per day or hours per week. If you really want to be a jerk, you can designate blocks of time where nobody can use the TV at all. Nobody but you, that is. Like, you know, when new episodes of Good Eats are on or something.

Although there are no details, it looks like the Screen Time Manager works by simply holding the wall end of the power cord of the display device hostage. This, of course, can be circumvented by unplugging the cord at the other end if possible, or (and this seems much more likely) through violent physical destruction of the Screen Time Manager itself. It’s $90 from Brookstone.

[ Screen Time Manager ] VIA [ RFJ ]