Oh! Gizmo

By David Ponce

Don’t shortchange your kid and give him regular old Crayons when you could be giving him these Rich Color Crayons. They’re pretty much made of the same material as regular Crayons, but instead of being one solid color, they’re marbled with a variety of color speckles that produce a richer color pattern. As you can see from the image above, the results can be impressive. Then again, these are obviously marketing renderings made by some kind of professional. But still, the idea is interesting.

Seeing as you can’t quite give each crayon an actual color name, they’ve been affectionately dubbed “Passion & Orange”, “StrawberrySpecial”, “CandyPop”, “CitrusHerb”, “BerryMix” and “ChocolateAlmond”. A box of these six “flavors” will set you back 1,200 Yen, or about $13.

Hit the jump for a few more pictures and links.

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By Andrew Liszewski

Esquire was the first to improve magazines with their limited edition issue featuring an e-ink cover, which I missed out on, but it looks like Entertainment Weekly is one-upping them, and then some, with a CBS & Pepsi sponsored video ad that will appear in their September 18 issue. Now there’s no way the insert will be as thin as a magazine page, given the electronics and batteries required to run even a tiny LCD screen, but it looks like the player will allow readers/viewers to use a set of 5 buttons to choose what content they’d like to see.

When Entertainment Weekly readers open the magazine to the ad pages, they will see a small screen flicker on and start to load a video. A brief segment featuring actors from “The Big Bang Theory” will explain how to use the player, while talking about features from Entertainment Weekly and the different video selections a reader can choose. By pressing one of five different buttons, readers can watch a video montage from “How I Met Your Mother,” a montage from “Two and a Half Men,” a humorous ad for Pepsi Max, a sneak preview of “Accidentally on Purpose” or a preview of new CBS dramas “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “The Good Wife” and “Three Rivers.”

Unfortunately the enhanced magazines will only be sent to EW subscribers in Los Angeles and New York, which means I will miss out yet again, but I’m sure outrageously overpriced copies will pop-up on eBay as soon as the issue is released.

Thanks Meg!

[ Advertising Age - CBS, Pepsi Create Video Ad to Run in Print ]

By Andrew Liszewski

This morning Sony announced a new type of lithium ion secondary battery that includes all the major improvements one expects to hear from a new battery including higher power output, extended lifespan and faster charge times. The batteries, which are designed to be used in larger rechargeable batteries like the kind used in power tools (hence the basic label) feature an olivine-type lithium iron phosphate used as the cathode material. As someone who never progressed past high school chemistry I’m not quite sure why that’s a better material to use, but according to Sony it results in a battery that has a power density of 1800W/kg with 20A continuous discharge, a 2,000 charge-discharge life cycle and the ability to recharge up to 99% of its capacity in a mere 30 minutes. And apparently the new batteries have been shipping since June of this year, so thanks for letting us know right away Sony!

[ PR - Sony Launches High-power, Long-life Lithium Ion Secondary Battery Using Olivine-type Lithium Iron Phosphate as the Cathode Material ] VIA [ Sony Insider ]

By Andrew Liszewski

At times RFID technology gets a bad rap, but that’s because it’s not always the best solution for every situation. (ie Passports etc.) However, here’s one example where the technology really shines. Developed by DeWalt, Tool Link is a $1,120 option for Ford trucks that uses RFID tags to keep track of your tools so that you don’t accidentally leave one behind at a job site.

The system comes with 50 tags that can be attached to tools and hardware from any manufacturer, an RFID scanner plus software that runs on the truck’s in-dash computer, as well as a couple of RFID antennas located in the truck’s bed. Once you’ve created a database of your hardware the system can keep track of what items were in the truck at the start of the day, and what items are missing before you leave the construction site at the end of the day, before they go missing permanently.

[ Gearlog - It's 5 O'Clock. Do You Know Where Your Tools Are? ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While the term ‘Exmor R’ is nothing more than a new PR catchphrase for Sony to toss around, the technology behind the sensors in their new Cybershot DSC-TX1 and DSC-WX1 is kind of interesting. Traditionally, compact P&S digital cameras are not known for their fantastic low-light performance. The smaller optics means there’s less light hitting the larger and larger sensors, which leads to noisy photos. I mean there’s a reason professional photographers will drop thousands of dollars on a gigantic ‘fast’ lens. But the ‘Exmor R’ technology supposedly results in a sensor with twice the light sensitivity of a traditional sensor since the various elements like wires and circuitry which usually hinder the photo-diodes from gathering light have been effectively moved out of the way.

And further improving the camera’s low-light performance are the hand-held twilight and anti-motion blur multishot modes which basically use exposure bracketing and in-camera HDRI techniques to automatically combine multiple shots with varying exposures to produce a final result with more detail and less noise. As for other specs, both cameras feature a 10.2 mega-pixel sensor and while the thinner TX-1 includes a 3-inch touch screen LCD on the back, the larger WX-1 benefits from a wider angle Sony G lens instead. $380 for the DSC-TX1 and $350 for the DSC-WX1 and both should be available come October.

[ PR - SONY DEBUTS WORLD’S FIRST DIGITAL STILL CAMERAS WITH BACK-ILLUMINATED “EXMOR R” CMOS SENSOR TECHNOLOGY ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

On the outside it may look like a non-descript industrial box, but Panasonic’s new ultra-accurate 3D profilometer has some pretty impressive technology to boast about on the inside. Thanks to a specially-developed new probe the machine can measure the surface of 3D objects, including microscopic pores at least 50µm in diameter, with an accuracy of ±0.15µm. When the object is being ‘profiled’ the probe touches it with a force of just 0.3mN, which is the equivalent to the amount of force caused by a mosquito landing, and the measurements are conducted at a blistering speed of 2mm per second.

Other advancements include improved anti-vibration performance thanks to Panasonic’s vibration analysis technology, since you don’t want the probe bouncing around when it’s doing detailed measurements, and an overall reduced footprint making the machine about 50% smaller than its predecessor. The new 3D profilometer will be available for order starting in October in Japan, and is expected to be quite popular in the automotive and electronics industries where high-precision components are essential.

[ PR - Panasonic 3D Profilometer ] VIA [ Tech-On! ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While flash cards with larger and larger capacities are inevitable, at one point I would have scoffed at a 64GB SD card as being completely unnecessary. But with more and more DSLRs using SD cards, getting bigger sensors and gaining the ability to capture hi-def video, a 64GB card not only makes sense, but is almost necessary. So congratulations to Toshiba who are the first to launch a 64GB SDXC card with 35MB per second write speeds and 60MB per second read speeds. The new card will also be available in 32GB and 16GB capacities (yawn!) and are set to go into production early next year.

[ PR - Toshiba to Launch World's First 64GB SDXC Card ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Andrew Liszewski

A new iPhone based payment system known as ‘Square’ is currently being alpha tested at the Self Edge store which recently opened in New York City. The payment system uses a custom app as well as a small credit card reader that fits in the headphone jack of an iPhone or iPod Touch. The card’s swipe data is transferred to the app where the payment is processed, complete with a digital signature confirmation. Besides keeping the whole process paperless thanks to email-friendly digital receipts, the Square system even allows someone like a hot dog vendor on the street to process credit card payments as long as they have a wireless data connection.

[ Cool Hunting - Square iPhone Payment System ]

By David Ponce

Most photographers will tell you: regular camera flashes are horrible. They tend to reflect off people’s skin amd create unwanted white spots, they give you red eyes in some pictures and they also blind you. NYU researchers have developed a way around this by creating a flash that uses light that is outside the visible spectrum, thus invisible to us.

It works like this: first the camera takes a picture with IR and UV light which produces a monochrome image. In quick succession a second image is taken without any flash, using only ambient lighting. Typically this will result in a dim, noisy, grainy image. The magic happens when the software combines both images using the first monochrome picture as a reference point to de-noise the image with natural colors. Once combined, the result is nearly indistinguishable from a long-exposure shot.

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