3D Camera with 12,616 Lenses

No, it’s not a get rich quick scheme by a company manufacturing lens cleaning tissues, but an idea for future camera technology from the brainy folk at Stanford University. A team led by Professor Abbas El Gamal are working on a camera with a multi-aperture image sensor. This is basically an image sensor with super-small pixels – several times smaller than the pixels on a regular camera. They are clustered together on the sensor chip in groups of 256 pixels, and each group has its own micro lens. It is like having a lot of cameras on a single chip; in effect the 3-megapixel chip the researchers are working on is equivalent to 12,616 separate cameras.

So far so good, but the really clever bit is that by selectively defocusing images captured by the cameras, the data can be processed to produce detailed 3D image maps of whatever it happens to be pointing at. Read More »

Noisy Word Alternative

You might think that Microsoft Word is the only word processor in town but as regular visitors will know, this is simply not the case and there are some excellent free alternatives, including AbiWord and Open Office Writer, and they’re both Word compatible.

Here’s another one, called Atlantis, and it’s free to try for up to 30 days and it can open, edit and save files in Word’s ‘doc’ format. Read More »

Don’t Watch This Space

Microsoft, Google. HP, Philips, Samsung and Intel are amongst the big names behind the White Space Coalition, which is looking at ways to provide high-speed wireless Internet access using the gaps between TV channels. The gaps, which are designed to stop channels clashing with one another, are essentially wasted space, but until recently it was thought that any attempt to use them would result in interference and broadcasters are naturally against the idea. Read More »

A Really Bright Idea

Californian company Luxim has developed a new ‘LIFI’ plasma light bulb. It’s not much bigger than a Tic-Tac, according to a report on CNET News, yet it gives off the same amount of light as a streetlamp. The bulb is driven by a RF generator, which creates a high frequency field around it that vaporises a mixture of gasses that changes to a plasma. The result is an intense light, available in a spectrum of colours. The bulbs are long lasting – up to five times longer than conventional lamps and they’re energy efficient too. Applications include street and stage lighting, video projectors, endoscopy and numerous industrial processes.

Sunny Side Up, Again

One day I will check my archives but I suspect that I have been writing about the imminent arrival of low cost, flexible photovoltaic solar cells for at least the past 20 years. The idea seems simple enough. Instead of making solar cells out of expensive and fragile silicon and glass and in the process using more energy than they’ll ever generate in their useful lives develop a chemical cocktail that turns light into electricity and coat or print it onto other materials.

Well, here’s another one, and I’m no longer holding my breath, but as usual it all sounds very promising. Konarka, the company behind the technology has come up with a flexible ‘Power Plastic’ film using inkjet printing techniques. Read More »

DIY Vinyl Video Game Cabinet Is Cute

The SOOPA is a little $30 vinyl arcade cabinet that you get to decorate yourself. “The 7 inch vinyl toy can be customized with paint, markers, pencils, ink and more. Packaged with each SOOPA vinyl toy are stickers that you can also use to design a screen, marquee, and wrapping cabinet art. Pay homage to your favorite arcade games or make up new ones.” The cabinet looks pretty much identical to this one, so you can get an idea of what it’s possible to create. I’m gonna get really creative and design the sweetest video game known to man. Read More »

IE8 Beta Now Available for Download

If you’ve just got used to Internet Explorer 7 you probably won’t want to know that the beta version of IE8 has now been publicly unleashed. One of the key features of Microsoft’s latest browser is crash recovery and if it throws a wobbly when it is restarted there’s an option to ‘restore last session. Other highlights include a new Favourites Bar, which is a bit like the old Links bar but as well as web page shortcuts it can also hold RSS links and a new facility WebSlices. This displays a thumbnail view of specially configured web pages. It depends on web developers creating the mini preview pages, and so far not many do, so don’t hold your breath on this one. Read More »

The Champs of Sex

Here come the results for the 2007-2008 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey. It was made on a pool of 26,000 people from 26 countries around the world, and the results may be surprising or not.

The list is topped by the Greeks, 87% of them having sex at least once a week, followed by the Brazilians, with 82%. Third on the list, with 80%, are the Russians. 60% of the Australians have sex weekly.

Only 55% of the British have sex at least once a week; the number is 53% for Americans and Nigerians, and 34% (!) for the Japanese. Read More »

Wild Sounds

Here’s a brilliant freeware audio recording and mixing program, called WildVoice Studio. Ostensibly it’s designed for making podcasts, but it’s far too good for such a narrow application. Of course you can use it to record your voice, through a microphone, but it will also record anything you can hear on your PC’s speakers, but here’s the really good bit. It comes with a library of almost 30 sound effects, everything from a fart to sawing wood, and you can mix in your own background sounds or music. Even if you’re not into podcasts this is still a great way to produce audio recordings, alert sounds for your computer, answering machine tapes, or just a easy way to make some silly noises…

Beemers on the Web

BMW look set to become the first vehicle manufacturer to offer in-car web access as an optional extra. It is using a system called ConnectedDrive, which relies on a GPRS cellphone connection to provide the driver and passengers with an Internet connection from a dashboard display and custom browser. Initially there will be restrictions, the driver and front seat passenger display will only work when the car is stationary, Read More »