Tech Gadgets Reviews

Tactical biomass refineries is just a fancy name to describe a device that turns trash into electricity. A ton of trash offers up to 20 hours of power which is more than enough to light up a small village. This sounds interesting, but will transporting these 4-ton behemoths to Iraq actually result in a larger carbon footprint in total?

The novel machines were built by defense contractors and Purdue University scientists as part of the Army’s push to reduce troops’ diesel fuel use in Iraq, where convoys are frequently targeted by insurgents. Nate Mosier, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering who is overseeing the work at Purdue, said the refineries are unique in their ability to burn multiple fuels at once. They’re also portable, designed to fit snugly into a standard shipping container. The trash-to-energy process begins when unfiltered garbage is fed into a chute, falling into a grinder that chews the trash into small pieces. Organic food waste heads to a bioreactor where an industrial fermenting process produces ethanol. In another chamber, plastic, cardboard and other trash items are heated to create low-grade propane or methane. Those gases and the ethanol are then combusted in the refinery’s modified diesel engine, which powers a 60-kilowatt generator.

AT&T has just rolled out the blackberry Pearl 8120 that comes with 802.11g WiFi connectivity, giving you yet another option to surf the Internet just in case that EDGE connection of yours starts to act up again. Unfortunately, this WiFi-enabled smartphone does not support automatically bridged VoIP calls. Other features include a better build quality, a 2 megapixel camera with video recording capability, and a supposedly less frustrating Web browsing experience. AT&T will probably offer the Pearl 8120 for $200 with a 2-year plan.

Posted Mar 13th 2008 4:43AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Robots

Finally, after a scourge of sissy, beer serving robots we meet our maker. Vstone’s Black Ox stands more than 7,000 feet tall and brings a Tokyo-sized lust for human meat sacks. Gigantor, you never had a chance. Ok, ok, he’s only a foot and a half from the floor but those 20 movable axis points and fierce fighting skills should deliver hours of entertaining torment for your pet, kids, or pet kids. Check the video after the break while we wait for an official price and release date.

[Via Impress]

Overview

If you have yet not bought a microwave or planning to buy a new one, then make the right choice of buying Videocon Solo ES1197P Microwave. Videocon, world’s leading home appliance and electronic goods manufacturer, has designed it with all the latest features. From 5 Micro Wave Power Levels to Insta Menu Drive, this microwave is incorporated with great features to provide you with a perfect cooking experience.

Features

• Express Cooking.
• 19 ltr Capacity.
• Defrost Setting.
• Mechanical Control Knobs.
• 35 Min Timer.
• Recessed Door.
• Digital Sensi Wave.

Sporting a brilliant White Color Cavity & Exterior, this microwave oven from Videocon offers you a quick and delicious cooking experience through its features like Digital Sensi Wave that spreads the heat uniformly inside the oven. Moreover, Videocon Solo ES1197P Microwave also sports a 4 Way Reflection. Having a capacity of 19 ltr and a 35 Min Timer, Videocon Solo ES1197P Microwave also features a Defrost setting to keep you at ease. The best thing is that it consumes only 1150 W of power for 35-minute duration.

Box content

The box comprises of Videocon Solo ES1197P Microwave, User’s Manual and a Recipe Booklet.

Price

Videocon Solo ES1197P Microwave is available at a price of Rs. 2990.

Source: Videocon

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Simkey Simcard Backup
This neat little gizmo not only backs-up your mobile SIM card, it also doubles as a micro PDA! Never worry about losing all your mobile contacts again - a gadget that gives you peace of mind.

You can have this for ?12.95

Indie musicians have a new shortcut to reach megastar status: Having their music picked up for an Apple commercial., “New Soul”, by Yael Naim, was featured in the ad for the macbook air. The song just debuted in the Billboard Hot 100 at number nine. Not bad for somebody nobody had heard of a few months ago.

In this regard, Apple is following in the footsteps of Levi’s. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the jeans company broke many new acts with its famous TV commercials. In the UK, having a song featured in a Levi’s spot pretty much guaranteed a number one hit. And Apple knows this. Famous for driving hard deals, the Cupertino company pays a lot less than usual for its music rights. According to Ad Age, Apple paid just $80,000 for Feist’s “1234″. The normal cost would be around $300,000.

It helps that Apple is a “cool” brand. Licensing music for a Mac ad is not seen as selling out to The Man. Can you imagine, say, the Beastie Boys allowing their music to be used in a Vista commercial? Neither can we.

Indie Act Seeks Backup Brand [Ad Age via TUAW]

There’s a small chance we might have another lithium-ion battery recall on our hands. This time the product affected is not a laptop. Instead, it’s the well known iPod nano. To be fair to Apple, a single incident involving an iPod nano in Japan is being investigated by the trade and economy ministry, according to an Associated Press article.

According to the report, it seems that an iPod nano shot sparks while charging. The ministry is categorizing the incident as a fire. That’s probably a fair categorization considering the chance that the sparks could have started a fire if the right combustibles were around. Luckily, nobody was injured in the incident.

If you consider that large numbers of iPod nanos have been sold, you have to be a little hesitant before you believe that Apple might have a full fledged crisis on its hands. After all, this could be a simple matter of one defective battery or an after-market battery being used in the ipod nano causing the issue. In the end, it’s another black eye for lithium-ion technology. It’s also a situation I am sure Apple will be quick to get to the bottom of before rumors begin running out of control about the iPod nano catching fire all over the place.

Read more from the Associated Press article.

O2 has rolled out a new Windows Mobile smartphone known as the Xda Atmos. Smartphones of similar calibre are pretty much in the same boat these days when it comes to specifications and form factor - you find the hidden QWERTY keyboard when the unit remains closed, revealing itself by sliding outwards. The Xda Atmos is actually the HTC S730 repackaged, and has also seen action in Japan as the X03HT courtesy of Softbank. Some of the features are :-

• Processor: Qualcomm MSM7200 400MHz
• Memory: 64MB RAM, 256MB flash memory
• Display: 2.4″ display with 320 x 240 resolution
• Cameras: 2 megapixel camera, VGA-resolution camera
• Wireless: WAN: HSDPA/UMTS (2100MHz), GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz)
• 802.11b/g connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo audio capabilities
• Other I/O: ExtUSB (11-pin mini-USB and audio jack in one)
• microSD memory card slot

Acer has just unveiled its brand new entertainment notebook known as the Gemstone Blue, and it can also be referred by its model number of 8920G. What can you expect from this brand new multimedia notebook? For starters, it will feature full high definition display support (that means 1,920 x 1,080 at the very least people), and an optional Blu-ray drive for you to enjoy the latest Hollywood movies in unprecedented clarity among others. The emergence of Acer’s Gemstone Blue underlines the commitment of the company to seriously challenge Dell and HP’s stranglehold on the high end mobile computer market.

Acer has dubbed its Aspire Gemstone 8920G the first of its “Blue” series, where the color naming convention hails from the notebook’s blue, black, and silver color scheme with interior and exterior lighting effects. What users will get from this 18.4″ notebook is a high definition LCD display with Intel’s Centrino-brand processors providing all the necessary computing horsepower within, complemented by Intel’s OM965 Express Chipset. Other features include integrated WiFi support, enough room to throw in up to a couple of 320GB hard drives, a standard DVD drive (as mentioned earlier, you can choose to replace this with an optional Blu-ray drive but that will definitely bump up the final price by a fair bit), and a choice between an Nvidia GeForce 9650M GS or 9500M GS graphics card.

According to Spooner , “Acer faces a particularly difficult task in doing so in the United States, where the Acer brand name has largely stood for low-cost brand. The company also faces stiff competition from HP and Dell, which have also been working to improve the cache of their respective PC product lines.” Acer hopes to break through this mental barrier with the Aspire Gemstone Blue which will ship from this month onwards, with prices starting from $900 and stopping at $1,700, depending on what you want to have inside.

Source: Information Week

You won’t find cheap plastic on any Bellperre tailor-made phones. And indeed, Bellperre has just launched a new range of phones made in luxe, sophisticated materials. Belleperre phones can be covered in any of the 200 leather colors in its palette.
Exquisite leathers are also available such as buffalo, shark, calf, and crocodile. Even the metal casings are customizable: from airplane parts to 18k rose gold and various others. These phones which can be further personalized through markings and engravings would be presented on March at the CEBIT 2008 and will be available by June in Europe.
[ Source ]