A new small-factor propulsion system is being developed by the Oklahoma State researchers for the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The propulsion system is going to be used in unmanned aircraft by infantrymen to inspect hostile areas and for surveillance, if successful.
The aircraft powered by the revolutionary propulsion system will be even smaller than 6-inches, providing a useful upgrade to the UAV equipment currently soldiers use.
An associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Jamey Jacob, stated “We are still too early in the development process to determine to …

Panasonic has announced a great new digital camera, with very good specifications. The Lumix LS80 features a 8.1 megapixel resolution CCD, with a 3x optical zoom, MEGA O.I.S. image stabilizer, SDHC memory card support, ISO up to 1600, 16:9 recording, 2.5-inch LCD display modes and is quite small. The camera will come in pink, silver and black, but yet we don’t know anything about release date and pricing.

Buffalo has announced it’s latest options for storage, called the QSIBSU2 HD / R, composed of four drives in RAID 0, that feature USB, FireWire 400 / 800, eSATA and TurboUSB functionality. The 1TB drive will ship at the end of this month and the 2TB one will get released at the end of February. The 1TB model will be priced at $695, while the 2TB one will cost you $995.

Australian CSIRO has developed a battery for hybrid cars, that has very good specifications and good emission. The new battery is called the UltraBattery and is supposed to be 70% less expensive than the current Ni-MH batteries used in hybrid cars. With a 4 times longer life cycle and 50% more  powerful than the current batteries, it already worked for 100,000 miles and still hasn’t died, so it’s definitely an increase in lifetime.
David Lamb stated that “The UltraBattery is a leap forward for low emission transport and uptake of HEVs,” …

Engineers from the University of Washington have designed some contact lens with imprinted electronic circuits and lights to help vision-impaired people, for an alternative way to surf the web or holographic driving control. Babak Parviz, a professor from the University of Washington stated that they’ve only made a small step to their goal, but it seems very promising, so they should manage to reach their goal.
Their technology will definitely have great use in the future and not only for contact lenses. If they use it in windshields drivers and pilots …

Fujitsu has just announced an upgrade to the Lifebook P1610 UMPC that’s even lighter than MacBook Air. The P1620 features a 1.2Ghz U7600 Core 2 Duo ULV processor, with 100 GB of disk space, up to 2GB of RAM. The other specs remained the same: 32GB SSD option for $299, a 3-cell battery or a 6-cell one for an extra $45, a 1,280×768 8.9-inch display and it comes with XP Tablet PC, but you can also choose Vista for the same price.
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Another desktop has joined the sub-$200 battle, being released by Mirus. I’m sure you don’t have high expectations, but this one seems to use grandma’s decade components, that won’t let you do much before freezing.
The laptop is priced at $199 after a mail-in rebate and it features a 1.6Ghz Intel Celeron 420 CPU, 80Gb HDD, 1GB of RAM, a 56k modem, a CD-RW drive, a 15-in-1 memory card reader, an Ethernet port and it also comes with a keyboard, mouse and a pack of speakers.
If you don’t aim higher, you …

Samsung has signed a partnership with HydroGen, an US-based company that produces phosphoric acid fuel cell ( PAFC ) power plants. The Master Cooperation Agreement’s terms state that Samsung will be HydroGen’s power plants exclusive distributor in Asia, Middle East and also other regions.
HydroGen has also agreed to design a multi-megawatt PAFC plant to operate on natural gas within 6 months. If they come to a success and gain Samsung’s satisfaction they will also sign an agreement to sell natural gas fueled multi-megawatt PAFC power plants.
Also Samsung will purchase and …

Dell has released a new 24-inch monitor, with good performances, like the 1,900×1,200 resolution, 400cd/m2 brightness, 102% color gamut, 178-degree viewing angle, 1,300:1 contrast ratio and a response time of 6ms. Yet it’s performances aren’t extreme, but it has a vast variety of jacks, like the 2x DVI, DisplayPort, Composite, HDMI, VGA, S-Video, Component, 2x USB downstream, one USB upstream. The 2408WFP already available to buy for the price of $748.
via Engadget

A Brazilian design, called Marcos Breder, has designed a good-looking flash drive, domino-shaped. The flash drives represent halves of dominoes and can be inserted one in each other, but that’s not all. They have dots on them, that each represent a giga of space loaded on the drive. The drives are quite practical and also funny, but we don’t know anything yet of release date or pricing, unfortunately.
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NEC has unveiled at MacWorld 2008 a new 30-inch wide-screen display for professionals. It’s especially designed for photography, CAD/CAM industries, graphic design, print production and more, having great performances.
The MultiSync LCD3090WQXi has a 4-megapixel resolution ( 2,560×1,600 ), a wide gamut and provides premium color performance. Also it includes 12-bits and sports LUT ( internal look-up cable ), High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection ( HDCP ), supported through the DVI-D connector.
It has a lot of features, like the ColorComp, X-Light™ Pro, AmbiBright, Black Level Adjustement, Digital CableComp, Multi-Directional Controls, Eco-Mode, …

For those that still prefer disposable batteries, Panasonic has developed the Evolta lineup, that has a lifetime 1.3 to 2 times longer than the existing alkaline batteries. Actually it’s quite good, but less favorable to use than a rechargeable battery.
Panasonic claims that the Evolta are the longest lasting AA batteries in the world and they will be 15% more expensive than usual batteries. We should see them on shelves on April 26th.
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With MacBook Air at MacWorld, Apple released more informations about the notebook. It features a single-link micro-DVI out so it can support 24-inch monitor, not 30-inch, and still there is no DisplayLink adapter. The Remote Disk comes in the DVD install package, it has a MagSage connector 90-degrees angled but you can use the MBA 45w adapter and there comes another problem which consists in the fact that MBA requires specific hardware to work.For $1000 you can have the 64GB SSD. If you are interested in the sound you …

A researcher named Joseph Ashwood inspired from the multicore processors to begin working on the multicore memory, that he sees in stores in the next few years. He began designing the multicore memory and has been reviewed by a team from Carnegie Mellon.
If his plans will actually work, his design will allow memory to get bigger and also faster, because his planning to organize data in a new way, across individual memory cells. He states that doubling the size will also double the memory speed, with a ratio of 1:1 …

Good news for the passengers of Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA. Later this year, they will be allowed to use mobile phones and wireless Internet during their flights. These services will be offered by a new company named Call Norwegian AS. We think this is just a way to attract more customers and will make flights more fun for those who have aircraft-sickness.
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