SOLAR POT - Solar Battery Charger

The influence that a dry cell has on the environment and the human body is serious. Dry cells, produced for convenience, is harmful to us and has a bad influence. By using a green environment energy, this design offers a way to use solar energy to charge batteries.

Plants get nutritive elements from the sun. Solar Pot charges batteries through this same solar energy: It recycles batteries by use of natural energy.

PS4 Coming: Playstation 3 Might Be Replaced Before the Previously Stated 10 Year Mark

Sony's always said the PS3 would be their gaming platform for a decade, but SCEE (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) boss David Reeves said he doesn't know if it'll go 8, 9 or 10 years. Not sure this matters, those dates being so far out, but several things come to mind.

First off, the PS2 is still going strong after the PS3 went on sale, to mostly mainstream buyers and the existing base of gamers there who continue to buy PS2 games. So this isn't a dead stop date by any means. Secondly, it means PS4 could be here sooner than we expect, even if David Reeves says "it's not on the horizon". By years. Because Sony's mantra was previously that the PS3 was a "10-year console".

It is possible that the point of this "8, 9 or 10 year" statement is to soften up the public for the possibility that the PS4 will come sooner rather than later.

Google Maps Hack Allows You to Nuke Any City In One Click

Created by CarlosLabs, the Ground Zero Google Maps hack shows you the blast radius of different nuclear weapons, from Little Boy—the 15-kiloton uranium bomb that obliterated Hiroshima—and Fat Man—its 21-kiloton plutonium counterpart that did the same with Nagasaki—to the Tsar Bomba, the 50 megaton beast produced by the Soviet Union in the 60s.

Just search for your favorite or most hated city, select your weapon—or asteroid—click "Nuke It!" and see the reach of the destruction.

The Glow Mirror Creates Instant Halo Effect

You've always felt special, important to humanity. But when you look in the mirror, reality sets in. You're not even ugly, you're just mundane. The Glow Mirror will fix that.

Looking past the creepy android mockup for a moment, the Glow Mirror is actually a pretty interesting product. Layered with photo luminescent material, the mirror illuminates, allowing you to better see yourself at night. Though we prefer the secondary function of looking perpetually brighter than the rest of the world, supported by a faint Saiyan-esque aura.

[Source ]

ASUS gets official with P835 WVGA smartphone

The company has just introduced its newest Windows Mobile 6.1 (boo...) smartphone, the P835. Without a doubt, the two standout features here are the 3.5-inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen and support for HSUPA 7.2Mbps downloads. The handset comes loaded with Opera Mobile for web surfing, a trackball, the company's new and improved Glide user interface, a battery good for six to seven hours of talking, a 528MHz Qualcomm 7201A processor, 4GB of internal storage, a microSDHC card slot, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, USB 2.0 connectivity, aGPS and quad-band GSM compatibility. You'll also find a 5 megapixel AutoFocus camera and video recording, and beautifully enough, the phone can double as a WiFi access point to share its blazing fast connection over WiFi with up to ten devices.


[Source ]

Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate Next Week

Microsoft is broadening the pool of testers getting the near-final Release Candidate (RC) bits of Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows Server 2008 SP2.

On February 25, Microsoft began providing subscribers to its TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) services with access to the SP2 RC bits. Interested subscribers can get the SP2 RC bits from the appropriate TechNet and MSDN download sites.Next week, the public will get the SP2 RC bits, Microsoft officials said.

[Source ]

Massive Installation Utilizes 41,000 LEDs

Multiverse, a massive installation by American artist Leo Villareal features approximately 41,000 LED nodes that run through a 200-foot-long tunnel in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.. As passerbyers move between the East and West buildings on an airport style people mover, the zillions of lights flickr on and off over head creating rhythmic patterns and abstract configurations.  The custom designed software also has an element of chance built into it, so it’s unlikely that anyone will see the same routine twice.  The project is Villareal’s largest and most ambitious work to date and will be on display through 2009.


[Source ]

Samsung Memoir

Is the world ready for consumer-class 8 megapixel cameraphones? That's a loaded question, but one way or another, T-Mobile's about to find out now that its SGH-T929 Memoir from Samsung is in the marketplace. With a full touchscreen and support for that elusive 1700MHz HSDPA, the handset packs some serious heat at the top end of the featurephone heap, and we've now had a chance to put it through its paces. 

[Source]

Urban Personal Transporter from CHANEL

CHANEL has given a vision of more glamorous shopping experience to the enthusiasts with its Urban Personal Transporter design. This segway is very much capable of giving more fun than riding a bike with its crazy roller blade look. The rich rider can run at a speed of around 20kph in the riders leaning direction. Adapting the famous CHANEL 2.55, everyone can retain the attraction of the surrounding crowd and will surely enjoy their flabbergasted look.

Windows 3.1 running on Nokia N95

In what can only be called "totally frakking awesome", someone installed Microsoft Windows 3.1 on a Nokia N95. By using DOSBox, Polish developer Marcin-PRV was able to install the ageing operating system on the Symbian-powered smartphone, allowing both operating systems to run side-by-side.


[Source]

Presenting Kindle 2

A cool Reader from Amazon

• The unit is 8″ x 5.3″ x 0.36″ and weighs about 10 ounces - 25 percent thinner than iPhone (wow, even Amazon is jumping on the iPhone-killer bandwagon)
• 6″ diagonal E-Ink electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 16-level gray scale (original Kindle was only four shades)
• Battery life has been improved by 25 percent - Amazon claims two weeks on a single charge
• 2GB of internal storage - 700 percent more than the original Kindle, holds over 1,500 books
• Page turning is now 20 percent faster
• Pricing is exactly in line with last week’s leak: $359, same as the first Kindle model
• The release date was no surprise either: Ships February 24th

Bezos & Co did have a few tricks up their sleeves - there had to be something unexpected to announce we imagine. In a very savvy move, Amazon had Stephen King write a story (involving a Kindle, err) and will release the story as a Kindle-only exclusive. King’s publisher stated the story may become available in physical form down the road a bit but for the time being, die hard King fans will need to snag a Kindle in order to keep claiming they’ve read every one of his six trillion published works.

Beyond that, the new Kindle will be able to automatically download magazines and newspapers, it will sync your content between devices and with a new feature called Read-to-Me it’ll even read content to you in a synth voice (great feature for the blind). The Kindle 2 is currently available for pre-order on the site and original Kindle owners get priority if they order before midnight tonight. Hit the read link for the Kindle 2 product page on Amazon.com, complete with a video.

Via Amazon 

HTC Magic is official

Vodafone just scooped planet Earth with the first touchscreen-only Android phone: HTC's Magic. All the specs look to line up with what was rumoured, with a 3.2-inch QVGA screen front and center (that resolution might be a typo, HVGA seems more likely), HDSPA, GPS, 3.2 megapixel camera (no flash), and a G1-style trackball. 

Details on pricing and availability will be unveiled for local Vodafone markets as they see fit, but pricing in Spain will be from 99 to 199 Euro, depending on contract. Initial markets to nab the phone will be UK (due in April), Spain, Germany, France and Italy, with more countries to follow, and the phone will be a timed exclusive with Vodafone. Crazily enough, the phone has a proprietary headphone jack, proving once and for all that HTC doesn't like you, but at least this one will ship with a touchscreen keyboard out of the gate -- it's running Cupcake.

• Processor: Qualcomm MSM7201a, 528MHz.
• Memory: 512MB ROM, 192MB RAM.
• Dimensions: 4.45 x 2.17 x 0.45-inches.
• Weight: 4.18 ounces with battery.
• Network: HSPA/WCDMA 900 / 2100MHz (no love for the States) with 2Mbps up, 7.2Mbps down; quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900MHz.
• Display: 3.2-inch TFT-LCD HVGA 480x320
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, WiFi, mini USB, and GPS
• Input: Trackball with Enter button, Capacitive touchscreen with on-screen keyboard (both portrait and landscape)

Via Engadget 

Sony Ericsson Premiere 3 Walkman Phone by KDDI

The cell phone market over the years has turned out to be a segment with the least shelf life, thereby a constant process for manufacturers to come up with new models. Today cell phone is not just an instrument to make and receive calls but far beyond that. The new walkman phone Premiere 3 by KDDI for Sony Ericsson, slated for spring release is a powerhouse so to say. It features a 3″ VGA screen, auto focus camera, and a memory of 2GB and weighing a meager 113gms, and quite compact in size. The colors are quite vibrant and with video in demand feature and also remote control for walkman, it sure is a model to look out for. There’s no info on pricing yet.

LG's GD900 - the world’s first transparent design phone

Most of its "advanced features" are being kept under wraps for the time being, but LG is showing off its strikingly-designed 13.4mm-thick GD900 this week with 7.2Mbps HSDPA in preparation for a launch later in the year. By and large, the design DNA here doesn't break rank with LG's sliders of the past year or two save for one very important exception: it features the world's first transparent keypad that softly glows when open -- and we've got to admit, this might be one of those rare instances where we're digging sheer beauty over functionality or usability. The company has also designed a dedicated Bluetooth headset to go along with its latest work of art -- but unfortunately, this image is about as close as you'll get to any of it until the planned second-half retail availability.

How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook

There are a lot of netbooks on which you can install and run OS X, but if you're mindful of the handy comparison chart those lads at Boing Boing Gadgets have compiled, you'll know that the Mini 9 is about as ideal a platform as you'll find for a Hackintosh ultraportable: Everything from wi-fi, sound and the function keys down to the optional integrated mobile broadband card and the SD card reader are supported and work as they should. No hardware compromises at all. It's awesome.

Generally, there are two ways to approach a Hackintosh install: Using a "slipstreamed" OS X installer image that's been modified to install on non-Apple hardware, or using a $129 factory-fresh retail OS X install disk in tandem with a special bootloader that does the necessary tweaking to let the install happen. The former can be easy enough, but it's pretty much illegal since it contains a pirated OS X install disk, and on top of that you'll run into all kinds of problems should you ever want to upgrade your OS or software via Software Update.

By using a retail OS X disk, you stay mostly out of pirate waters, and ensure that once everything's up and running, you'll be as close as is possible to having an actual Mac. Here we're doing that, using a method referred to as the "Type11" install, cooked up by a fellow of the same handle and his colleagues over on the MyDellMini forums, a fantastic resource.

Even though we're using a standard retail-purchased copy of OS X, the disclaimer: Apple does not like Hackintoshing. It violates the OS X EULA, and probably won't make the Dell folks too happy either, should you need to return your hacked Mini 9 for service. So, as always, proceed at your own risk.

On a personal note let me tell you, it's worth it. The Mini 9 is a beautiful OS X machine. So let's get started.

What You'll Need
• Dell Mini 9 With 16GB SSD or higher (8GB SSDs will techincally work, but it will take some fiddling not covered by this guide)
• Retail copy of OS X 10.5.x (NOT an OEM copy that comes with a new Mac)
• A USB flash drive 8GB or higher
• An external USB DVD drive
• The "Type11" Bootloader: DellMiniBoot123v8.01.iso.zip (download link in this forum post)
• Blank CD to burn bootloader image (I actually used version 8.0 of Type11 on my CD-if your boot process with 8.01 is different than what's spelled out in this guide, you can download 8.0 here. Both should work.)
• Windows PC for preparing the flash drive (if DVD drive works fine, this is optional)

Preparing Your Boot Loader
The easiest way to use both the Type11 bootloader (burned to a bootable CD) and your OS X install DVD is via the external USB DVD drive. The catch is, some drives are mysteriously not compatible with installing OS X on the Mini 9. Mine was one of those drives—the bootloader CD would work without a hitch, but it would choke on the OS X install disk every time. Thankfully, it's also possible to run both the bootloader and the OS X install disk off of a USB flash drive. I'm going to spell out my method here, which actually included both approaches, but try an external DVD drive first, and if yours is compatible, your life will be a little easier than mine was. On the other hand, if you don't have an external drive, you can give the USB flash drive method a shot.

The general approach here it to boot from the Type11 bootloader, which allows you install, run and update OS X; once you're up to 10.5.6, you can install a suite of Mini 9 specific drivers so you don't have to rely on the bootloader anymore.

1. Unzip the DellMiniBoot123v8.01.iso and burn it to a CD with Disk Utility or a similar Windows tool (don't just drag the ISO file to a disk). Pop that disk into your external DVD drive, connect it to your Mini 9 and power it on, then press 0 (zero) at startup to bring up the list of bootable devices.

2. Choose CD/DVD from the list, which will bring you into the bootloader. Choose the first option, "Install Retail OS X 10.5" which will bring you to a command prompt that says "boot:"

3. Take out the bootloader disk and pop in your retail OS X install DVD, keeping the PC running. (You can power your external drive off and then on again to make sure everything's kosher.) Press Escape at the boot: prompt to bring up the drive options. The Type11 installer uses hex codes to choose which device you're booting from, which you can assign at any time from the boot prompt by pressing escape: enter "9f" for the external DVD drive or "80" for the primary internal SSD. Here we're booting from the external CD drive, so press escape, Type "9f" then press enter.

4. At this point, the OS X installer will either load or it won't. If it does, great. You can skip to step 12. If not, you'll need to do what I did, and transfer everything to a USB flash drive to install that way.

Preparing a USB Stick Instead Of/In Addition To a Boot CD
This is based on a tutorial found on the MyDellMini forums by "bmaltais"—bigup to him.

5. Open up Disk Utility and partition your USB drive (8GB or larger) into two partitions: one 200MB FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition named "TYPE11" and one with the remainder of the free space formated as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) called OSXDVD.

6. Move to a Windows PC (I know, I know), plug in your USB stick and download Syslinux-this is a utility that will make the FAT32 partition of your USB stick bootable. With the Windows Command Prompt, cd over to the "win32" subdirectory of the Syslinux directory you downloaded and type the following, where "F:" is the drive letter for the TYPE11 partition on your USB stick:

syslinux -ma F:

You won't get any confirmation, but if you receive no error messages, you're good: This copies a single file named ldlinux.sys (invisible in Windows) to the USB drive to make it bootable. Pop it out and go back to your Mac if that's what you're using.

7. Now, unzip the Type11 ISO (instead of burning it to a disk) and copy the whole directory structure to the TYPE11 partition. Do NOT overwrite the "ldlinux.sys" when it asks—you want to keep the one you copied over with Syslinux.

8. To fill up the other partition, insert your OS X install DVD and, in Disk Utility, select it and choose "New Image." Save it to the OSXDVD partition of your USB drive as "live.dmg" with "compressed" as the type and encryption set to "none." This'll take about a half hour to rip the DVD to an image, which should weigh in at around 6.4 GB give or take.

9. After that's done, go to Terminal and copy your mach kernel file to the OSXDVD partition by typing this:

sudo cp /mach_kernel /Volumes/OSXDVD

10. And finally, download this zip file, uncompress it and copy the System and Library folders inside to your OSXDVD partition. This is the last bit of magic needed to make your Mini 9 think it's working with an actual OS X install DVD.

11. On your Mini 9, restart it and enter the BIOS setup by pressing "2"—and make sure legacy support for USB devices is enabled. Now, reboot and select the boot options list by tapping 0 at startup and choose USB Storage. Select the OSXDVD partition to boot from and press Enter. This should load up the familiar Apple and the OS X installer window.

Install OS X
While you're installing and doing initial configuration of OS X, everything will be all warped to 800x600 rather than your Mini's native 1024x600 res. Don't worry, this will be fixed soon enough.

12. The first thing you need to do is format your SSD. Bring up Disk Utility in the installer select it at the highest level possible. Go to "Partition" and make it a single Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) partition. Before hitting Apply, go to Options and select GUID Partition Table. Then hit apply.

13. Now, go back to the Installer, and install OS X to the SSD you just partitioned. You will definitely want to choose to customize your install to save SSD space—I would ditch all the printer drivers and language packs you don't need to save space. If you install with the default options though, don't worry—all can be removed later. The install will take about an hour, so go fix yourself a drink. You may come back to an Install Error message at the very end (I didn't), but if you do, don't worry. It's normal.

14. Once OS X is installed, it's still not ready for use right off the drive. On your first reboot, make sure you boot back into the Type11 bootloader on your CD or flash drive, as your new OS X partition is still not bootable without it.

This is, however, where a bit of weirdness set in for me. The Type11 partition on my USB disk would NOT recognize my fresh OS X install on the Mini 9 SSD. It just would not boot it. The Type11 boot CD I had made (with version 8.0 of Type11) DID recognize it, however, and booted it just fine. So bear that in mind here—even if you weren't using an external drive before, you still might need one.

15. So now you boot back into the Type11 CD and choose option 1 ("Install Retail OS X 10.5") again, even though you're not installing. This takes you back to the boot prompt. This time, hit Escape, and type the code "80" for your SSD (as opposed to "9f" for the external DVD). Press enter, and then back at the "boot:" prompt, type "-f" with no quotes before hitting enter again to boot. This will load all of OS X's kernel extensions (.kexts) to make sure wi-fi and everything works. OS X should boot, and you'll go through the typical OS X setup process. Notice the webcam and—hopefully—networking are already working!

ONE MORE NOTE: If networking isn't working, don't panic. On my first boot from the SSD, wi-fi didn't work. But after a restart and another boot from the bootloader CD (with the "-f" option) it worked fine. Throughout this process, if anything is screwy, before you panic and start Googling new strategems, simply re-do the last step that failed—it's often that easy.

Free Up Space and Update OS X to 10.5.6
Now that you've booted from the fresh install on the SSD, it's time to update to 10.5.6 (if necessary). After a default install, I only had a gig and change left on my 16GB SSD, so I had to dump some programs I wouldn't need as well as all the printer drivers found at /Library/Printers. There is an app called Monolingual which can also help clear some space by removing unwanted language files and stripping out all legacy PPC code from your universal binaries.

16. Once you've cleared up enough space (if necessary, you'll need around 6GB), go to Software Update and install the 10.5.6 update. This will take a long-ass time too (the SSD, strangely enough, seems to actually be slower on tasks that take tons of reads and writes).

17. After it's done, restart, and boot into the Type11 bootloader one last time. This time you don't have to use the "-f" flag. Once you're booted, go to the DellMini9Utils folder on your Type11 CD or flash drive and run the DellEFI installer. This will load all of the Mini 9 .kexts and drivers as well as a special bootloader to boot your SSD install. Choose the easy install option and just let it do its magic.

18. After it's done, you'll be asked to reboot one final time. You won't need to boot from the Type11 CD this time; you should boot straight off of your SSD like normal, and enter upon your fresh new OS X desktop, now in gloriously correct 1024x600 resolution. Awesome!

Configs, Tweaks and Fun Stuff
You'll notice right away that OS X runs fantastically on the Mini 9. I was really stunned, and you probably will be too. Here are some things to make it even better:

• Follow this tutorial to get your mobile broadband working if your Mini 9 has it. Network preferences should recognize it out of the box.
• If you're especially OCD, you can run the "AboutThisMac.pkg" inside the Type11 utilities folder to change "Unknown Processor" in the About This Mac window to the correct 1.6GHz Atom designation.
• This is a neat trick for fooling pesky oversized windows into shrinking themselves for your small screen.
• I haven't had luck with this, but you can apparently enable some multitouch scrolling action on the Dell's Synaptics touchpad by following these instructions.

Conclusion
So congrats, now you have a 100% functional OS X netbook. I've been using mine for a few days now, and it's quite the machine for basic netbook activities-surfing, IM, email. It connects to my shared AirPort disk and streams my video collection (even high-def files) perfectly, and also backs up wirelessly over Time Machine. The 9-inch screen will make even your lower-res full-screen video look fantastic—YouTube or Hulu, QuickTime trailers and video rips are a pleasure to watch. Watching an episode of something in bed without lugging my 15-incher in with me is really nice.

In addition, I think I may have found the perfect toilet computer. No one wants to fight Windows on the throne. And of course it's amazing for traveling. I'm about to take a trip to Cairo, and I'll be bringing this little guy without a doubt.

Resources:

• DellMyMini Forums: Mac OS X
• DellMyMini Forums: OS X: FAQs and How Tos
• OSX86 Wiki Guide

Sony Japan testing 'new game machine'

For months, rumors have been circulating about either a redesign or a successor to Sony's PSP handheld. This week, the flames of speculation were further fanned by a job listing on the official Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Web site for an "evaluator/assessor" for a "new game machine." According to a GameSpot translation by a fluent Japanese speaker, the new machine is "part of the PlayStation or PSP series and their peripherals."

The job listing goes on to state that, if accepted, evaluator/assessor applicants will "be part of an advisory staff that will play PlayStation series software on this new machine and check its functionality. They will also be able to "test game machines not yet released or new functionality of PS3 peripherals before they are released." (Emphasis added.)

So what exactly is this new "game machine"? Is it a new PSP, as some suspect, or simply some sort of new peripheral for the PSP or PS3? When contacted by GameSpot, Sony Computer Entertainment reps said they were working on a response, which had not been issued as of press time.

If the device in question is a new model of the existing PSP platform, it would be the fourth iteration and third redesign of the handheld since its Western release in 2005. The first revamp, the PSP-2000, was unveiled at E3 2007 and offered a slimmer chassis and video-output support. The second revision, the PSP-3000 that launched last October, offered a brighter LCD screen, built-in microphone for use with Skype, and interlaced video output

Coral-200-Solar: World's First Solar-Powered Mobile Phone

Friday, February 20, 2009:  Digicel Group has launched what it claims to be the the world's first low-cost solar-powered mobile phone -- Coral-200-Solar. The Coral-200-Solar, manufactured by ZTE, uses proprietary technology from Dutch-based Intivation. The concept of linking charger devices and a phone at the point of sales has been a proven success, says the company. Now, with the launch of the Coral-200-Solar with an integrated solar charger built into the phone, Digicel takes the initiative to an even higher level.