A British company has been working for a number of years constructing an e-paper like screen, based on polymer transistors, rather than silicone ones – this means that the transistors have the same characteristics as polymers, and are flexible: i.e. a bendable , light-weight plastic screen!

WANT!

linkie

If Apple aren’t actually going to launch that damn tablet, there sure is a LOT of hype going around the intarweb these days… a few links from 9to5mac below, all from the last couple of days. One notable bit of news that lends a lot of credibility, is that devs are being asked to prepare their apps so they can be demoed at the January event. I’m not really sceptical about the device itself – I think there’ll be plenty of cool things made, if you give them a platform with a new, great interface. We’ll see

Developers being asked to ready their apps for fullscreen use / january demo

“tablet event” in January, launch come March? Apple has rented a venue for an event

NY Times source: you’ll be surprised how you interact with this tablet

Product pimping time!

I feel a little weird writing about this because it’s just so geeky, but I seriously think this is one of the best gadgets I’ve EVER bought. It’s a 12 cm wide, discrete black box, with both HDMI and component/phono output that you can connect to your HD/SD tv .. and it’s capable of playing a variety of formats from USB storage. You ripped your DVD’s and put them in the attic? No problem, this thing will play VOB’s. It’ll also play MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, H264, MKV, and a lot of other stuff. Furthermore, it can play music and show photos from same USB storage.

All in all, it’s an incredibly well-functioning little unit. It plays anything you throw at it (anything I’ve tried, anyway), and the user interface is brilliantly simple: basically there are four icons: photos, music, movies, settings. Those four menu items contain what you would expect, and there is a small remote included with the unit, meaning you can lean back in your sofa and watch your holiday snaps.

The price? Roughly 600DKK. ‘Tis a good replacement for the Mac Mini I had stolen earlier this year.

I’m curious what this tablet business is going to become. From all the mockup videos and ‘real fake’ videos I’ve seen, it appears it’s going to largely become a platform for big business to advertise stuff. Case in point, that Sports Illustrated tablet demo that was knocking around earlier this month – but there have been others.

Looking at this, it seems so nice and responsive – but to be honest, it’s a little TOO perfect. You notice how there’s never any mistakes in the way the user interacts with the touch UI? Seems too good to be true, so it’s probably just a mockup. Anyway … I would welcome a lightweight book reader such as this, with a distribution system as easy and user friendly as iTunes, and a touch user interface as pleasant to use as that of the iPhone. I on the other hand wouldn’t welcome it if the tablet is as closed a platform as the iPhone is. Frankly, the closed-off nature and proprietary content delivery system is making me consider other smartphones, but for now I can’t think of one that delivers as the iPhone does.

Despite those misgivings, imagine all the cool games you could do with a larger (say maybe 12″) touch area. I imagine another thing that would crop up REAL fast is a piano application.. because obviously this phantom tablet Apple are supposedly probably actually making, will have an app store similar to the iPhone. There’s talk of a 70/30 revenue split for content suppliers, and presumably this same ratio will apply to application developers. Maybe one should take a look at this emerging market and join the throng of would-be gold-diggers? Then again, let’s see what we get come March 2010

A short talk where Scott Kim makes a couple of interesting points about the nature of puzzles, games, and toys.

Hehe.. 100 of each colour will be manufactured, at a price of 8500 british pounds each. HOT DAMN! I want one of those though,  not the limited edition, but a Leica in general… there’s just so much personality in there, I’m in love!!

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/16/leica-m7-edition-hermes-drops-this-december-at-a-price-you-cant/

I’m guessing this will most likely take most people by surprise… well it did me, anyway =) That sound can form geometric patterns just seems so logical and elegant, yet at the same time I would’ve never thought it possible. It’s extremely interesting to me that it seems there’s an abundance of coherent phenomena, similar patterns appearing in a lot of areas where you just wouldn’t expect them to. Ancient greek philosophers were the first to  discover (or at least claim) that maths are a universally true language of the universe, and somehow, I feel that cymatics connects to that ancient assertion in an interesting way.