Red faced Sony Vaio TT90 caught on video!

Sony Vaio TT on video, this is the Burgundy Red colour
(it's a lot brighter than I would call Burgundy!)

Cool colour non-the-less, expect some more colours on video and a mini-review from us soon!

PC can be purchased now from :
Conics.Net prices start at about $2100 USD, add a dual RAID 0 SSD, Blu-Ray burner, max RAM etc and you can pay upto approx $5000 USD

Raon Digital Everun Note cheap-ass model soon!

Raon Digital recently announced a cheaper version will be available in November : features a 16GB SSD (MLC) and a SEMPRON CPU running at 1.2GHz .

All othere features are same as the original Everun Note released in September.

Reseller Conics.Net will have stock of the cheaper model in November. (the Turion dual core model is shipping now)

I love the smell of VOMIT in the evening!

Last train home is always full of surprises, tonight a young guy stumbled on to the train and slummed down next to the door, a few minutes later he vomited against the door and all over himself... It's amazing how fast a busy commuter train can clear out when there's an attack of this kind :)

CEATEC 2008: More video of the DoCoMo’s separate Mobile phone.

More video’s of the DoCoMo Separate Mobile phone or “Separate Keitai” concept phone.
More at Tech-On

CEATEC 2008: NTT DoCoMo Unveils Handset with Projector built in.

NTT DoCoMo demoed a prototype mobile phone at CEATEC JAPAN 2008 that can be used as a projector. Based on an existing handset, DoCoMo integrated an ultra-small projector into the base so the mobile phone is too fat to be practical.
The projector uses red, green and blue LEDs for the light source and is equipped with the Pico’s DPL chipset / DMD (digital micromirror device) downsized for mobile use.
As you can imagine the projector is not a powerhouse with a luminance of only 7.5lm and pixel count of 480 × 320 producing a 20-inch image from a distance of about 80cm. The power consumption is about 3W yielding only 15 to 20 minutes with the prototype. DoCoMo says a commercialized version is at least 3 years away with an aim of having at least 100 minutes run time on batteries.
More at the Nikkei

Gamers Rejoice! Kingston launches new DDR3 RAM just for gaming PCs!

Gamers Rejoice! Kingston launches new DDR3 RAM just for gaming PCs! Kingston’s latest RAM, dubbed HyperX, is advertised as the fastest DDR3 memory units made to date with a 2GHz speed and feature CL9-9-9-27 at 1.9 volts over the 2GB pair. On sale now in the USA’s Kingston website for $227 for 4GB (2GB modules).
Via Crunch Gear

WoW-PoW goes to the 2008 CEATEC Japan: DoCoMo latest concept Mobile Phone has 2 removable touch screens.

We had a chance to attend the 2008 CEATEC trade show in Makuhari Messe Japan. The items of biggest interest had to be DoCoMo’s 2 piece touch screen concept phones. There were 2 functioning models and we had a chance to play with both. The one in the video attracted the biggest buzz with 2 removable touch screens with one of screens changing from a standard keyboard to a QWARTY keyboard. We liked the clean and slick styling of the phones and how the screens stayed together with magnets allowing you to change the pones configuration from a clam shell to a tablet. The other phone which was more polished had a traditional keyboard base and a removable screens that allowed you to talk on the phone while also watching video or surfing the net. Both phones has all the expected goodies, like Bluetooth, Web Browser, and Media Player capabilities. DoCoMo is gauging the reaction of the shows patricians to see if they will further develop the phones.

Snowballs chance on Mars? Falling Snow on Mars spotted by Phoenix Lander

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft has discovered falling snow for the first time, scientists reported Monday.
A laser aboard the Phoenix recently detected snow falling from clouds more than two miles above its home in the northern arctic plains. The snow disappeared before reaching the ground. Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains in May on a three-month mission to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. One of its biggest discoveries so far is confirming the presence of ice on the planet.
More At CNN.com

Electrical Field Could Boost Gas Efficiency Up To 20% for Diesel cars

Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent.
According to Rongjia Tao, Chair of Temple's Physics Department, the small device consists of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector. With the use of a power supply from the vehicle's battery, the device creates an electric field that thins fuel, or reduces its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion than a standard fuel injector, he says.
Further improvements in the device could lead to even better mileage, he suggests, and cited engines powered by gasoline, biodiesel, and kerosene as having potential use of the device.
OMG! Are those Magic Miracle Mileage Magnets ads in the back of Popular Mechanics true???
Find out more here.

Can nanoscopic meadows drive electric cars forward?

Nanoscale meadows of grass and flowers could hold the key to increasing the amount of energy that can be stored in ultracapacitors, devices tipped to replace batteries in high-demand applications like electric cars.

Batteries are slow to recharge because they store energy chemically. By contrast, capacitors, which are common in electronics, are short-term stores of electrical energy that charge almost instantaneously but hold little energy.

Read more here

First Picture of likely planet around sun-like star

Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun.
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.

More at Science Daily

Breakthrough In Energy Storage: New Carbon Material can store large quantities electricity.

Breakthrough In Energy Storage: New Carbon Material can store large quantities electricity. Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called "graphene" as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power.
The researchers believe their breakthrough shows promise that graphene (a form of carbon) could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors, which are manufactured using an entirely different form of carbon.
More at Science Daily

'Smart Water' May Help Boost Production From Oil Wells By 60 Percen

Researchers in Norway report that injecting a special type of seawater called "smart water" into certain low-yield oil wells may help boost oil extraction by as much as 60 percent. The study could help meet rising energy demands and provide consumers with some financial relief at the gas pump in the future, the scientists suggest.  

Read more here

New bug ferments green fuel on the cheap

Genetically engineered bacteria could make cellulosic ethanol cheaper to manufacture, researchers report. The finding could unlock more energy from the waste products of farming and forestry.

Ethanol from cellulose, the kind of sugar in cornstalks and sawdust, is being promoted as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels, with the advantage that it does not use food crops such as corn as raw materials.

RAON Digital EVERUN Note Prices out

Raon Digital's latest design Everun Note has been priced and resellers are reporting delivery dates now.

Conics.Net reports price @ approx $889 USD.
(they ship the Raon to all countries)

Japanese Site, Sarutek.Com put their price at 99,800 yen.

Both sites are reporting delivery to be 19th Sept 2008

Stay tuned :-)

Most cows point north?

Most cows point north?
CNN has a video about a new study that says cows worldwide rest and graze in a north-south line.

Charge your mobile phone just by walking the dog… for 6 hours straight.

While not really intended for developed countries the start up M2E Power, based in Boise Idaho, announced that it will start selling a cell-phone charger next year that can convert every day movement into energy for cell phones. The micro-generator device is designed to convert regular motion, like walking the dog, grocery shopping etc into power with the charger said to be able to convert six hours of everyday movement into an hour of talk time. In the future, the company planes to embed its micro-generator with integrated battery storage system into the mobile phone itself. While not really suitable for developed nations with good electric infrastructure the motion-harvesting mobiles fill a real need in developing nations with inadequate power grids, off the grid adventurers, or most importantly the military.
More at Businessweek

Hydrogen-Producing Bacteria Provide Clean Energy

A new "green" technology developed cooperatively by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and North Carolina State University (NC State) could lead to production of hydrogen from nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
Read more here

Video Review of the Sony Z90 US; A Mobile Media Marvel!

Conics.net was foolish enough to lend us a Sony Z90 US 13.1” notebook computer for several days and here is our video review. This sucker Smokes! It honestly is the fastest laptop we have played with due to its Centrino 2 CPU. It came with the works, 2.8GHz CPU, 320GB HDD, 4GB DDR3 RAM, and Blue-Ray drive. (Correction, video says 7200RPM drive but it is really a 5400RPM) Not just fast, this thing can play any HD 1080p video without working up a sweat. In fact, we played 2 HD videos simultaneously with not a stutter or hiccup. If you need a Crysis graphics crunching laptop this is the one but it will cost yah as isn’t cheap. The top of the line VAIO Z90 goes for almost $4000 but what would you expect from a notebook more powerful than most high end desktops. Available at Conics.net.

Toshiba ArrayFort holds 432 terra bytes HDD

The AF7500 holds up to 432 SATA Hard Disks, has 16 port FibreChannel and up to 1.5Gbytes / sec through-put.

As you would expect there will be lines longer than the Apple 3G lineup when this puppy is released today in Japan for a cool 92,205,300 yen ($838,230 USD).

Would make a nice BitTorrent device!

from Nikkei (Japanese)