Yill is a green rolling office with its own power
If you are the busy filed worker sort that needs to be able to work wherever you might be power is probably your biggest issue. Your computer and other gear need power to operate and many devices last only a few hours on a charge before you need to plug in.
A new cordless energy storage device has been unveiled by designer Werner Aisslinger called the yill. The yill looks sort of like a rolling round carry-on suitcase with a handle. The round outer edges act like wheels when the user pulls it along. Inside the device is no space for clothing, just space for batteries.
The yill can provide up to 300W of electricity using lithium titanium batteries. The batteries inside can be charged in a few ways. A solar panel on the yill can charge the batteries and they can be charged by plugging the device into a power outlet. At this point, the yill is a design concept and it will be shown off during Milan Design Week in April.
Via Designboom
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- CES 2008: Green Plug UPP
- Eton Scorpion green-power gadget launches
- Speaker + Chinese food takeout box = AON BOX speaker
- Green concept harvests free green power from wind and sun
- Kanguru goes green with the Eco Drive
Geekiest video game ever called PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew
If you were around in the early days of the video game, you will remember classics like Asteroids and others with blocky graphics and the iconic pewpew sound of lasers being fired. There are still a lot of video games that are made for fans of that old school style fare and a new one has turned up with the name PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew.
The name of the game might not roll off the tongue, but the game is interesting. You don’t get a controller as you expect to control the game play; you get a pair of microphones. One player has the mic that controls the thrust of the jetpack by blowing into the mic.
The other player controls the firing of the laser weapon by… wait for it… saying pewpewpew. The game is a left to right scrolling type in a 2D world with vectorized obstacles you have to shoot and fly over or under.
[vimeo 19687592]
Via Geekosystem
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- TN Games announces 3RD Space Trigger for consoles
- Def Jam Rapstar gets support for Kinect
- Diablo on the Gameboy – It almost happened
- University of Florida Launches StarCraft Course
- Rare Atari 2600 game Air Raid sells for $31K
Cheetah and Atlas are DARPA inspired robots
I like robots as much as the next geek, but some of them creep me out a bit. I blame it on Hector and Terminator scaring me as a kid. DARPA has some out there projects that often turn into some interesting finished items that may one day see the battlefield.
Boston Dynamics has announced that it won a DARPA contract to build a robot called Cheetah. The bot looks like the real animal it gets its name from, is faster than the fastest human, and has the agility to evade enemies. The Cheetah can zig zag as it runs and make tight turns as well as stop on a dime.
The company is working on another robot called Atlas that looks like Hector minus a head. As long as Atlas doesn’t develop a penchant for hot 70 starlets, we are all good. Atlas will be a walking bot that can walk over rough terrain, crawl if needed, and turn sideways to slip though narrow passages.
Via Wired
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- DARPA submersible aircraft is part plane, part submarine
- KAIST sells eight HUBO 2 robots to US and Singapore
- MIT team reach new heights at super-speed
- Innovation First selling ROBOTC programming kits for VEX robots
- Researchers Develop Algorithms That Let Robots Deceive Humans, Other Robots
ASUS Eee Pad MeMO fully detailed: 7-inch Honeycomb Flyer rival [Update: Video & Price]
CeBIT 2011 kicks off this week in Hanover, and already we’re seeing information trickling out. ASUS has quietly confirmed that the Eee Pad MeMO launched at CES 2011 back in January will indeed debut running Android 3.0 Honeycomb; jkkmobile spotted the news on the MeMO’s full spec list, confirming a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor, microHDMI port and quadband HSPA+ connectivity.
That’s on top of WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and microUSB (with Host support for plugging in peripherals), a 3.5mm headphone socket and microSDHC slot. There’s also GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash on the back, and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front, while sensors include a gyroscope, g-sensor, light, proximity and digital compass.
Storage is up to 64GB and RAM is 1GB, and the 7-inch display runs at 1024 x 600 and responds to capacitive finger control together with ASUS’ included stylus. A full charge is apparently good for up to 8hrs of video playback, and the MeMO can supposedly handle 1080p HD. No word on pricing at this stage, but if ASUS can get that right then this might make for some impressive competition to the HTC Flyer.
[via Android Community]
Update: jkkmobile has delivered some video of the MeMO, and while the demo unit is only running Android 2.2 Froyo, the interesting part is the Bluetooth handset accessory ASUS is showing alongside the tablet. It can be used for voice calls, so that you needn’t hold the 7-inch slate to your head. It also has a transparent display, and can be used as a remote control for the MeMO. According to ASUS Germany, the MeMO should be priced at €499 ($690) for the 8-16GB model, or €699 for the 32-64GB model, with the Bluetooth handset; that definitely undercuts the €669 HTC Flyer at the entry level, at least.
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- ASUS Unveils EeePad MeMO
- HTC Flyer 7-inch tablet due March, plus two slates in June?
- HTC Flyer tablet spec leak: single-core Snapdragon?
- USB Memo Holder
- HTC Flyer tablet a 7-inch Pegatron rush-job for Q1 2011?
Kinect hacked into 3D scanner for making foam busts of users
The Kinect has turned out to be something that in my house at least rarely gets used. It is a very cool device though and I continue to be amazed at some of the things that geeks are able to hack the Kinect to do. One of the latest hacks turns the Kinect into a crude 3D scanner that can turn the pose the person stands with in front of the camera into a foam bust.
The pieces that are made by the 3D printer attached to the Kinect look like little puzzle pieces that can be connected together. The video taken by the Kinect is turned into a STL file and sent out to the printer.
The Kinect system is called Fabricate Yourself and it’s interesting. You can see a video of the thing in action below. Other than just being cool, I wonder what real world applications that sort of hack could have.
Via Boingboing
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- Kinect connects to Android for reading depth info
- Microsoft unveils advertisements that will launch with Kinect
- Kinect Sign-Language hack is work-in-progress [Video]
- Geek hacks Kinect to work with Wii controllers for Call of Duty action
- Kinect adapted for robotic surgery
Apple AirDrop inspired by our wireless sharing system, claims eviGroup founder
Apple’s AirDrop easy file-sharing feature in Mac OS X Lion may bring the company some headaches, with a French tablet and software firm claiming it borrows from a wireless sharing system of its own. eviGroup founder Nicolas Ruiz claims that AirDrop’s functionality shows considerable overlap with his own INPI-filed “Technique de Communication Réseau sans Configuration” (“technique of network communication without configuration”).
The eviGroup method involves point-to-point WiFi connections with a simple proximity-based UI, that aims to bypass complex file sharing permissions and configurations. There’s no word on when eviGroup plans to actually produce an app based on it, however.
Still, it looks like Ruiz is taking a sanguine attitude toward the whole affair, suggesting that “business is business” and pointing out that, because of the way European patents are formulated, it’s the specific technique which is covered rather than the concept itself. The advantage of eviGroup’s system, he suggests, is that it’s platform-agnostic, and so will work with more than just Mac OS X Lion devices.
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- Apple AirDrop makes OS X file sharing super-simple
- eviGroup Pad Standard UMPC drops 3G, gets cheaper
- eviGroup Wallet Android MID gets new design, status update
- eviGroup shows off cool new Paddle Pro tablet
- eviGroup’s larger Wallet tablet to be Atom powered?
Blackberry Rep: PlayBook Will Support Android Apps [Video]
We’re not exactly huge Blackberry fans here at Phandroid, obviously, but we do cover any and everything Android. Having said that, a new video has come out of a RIM representative confirming that the Blackberry Playbook tablet will – at some point – support Android applications.
We’ve heard those murmurs a while ago, and recent testimonials from the folks who develop Shop Savvy have all but confirmed this to be true. RIM has yet to make any official announcement mentioning this, but this is as good as it’s going to get. We’re not saying we’re going to go out and snatch up a Playbook because of it, but it’s still good news. It’s at the 14 second mark in the video above. [via CrackBerry]
Motorola XOOM Overclocked to 1.5 GHz [Video]
The Motorola XOOM – the world’s first Android 3.0 tablet – has been hacked to no end since its release last week, and development continues with coolbho3000′s overclock developments. He first had the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor clocked at 1.2Ghz, but that was just Saturday. One day later, he’s achieved a stable 1.5 GHz overclock. I’m not surprised that he was the one to achieve it considering he’s the developer of SetCPU, but I am interested to see how big of a performance boost the XOOM will get as a result. (And considering his history, we’re confident that this is the real deal unlike those who claimed to have overclocked the Galaxy S’s CPU to 3 GHz a while back.) Instructions are here. Video proof sits above. [Droid-Life]
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc System Dump Online
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is starting to trickle into the marketplace, and you had to guess that with its arrival would come eager developers ready to pull all of its interesting bits right from the device’s internal storage. Folks at XDA have gotten the full dump if anyone’s interested. You can find Xperia-specific applications, Sony Ericsson’s new home launcher, the keyboard, and more. If you just want the launcher, use this link via the unofficial X10 blog. The entire system dump can be had at XDA.
SlashGear Weekly Roundup Video: February 27, 2011
Hey guys, this is our very first SlashGear Weekly Roundup video. We highlight the top ten news of the week and hope this will be a good way for those to quickly catchup on the most important weekly tech news. Check it out after the jump and feel free to give us some feedback.
10. Sprint HTC Merge – first CDMA Windows Phone
9. Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread for Nexus One and Nexus S goes OTA
8. Sony VAIO S ultraportable announced
7. Nokia names first MeeGo phone: Nokia N950 targeted as a “development platform”
6. Intel Thunderbolt official announcement. Take a closer look at Thunderbolt and the other Intel partners.
5. Motorola ATRIX 4G Review.
4. Microsoft Kinect SDK release confirmed for personal use in March
3. Motorola XOOM Review and Android 3.0 Honeycomb Review.
2. Apple iPad 2 event confirmed for next week.
1. New Apple MacBook Pro early 2011 range.
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
- Verizon iPhone unveil February 3 2011?
- Motorola Disappoints at CTIA
- Nokia E7 Finnish pre-orders open ahead of Feb 2011 delivery
- Apple Unifies Verizon and AT&T iPhone 4 in New Advertisement
- What do you want to see on weekends at Slashgear?
