Computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are bringing the minimalist approach to medical care and computing by coupling USB-based ultrasound probe technology with a smartphone, enabling a compact, mobile computational platform and a medical imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand.

 William D. Richard, Ph.D., Washington University Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and David Zar, Washington University Research Associate in Computer Science and Engineering, have made commercial USB ultrasound probes compatible with Microsoft Windows Mobile-based smartphones, thanks to a $100,000......

Looky here, it’s yet another smallest flash drive ever! The EagleTec Nano flash drive measures a minuscule 19 x 15 x 6mm and weighs only 3 grams. It manages to stuff as much as 8 gigs of memory in there somewhere… To be fair, I can’t really see how a flash drive could get much smaller than this without being totally impractical and an accidental inhalation risk. But, I have faith that those issues aren’t going to prevent it from happening anyway. The EagleTec Nano flash drives comes with 4 gigs for $22, or 8 gigs for $33.

Taiwanese computer vendor Acer is planning to introduce an Android-based smart phone by the end of the year to add to the ten phones based on Windows Mobile already in the works for 2009, reports Bloomberg. Acer’s head of mobile-phone products Aymar de Lencquesaing said that the world’s third largest computer maker had made no formal announcements around Android, though “it’s likely that we’ll have one in 2009.”

In February, at Mobile World Congress, Acer unveiled its first four cellphones, which are based on Windows Mobile. Skepticism that the computer vendor can crack the highly competitive......

O2 recently launched the XDA Flint aimed at students. The device has the usual up to date specifications that any self respecting cell phone would have, a complete list of which can be seen after the jump. But to make it easier on the students the device comes with a detachable keyboard for intensive not taking and a rather large 5-inch screen so you can actually use it like a laptop. The Flint also sports 16GB of internal flash memory, so you can store all sorts of video, audio and pictures files. There is no mention of a price or an Indian release date. Jump for complete specs and a closer look at the detachable keyboard

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Jacob Rosen is developing a wearable robotic “exoskeleton” that could enable a person to lift heavy objects with little effort. It’s a bit like the robotic armor that has long been a staple of futuristic battle scenes in science fiction books and movies. But what excites Rosen is the device’s potential to help people disabled by stroke or degenerative diseases

Web link: University of California Santa Cruz

“People with muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular disabilities could use the exoskeleton to amplify their muscle strength, and it could also be used for rehabilitation and physical therapy,”......

 Sony’s Contrast Flex OLED Walkman is bracelet style with other form factors possible. We were able to catch footage of its introduction video at Sony’s exhibit during CES 2009. Essentially, this product allows visualization of music while expressing the owner’s personality. The Walkman would be made of high performance flexible bioplastic, which enables the marriage of form and functionality. This is a music player that could happen in five to ten years, according to chatter overheard at CES.

We have no idea if Sony is going to stay this course, but it is being prototyped in Sony labs so its a good......

An architecture student has found his way out of the city’s interminable traffic jams, and he carries it in his backpack. Capella, as Truong Minh Nhat calls his creation, is an electric bike made with light composites that the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture student says can be folded and put into a backpack. Capella can have its wheels, chain and chain-ring bolt folded into the body.
Users can take the bike along when traveling and escape the crowd anywhere, Nhat says, adding that it can travel at 30 kilometers per hour with a battery that will run for 12 kilometers after it is charged for two hours.

Nhat says......

NVIDIA is poised to energize the PC market by transforming Atom PCs into a premium experience found today in higher priced laptops and desktops. NVIDIA will supercharge the fastest-growing segments of the PC market – netbooks, small form factor and all-in-one PCs – by enabling these products to play rich media and popular games in high definition. At the same time, the Ion Platform will create new and exciting premium PCs that fit in the palm of your hand.

he formula is simple: Combine the highly rated GeForce 9400 GPU found in new desktop and notebook PCs with the Intel Atom CPU. This combination (code-named Ion Platform) enables......

Lenovo’s just announced their newest desktop - the IdeaCentre A600 – for all to wonder at. This puppy’s got a 21.5-inch (1920×1080) HD panel with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and the PC packs a choice of Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, optional ATI Radeon graphics, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and an up to 1TB hard drive. Optional to the system is a remote control which can also be used as a game controller, a VOIP handset to make and receive calls, and as an air mouse — that’s a lot of functions! The A600 is expected to roll out in March with a starting price of $999 (Rs 48,300 approx).

Lenovo today announced the latest additions......

Flexible OLED displays are becoming more and more commonplace, despite not actually being available in any devices you can buy just yet. When that day finally comes, Universal Display Corporation thinks one of those gadgets will be something like the above: a wearable, flexible, 4-inch prototype screen that CES attendees will be able to check out and maybe even try on. It’s been developed with military applications in mind, but bendy consumer devices are naturally envisioned as well. There’s no word on when we’ll start seeing them in passports or flexi-phones, but we’re thinking we have a while to wait yet.

We stunned the world with our previous exclusive story about an upcoming touchscreen Walkman, but what we didn’t tell you is that there is another. Sony is set to offer a completely different Walkman than ever before, this time aimed at the budget conscious consumer who wants something to match their active lifestyle.

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A UK location services company Lok8u has launched NuM8 a ground-breaking solution that combines GPS and GSM technology in a micro form factor. NuM8 is the world’s first GPS locator device specifically designed to be worn by children with the technology cleverly concealed within a child’s digital watch. Its unique design features ensure that the parent locates their child, not the technology.

NuM8 is innovative and fundamentally different to other products available in the market. It does not rely upon the child to be responsible enough to keep their locator with them in a bag or pocket. Instead, when NuM8 is securely fastened......

Psyko Audio Labs launched its 5.1 Directional Audio Headphones recently. But these headphones aren’t for the faint of heart. The company uses a special alignment technology that delivers accurate surround sound to each ear “in a natural 3D sound field.” There’s also a “subwoofer” in each ear cup and a built-in amplifier – which lets gamers “customize volume and bass levels” – unfortunately it costs $299.99 (Rs approx) and will be available in the first quarter this year.

Good news for couch potatoes who happen to own an iPhone. A group of students at the University of Toronto, have completed something that could potentially replace all the remotes you have scattered around the house. It’s called the UiRemote (Universal Infrared Remote). With the help of a small accessory, users will be able to use their iPhone to control the TV, DVD, Cable box, Projectors, Digital Photo Frames, AC, Fans… basically anything that responds to Infrared. The program can obviously send out the remote control signals, but it can also learn any button on any standard Remote, or even a sequence of button clicks as a macro. The device and software will release in the coming weeks so check at the Web link to see when they are ready.

Microsoft proclaimed Monday evening that Xbox 360 has sold 28 million units worldwide through 2008 since its launch in November 2005. Microsoft director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Aaron Greenberg told Edge in a phone interview that the company sold 10.3 million Xbox 360s throughout the year. According to Greenberg, this puts Microsoft’s console more than 8 million units ahead of the PS3, a console that launched a year after Xbox 360.

“We actually reported our biggest year ever in Xbox history” in terms of hardware and software unit sales and dollar spend, Greenberg said, without revealing......

Johnny Shih, CEO of Asus, has announced that the company is looking at an Eee-branded phone… and that it may run Android as well. Speaking to TechRadar at Asus’ keynote speech at CES 2009, Shih said that the company was looking at a ‘two-pronged’ approach to simple, easy to use devices, meaning a device that can be “put in the pocket, play MP3s, offer GPS services, works like a PDA and offers Mobile TV altogether,” according to Shih. Given that Asus has recently joined the Open Handset Alliance, the organisation behind Android, TechRadar asked Shih about the company’s plans to use the OS.

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With a focus on making photo sharing easier and more convenient, Sony today introduced the world’s first Wi-Fi enabled digital camera that uploads photos and videos to Web sites through any public hotspot due to its built-in Web browser. The new Cyber-shot DSC-G3 digital still camera answers one of the most pressing needs for photo enthusiasts: how to share those amazing photos and video clips of family, friends and events as soon as you shoot. The Cyber-shot camera makes it easy to upload images and video directly to popular photo and video sharing sites wherever a Wi-Fi connection is available.

The Cyber-shot DSC-G3 model featuring......

Razer has unleashed the full potential of gaming mice by designing the Mamba an ergonomic, lag free gaming mouse with 2.4GHz gaming grade wireless technology, making it the fastest mouse ever. With dual mode wired/wireless functionality, the Razer Mamba lets users immediately and seamlessly switch from wired to wireless play. With first in class polling rates at 1ms as compared to traditional wireless mice that poll at 8ms, players will have virtually lag free game play. The Razer Mamba also includes a host of features like Razer Synapse, an on-board memory that lets gamers store and bring their mouse settings wherever they go. And the world&rsquo......

Japanese scientists have successfully cloned a prize beef cow more than 13 years after it died, it was announced on January 6. The legendary steer — named “Yasufuku” in his first life (1980-1993) — is regarded as the father of Hida beef, a high-quality meat from Gifu prefecture famous for its marbled texture and rich flavor. During his 13-year life, the prize bull’s sperm was used to sire 40,000 calves, helping to establish Hida as a high-class brand of beef. It is believed that more than 30% of the nation’s Japanese black cattle can trace their roots back to Yasufuku.

To produce the clones,......

Fresh off the plane from Korea comes the Samsung Show, a Korea-only projector phone that uses TI’s
DLP technology rather than the Logic Bolt’s LCoS system to project images onto a big screen. It’s a somewhat bulky candybar-style phone. It runs a proprietary OS, and includes support for Korea’s DMB-T digital TV system. It uses Samsung’s TouchWIZ user interface, which involves a touchscreen and movable widgets. The Show’s projector has five options: “File Viewer,” which shows movies in a large-screen format; “Album,” for photo slideshows, “Story Telling,” which appears......

Toyota Motor Sales announced an expanded commitment to electric vehicles on Saturday, disclosing plans to manufacture an all-electric city car by 2012 and a wider fleet of gas-electric hybrids. At the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, Toyota showed off a concept car called the FT-EV, a battery-powered four-seat compact car. Although it’s concept car, Toyota said it will release an “urban commuter” electric car in 2012.

Based on an existing car sold in Japan called the iQ, the FT-EV runs entirely on batteries and has a range of about 50 miles. Like many all-electric cars planned for release in the......

 Acknowledging that its release of Windows 7 public beta “was not ideal,” Microsoft said it will suspend the software’s 2.5 million download limit for a couple of weeks. So this is your chance people if you haven’t already downloaded the beta get it here.

 Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc announced the move in a company blog Saturday:
Due to an enormous surge in demand, the download experience was not ideal so we listened and took the necessary steps to ensure a good experience. We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided remove the initial......

E-Mailing now comes so naturally to us that we can do it in our sleep — at least in the exceptional case. An article that will soon appear in the journal Sleep Medicine, detailing the experience of a sleepwalker, shows that we can send messages even when we seem to be sound asleep. Such e-mailing interests neurologists who specialize in sleep science.

After all, it poses a challenge to the accepted notion that sleepwalking is confined to activities involving gross motor movements, with minimal cognitive activity. Until now, we have been able to take comfort in our understanding of our own sleepwalking as an impersonal phenomenon.......

Just in case pushing the buttons on the remote has become too much of a chore… Irish-based company Amulet Devices has come up with the Amulet Remote, a voice-activated controller. Designed specifically for Vista Media Center, the remote allows users to record and watch TV, listen to music and view DVDs, photos and videos—all through the power of speech. Video of the device in action and some more info after the jump.

The unit has a built-in microphone. So all you have to say is something like, “Watch Program Deadliest Catch” or “Record Program Dexter,” and you’re all set. On the music side, as......

A toy helicopter is believed to have been used in an attempt to smuggle drugs into a prison. Guards at Elmley Prison in Sheerness, Kent, spotted the remote control miniature aircraft flying over the walls of the jail and heading for the accommodation blocks one night after it was picked up by CCTV cameras.

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The entire line will have a brick-built look to it, though devices like the LEGO digital camera, won’t actually be built out of bricks, at least not bricks that come apart. Probably a good design decision given kids have a tendency to drop things like this. Parents wouldn’t be too jazzed about having to rebuild a camera each time it gets dropped.
In addition to the small......

The Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has developed an agriculture robot suit designed specifically to help out with tough agricultural work like pulling radishes. The suit has eight motors fitted over the shoulders, elbows, back and knees to provide a power boost to the wearer. The current model weighs a hefty 25 kilograms, but developers hope to halve the weight and have it on the market in two years, retailing for between 500,000 and 1 million yen

Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information......