So what could pop singer and oddball clotheshorse Lady Gaga do that could possibly have anything to do with tech? Well, she made an appearance at CES 2010 today, showing off her $120 in-ear Heartbeats headphones while creating a mob scene in front of the Monster booth. She didn’t sing any songs, but sung the praises of her dainty ‘phones, certain to make her big-spending bosses at Monster happy.

In defense of Dr. Dre’s “Beats” headphones from Monster, we’ve tried them and think their sound is among the best we’ve ever heard. What Lady Gaga and her signature insane clothing (including this spiky hat) has to do with headphones, well, celebrity will tie one up with all sort of strange bedfellows.

Via Lady Gaga Heartbeats

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Stringed instruments have been around for centuries, but nobody’s figured out how to keep those strings in tune — until now. The breakthrough introduced at CES 2010 is called the Evertune Bridge, with an individual springs constantly pulling against each string at precisely the correct tension to keep each note the same … indefinitely.

It’s hard to see the inner workings of this miracle machine, but in our hands-on encounter with two guitars rigged with the Evertune Bridge, each string stayed in tune no matter what we did. It not only works on guitars, but any stringed instrument such as a piano or banjo. This is brilliant. Look for it on guitars everywhere within a year or two.

Via Evertune

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Samsung’s hitting the new decade with a new corporate moto: Inspire the world, create the future. By putting so much emphasis on 3D, they’re doing just that. Samsung believes in a complete 3D Home Ecosystem, with a completely integrated 3D Blu-ray player, TV with built-in 3D processor, shutter glasses, and a complete home-theater sound system, creating an “immersive” experience. They announced the widest range of 3D TVs in the full array of technologies — LED, LCD and even plasma. Take your pick. Almost all their new sets will be capable of 3D.

They also wowed the crowd with the new 9000 series 3D LED display that’s about as thin as a pencil. Coolest part is as the user approaches the TV, the operating panel is revealed. Quite sexy. Are you inspired?

Samsung is just as excited about 3D movies as they are about their very own 3D TV lineup. Forming a global alliance with Dreamworks and Technicolor, the new 3D Blu-ray player is ready for the first 3D Blu-ray disc presented to Samsung, “Monsters vs. Aliens.” Looks like 3D on Blu-ray is here at last.

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About the one thing worse than a dropped cellular phone call is dropping (and breaking) your cellular phone. While not much can be done for the latter, except for being a bit more careful, many companies have promised to provide boosters to keep you from the dropped calls. Many of the devices offered are little more than high-tech (or not) snake oil, which is why Wilson Electronics approach to this seemingly never ending problem might just work!

The Sleek Cell Phone Signal Booster features a built-in amplifier that boosts signals to and from cell site, and this one features 20- times the output power to a cell site when in a vehicle. It even doubles as a built-in battery charging port, and further extends the battery life of mobile handsets. It feature a built-in antenna, and works with cellular (800 MHz) and PCS (1900 MHz) frequencies. This package also includes an outside vehicle mini magnet-mount antenna. Now if only it could do something about those of us who routinely physically drop our phones.

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What’s the problem with batteries? Right, exactly: they run out of power too quickly. The solution? There are plenty, and five panelists — including reps from Motorola and Powermat — will be discussing the future of portable power on a CES panel moderated by one Peter Pachal, editor of this very site.

If you’re in Las Vegas and you want to check out the session, you’re in luck. We’re giving away four passes to our battery panel to anyone who can get to it. On top of that, one of those attendees will win two tickets to the Friday night’s show of Cirque du Soleil’s Love at the Mirage. We’ll pick the four attendees from anyone who sends an e-mail to dvicelovesbatteries@gmail.com with “I Love DVICE” in the subject by 8 p.m. Pacific Time tonight. Winners will pick up passes at the session, and we’ll give away the pair of Love tickets at the close of the panel. Good luck!

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UPDATE: With the recent changes to the comment layout, this isn’t needed
any more. Stylish is still fun to play with though. Check it out! I
find the comment threads to be a bit tough to follow. Definitely hard to
scan when the threads get complicated anyway. To make this easier for
myself I made …
By: fungus amungus

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Creature-creator Holly of A Little Stranger has created three elegant throwbacks to Nintendo’s lovable 16-bit era characters. She’s get three hand-knitted cameo necklaces — and only one of each — featuring Kirby, a piranha plant and a purple Yoshi.

From Holly:

Each has been painstakingly hand stitched, mounted on an antique brass cameo mount and strung on a bright coloured bobble chain. I’ve then added a teeny pink bow for added cuteness. 6cm tall, comes gift wrapped ideal for gift giving — perfect for valentines

Each also costs $68. That may sound a little hefy, but you know what? A lot of work went into these and we’re inclined to say that’s more than fair for these one-of-a-kind items. Check ‘em out in the gallery below.

Etsy, via A Little Stranger, via Plastic and Plush

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When we first showed you the Nexus One, there was something that really stood out to us: you can by an unlocked phone right from Google for $530, and straight off the bat. Five Franklins and three Hamiltons later, teardown website iFixit had Nexus One of its own, and the staff did what they do best: tore the sucker apart.

Our spec-happy readers should make haste over to iFixit’s excellent teardown. For the rest of us, though, there’s also an important takeaway here. Unlike the iPhone, iFixit found that getting to the Nexus One’s battery is an “unbelievably easy task,” which is important in today’s electronics scene where batteries fail left and right — and removing one can aid in simple tasks such as rebooting the phone.

As for iFixit’s Nexus One, we hope that putting it back together will prove just as effortless. Those suckers are pricey!

iFixit, via PC World

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U.S. EPA today proposed significantly tougher smog standards after reconsidering the George W. Bush administration’s controversial 2008 regulations.

The draft rule released by EPA proposes to revise the two standards aimed at protecting public health and welfare to comply with recommendations made by the agency’s science advisers. The Bush administration had rejected those suggestions when issuing the 2008 national air quality standards for ground-level ozone, or smog, drawing criticism and legal challenges from environmental and public health groups.

[More]

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Do know someone who has a hard time working even the simplest remote control? Well, salvation could be at hand, in the form of RCA’s new RCRV06G. This new universal remote can control up to six components, with up to 25 of the most common functions operating by either voice command or the old-fashioned buttons. Of course all of this would be some kind of cruel joke if it was nearly impossible to do the initial setup, but luckily voice commanded setup is also part of the deal.

I just wonder whether your whole system will go dead if someone yells, “switch the power off” in some TV show or movie.

No word on when this baby will be in the stores, but retail will be about $40.

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After months of teasing, Plastic Logic finally unveiled its vaunted Que proReader. It’s not strictly speaking an e-book reader, although it is. With a large-format 10.7-inch diagonal touchscreen, Que is designed for the business user. It displays Microsoft Office documents, PDF files, magazines and newspapers, maintaining their font/layout look-and-feel. The idea is you can leave that pile of papers in the office while you’re traveling. You can also write notes right on a document, which you can then share with co-workers.

Que is available in two flavors, a 4GB model that’ll hold 35,000 documents ($650), and an 8GB version with Wi-Fi and an AT&T 3G connection to Barnes & Noble and will store 75,000 documents ($800). Both will be available in mid-April at B&N stores and online, but can be pre-ordered now from the Que site.

How the Que works — and how it compares to the Kindle — after the jump.

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The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth. It might also represent the most prolific cradle for new types of animals on the planet, according to new research published in the January 8 edition of Science . [More]

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Video projectors that can throw up a big bright picture a great for gaming and home theater, but most of them eat their way through an expensive bulb every 1500 hours or so, while consuming more electricity than Grandma’s space heater.

Casio looks to change that by introducing their Slim Green line of business presentation projectors. Ripping one from Toyota’s Prius playbook, these projectors toss the energy hogging high pressure mercury bulb used in most projectors, replacing it with a hybrid light engine that uses a laser, an LED, and a florescent tube. We’ve seen those little pico projectors that use just an LED, but they can’t deliver enough green output to give you a really bright picture. By combining a laser and a florescent tube to make green, Casio says the Green Slim can deliver around 3000 lumens, which should be enough to fill a big screen in a well lit room. The light engine is also expected to last 20,000 hours, so no more annual $250 bulb purchases.

Casio has 10 models in the pipeline, but all of them are aimed at the business user. How about a few models with resolutions suitable for us home theater guys Casio? I’ve gone through three bulbs for my Samsung projector while watching my power meter spin wildly.

No word yet on pricing or delivery date.

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Pretty little Sasha is an ‘imposter oldie’ who is probably only about 6. She is great with kids, can live with cats, and could also live with another active and confident younger dog.

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Getting the racing world to take electric cars seriously will go a long way towards acceptance by the general public as a whole. And electric cars have a lot going for them in that regard. Few moving parts, lots of torque, and all of that power is available at 0 RPM’s.

A British company called Westfield Sportscars, who builds kit cars designed for track racing, is dipping their toes into the water of electrified sports cars. They plan to produce the iRacer, a lightweight, rear-wheel drive electric race car with an asphalt tearing 730 ft-lbs of torque. Sounds vicious.

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Toshiba’s kicking off 2010 with one new concept: Cell TV, and I gotta say, it’s a impressive technology. At the core is a chip that converts 2D to 3D, in real time. I’d be interested to see if there’s any lag time that will cause the audio to proceed video through this process.

Cell TV will give “true super resolution” and enhance the image quality of compressed Internet video. In 2D, it offers 480Hz, and 240Hz for each eye in 3D. The new sets will have Auto View and Color Sensor to detect if the ambient lighting is natural daylight, incandescent or fluorescent, and adjust the image accordingly. Other features that caught my attention were wireless HD (802.11n), DNLA, USB Movie, Net TV, and built-in videophone, with image enhancements. Who doesn’t want to look good when they debut on HDTV?

Toshiba was showing the Cell TV with a 1TB built-in hard disk and integrated Blu-ray, too. All in all, an impressive product, but it seems to be putting a big bunch of eggs into one new product basket — for both customer and company.

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Art | Craft | Food | Games | Green | Home | Kids | Life…
By: fungus amungus

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In one of Top Gear’s more infamous (and yet informative) vehicle tests, Jeremy Clarkson pitted a Toyota Prius against a BMW M3 to see which car could get better gas mileage. The catch was, the Prius had to drive as fast as it could, while all the M3 had to do was keep up with the hybrid. The end result was the Prius got 17.2 mpg, while the M3 got 19.4 mpg. The point, according to Clarkson, is that it isn’t what you drive, but how you drive.

Now we can debate the merits of the video (posted below) all we want. But the point is, you can get decent mileage if you drive, well, gingerly. It isn’t easy, but Garmin, maker of GPS devices, has come up with a device called the ecoRoute hd. This device plugs into your car and calculates just how green you are driving, no matter what you are driving. It’s pretty cool, in a green, Big Brother sort of way.

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Sony’s CES 2010 press conference started with a short serenade from off-key teeny bopper singer Taylor Swift, and winded its way through a boatload of new products from the Japanese consumer electronics giant. Sony’s courtly chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer touted Sony’s commitment to 3D from lens to screen, the “monolithic” Bravia line of HDTVS, and lots of new video and still cameras.

Our faves? The Sony Bloggie, a USB video camera knockoff of the Flip Mino HD that offers a unique 360-degree panoramic lens option; and our other favorite was Sony Dash, an internet-attached device with a crisp 7-inch screen that displays Chumby widgets and a whole lot more.

Here’s our massive gallery showing you the most interesting of all we saw at the overwhelming and surprisingly boring Sony CES extravaganza.

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This holographic laser projector (HLP) projects images onto curved and tilted surfaces. We just got our hands on the tech in the back rooms of CES 2010, and it works beautifully. By using red, blue and green lasers to project large triangles onto a 10-inch area, Light Blue Optics has created Light Touch, resulting in a fascinating laser touchscreen that’s surprisingly interactive.

In our hour-long hands-on session, the touchscreen felt like a capacitive screen, requiring a light touch to move objects. The colors looked just saturated enough to be watchable, and the video wasn’t super-bright even in a dimly-lit room — but it was just clear enough to be useful, and the Class 1 lasers inside won’t burn out your retinas, either. It was an eerie feeling to use this technology, convincing us this is a completely new product category that could change everything. It’s that good.

Watch our hands-on video, and then see the company’s video simulating a few of the astonishing possibilities manufacturers have suggested for Light Touch. Light Blue Optics plans to license the tech to a variety of hardware and software creators such as Samsung, Microsoft, Adobe, Toshiba, and many more.

So as we asked earlier this week, is it a magic screen or a work in progress? Both, but Light Blue Optics Light Touch is mostly pure magic.

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Now that we’re all properly obsessed with touch interface technology, devices like the new Yantouch Jellyfish LED RGB Light have a chance to make their psychedelic impact. The light offers a range of up to 16 million colors schemes all controlled via the tiny touchpad at its base.

From monochromatic colors to rainbow variations of your own creation, the light is a relative steal at just 14,800 yen ($160). You can see the Yantouch Jellyfish LED in action here.

Via Impress Watch

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