Wireless Renewable Energy Device Charger

OK, the title of this post may be a little misleading but a whole bunch of funky devices are being shown off at this year's CES including a rather gaudy but highly useful wind/solar USB charger and Powermat's wireless charging mat.

The wind/solar charger looks a bit like a personal fan but actually works the other way around and if it's not windy enough you've got the rather large solar panel on the front (weird place for it?). This made me think of putting something like this on your bike or even your car to capture the wind as you pedal/drive... but then again you could probably just put one of those wheel things on the rim like the old fashioned bike head lights.

The second item, the Powermat, is a wireless charging technology where you just place your device on the mat and magically it starts charging up. There's a video in the link above if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Now, the point of this post is that we need some convergence here. If we could get the renewable energy into a wireless form factor we'd be laughing. Any takers?

Blue Is The New Red

Kent Displays (I've never heard of them either) have apparently been making cool and funky displays for a few years now and selling them to manufacturers but today it was announced that they've got two hot new technologies ready to rock your gadget world.

The first one is "a simple monochrome electronic writing tablet that consists of a pressure sensitive display (think next-generation Post-it note)". I can't quite picture how this works and the photo just looks like a bent LCD screen...

BUT!

The cool one is the funky colour changing electronic "skin". Named eGo it requires no power at all to maintain any colour already rendered on the surface. This means you can "display" whatever colour you'd like and it stays that way without using any more power until you switch it again. It would be handy for things like watches and phones (like in the photo) if you're a little fashion conscious. Or maybe it can be applied to your fingernails so you can be just like the secretary from The Fifth Element. Can you think of any other uses for it.

2009 BMW 7 Series: Electronic Back Seat Driver

A little write up over at CarAdvice.com.au talks about one of the coolest features in a new car since sliced bread (huh?). We've had trip computers and speed monitoring computers in cars for ages but this new feature called Speed Limit Display will, well, display the speed limit.

The system uses a little camera mounted near the passenger side rear-vision mirror which watches the side of the road for any speed limit signs (including those funky LED-based electronic ones they like to use around construction zones) and pops up a little alert on the car's HUD if you're going over it.

However, before alerting the driver the new system chats with the car's nav system to see if the speed matches the speed in the GPS data so maybe it's not exactly like a back seat driver.

Oh, and BMW really wants to make sure you understand that the system won't try to slow you down, we wouldn't want THAT now would we!?

Read more about the 2009 BMW 7-series.

Stick It To Darth and R2

Now, I consider myself a bit of a geek but I think this is going a little too far. Click through to watch videos of these Darth Vader and R2D2 USB hubs.

Only the Darth video was working when I visited and after plugging him in his eyes light up, his head moves around and you head the scuba-gear breathing sound we all know and love. The guy in the video plugs a USB key into his chest thingy and other useless stuff happens.

If you have $68 USD to throw away or you'd like a USB hub that matches your awesome Boba Fett suit then don't let me stop you.

Back To The Feet-ure

I love it when classic movies meet modern tech and this is certainly one to be proud of. You may remember Marty McFly's bitchin' Nikes in Back to the Future II (the ones he had on while hoverboarding around). Well Nike appear to be making a very similar pair for the real world.

Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed for the auto-sizing, self-drying puffa jacket.

eBook Works Like A Real Book

Researchers at Maryland and Berkeley Universities have put their collective heads together to come up with an eBook that works like a regular book.

You perform a quick flip motion to turn the page on this dual screen book-like eBook or fan the pages to skip through the book faster.

More info over an Engadget.

Auto-landing Jet After Losing 60%+ of Wing

Engadget reports on a test run with a model jet by Rockwell Collins where they intentionally blew off over 60% of its right wing. The jet then went ahead and not only corrected its handling but landed... watch the video and be amazed.

Video: http://www.rockwellcollins.com/news/video/damage-tolerance.html

iPhone mini projector

Engadget reports on Honlai's QingBar MP101, a funky mini projector for showing your super high res iPhone videos. It's capable of displaying up to 27" (68.5 cm) image in 4:3 ratio with a pretty crappy low lumen count of 10-15 and contrast ratio of 200:1 (my cheap Benq PE7700 has a contrast ratio of 2500:1 @ 1100 lumens). So, get you friends around a bit of wall in a dark room and you might be able to watch the soccer.