Merry (nano) Christmas?

Photo: National Physical Laboratory

The UK's NPL (National Physical Laboratory), is celebrating the holidays this season, with the creation of a nano snowman. Constructed of two tin beads, facial features milled with a focused ion beam, and a nose made of ion beam deposited platinum. It is 1/5th the width of a human hair. See how they do it HERE.

Is it just me? I thought snowmen had three sections.

Steampunk Keyboards

Saw a G4 episode on Steampunk last night. One of the cooler things I think is the Steampunk keyboard. So, I though I would collect a few pictures and post them here. If you want to make your own Steampunk keyboard, amongst other Steampunk creations, check out The Steampunk Workshop.

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Google launches a Japanese IME converter.

Google has launched a Japanese typing converter (IME) for the language bar. Once installed it sits right along side the built in converter from Microsoft, giving you the choice to revert back if you want to. One thing I wish it did, that The Microsoft IME doesn't do either, is let me select Hiragana as my default input for every application. Why it defaults to "direct input" all the time, I do not know. If someone could tell me how to choose an input method, other than "direct input" as my default, please help. Get it HERE.

Google 日本語入力は、変換の煩わしさを感じさせない思いどおりの日本語入力を提供します。

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The Memristor - Get ready for something amazing.

The fourth piece to an electrical puzzle, the memristor was described and named in 1971, but it's existence wasn't proved until April 2008.  This is one technology that is worth observing. 

 

Above photo: Memristor close-up: An atomic force microscope image shows 17 memristors in a row. Each has a bottom wire that contacts one side of the device and a top wire that contacts the other. The wires in this image are 50nm, or about 150 atoms, wide. J. J. Yang, HP Labs

It is said to have properties similar to human synapses.  A solid state divice not only capable of binary computing, (1's and 0's), but able to use any value in between. Along with that, it's capability of remembering it's state when power is removed, could usher the advent of analog computers that can learn. But, that is just the beginning.  Keep an eye on this one your future is about to change.

More info at the HP Labs.

Augmented Reality

I know this has been around a while, and it has been blooged about alot.  But, with Geisha Tokyo Entertainment's release of the interactive maid アリス in October, It got me looking at all the uses and possibilities for this technology.  

If you want to have some fun download  the ARToolkit by HIT

 Lab at the University of Washington.  The ARToolkit gives you som basic examples you can try for yourself without having to program anything.  All you need is a webcam.  It contains everything you need to develop your own applications as well.

Now if only they can perfect holographic imagery, things could get very interesting. Although old now, below is a prime example of what this technology can do.

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...and アリス:

Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock

After buying my Philips DVP 5992/37 DVD player with USB 2.0 Port,  I need something to get all the movies, music, and pictures on.  Putting them on DVD's is too tedious and thumb drives too small.  This little thing lets me take a bare drive and attatch it to my DivX DVD player and have up to 1TB of all my stuff at my fingertips.  Actually I should have posted a review of the DVP5992/37 first.  It is great for PC backups too.  The only downside is that the drive is bare.