World's biggest touchscreen display unveiled at CeBIT

For the last eight years, German presentations specialist Stereolize has been helping Microsoft do its thing at CeBIT, and every year the company tries to top the previous year's efforts. For this year's trade show, the company went super-size – creating 234-inches of diagonal, interactive touchscreen loveliness that towered above the Microsoft presenters and left onlookers having to pick their jaws up off the floor. Read on, to see a short video showing the huge display in action ...

Rather than stitch together a number of displays to form a kind of touchscreen wall, Stereolize chose to make one huge display from the biggest piece of security glass available – and even that proved a less than straightforward task. "We found out there is a limit on production size," Reiner Knollmueller from Stereolize told Gizmag. "Then another limit for transporting it and a third for operating it on a booth environment."

Even before Microsoft could attempt to build its booth, Stereolize had to erect the custom steel frame and then move in a specially-ordered crane to bring in and mount the high-gloss security glass – which weighed around half a ton – in the frame. "After some meticulous cleaning, a dedicated rear-projection foil was put into a frame and placed gluelessly behind the glass window," explained Knollmueller. "One of the many characteristics was keeping the frame as minimal as possible in order to create an almost borderless display impression."

Galaxy Tab takes thinnest tablet crown - twice

Samsung has unveiled not one, but two new tablet additions to its Android mobile product line at Florida's CTIA Wireless 2011. The company has managed to slim down the width profile on both devices to an iPad 2-beating 8.6mm (0.33-inch), claiming the crown for the world's thinnest tablets in the process. The 8.9-inch and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab devices both get a couple of cameras, benefit from dual-core processing and come in three storage choices.

Floating megacity designed for the banks of the Mississippi

Arcologies, which are essentially entire cities crammed into a single high population density megastructure, are still the realm of science fiction – or games such as Simcity. But with the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ongoing, a group of designers have come up with the proposal for just such a structure designed to sit on the bank of the Mississippi. Called the New Orleans Arcology Habitat (NOAH), the structure would house 40,000 residents along with all services and amenities that would allow them to live their entire lives within its walls if they so desired.

With much of New Orleans built below sea level and the city prone to extreme winds, NOAH’s designers chose to go with the concept of a floating structure whose open triangular frame shape is designed to dissipate severe winds by allowing weather to blow through the structure in any direction with a minimum of massing interference. The structure’s outer edges are also curved and tilted to further dissipate wind loads, while both curved and flat surfaces would be outfitted with secured sliding hurricane panels to form a protective exterior barrier.

While the 1,200 ft (366 m) structure is actually designed to float, it wouldn’t be set adrift on the Mississippi. Instead a water filled basin around 1,200 ft (366 m) in diameter and 250 ft (76 m) deep would be constructed on the bank of the Mississippi. The basin would partially be carved out of the existing land and also extended out into the river.

he actual foundation of the NOAH superstructure would then float within the basin thanks to its multi-cavity “hull” consisting of high strength concrete cells that form a matrix of approximately 40 x 40 cells. This matrix is designed to give the structure buoyancy and form the frame for the steel framed superstructure. The designers estimate that structure will draft 180 ft (55 m) within the water-filled basin, allowing for a minimum 50 ft (15 m) space between the floor of the basin and the floor of NOAH’s foundations.

Inside, “sky gardens” will be placed every 30 floors within the three main towers to act as community spaces. Designed as an all-pedestrian environment, only select horizontal areas will be fitted with moving walkways and/or electric train carriers, while vertical commuters will travel via a series of local and express elevators.

With no need for cars – although a parking garage to house 8,000 cars would be built within the foundations – NOAH is designed to be carbon neutral with solar array banding panels, wind turbines, river-based turbines, passive glazing system, sky garden heating/cooling vents, grey water treatment and fresh water recovery and storage systems.

NOAH’s estimated 30 million-square-footage (2.8 million m2) would be broken up into 20,000 residential units, three hotels, 1,500 time share units, three casinos, 1 million square feet of commercial space, 8,000 car garage, 100,000 square foot district school system, 50,000 square foot public works, 50,000 square foot administrative offices and 20,000 square foot district health care facility.

The NOAH design team sees the structure as a viable plan, not only for New Orleans but for any coastal urban area. And while there are many advantages to the concept of arcologies, they remain very much on the drawing-board at this stage.

Razor Switchblade concept to take desktop PC gaming mobile

While mobile devices have attracted a large part of the casual gaming market, PC games still offer a depth and adaptable user interface that is impossible to match on mobile phones, tablets, or even consoles. With that in mind, gaming-oriented peripherals manufacturer Razer has unveiled a concept device at CES 2011. Called the Razer Switchblade, it looks to bring PC desktop gaming to a portable form factor.

With the keyboard and mouse interface being one of the major strengths of PC gaming but a major problem when it comes to portability, Razer has given the Switchblade a dynamic tactile keyboard that adjusts its configuration based on current game being played. This is accomplished through the placement of transparent keys over an LCD panel, meaning the keys can display game-related icons as well as letters and numbers, and the layout can even change dynamically based on the situation in-game.

Meanwhile, to replace the mouse the 7-inch upper display boasts an ultra-sensitive multi-touch screen. Although, for those that prefer to use a mouse, the concept device also includes a USB 3.0 port. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack, mini HDMI and mic ports to give you the option of playing on a larger display with better sound.

Designed from the ground up by Razor’s designers and engineers in collaboration with Intel, the device is based on the Intel Atom processor and is conceptualized to cater to all game genres and run Windows 7. It is also designed to include both Wi-Fi and 3G. It measures 172 x 115 x 25mm (6.77 x 4.52 x 0.98 inches).

Although it's still just a concept and Razor is better known as a gaming peripherals company, the company seems to have invested quite a bit of time and effort into developing the Switchblade, which could bode well for its eventual release.

Two years ago Razor says it made a secret acquisition of the engineering team of “a global award winning ultra mobile handheld brand” whose key lead engineers joined the company and have been working for the last two years on the project with the aim of bringing the design to life. We’ll be waiting and watching.

JOYSTICK-IT adds a physical joystick to tablet-based gaming

While touchscreen tablets such as the iPad have proven themselves to be extremely popular gaming devices, games that require a directional input suffer from difficult to use and easy to lose track of onscreen touch control pads. The JOYSTICK-IT iPad Arcade Stick is a simple accessory that solves this problem by sticking over the top of the onscreen control pad to provide a physical joystick when needed.

Featuring solid milled-aluminum construction, the JOYSTICK-IT from ThinkGeek doesn’t require any wires or batteries. The device itself has no moving parts with a spherical surface on the bottom of the device allowing the joystick to be rolled around which causes the outer edge of the base to contact the screen and register input on any capacitive touchscreen. Although the JOYSTICK-IT sticks to the screen, it is easily removable and repositionable.

Although ThinkGeek says the JOYSTICK-IT will work with any device with a capacitive touchscreen, its size will make it less than ideal for mobile phones, but it looks just the thing for adding some extra precision to tablet-based gaming.

The JOYSTICK-IT costs US$24.99 (although at the time of publication it was out of stock).

Sony unveils first ‘Double Full HD’ 3D camcorder plus new projector-packing models

Among a slew of new additions to its Handycam line of camcorders unveiled by Sony at CES 2011 were a couple of notable standouts. The first is the HDR-TD10E, which Sony is calling the world’s first “Double Full HD” 3D consumer camcorder that effectively doubles up on a variety of key components, while the second is the HDR-PJ series, which consists of three new models which boast a built in projector.

The HDR-TD10E’s integrated dual lens system includes two of each key component – two Sony G lenses, two “Exmor R” CMOS sensors and two “BIONZ” image processors. In addition to playing Full HD 3D videos on any 3D capable HDTV, the HDR-TD10E’s dual recording system gives it the ability to playback 3D content in Full HD 2D automatically on non-3D displays, while 3D footage can be viewed without glasses on the camcorder’s 3.5-inch 3D LCD touch screen.

Other features of the TD10E include 10x optical zoom with Optical SteadyShot and iAUTO – which automatically configures the camera’s settings based on the camcorder’s surroundings – offered in 3D mode. There’s also a Tracking Focus feature that maintains focus on moving subjects, and 64 GB of flash memory.

Sony will release the HDR-TD10E in April 2011 at a price yet to be announced.

Also worth noting amongst the new additions was the HDR-PJ series, which feature a projector built into their 3-inch LCD panels. According to Sony these camcorders can project video and images of up to 60-in (152 cm) diagonally in size at a throw distance of 20 feet (6 m). The HDR-PJ series camcorders also integrate stereo speakers with Clear Phase and S-Master digital amplifier so you can do away with that big screen TV and home theater system altogether – or not.

The HDR-PJ series consists of three models, which look to vary only in memory type and capacity – and no doubt price, when they are announced. The HDR-PJ50VE with a 220 GB HDD will be available in April 2011, while the HDR-PJ30VE with 32 GB of flash memory, and HDR-PJ10E with 16 GB of flash memory will be available in March 2011.

ZBOX energy efficient Blu-ray

ZOTAC has announced two new additions to its existing ZBOX Blu-ray range of small form factor, energy-efficient computers. The ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 and AD03 Plus models are described by the company as a potent casual gaming platform and feature high definition graphics and audio, Dual-Core processing power, DDR3 memory, USB 3 and Wireless-N networking.

The ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 series combines an AMD E-350 APU 1.6 GHz, dual-core processor platform with a discrete-class Radeon HD 6310 graphics processor running at 500MHz, which results in the "perfect synergy of CPU and GPU" according to ZOTAC. Featuring high definition 3D graphics rendering and Microsoft DirectX 11 support, the 7.36 x 11.02 x 1.5-inch mini-PC also sports a slot-load Blu-ray optical drive offering 4x Blu-ray read, 8x DVD and 24x CD read/write.

Inside the barebones AD03 box there's room for a 2.5-inch format SATA 6Gb/s HDD or SSD, a couple of DDR3 SO-DIMM memory slots, mini-PCI express, 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, eSATA and a 5-in-1 media card reader. There's also 802.11n WiFi (up to 300Mb/s) and Gigabit Ethernet (up to 100Mb/s), DVI and VGA outputs and optical digital S/PDIF audio output.

The 7.1-Channel digital audio and onboard analog stereo high-definition audio is Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD: Master Audio bitstream ready and is said to be capable of sending raw, lossless audio formats over HDMI to digital home theater receivers.

Most of the specs are the same for the AD03 Plus, but this flavor comes shipped with 2GB DDR3 RAM and a 250GB HDD spinning at 5400RPM.

Archos releases 250GB version of 7-inch Archos 70 internet tablet

When Archos released its 7-inch Archos 70 internet tablet last month it sported a fairly paltry 8GB of Flash storage and ran Android 2.2. Since then the device has received a firmware update that brought improved performance, better battery life estimation and support for external GPS adapters thanks to Android 2.21. Now the company has announced a hefty boost in storage space with a 250GB HDD version of the device.

 

The 250GB version of the Archos 70 retains pretty much all the same technical specs of its 8GB brethren, including 800 x 480 pixel (WVGA) multi-touch screen, 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor with 3D OpenGL ES 2.0 graphic accelerator and HDMI output. The only differences, aside from the boost in storage capacity, are the loss of the micro SD card slot and a slight increase in size and weight.