Kitchen Gadgets: Holiday Gift Guide

It’s that time of year when shoppers hit the road to find the “it” gift for all the culinary friends and family members on their holiday lists.

Not coincidentally, it’s also that time of year when lots of new cooking toys crop up. Some are practical must-haves, such as a rechargeable food thermometer. Others may make you scratch your head. (Crumb vacuum or poaching pod, anyone?)

To get a handle on the year’s most interesting, useful and/or best-selling culinary trinkets, we went to Sparrow Hawk Ltd., 12 E. Bijou St.; Chefs, 5070 Centennial Blvd.; Target stores (several locations); and a few online sources. The goodies, available at these and other stores, come in a range of prices, from less than $5 to $30.

You’ll see a few of our top picks below.

Toucan Scrubby Holder

An attractive way to keep your scrubby handy and your countertop neat. Hand-painted, glazed earthenware holder comes with a nonabrasive scrubby. Hand wash. $9.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

Trudeau Crumb Sweeper

This battery-operated sweeper is great for gathering crumbs from the table. It has soft, nonscratch, nylon bristles and takes two AA batteries. It comes in red, yellow or orange. $11.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

Hutzler Onion Saver

Keep your cut onions odorless, fresh and moist in this airtight container. Dishwasher safe. $3.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

Rick Bayless Avocado Scoop

This unique gadget lets you scoop and mash avocados with ease. The stainless steel head sits atop an avocado-colored silicone handle, making for a comfortable grip. Dishwasher safe. $17.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

Progressive Pan Scrapers

These ergonomic scrapers are perfect for cleaning and scraping sticky messes from plates, pots and pans. Safe for nonstick surfaces and dishwasher safe, they come in an array of bright colors. $1.79 at Sparrow Hawk.

Savory Recipe Assortment

Boxed sets of 10 note cards (two each of five designs) plus 11 envelopes. Each card contains a recipe, plus food lore or cooking tips from Tina Wasserman, who owns a cooking school in Dallas. Holiday collections include Holiday Treats Assortment; Holiday Entertaining Assortment; and Hanukkah Recipe Assortment. $18 at www.cookingand more.com.

Polder rechargeable instant-read thermometer

A charging base makes sure the probe is always at hand and fully charged. Includes thermometer, base and protective probe sheath. Has a backlit LCD screen with extra-large numbers. The backlighting changes from yellow to green to indicate that the reading is done. A magnet on the probe keeps the thermometer secured to the base while charging. $29.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

Cookie cutters

These durable, nonstick cutters make seamless cuts for cookies and canapés, and they release cleanly and easily. Each set includes one shape (star, tree or circle) in five sizes, and the sets nest for compact storage. Dishwasher safe. $1.99 at Chefs.<

Screwpull champagne cork catcher

Simply remove the foil and cage, place the cork catcher on the champagne bottle, hold firm, twist the bottle, and up comes the cork. Get the “pop,” but not the flying cork. $20 at Sparrow Hawk.

ISI Flexible Mixing Bowls

Molded from silicone, this set contains three bowls with removable lids. The bowls are flexible, lightweight and durable, and work beautifully for mixing and stirring. Plus they’re heat resistant to 490 degrees, and they’re safe for use in the microwave, freezer and dishwasher. Available in red, white or blue. $24.99 at Chefs.

EAT IT! Snacks & Sweets Trivia Game

This board game for teens and adults features fun trivia about the foods that everyone loves to eat: chocolate, candy, cookies, ice cream and other desserts. It comes with thousands of questions about jingles, advertising campaigns, ingredients, nostalgia, origins and pop culture. $27.99 at Target.

Celebrity Chef! The Game

A combination of Cranium and Bravo’s “Top Chef,” this is a board game for those interested in, passionate about and inspired by the world of chefs. It’s fun for both the occasional home cook and the culinary professional. $29.99 at www.celebritychefthegame.com.

Fusion Brands Poach Pod

These handy silicone cups, heatresistant up to 500 degrees, make it easy to poach eggs. Just crack your egg right into the pod and set in a pot of boiling water. The perfectly shaped egg will slip out of the pod easily. Dishwasher safe. $8.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

MISTO Snapi Server

This plastic, hinged device is for single-handed servings of salads, pasta and veggies. Available in assorted colors. Dishwasher safe. $9.99 at Sparrow Hawk.

Stay Fresh Pie Keeper

Made of durable plastic, the container will hold any size glass or metal pie plate with enough clearance for meringue toppings. Dishwasher safe. $9.99 at Chefs.

Penzeys 4-Jar Bakers’ Assortment

This set contains the most popular spices for fresh, homemade baked goods. Includes Sweet China Cassia Cinnamon, Dutch Process Cocoa, Baking Spice (a combination of sweet spices) and Double Strength Madagascar Pure Vanilla Extract. $27.99 at www.penzeys.com.


Source: http://www.gazette.com/articles/sparrow_30245___article.html/hawk_safe.html

Casio World’s Fastest Camera 6 Mega Pixel Digital SLR Protype being developed

Casio has announced that it is currently developing a totally new and revolutionary digital camera with never-seen-before high speed performance and image capture functions.

The prototype of Casio’s latest revolutionary camera features a new high speed CMOS sensor as well as a high-speed LSI image processing chip. It will be a 6.0 mega pixel camera and will feature 12x optical zoom and CMOS-shift image stabilization functions that offers not only ultra-high speed burst shooting for still images, but also high speed movie recording.

Casio’s latest revolutionary high speed camera

When shooting still images, the Casio camera can achieve a high speed burst shooting of 60 images per second at maximum resolution, incidentally the fastest ever in the world. Besides, when using Pre-shot Burst Mode, users can be confident of capturing the most crucial of photographic moments.

Casio’s revolutionary camera also captures movies at VGA resolution at a speed of 300 frames per second, meaning that it can record movies for replay in ultra-slow motion. This function has been possible so far only for a limited range of professional movie equipment.

Listed below are the main specifications of Casio’s prototype camera:

Effective pixels: 6.0 million

Imaging element: 1/1.8 inch high speed CMOS sensor (total pixels: 6.6 million)

High speed burst shooting: 60 images per second at 6.0 million pixels, JPEG

High speed movie: 300fps, Motion JPEG, AVI format, VGA

Lens/focal distance: 12 lenses in 9 groups, F2.7 to 4.6, equivalent to approximately 35 to 420 mm on a 35 mm film camera

Zoom: 12X optical zoom

Image stabilization mechanism: CMOS-shift image stabilization

Monitor screen: 2.8-inch widescreen TFT color LCD, approx. 230,000 pixels

Viewfinder: Color LCD, approx. 200,000 pixels

Dimension and weight: 5.01” (W) x 3.13” (H) x 5.12” (D). Approx. 22.93 oz (excluding battery and accessories)

As of now, the product release date and pricing have yet to be determined. Meanwhile, Casio will continue to work on this camera to further improve its performance and functionality.

Source: http://www.techshout.com/cameras/2007/08/casio-worlds-fastest-camera-6-mega-pixel-digital-slr-protype-being-developed/

Top Ten Digital Cameras to capture this Festive Season for a Lifetime

The festive season is here, and with it comes the worry of frantically searching for fun gifts for friends and family. Well, now you may not have to search any more, at least if you are looking for a digital camera for one of your tech-loving friends.

Here is our choice of top 10 camera within the price range of Rs.8000-Rs.10,000 that will be perfect as festive gifts. So hurry and take a look, because a camera is one of those quintessential gadgets- one that allows you to capture fun times and memories that will last for a lifetime. And as we all know, the parties have begun, and life has begun to take on a fun and feisty mood as we are bang in the middle of the festive season.

The Olympus FE270 is a fun digital camera that most photography enthusiasts will come to love. The FE270 is a 7.1 mega pixel camera with a 3x optical zoom and around 15 scene modes, offering users the best results in different situations. A good thing is that videos can be shot with sound. Also, using the Super Macro Mode, users will be able to capture great shots of flowers and other objects that require detailed close-ups. Once again, this camera offers 6.9MB of internal memory. This camera from Olympus just costs Rs.8995.

The Lumix LS70 camera can rightly be termed as Panasonic’s most worthed introduction for 2007. This 7.2 mega pixel camera with its superb Lumix DC VARIO optical 3x zoom lens and a host of features makes this a tempting buy. Its 20-inch TFT color monitor is decent. However, the 27MB of internal memory that comes with this camera makes up for any missing features. Moreover, the camera also offers various modes such as Burst capture mode and red-eye reduction modes. The price of the Lumix LS70 digital camera is Rs.9250.

The Canon PowerShot A550 is one of the few entry-level cameras that offers a larger-than-life 2.0-inch LCD versus the traditional 1.8-inch screen. Other features include a 4x optical zoom lens, point-and-shoot operation, a VGA movie mode and support for SDHC memory cards. Battery life of the PowerShot A550 is great as it allows you to clock around 550 shots before dying out. Canon’s PowerShot A550 digital camera is perfect for a gift for close friends and family at Rs.9,990.

The Samsung DIGIMAX S500 is a 5.1 mega pixel camera with a 3x optical zoom and a large 2.4-inch LCD screen. The design of the camera offers an ergonomic grip for steady shooting. A conveniently placed mode dial and a quick print button for direct printing are added features that users will come to appreciate. Internal memory of this camera is approximately 20MB, while an MMC or SD card up to 1GB is also compatible for extra storage. The DIGIMAX S500 camera carries a price tag of Rs.9,990.

The sleek Polaroid T730 with its 7.1 mega pixels, 3x optical zoom, 4x optical zoom and of course the 2.5-inch color TFT LCD display makes for a good festive gift. Although it is compatible with most SD memory cards, the camera does offer an internal memory of 32MB (18 images) in case you forget to carry your SD cards. This PC and Mac- compatible camera offers a host of features such as Red-eye reduction, Slow Sync (which gives you the right kind of light setting) and an Electronic 2-10 second timer. At a super price of Rs.10,990, the Polaroid T730 from the company’s popular T-series will be perfect for the old as well as the youth.

The Nikon S200 is one of Nikon’s tiniest point-and-shoot cameras. It is equipped with a 7.1 mega pixel with a 3x optical zoom lens. The 2.5-inch LCD with 153,000 pixel resolution offers the only means of composing images, since this camera does not actually have an optical viewfinder. Even though the core feature set for this camera is quite typical, other in-camera fixes such as D-Lighting, which adjusts the exposure/brightness and Best Shot Selector, which determines the best photo in a series of shots, make the Nikon S200 a good buy for those venturing into photography. A unique benefit is the fact that the Nikon S200 can double as a voice recorder, offering up to 5 hours of recording time. The Nikon S200 digital camera carries a price tag of Rs.12,950.

The Sony CyberShot W55 digital camera is a 7.2 mega pixel camera with a 3x optical zoom. This camera has the ability to deliver spectacularly clear, high resolution digital images with just about every click. Moreover, the CCD allows a higher light level to pass to each pixel, increasing sensitivity, reducing noise and utilizing more digital information when reproducing the subject. The large 2.5-inch LCD allows for easy viewing of images clicked, while Sony’s G Series Lithium-ion battery maximizes the power of the camera up to 380 shots on a single charge. An added bonus is the 56MB of internal memory in case you forget to carry your Memory Stick Duo card. The cost of this camera is Rs.12,990.

Kodak always has something interesting to offer, just like this 8.0 mega pixel Kodak M883 camera with its 3x optical zoom lens. The camera is housed in a thin and tylish metallic body and come with some interesting accessories such as carry bags, SD cards and USB AC adapters. Plus, it sports a huge 30inch wide-angle viewing LCD. Other good features include face detection technology and several scene modes to suit just about any environment when shooting. As the Kodak M88r camera features picture enhancing features on the camera itself, this model seems to be a perfect gift at Rs.13,999.

The Olympus MJU 820 is an attractive 8 mega pixel digital camera with a 5x lens and a large 2.7-inch and bright LCD screen which incorporates anti glare technology. Its sturdy body is supposed to brave small splashes and showers with ease, but don’t go about dunking this one into a bucket of water! So it’s perfect for travelers and trekkers alike. A number of modes, 25 language options and a small internal memory complete the features of this camera. The Olympus MJU 820 camera may be a dream come true for some at an attractive price of Rs.14.995.

Next up is the Kodak EasyShare V803 is an 8 mega pixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom. In spite of having a small display of just 6.4cms, the pictures come out crystal clear, enough to make anyone satisfied. The lens retracts back into the body, and the whole package is designed to slip into a pocket for a night out. This camera that costs Rs.14,999 comes in a number of exciting colors including red, blue, yellow, purple, white, silver, pink and black.

Please note: The prices noted above may differ by Rs.500 in the Indian market. However, all of these cameras are immediately available. So what are you waiting for!

Source: http://www.techshout.com/features/2007/08/top-ten-digital-cameras-to-capture-this-festive-season-for-a-lifetime/

Scientist: 'Hybrid' computers will meld living brains with technology

A scientist who successfully connected a moth's brain to a robot predicts that in 10 to 15 years we'll be using "hybrid" computers running a combination of technology and living organic tissue.

Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, has built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Higgins told Computerworld that he basically straps a hawk moth to the robot and then puts electrodes in neurons that deal with sight in the moth's brain. Then the robot responds to what the moth is seeing -- when something approaches the moth, the robot moves out of the way.

Higgins explained that he had been trying to build a computer chip that would do what brains do when processing visual images. He found that a chip that can function nearly like the human brain would cost about $60,000.

"At that price, I thought I was getting lower quality than if I was just accessing the brain of an insect which costs, well, considerably less," he said. "If you have a living system, it has sensory systems that are far beyond what we can build. It's doable, but we're having to push the limits of current technology to do it."

This organically guided, 12-in.-tall robot on wheels may be pushing the technology envelope right now, but it's just the seed of what is coming in terms of combining living tissue with computer components, according to Higgins.

"In future decades, this will be not surprising," he said. "Most computers will have some kind of living component to them. In time, our knowledge of biology will get to a point where if your heart is failing, we won't wait for a donor. We'll just grow you one. We'll be able to do that with brains, too. If I could grow brains, I could really make computing efficient."

While the moth is physically attached to the robot at this point, Higgins said he expects that one day only the brain itself will be needed. "Can we grow a brain that does what we want it to do? Can I grow an eye with a brain connected to it and have it do what I need it to do? Can I engineer an organism and hook it into my artificial system?" he asked. "Yes, I really think this is coming. There are things biology can do so much better. Think of a computer that can be both living and nonliving. We'd be growing tissue that has no more intelligence than a liver or a heart. I don't see ethical issues here."

He does see an ethical line, though. "Our goal is not to hook up primate brains to a robot," said Higgins. "There's the possibility, when you start to tap into brains, for all sorts of evil applications. There are certainly all these ethical issues when you start talking about human and primate brains."

Higgins said he expects that these future hybrid systems will take the form of a visual sensor that sits on the front of an automobile and keeps the vehicle from rear-ending another car. He also envisions them being embedded in military robots that can go into a hot zone, see the enemy and actually sniff out land mines. And hybrid systems could be used to make people with spinal cord injuries mobile again.

Will future desktops and laptops have organic parts?

Why not, said Higgins. "Computers now are good at chess and Word and Excel, but they're not good at being flexible or interacting with other users," he added. "There may be some way to use biological computing to actually make our computers seem more intelligent."

Right now, Higgins has successfully attached electrodes into a single vision neuron in the moth's brain. (Different neurons perform different functions like vision and the sense of smell. Humans have millions, if not trillions, of neurons. Insects have hundreds.) Now, Higgins is experimenting with connecting four electrodes into neurons on both sides of the moth's brain, expanding the visual image that the robot receives. "That should give me information about things moving on the left and right of the animal, at different speeds and moving up and down," he explained.

Higgins is also experimenting with tapping into the moth's muscles and olfactory senses. If he can work with the muscles, for instance, a strapped down moth trying to move in a certain direction would actually propel the robot.

"We're developing a lot of technology that could be used for prosthetic applications," said the researcher. "There are lots of people working on connecting functional brains to people who have nonworking limbs. You connect to the brain and send the information to a human limb or robotic limb. It's an area that is closely related to what we're doing."

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9050258&pageNumber=2
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=10&articleId=9050258&intsrc=hm_topic

The World's Most Expensive Small Camera

AN 84-year-old Leica has become the world's most expensive small camera after being auctioned for over 100 times the cost of a modern-day digital camera.

The rare camera fetched a world-record price of €336,000 ($551,151) for cameras of its type at auction.

World's Most Expensive Small Camera

This makes the tiny portable black camera dating from 1923 the most expensive small camera in the world and the second most expensive camera ever sold at auction.

It was bought by an anonymous European collector.

The Leica camera was the seventh of a series made in Germany to test the market for portable cameras, and intended for export to New York.

The world's most expensive camera sold at auction was a Daguerrotype early camera made by the Susse brothers dating from 1839 and sold in May for €580,000 ($951,598).

Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,22782110-5014115,00.html

Real Life Spy Gadgets Compete For Price

In the James Bond novels and films, it fell to technical expert Q to invent the gizmos and cunningly concealed weapons that helped the British spy cheat death and save the world.

From a biometric keyboard to blast-proof curtains, the inventions on display in the real world this month came from five technology firms in the final round of the Global Security Challenge, a competition to identify the world's most promising security start-up.

"I'm sorry that Q wasn't at the judging table," said Sir Richard Dearlove, who from 1999-2004 was the real-life C – the code-name given to the head of British spy service MI6.

But on a more sombre note, he told participants: "We are faced with complex new threats to society... We must also contend with the possibility that many new technologies have a dark side and may be used against us."

According to Venture Business Research, which provides intelligence and research on private companies in high-growth sectors, more than $US6 billion ($6.9 billion) of investment has flowed into private security and defence businesses in the US and Europe so far this year, up from some $3.5 billion in the whole of 2006.

Spotting that potential, MBA students at London Business School staged the inaugural security challenge last year, when British start-up Ingenia Technology took the $10,000 first prize for an anti-counterfeit laser-scanning device.

Such was interest in the competition that the US Government's Technical Support Working Group raised this year's prize to $US500,000 ($573,000).

Industry players, private equity groups and venture capital firms all listened closely to the entrants' pitches, in an event highlighting the challenges facing young companies in turning bright ideas into commercial ventures.

Night camera

The winning entry was from NoblePeak Vision Corporation, based in Wakefield, Massachusetts and founded in 2002 as a spin-off from Bell Laboratories: its night-vision camera can pick up short-wave infrared (SWIR) light invisible to the eye.

The black-and-white night-time images are much sharper than those generated by thermal video cameras, and applications include battlefield vision, protecting buildings and helping car drivers avoid collisions at night.

Other finalists included biometric technology to recognise keyboard users by their typing behaviour – sparing users from memorising dozens of passwords – and a hand-held device for testing exposure to nerve agents.

By scanning the eye, it can also detect carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning, or identify trauma to the brain.

Another company offered new high-strength fibres that get fatter when stretched and are highly resistant to blast damage, offering potential as special curtains to catch flying window glass in an explosion.

Also in contention was a "face synthesis" device to create up to thousands of images from one photo, predicting how the subject will look in different lighting conditions, from different angles and with varying expressions or facial hair.

Biometrics

A poll of investors, experts and industry players at the event identified biometrics and protection of critical infrastructure as key growth areas in coming years.

But Lee Buchanan, a former assistant US navy secretary who now advises US private equity group Paladin on investments, said the crucial point was to deliver more than just security.

"Typically a company or an organisation is going to be much more interested in a security technology which also has a non-security yield – an increase in productivity, an increase in the distinction of its own product," he said.

Competition judges praised the calibre of the entries but found some of them lacking in key areas.

The keyboard developer was targeting an "incredibly crowded area" of the IT security market and had not undertaken much peer review – a criticism shared by the face recognition system.

The fibre-maker was praised for its innovation, but found wanting in its delivery strategy. The eye scanner's makers had underestimated regulatory challenges and the difficulty of building a robust product.

Security companies needed a good business model, Mr Buchanan said, but added: "I don't see very many of those out there."

Mr Buchanan identified sensor technologies for explosives, bioweapons and nuclear materials as one of the biggest gaps in the market.

'More attractive than clean energy'

While this year's $6 billion investment in the sector has been swollen by some big one-off deals, Venture Business Research director Douglas Lloyd said European interest had markedly increased, and a series of dedicated security funds had started to emerge.

"I expect investment activity in this sector to remain buoyant. And I also see this as a more attractive sector, as many do, than clean energy," Mr Lloyd said.

"The failure rate of security businesses is much lower than clean-tech ones and, as importantly, the capital investment required to build a successful security business is also much lower."

With politicians and intelligence chiefs warning of a decades-long struggle to come against al-Qaeda, security looks set to remain a growth industry.

Paladin's Mr Buchanan rejected the charge often levelled by critics that the defence and industrial establishment has a vested interested in talking up the dangers.

"I'm not sure we can over-emphasise the threat. It's going to be with us a very long time. It is very deep and abiding. I don't think we're nearly at the point where the hype exceeds the need," he said.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,22829922-5014108,00.html

Get wired! The top 6 family tech gifts of 2007

As a dad for the last 13 years, I can tell you that there are few moments more humbling than trying to get a gadget to work under the increasingly skeptical gaze of your kids on Christmas morning. So I made a pact with myself: If I was going to pick my favorite gadgets for the holidays, they’d not only be powerful, fun and shiny, but they’d also be to easy to start up in front of the kids.

When it comes to high-tech toys and tools that are simple to set up and fun to use, here are the best — and the easiest — of the best. Be sure to tune in to TODAY on Christmas morning, when we’ll give you a quick “out-of-the-box” tutorial to get you started with each of the following:

AT&T Video Share
A Dick Tracy-like advance in technology: AT&T’s Video Share technology lets you have a real-time (one-way) video telephone conversation with somebody else, no matter where they are in the country, on your mobile phone. Works almost anywhere in the U.S. A built-in camera in the phone points at you or

AT&T Video Share

your surroundings while you talk, so your relatives on the other end can see what you’re seeing, live. Any kid who is a fan of the “Mike TV” character in Willy Wonka will love this one. Plan starts at $4.99 per month. Some video phones are free with 2-year plan, www.att.com.

Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card
Eye-Fi is the world’s first wireless SD memory card for digital cameras. Translation: Eye-Fi has turned that little removable SD card in your digital camera (which stores your pictures) into a transmitter; the second you walk near a wireless signal in your home, the Eye-Fi SD card sends your pictures — wirelessly — to any one of 17 online photo sites (like Kodak Gallery) or social networking sites (like Facebook).

Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card

Again, you don’t have to do anything to upload your pictures — with the Eye-Fi, just get near a hotspot; the Eye-Fi will automatically send your pictures to your computer, and to many photo services on the web. No cables. No getting online. $99, www.eye.fi.

Nintendo Wii
Nintendo has lapped the field. Everybody wants a Wii. Why? When you look at it on paper, it’s hard to understand. The company created a slower, lower-resolution video game, and next to Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Playstation 3, it looks a little dated, a little old-fashioned. But then pick up the intuitive game controller, and in seconds, you’ve figured out the

Nintendo Wii

attraction — for one thing, there are no instructions needed. For another, all ages in one family seem drawn to the game’s simplicity. And for sure, the fact that the game connects you to the image through natural human motion is a big attraction. The Wii is more fun, takes no time to learn and now has the odds-on favorite for Video Game of the Year: Super Mario Galaxy. No wonder they sold 350,000 Wii home systems just in the first week of this year’s holiday shopping season. $249, www.nintendo.com

New Apple iMAC desktop computer
A huge percentage of home movies are made on Christmas day, and the new Apple iMac offers by far the simplest, fastest way to make those movies. Using a software called iMovie, which is included on all iMacs, all you have to do is shoot what you want, connect your camcorder to the computer with a cable and iMovie takes care

Apple Apple Apple

of the rest. When it asks you if you want to ‘import’ the clips, click on ‘yes.’ Then, drag the video clips of your family that you just made into any order you want (just clicking and dragging does it). Last but not least, add a music track by doing the same thing — clicking on a piece of music you have on your computer, and dragging it under the video clips. Then press play. Suddenly, Spielberg. The iMac is among the easiest, most intuitively-designed home computers ever made. $1199 to $2299, www.apple.com

Olympus SP 560 UZ
By far, the fastest-growing segment of the digital camera business (digital cameras are the #1 tech present for Christmas) is called the UltraZoom category. It lies between the traditional Point-and-Shoot category and the pricier, more-complicated Digital SLR.

Olympus SP 560 UZ

The new Ultra-Zoom has most of the power of a Digital SLR but with the weight and compact dimensions of the Point-and-Shoot. The best in show — the Canon SP 560 UZ — has an amazing zoom lens and a truly intuitive way of controlling your picture-taking. $449, www.olympusamerica.com.

The Sirius Stiletto 2

The Stiletto 2 is the lightest, easiest-to-use portable satellite music player in the world. If there was one drawback to satellite radio (which picks up signals from orbiting satellites that hover over the United States), it was the way the players worked. They either had to be connected to cars or, if they were portable (a recent development), they were about as easy

Sirius Stiletto 2

to use as Rubik’s Cubes. The new, sleek, shiny, Stiletto 2 has a simple-to-navigate system and a very large, high-resolution, color LCD screen. The best part — other than the intuitive buttons — is that you can take it outside on a walk, bike ride or hike and pick up over 100 channels of digital radio, plus the Stiletto picks up wifi internet signals. So you can stream Sirius.com from your computer and listen to satellite radio ... inside. $279, www.sirius.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22042424/

iPods and gadgets top gift wish lists

WHAT'S big this Christmas? For a start, futuristic electronic gadgets, especially iPods, iPods and more iPods.

As the ubiquitous music and video players get smaller and thinner cases, and bigger and brighter screens, they continue to thrive — this year the black iPod nano, with its anodised aluminium and polished steel shell, is proving particularly popular in consumer electronics stores.

JB Hi-Fi also reports that games consoles, especially Nintendo's Wii, with it's hand-held remote controller, are hot sellers, as well as big LCD televisions with 32-46 inch screens.

The futuristic theme continues in toy shops, where Star Wars Lego is a big hit. Toy City in Elsternwick reports that models of General Grievous' Starfighter have been in demand.

But it's not just the future that's popular — there's also a retro trend evident, with tricycles in traditional red and cream colour schemes selling well.

Kids have always loved playing with water, and as restrictions bite, another popular gift is the AquaPlay, a Swedish-designed water toy that comes in sections that lock together, and most importantly doesn't use much water.

While international novels usually steal the literary limelight at this time of year, Australian books are front and centre. At Readings in Carlton, Christopher Koch's The Memory Room and Maggie Beer's cookery book, Maggie's Harvest, are selling well, while Mo Vida, inspired by Melbourne's laneway restaurant, is moving so quickly it's likely to be sold out by next week.

Matthew Condon's novel The Trout Opera, more than a decade in the writing, has proved unexpectedly popular, as have Alex Miller's Landscape of Farewell and Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog.

Even in summer footy continues to be enormous. It might be deep into cricket season, but Melbourne Sports Books reports that the 2007 Footy Almanac, edited by John Harms and Paul Daffey, is in big demand, as is the Geelong 2007 Grand Final DVD, and a freshly updated edition of the biography of Geelong's footy supremo, Frank Costa.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/ipods-and-gadgets-top-gift-wish-lists/2007/12/01/1196394689115.html

Terabyte Storage for Cell Phones

A new type of memory technology could lead to thumb drives or digital-camera memory cards that store a terabyte of information--more than most hard drives hold today. The first examples of the new technology, which could also slash energy consumption by more than 99 percent, could be on the market within 18 months.

"It's a radically new technology," says Michael Kozicki, a professor of electrical engineering at the Arizona State University, whose group is one of several working on a version of the new memory. "If it really works as well as everybody thinks it could, it could genuinely revolutionize the memory and storage industry."

The new type of memory, called programmable-metallization-cell (PMC) memory, or nano-ionic memory, has been under development at the Arizona State University and at companies such as Sony and IBM. It's one of a new generation of experimental technologies that are bidding to replace hard drives, the nonvolatile "flash" memory used in portable electronics, and the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in personal computers. The first ionic-memory prototypes were far too slow for practical use. But recently, researchers have demonstrated that materials structured at the nanoscale could yield ionic-memory devices that are much faster. Nano-ionic memory is significantly faster than flash memory, and the speed of some experimental cells has rivaled that of DRAM, which is orders of magnitude faster than flash.

The memory could also prove easy to make. Recently, the Arizona group published work demonstrating that nano-ionic memory can be made from materials conventionally used in computer memory chips and microprocessors. That could make it easier to integrate with existing technologies, and it would mean less retooling at factories, which would appeal to manufacturers.

Another reason that ionic memory is attractive is that it uses extremely low voltages, so it could consume as little as a thousandth as much energy as flash memory. In theory, it could also achieve much higher storage densities--bits of information per unit of surface area--than current technologies can.

These attractions are largely the result of a new mechanism for storing information. Flash memory stores bits of information as electrical charge, but the smaller the memory cells that hold the bits, the less charge they can hold, and the less reliable they become. The new memory stores information by rearranging atoms to form stable, and potentially extremely small, memory cells. What's more, each cell could potentially store multiple bits of information, and the cells can be layered on top of each other, increasing the memory's storage density to the point that it might rival that of the densest form of memory today: hard drives.

Each memory cell consists of a solid electrolyte sandwiched between two metal electrodes. The electrolyte is a glasslike material that contains metal ions. Ordinarily, the electrolyte resists the flow of electrons. But when a voltage is applied to the electrodes, electrons bind to the metal ions, forming metal atoms that cluster together. These atoms form a virus-sized filament that bridges the electrodes, providing a path along which electrical current can flow. Reversing the voltage causes the wire to "dissolve," Kozicki says. The highly resistive state of the electrolyte and the other, low-resistance, state can be used to represent zeroes and ones. Because the metal filament stays in place until it's erased, nano-ionic memory is nonvolatile, meaning that it doesn't require energy to hold on to information, just to read it or write it.

A thumb drive that stored a terabyte of information, however, would have to take advantage of two other characteristics of nano-ionic memory, Kozicki says. First, it would have to store more than one bit of information per memory cell. Once the wire inside the cell forms, it's possible to apply a voltage again, causing more atoms to form, thickening the wire and further decreasing resistance. Successive jolts will thicken the wire yet more, and the different states of resistance could be used to store multiple bits of information per wire.

What's more, this type of memory can be stacked up in layers, since it's not necessary for each cell to be in contact with a base layer of silicon, as is the case with some other types of memory. Combining multiple bits per cell with multiple layers could make it possible to form extraordinarily dense memory, Kozicki says.

William Gallagher, a senior manager for exploratory nonvolatile-memory research at IBM Research, says that nano-ionic memory is one of several promising next-generation memory technologies. These include MRAM, which stores information using magnetic fields, and phase-change memory, which stores information in a way similar to that used to store bits on DVDs. Gallagher says that ionic memory's competitors have a head start on it. MRAM chips are already sold for some special applications, such as devices that will be exposed to harsh environments. But MRAM may also prove better for high-speed memory applications than as a replacement for flash, so it may not compete directly with nano-ionic memory. Samsung, however, could be selling a phase-change-based flash-replacement memory within a year.

Still, nano-ionic memory may not be far behind. A few companies have licensed nano-ionic-memory technology developed at the Arizona State University. These include Qimonda, based in Germany; Micron Technologies, based in Boise, ID; and a Bay Area stealth-mode startup. The startup is well on the way to producing its first memory devices, which Kozicki says could be available within 18 months. These first chips, however, won't rival hard drives in memory density, he says.

The new technology could nevertheless have difficulty winning wide adoption. Flash-type memory continues to improve and may do so for a few more generations of products. Also, the best nano-ionic-memory prototypes have been made from materials that aren't used in conventional microchips, so manufacturing could be costly, at least initially. Kozicki's group recently demonstrated that ionic memory can be built from a combination of silicon dioxide and copper--materials that are compatible with conventional manufacturing. But these materials do not perform as well, which could make them less attractive than alternatives such as phase-change memory. For the new type of memory to succeed, it may be necessary to convince manufacturers to switch to new materials.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/19643/page2/

http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/19643/

Your Robotic Personal Assistant

Aside from the Roomba, robots haven't made much progress infiltrating American homes. But researchers at Stanford University have developed software that overcomes one of the biggest challenges: teaching a robot how to pick up an object it has never encountered before. The robot's software suggests that the best way to pick up something new is by determining the most grabable part of the object--the stem of a wineglass, the handle of a mug, or the edge of a book, for instance.

Engineers and science-fictions fans have long dreamed of putting robotics in the home, says Andrew Ng, professor of computer science at Stanford. In fact, the robotic hardware that exists today could allow a robot to do the complex tasks that are required to pick up objects, keep a house clean, and so on. But the missing piece, Ng explains, is software that can allow robots to do these things by themselves. A dexterous robot with the smarts to pick up new objects without being specifically programmed to do so could be useful for complex domestic tasks such as feeding the pets and loading the dishwasher.

While it's true that some robots are capable of picking up specific objects, even on a cluttered table, they do so with the help of specific three-dimensional models that have been preprogrammed, says Aaron Edsinger, founder of Meka Robotics, a startup in San Francisco. "But this assumes that we're going to be able to know ahead of time what objects are out there," he says. This might be inessential in a carefully constructed nursing home, for instance, but it would be essential in a busy family's apartment or house.

Instead of using predetermined models of objects, some roboticists, including Edsinger and Ng, are building perception systems for robots that look for certain features on objects that are good for grasping. The Stanford team has approached the problem by collecting a number of previously fragmented technologies, says Ng, such as computer vision, machine learning, speech recognition, and grasping hardware, and put them together in a robot called STAIR (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot).

STAIR's hardware consists of a mobile robotic arm with a microphone, a speaker, sensors, and cameras that help the arm retrieve objects. The robot's software has its foundation in machine-learning algorithms that can be trained to perform certain functions. The researchers trained the software using 2,500 pictures of objects, with graspable regions identified.

But making the leap from two-dimensional pictures to a three-dimensional world was a challenge, says Ng. Typically, a robot can create a 3-D view of its environment--so it knows how far away the coffeepot is from its hand--using the input from two cameras. This distance is usually determined by collecting a large number of points on an object with the right and left cameras, and then triangulating all the data to build a 3-D model. This process takes a lot of computing power and time, however.

Ng's team developed an alternative that simplifies the process. Instead of collecting data about lots of points on an object, the researchers' algorithm identifies the midpoint of a graspable portion of an object, such as a handle, by calculating the edges of an object and comparing this with the edges of statistically similar objects in the database. The software matches this point using both cameras and triangulates the distance. "This was the key idea that made all of our grasping things work," Ng says. "We've now done things like load items from a dishwasher."

Robots still need to learn the finer points of automatic manipulation, Ng adds. STAIR was designed only to grasp objects, and not to adjust its grasp depending on the situation. For instance, it wasn't built to pour coffee from a pot--a task that might require a different grasp position and a different amount of pressure than simply picking up the pot and placing it on a shelf. Additionally, the software doesn't know the consistency of the object--whether it's squishy or solid. But researchers are working on these problems, and ultimately, a personal robot will have a combination of sensing technologies and different software that will allow it to pick up and manipulate an object. (See "Robots That Sense Before They Touch.")

It could be years before all the technologies are integrated well enough so that robots can handle complex household chores on their own, but the Stanford work is pushing the dream forward. "If I had to pick one thing that's holding back this vision of personal robotics, it would be the ability to pick things up and manipulate them," says Josh Smith, senior research scientist at Intel Research, in Seattle. "We need more grasping strategies, like [the Stanford researchers'], that don't require an explicit 3-D model of the object." He adds that in addition to the robot having improved computer vision techniques, the actual hand of the robot will most likely have a number of sensors that can feel if an object is moving or if the grasp isn't right. "Much richer sensing in the hand will be an important part of the solution," Smith says.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19768/page2/
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