Author: Kat Hannaford

Greenpeace awarded Apple as being the “most green” tech company the other week, so it’s not surprising two patent applications have been dug up from last May showing they aim to be even more energy-efficient.

Both patents, discovered by Patently Apple, show devices which save energy when charging from the socket. It’s not the usual Apple discovery—hardly a touch-sensitive iPhone—but it’ll be an ongoing issue for tech companies to face, so it’s not surprising they want in on it early.

While the above figures look a bit confusing, Apple’s basically saying:

“Some personal computers sometimes are being left on simply to serve as power supplies for the charging of the aforementioned portable devices via connections, such as Universal Serial Bus (“USB”) connections, that provide power in addition to data (rather than charging those devices from the household electric service using their dedicated chargers), even though the power supply of a personal computer is much larger than is needed for such a function, and as such draws much more power than such a function would otherwise demand. As the price of electricity increases, such uses of power can cost users more.”

Using an “Intelligent Power Monitoring” system, you could choose to charge your gadgets during off-peak hours to save money, or charge just a gadget attached to a laptop via USB, not the laptop itself.

The second, slightly-similar idea from Apple is called the “Intelligent Power-enabled Communications Port,” which involves a system that routes different amounts of power to various electronics being charged:

“Rather than continually upgrade standards such as the USB or FireWire standards, a variable power supply may be provided for the power conductor of a port.”

As with most patent applications, it’s all a bit vague thanks to a lack of detail, photos and motive—for example, it’s not known whether Apple would want to incorporate this technology into existing product lines, or launch a stand-alone energy monitoring device. The latter would hardly be in keeping with what they’re known for, but it’s not like we can ever truly be sure of what Apple’s going to do next. [Patently Apple via CNET]

Time to get back to the tablet range of yesteryear: HP’s TouchSmart line-up. They’ve added three new models to the family—the 12-inch tm2, 15.6-inch dv6t and 17.3-inch dv7t.

At $950, the tm2 has a capacitive multitouch screen in the aforementioned 12 inches, a SU7300 1.3GHz ULV processor along with 3GB of DDR3 RAM and optional ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4550 card or SU9600 processor.

The larger 15.6-inch dv6t has a 2.4GHz Core i5-520M processor, 3GB RAM and 320GB HDD. It’ll cost $929 when it goes on sale.

Last, but no means least, the dv7t has a 17.3-inch display and will set you back $999. HP isn’t exactly breaking tablet PC boundaries with these three, but at least you know what you’re getting when you buy them. [LogicBuy via Engadget]

Created for the Lego Graffiti Styles Convention in Munich, Cole Blaq made a fiery Lego display with some bee-yoo-tiful photo results.

The Lego bricks spell out his name, with a downlight emphasizing the colors of the bricks. Someone should build a big Lego downpour now, those flames look OUT OF CONTROL. [Cole Blaq on Flickr via Brothers Brick via @Katiesol on Twitter]

A brief report on the often ill-informed Digitimes quotes the Chinese Commercial Times paper as suggesting Apple may be readying a 22-inch touchscreen iMac.

This has largely come about thanks to rumors originating from Quanta and Sinket Photronic, the latter of which will be supposedly supplying Apple with the touchscreen displays. If this rumor bears any fruit, it’s bad news to anyone who splashed out on a Troll Touch touchscreen iMac. [Digitimes]

On sale from next month in Japan and the rest of the globe at a later date, Panasonic’s G2 plasmas offer several choices—42, 46 and 50-inches, and black, silver or a dashing brown color options.

The series has the new Black Panel technology for 20 per cent greater image quality (in comparison to the G1), and with a supposed contrast ratio of 5,000,000 : 1. The 42-inch set will be 220,000 Yen ($2,424) when it goes on sale next month.

Along with the G2s, Panasonic’s also let rip with the S2 series, which comes in 42 and 46-inch sizes. There’s nothing much special about these panels that have a 2,000,000: 1 contrast ratio, apart from a 10 per cent less energy consumption. The 42-inch set will cost 190,000 Yen ($2,093). [Akihabara News]

More dusty Newton prototypes have emerged from the archives as everyone’s busy drycleaning their favorite black turtlenecks in preparation of Apple’s tablet announcement. The Bic and Cadillac hit the FCC but never quite made it to shelves, apparently.

The various photos were uploaded to Flickr by users Sonnyhung and Jimabeles, who says that he saw the prototypes at a “mobile computing development group” at Coke (no idea if he means Coca-Cola, or another company), saying that:

“Apple was more or less searching for a reason to build the tablet and never did find a market. I have no idea how many exist. I only know of one other and it is in a computer museum in California.”

Jimabeles claims the Bic had two PCMIA card slots, a retractable I/O door, removable battery, infrared, microphone and speaker, along with an ARM 610 20MHz processor. It never made it past the FCC doors, but as the tablet world is busy undergoing some major changes, it’s fascinating to look back at the models that Apple didn’t actually launch. [Jimabeles Flickr and Sonnyhung Flickr via NowhereElse]

Bic Newton prototype:

Cadillac Newton prototype:

I haven’t had breakfast yet, so these breakfast robots from Korea are looking all the more attractive. KIST has developed two ‘bots which can operate a microwave, serving tea with toast and carrying it to the hungry person.

In the video below, Mahru-Z (the boy robot with two legs, who took two years to create) carries a cup of something hot from the microwave, which he opens, picks the toast up from the toaster, and places them both in a basket. That’s when his ladyfriend Mahru-M comes in, who’s equipped with a nice round wheely bottom. She picks up the basket, and serves it to the human member of their breakfast party.

KIST is hoping to develop Mahru-Z and Mahru-M to the point where they can aid families in household tasks, including washing the dishes and preparing food. Just make them a little faster so the toast is actually still warm when it reaches me, and I’m sold. [MT News via PlasticPals]

Here’s why your mother always said never to put aluminum foil in the microwave. Can someone buy this Swedish guy a new kitchen, please? And a box o’ wine, too? [YouTube] Thanks, Nightwheel!

Dell was noticeably cagey at CES when they revealed the Mini 5 tablet, not being too forthcoming with specs nor fondling-time. Thankfully a user at the Tinhte forums has snaffled one and discovered some very interesting internals.

The Mini 5 has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, which should mean it’s fast enough to do a healthy amount of charging and video hopping on. Other specs we didn’t know about but guessed anyway are all present: Wi-Fi, a 3G SIM card slot, and 1,530mAh battery. It’s got two microSD card slots—one for people to use, the second an inaccessible one presumably for storing Android or somesuch on.

That’s all joining the components Dell were confident enough to announce two weeks ago at CES: Bluetooth, a multitouch 5-inch screen, 5.0-megapixel camera, plasticky finish. Vietnamese video proof of the Dell’s specs, below. [Tinhte forums via Slashgear]

Remember that leaked Motorola, with the right-side tumor? It’s just got official as the MOTOROI (great fun if you say it aloud), and while it’s destined for Korea only, it has an extra trick up its sleeve: handwriting recognition.

In actual fact, the MOTOROI has five ways to get those words across, with a 3×4 keypad, full QWERTY, half-QWERTY, handwriting and writing pad listed. The specs sound great, certainly improving upon the CLIQ and Droid’s internals.

Running on Android 2.0, it’s got native apps multitouch on that 3.7-inch WVGA screen, takes photos with an 8-megapixel camera, records video in 720p, and has an HDMI out and a T-DMB TV tuner for watching 24 of South Korea’s channels. 8GB of storage and a microSD card slot are pretty decent for storage options, and just like with its older brother the Droid, it comes with a docking station.

Unless you live in Korea, it’s unlikely you’ve read this far. It’ll be on sale next month exclusive to SK Telecom, though don’t hold your breath on it making a western world appearance any time soon. [Motorola]

For the more fashionable readers at Gizmodo (someone? Anyone? Bueller?) comes these Marc Jacobs USB hubs, disguised as ye olde mixtapes. MIXTAPES. You remember them, right? [The Malcolm via Hypebeast]

Men! Do you smell so bad that even your laptop has started stinking? Desperate times call for desperate measures, which means you might just have to consider this USB scent flower.

As your lookey-holes can see, it’s in the shape of a flower, but don’t let that put you off. You can’t put a price on a harmonious working environment, nor be too picky about aesthetics. Besides, each bouquet—which retails for $9.99—has three refill cartridges which last for months. The USB flowers come in different colors and scents, so every day can be an Ocean Breeze, Purple Lavender, Pink Jasmine or White Chamomile day. Martha Stewart already owns 87 of them, I heard. [USB scent flower via ChipChick]

We’re only into the second week of the year, but already we’ve seen thousands of gadgets and gizmos announced, thanks to CES. But what to splurge on? Hopefully our choices this year will help you out in your buying quandaries.

2010 promises to be a big year for launches, with 3DTV, tablets and ereaders expected to be stocked on Walmart’s shelves faster than yesterday’s old CRTs are thrown onto the street. After scratching our heads this week, we think we’ve all worked out exactly what we’re going to be spending our hard earned notes on this year—but we’re very interested in what you’re going to buy, too. Let us know if you’ve got similar taste to us, or want something different from the gadget fairy this year.

Designer Emil Kozak has knocked together some graphic Dell skins which will help out the (Product) Red charity. There’s four different designs, with 23 color variations to choose from, and conveniently help disguise the fact that you own a Dell.

They’re $65 each, and are available now. [Dell via Emil Kozak via 2Day Blog]

We’re not usually prone to listening to analysts’ speculation—especially when it comes to Apple products—but this latest, previously unheard-of rumor could see the iPhone experience reinvented completely if proven to be true. Still, please do BYO salt bag.

Robert Chen, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg that the next iPhone will launch in June (obvious to anyone in this world), but will also be remarkably different to what we’ve seen before.

“Apple’s going to put a lot of innovation, not just on the hardware, but also on the software of the new iPhone”

The “new plastic casing” will be touch-sensitive, much like Apple’s Magic Mouse, and according to Chen it will also have a 5.0-megapixel camera. The camera will undoubtedly be upgraded in the next iPhone model, so that’s not a far reach for Chen to make, but this new touch-sensitive casing sounds intriguing.

Making the next iPhone completely touch-sensitive sounds slightly redundant, if you ask me. Why would you want to be able to make a gesture on the back of the iPhone with your finger, to answer a call or turn the volume up on your music, when it’s already all too easy to do that on the touchscreen?

Unless Apple has something else up their sleeve. When you think about how you hold an iPhone, your index finger is usually pointed upwards, resting somewhere in the middle of the back. Could a touch-sensitive area there allow for quicker one-handed scrolling through emails, or application of pressure to perform a different task? Could it be used effectively in gaming?

It’s perplexing thinking about what Apple can offer via a touch-sensitive casing that its touchscreen can’t already do, but if you’ve got any ideas about this big fat piece of analyst hype, do let us know. [Bloomberg]

By now you would’ve heard about the earthquake which left Haiti devastated on Tuesday, leaving thousands dead and even more injured. These high-res satellite photos show the damage the earthquake, measuring 7.3, had on the capital Port-au-Prince.

The photos were taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite which has a resolution of 0.5 meters per pixel, from 423 miles in space, on the morning of January 13th. [GeoEye Satellite Images via Discovery News via Reillymj on Twitter]

You can help out those affected by the Haiti earthquake at Unicef here

Mere days after Google stuck it to the man and refused to continue censoring search results in China, the country has put IMDb.com on its list of inaccessible sites. [The Reg via TechRadar]

Google may not be too interested in giving their US market native app multitouch in the Nexus One, but Motorola aims to please, with CEO Sanjay Jha promising to “deliver multitouch in the majority of our devices.”

Going on, he told Laptop Mag “There’s a complex set of factors, not all of them technical,” which makes us wonder is he’s referring to Google’s thoughts on multitouch Androids. Google’s motto may be “don’t be evil,” but giving European Nexus One owners native multitouch and ignoring other countries is frankly baffling. [Laptop Mag via Phone Arena via Engadget]

So you’ve bought your XEL-1, but still have money to burn when it comes to OLED products? It’s such a common problem. Nanobrick’s caught onto your obsession, and has created 11 media frame models for customizing with your photos.

Each model has several OLED screens, which measure either 3.3-inches or 4.1-inches, for storing photos on of your empty wallet, or maxed-out AMEX card. Each model costs in the area of around $100,000, with the best undoubtedly being this Flowers one, pictured. The rest look like souvenirs your Gran picked up on her Chinese holiday. [OLED-Display via Engadget]