Author: Kyle VanHemert

Not a day goes by that I don’t lament my inability to hook up my Blackberry to a full-size monitor and keyboard. OK, I’ve never actually thought that, but the REDFLY dock from Celio can pull it off regardless.

In a new demonstration video, Celio shows off their REDFLY Moab, a small box that gives you some room to stretch out in your smartphone’s OS. “Why wouldn’t you just send an e-mail in webmail?” you ask, and I wonder the same thing myself. But seeing the familiar Blackberry OS on a big screen is actually sort of amusing, like seeing an elephant balance on its hind legs.

It doesn’t look like the REDFLY supports mouses yet, so if you were excited at the prospect of inflating your Brickbreaker high score you can forget about it. No word on when Celio will be rolling out the dock, so for the time being your smartphone input is limited to your two innermost digits. [Engadget]

Last week we saw a neat concept for a wall that employed spinning triangular panels to change its appearance. Hungarian designer István Kulinyi’s Mobil Pixel Lamp employs the same general idea, except it’s a lamp. And it’s real.

Inspired by the pixels you’re looking at right now, Kulinyi’s lamp comprises a five by five grid of triangular panels framed by black bars on the top and bottom. Each panel has a side that glows red, a side that glows white, and one that is solid black, allowing for 847,288,609,443 different combinations. That should keep you busy for a while.

Though Kulinyi seems to have put together a working model of the Mobil Pixel, as of now there isn’t any information on its future as a manufactured product. Hopefully some enterprising company will snap this design up soon; with almost a trillion different looks, it’s bound to have something for everyone. [István Kulinyi via designboom via Unplggd]

Conventional treatments are often ineffective for treating brain cancer, but scientists have developed a novel new method of destroying cancer cells in the brain: they tag them with metal nanodiscs and shake them to death with magnets.

Scientists at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy have developed a process by which tiny iron-plated discs are attached to antibodies that seek out cancerous cells. Those cells end up getting tagged with the discs, and when a light magnetic field is applied, the oscillation causes the cells to self-destruct. Surrounding healthy cells are left undamaged.

The scientists working on the project emphasize that it’s still in the early, experimental phases, though they hope to begin testing on animals soon. But even if it takes several years to determine if this unique approach is viable for use on humans, it’s always heartening to see nanomaterials being applied to the difficult problems of today. [Science Daily via Kottke]

Wayne Coyne, frontman of the acclaimed rock band The Flaming Lips, recently renovated his Oklahoma compound, and the new space gives the group’s music a run for its money in terms of psychedelic flair, playful construction, and sheer imagination.

The last we saw of Coyne, he was, naturally, sitting in a bathtub on Google Street View. If you thought that was the weirdest place he bathes, wait until you see his bathroom. Its Gaudiesque drip-castle design—Coyne refers to it as the “drug damaged, artist element of [his] home”—is certainly one of the highlights of his new pad, realized by FitzSimmons Architects.

An adjoining alcove, accessed by a glittering circular passageway, scores serious bonus points for including the Giz-featured world’s most beautiful object: the Gyrofocus fireplace.

Having seen Coyne’s appropriately trippy poop cave, it’s got me wondering if other musicians’ homes reflect their sensibilities as closely. Is John Mayer’s house ordinary and forgettable on the outside but chaotically and impenetrably decorated on the inside? Does Prince’s Minneapolis home have a bunch of sex swings? Yes, yes, I’m sure it does. [Fitzsimmons Architects via Design Milk via Geekosystem]

Verizon has officially stated that they will be holding a joint press conference with Skype at MWC on Tuesday, and now Business Week is reporting that Verizon will announce new phones preloaded with Skype for use with their 3G network.

Well yes, that seems like a pretty reasonable guess for what the two companies will be announcing come Tuesday. Despite constant rumors of such, there’s no iPhone or iPad on the Verizon horizon, and adding Skype to their stable would be an attractive option for customers who are making fewer and fewer calls but are already plunking down considerable cash for beefy data plans.

With Skype tinkering away on the 3G functionality of their iPhone app—3G Skype calls are already possible with Fring—it seems like as good a time as ever for Verizon to make a strong push for 3G data calling and the more flexible plans it will engender. [Business Week]

If you like robots or music even a little bit, you should really just go ahead and watch this video of Marv, a robotic vibraphone, playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” faster than any human ever has or ever will.*

On the vibes, at least, Marv is king. Created by three San Francisco engineers who are musicians themselves, the “MIDI Actuated Robotic Vibraphone” will be making its public debut at BarBot next week.

Thankfully, the team captured this early run-through on video, so those of us not in the Bay Area can be dazzled by Marv’s performance. At first it seems like the vibraphone is playing itself, and you get that same weird, uncanny feeling when you come across a player piano. But then the camera moves closer and you can see what’s really going on: instead of using two mallets to strike the bars, each note has its own tiny piston underneath which allows Marv to play pieces with wicked precision and dizzying speed.

As the team’s website claims, Marv plays arrangements “far more complex than a human player could ever achieve,” in part because of its ability to strike multiple notes simultaneously.

I like how at the beginning of this video one team member says, “it does something at least,” as if what we’re about to see is only a passable example of robovibes action. But once Marv gets going and the bumblebee is flying at full tilt, the camera pans to two of the creators who just nod their heads like, “oh Hell yeah.”

Marv can be programmed to play along with humans, too, but I’m not sure I’d want to be the dude holding back this machine’s incredible robo-abilities. I guess what I’m saying is, when it comes to mallet-based percussion instruments, bring on the singularity. [Robovibes via Laughing Squid]

*Some commenters rightfully directed me to this video of Tiago della Vega playing the piece even crazier fast, though I cannot verify his status as “human.”

With MWC right around the corner, all eyes are on Microsoft for the launch of Windows Phone 7. And though we heard Project Pink was in trouble, this FCC filing suggests the Sharp-made Turtle may still be on its way.

The diagram for the model PB10ZU shows a short, stout device that bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Project Pink Turtle images we saw last Fall. The filing reveals that the PB10ZU packs dual-band CDMA, EVDO, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. Sharp being the manufacturer for the Turtle is in line with what we have heard from the beginning and makes sense, as they made the original Sidekick for Danger, who was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.

A second device with the model number PB20ZU is mentioned, though considerably less detail is offered. One could surmise that this might well be the Pure, the second, more traditionally-shaped slider that we saw in our original leak.

As Engadget points out, the FCC filing’s details are being withheld until March 29, just after the CTIA conference in Vegas. That conference has been rumored as a potential venue for the debut of the Zune phone. Exactly what place the Turtle will have in the Windows Phone 7 line-up remains unclear, though it has been suggested that it is not the star of the collection but rather an “evolution of the Sidekick.”

Presumably some of this will come into focus in the coming days at MWC, but until then you can bet the speculation will be at an all time high. [FCC via Engadget]

In today’s Remainders: the unfun. Wait! Don’t go. The items themselves are fun! They just involve unfun. We have a no fun WiFi school bus; a no fun eBook from the White House, an unspectacular Samsung smartphone reveal, and more.

Boring Bus
I recently took my first trip on a WiFi-enabled airplane. At first I thought, “How cool! I’ll never be bored on a flight again!” But I quickly realized that in-flight WiFi, in some perverse way, made me MORE bored. That special in-the-air-with-nothing-to-do time had been invaded by the regular old routine of checking e-mail and reading through my RSS feeds. So it is with a heavy heart that I read this story about a school district in Arizona that plopped a mobile WiFi router on top of a school bus, effectively turning it into a mobile study hall. And the worst part is the kids are just going along with it. Apparently all of the regular back of the bus mischief has subsided and now the kids just sit and do homework. That’s no fun! I remember one time when I was on a school bus a weird kid put SIX FRUIT ROLL UPS in his mouth at one time and nearly suffocated himself in the process. If we’re entering an age in which WiFi is the replacement for adolescent fruit roll up shenanigans, count me out. [CrunchGear]

Boring eBook
For the first time, this year’s Economic Report of the President will be made available as a free eBook. They have versions prepared for Nooks and Kindles and will offer an ePub version for the Sony Reader and other devices that get down with ePub. I applaud the effort, but I imagine that I’d have such a hard time concentrating on this to begin with that it would take approximately one E-Ink page refresh for me to give up completely. [Engadget]

Boring Reveal
Oh Samsung. You tried to keep your new Bada smartphone under wraps until MWC. You were so close. But then you went ahead and put up this gigantic billboard mere days before the event. Sure, the ad doesn’t reveal much about the Wave’s specs—just that it has a camera and a full touchscreen—but talk about fudging your big unveiling. [Unwired View]

Boring Sergey
TED curator Chris Anderson brought Google’s Sergey Brin on stage for an unplanned Q&A about his company’s recent cyber-beef with China. Wired made note of Brin’s statement that he was remained “optimistic” that Google and China could work something out, and quoted him as saying he thought Google could “really work within the Chinese system.” On the whole, it seemed like Sergey might’ve been backing down from the no-censorship ultimatum his company announced earlier this year. But a quick read through a transcript of the question and answer session reveals that he addressed the ultimatum explicitly—it’s still there, just sugarcoated a little bit:

Yes, we’ve made a statement of intent. That we intend to stop censoring, and you know, if we can do that, within the confines of Chinese policy, we’d love to continue Google.cn and our operations there. And if we cannot, then we’ll do as much as we can but we don’t want to run a service that’s politically censored. I’m not talking about things like porn and gambling and things like that. Political censorship.

So, no, Google’s not backing down. Just being diplomatic. [Wired]

If this Crowbot, which can attract and repel crows by playing different recordings, isn’t quite weird enough for you, wait until you hear about Crowbot Jenny, the elusive superhero babe who uses it to command her crow army.

What do you get when the worlds of superheroes, manga, technology and crows collide? Crowbot Jenny and her Crowbot, a character and project conceived by Hiromi Ozaki to explore animals and our interactions with them.

To do so, Ozaki consulted two leading crow experts at the University of Cambridge and came up with the Crowbot, a device that can communicate with the birds via a variety of crow calls. That would be enough, you’d think, but Ozaki thought the Crowbot needed a shoulder to perch upon. Enter Crowbot Jenny, “a reclusive girl who prefers to spend time surrounded by technology and animals rather than with humans.” Right.

When she’s not off doing bizarro superhero stuff, Crowbot Jenny is helping out with bird-related research at University of Cambridge.

OK, so its not exactly a crow army she’s dealing with quite yet. But it’s nice to see some imagination going into this research and the technology that’s behind it. [We Make Money Not Art via Bot Junkie]

Apps are here to to stay, so we might as well get our kids on board early. That’s the thinking behind Wild Planet’s Spy Video TRAKR, a video-enabled RC car that can be loaded up with free, kid-created programs.

Making its debut at this weekend’s Toy Fair, the TRAKR sports a camera that beams video back to a small color LCD screen on the controller. That video, or still shots from it, can be saved to an SD card for later perusal.

But the real twenty-first century touch here is the TRAKR’s ability to run kid- (or kid at heart-) programmed routines that will be available as free downloads from the Wild Planet website. Out of the box, the kit will include an app for using the TRAKR as a motion-sensing alarm system, sounding a warning to intruders with its built-in speaker, as well as one for recording night vision video.

The TRAKR will be available for $120, though you’ll have to wait until October to link up with other app-writing spies (and to download the Girls Locker Room routine). [Wild Planet]

The XP1-Power is a little bulkier than your average USB cable, but it has good reason: it packs a back-up battery in-line. XMultiple have improved on their older version, now boasting 20 hours of extra juice and surge protection.

In addition to the surge protection, the XP1 is now compatible with several adapters that allow for the charging (and back-up juicing) of a variety of smartphones, MP3 players, GPS devices and the like. The adapters come at $4.99 a pop and the cable itself is $49.99. [XMultiple]

A lot of people incurred the wrath of Hunter S. Thompson over his long career, and we can now add the “fools,” “bastards,” and “idiots” who worked at his local electronics shop to that list.

Warning, the video is NSFW if you work with old people or humorless prudes.

Take your average septuagenarian’s frustration with technology and add Thompson’s well-documented volatility. That will only offer a hint of how amusing this call—an expletive-ridden threat to the people who set up his new JVC DVD player—really is.

It’s also reassuring to know that Thompson, who wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com at the end of his career, employs the same “do-what-I-want-or-else-I’ll-write-about-it!” tactic we here at Gizmodo routinely use to keep tech support jockeys in line. Just kidding! Hilariously NSFW. [DVICE]

Next week, for the first time, the public will be able to see how our government might respond to a full-fledged act of cyber terrorism, in a simulation that will include top intelligence and security officials.

On February 16, the Bipartisan Policy Center-hosted event, dubbed Cyber ShockWave, will assemble many top officials in the “White House situation room”—recreated by set designers in a conference room at the Mandarin Hotel—to respond to a multifacted cyber attack of which they will have no previous knowledge.

The attack, designed by security experts and embellished by professional scriptwriters (really), will unfold dynamically throughout the course of the simulation. The participants, including former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponter and former Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend among others, will have to figure out a course of action on the fly.

The fun part: we’ll get to see how they do. Though the government has held similar simulations in the past, this will be the first time the process will be open to the public. CNN camera crews will be on location, shooting video that will run in the days following.

I’m curious to see how this group of people who are, of course, quite intelligent, but also, you know, quite old, respond to a fully-realized cyber attack. Hopefully they’ll be able to sort out their firewalls from their Firefoxes. [The Atlantic via Computer World UK]

In today’s Remainders: patience. Or at least, it’s what’s required by today’s items, including Lumix camera pricing, Google’s acquisition of Aardvark; LG’s forthcoming e-reader, and the great Palm Pre manufacturing halt that wasn’t.

Aardvark Party
Google has acquired Aardvark, a unique social search engine, for $50 million. With the internet still buzzing over Buzz, it isn’t exactly surprising to see Google expanding further into the “space between you and every other human being on the planet,” as Jason described it. For those who aren’t familiar, Aardvark takes user’s questions and, using artificial intelligence, distributes them to real live people who know something about the topic. For queries that don’t have a simple, Google-able answer, this type of expert search engine could become a powerful tool. But we’ll just have to wait to see how Google implements the technology, that is, to see if the experts’ answers will be audible above the Buzz. [Technology Review]

Halting the Halt
Earlier today there was a big head-scratcher: Palm, according to a report from OTR Global, was completely halting production on all Pres and Pixies. One of OTR’s sources explained ominously:

The decision is very sudden, and Foxconn was told to reduce all February Pre forecast to zero on Wednesday and nobody knows whether shipment will resume in March.

Was Palm being bought by another company, Boy Genius wondered? We furrowed our brows and feared the worst. But before we could really get worried, Engadget put everyone straight: no halt on production, just a brief hiatus for Chinese New Year. Ok, that makes a little more sense than a Palm buy-out. And with that, just as quickly as it started, the great forty-five minute Palm mystery came to a close. [Engadget]

LG Reads
LG wasn’t about to let Kindle and Nook and iPad battle it out for E-Reader dominance in 2010, and today the company’s CEO, KW KIM, announced that they will enter the fray with their own reader sometime in April. In recent months LG pushed out a solar-powered reader and showed off some nice flexible 19″ E-Ink displays, so they might just end up coming out with something that has some sort of edge on the competition. But we’re going to have to see it to believe it. [E-Reader Info]

Panny’s Prices
We love Panasonic’s Lumix line of point and shoots, but we wish they’d just announce the prices along with the products. The most recent batch, including the rugged DMC-TS2 and the geotagging-capable ZS7, got our inner-adventurers all excited, and now we have some price tags to consider: Lumix TS2 and ZS7 will go for $399.95; the Lumix ZS5 and ZR3 will be $299.95. The whole bunch will be available by mid-March. Check out the original posts for full specs or follow the link to today’s press release. [PR Newswire]

If your USBw 200 WiMax modem is feeling lonely and is looking for a spooning partner, this new dock is the perfect companion. In addition to matching the modem to a T, it also boosts its reception significantly.

As of now the device is only slated for plug and play use with Windows, and it won’t be available until sometime in Spring. The price hasn’t yet been announced, but when the time comes it will be available directly through carriers. [Electronista]

In today’s Remainders: Snow! Stay in and watch the video podcast infinite recursion on YouTube or go outside and toss the new Panasonic Toughbook tablet in a snowbank (it can handle it). Crowdsourced snow shoveling in DC and more!

Tough Tablet
Yeah, the iPad is pretty, but you better be careful how you treat it lest that beautiful 9″ screen shatter into a million little pieces. For people who are looking for something a little tougher—okay, a lot tougher—Panasonic’s Toughbook H1 Field looks about as rugged as they come. Admittedly, the H1 probably won’t be of much use to regular old consumers who are interested in regular old tablet computing, but with WiFi, a 10″ touch screen, a 2MP camera, a reinforced 64GB SSD and the ability to protect all those guts after a six foot fall, this tablet is the one to covet for anyone whose line of work could be found on Dirty Jobs and requires a computer. [Engadget]

ohmygodOHMYGOD
Apparently this is pretty popular on the old internets, so my apologies if you’re already familiar with this incrediblie video podcast infinite feedback loop. But ohmygodOHMYGOD ohmygodOHMYGOD is it funny.
[BoingBoing]

Snowgedden, Crowdsourced
Snowmageddon. Snowpocalype. The Blizzard of 2010. Whatever you call it and no matter where you live, you’ve probably heard that the East Coast is currently getting walloped with a massive snow storm. Here in New York it is definitely snowin’, but it’s nothing that some mittens and a hot chocolate can’t get us through. In the Washington D.C. area, from what I gather, things are a little bit crazier. But in this day and age, where there’s a problem, you can be sure that there’s a potentially useful crowd-sourced solution. Enter Snowmageddon: The Clean Up. Using Google Maps, D.C.-area residents can post snow “problems” (My driveway is snowed in) as well as snow “solutions” (I’m a big burly man and I would like to dig someone out of a snow bank). Right now, as you can imagine, there are more problems posted than solutions, but it’s good to know that even in these chilliest of predicaments, technology is there with an answer. []

EeePad
Asus says it’s got a “killer” product in the pipeline for Computex in June, and it looks like it’s most likely going to be an Eee tablet of some sort. That would be pretty exciting, but we were already excited-out over this report, from a few weeks ago, that said that Asus had a killer Eee tablet coming out in June. Asus has suggested how they’d like to work with Google on their tablet, but while the prospect of a Chrome OS EeePad is a nice one, it’s hard to get too worked up over anything so flimsy. [CrunchGear]

Panasonic’s camcorder game was pretty strong in 2009, and now we have the full list of prices to go along with the specs for the three HD cameras and three standard-def cams we saw early in January. Here’s the rundown on all six models:

The zoomy HD cams start at $499.95 for the HDC-SD60, $529.95 for the HDC-TM55 and moving on up to $699.95 for the HDC-HS60.

The standard definition line starts at $249.95 for the SDR-S50 up through $349.95 for the SDR-H85 with the SDR-T50 in between at $269.95.

PANASONIC ANNOUNCES PRICING FOR 2010 STANDARD DEFINITION CAMCORDERS AND COMPACT-SIZED HD MODELS

SECAUCUS, NJ (February 9, 2010) – Panasonic today announces pricing for its compact High Definition models, the HDC-TM55, HDC-HS60 and HDC-SD60, and its full-featured standard definition camcorders, the SDR-H85, SDR-T50, SDR-S50. All six models will be available in mid-March 2010.

The Panasonic full-HD camcorders will be available for suggested retail prices (SRP) of $529.95 for the HDC-TM55; $699.95 for the HDC-HS60 and $499.95 for the HDC-SD60. The three Panasonic HD camcorders feature a 35.7mm wide-angle lens and a powerful 25x optical zoom. And with Panasonic’s new Intelligent Zoom feature, the new HD camcorders can extend to a 35x zoom. Intelligent Zoom corrects image degradation in ordinary digital zooming to deliver stunningly clear HD quality, even with the zoom fully extended. All camcorders record to SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Cards, while the HDC-TM55 also has 8 GB* of internal memory and the HDC-HS60 has a Hard Disk Drive that holds up to 120 GB.

Panasonic’s standard definition camcorders will have SRPs of $349.95 for the SDR-H85; $269.95 for the SDR-T50; and $249.95 for the SDR-S50. These camcorders may be small in size, but they have impressive features: a 33mm wide-angle and a long, powerful 78x ultra zoom – giving them remarkable range for capturing video both far and wide. Panasonic’s new camcorder models are packed with enhanced features to help make shooting quality video easy, including the new Active mode for the Advanced O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer), helping to suppress blur even if the user is moving and when the long zooms are extended. Like the HD camcorder models, these models all record to SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Cards. Additionally, the SDR-H85 has an 80 GB hard disk drive, and the SDR-T50 has 4 GB of built-in memory.

For more information on all Panasonic LUMIX digital camera models, please visit www.panasonic.com/dvc.

* GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Panasonic announced three HD camcorders back at CES, and now the HDC-HS700 and -TM700 round out the family. With 3MOS sensors that offer high-quality HD image in low-light situations, they won’t be cheap but you’ll get what you pay for.

Back in December, we deemed the HDC-TM300, the predecessor to the TM700, the best camcorder you could buy over $1000. The TM700 retains the 32GB solid state drive, the 3″ touchscreen LCD, the SD card capability, and the full 1080/60p recording HD recording of the TM300 while including some distinct improvements: increased zoom (12x optical and 18x Intelligent Zoom); wider-angle recording with 33mm capability; and more advanced image stabilization.

The HDC-HS700 largely sports the same specs, except it boasts a beefy 240GB HDD and adds a little extra bulk in which to house it.

Both the HS700 and TM700 can take 14.2 MP still images and have 46mm Leica Dicomor lenses. The prices for the camcorders will be announced a month before their release, and while they won’t be cheap, we expect them to maintain the high quality of last year’s models. Check the release for full details.

PANASONIC’S NEW 3MOS HD CAMCORDERS PRODUCE TRUE-TO-LIFE COLOR AND EXCEL IN LOW-LIGHT ENVIRONMENTS

New 35mm Wide-Angle Leica Lenses, 18x Intelligent Zoom and Manual Controls Make HS700 and TM700 Perfect for Professional-Quality Video Shooting

SECAUCUS, NJ (February 9, 2010) – Panasonic today introduces two additions to its 2010 line of camcorders, the Panasonic HDC-HS700 and HDC-TM700, both Full High Definition (HD) 3MOS camcorders with 1920 x 1080 resolution. The new Panasonic HD camcorders combine 1080/60p recording – allowing them to capture expressive video without detail loss or Moiré pattern – with an advanced 3MOS system that produces vivid, true-to-life colors and excels in darkly-lit environments. The new HDC-HS700, records both to its large 240 GB* Hard Disk Drive or to an SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Card. The HDC-TM700 has 32 GB of built-in memory as well as capability to record to SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Cards, and is the successor to last year’s popular and award-winning HDC-TM300. Both models have a 35mm wide-angle Leica lens and a manual ring for creative flexibility.

“For video enthusiasts looking for a feature-rich, high-performing, yet affordable High Definition Camcorder, Panasonic’s new TM700 and HS700 3MOS models will be a hit this year,” said Chris Rice, Product Manager, Imaging, Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company. “Last year’s TM300 was extremely popular and won several honors and awards for its video quality and performance, so with the improvements we have made with the TM700/HS700, including extended zoom, wider-angles and a more advanced image stabilization system, we are excited to give consumers the ideal tool they need to capture their memories with superb quality.”

The high-sensitivity 3MOS system provides an effective video image pixel count of 7,590,000 pixels (2,530,000 pixels x 3) and separates the light received through the lens into the three primary colors – red, green and blue – processing each independently. The sensor shoots 14.2-megapixel still images (in Still Image mode) and 13.3-megapixel still images from recorded video. Even with this high pixel count, newly developed technology increases sensitivity and reduces noise by one-half to achieve vivid images with minimal noise. As a result, Panasonic’s 3MOS system enables excellent color reproduction, high resolution, rich gradation, and lets the user capture vividly colored images in bright or darkly-lit places.

The Panasonic HDC-TM700 and HDC-HS700 HD camcorders feature the newly designed, large-diameter F1.5 (46mm) Leica Dicomor lens, which provides the superb image rendering and not only suppresses ghosts and flare, but also minimizes the distortion and degradation of contrast and resolution. In addition, its 35mm** wide-angle capability makes it ideal for many different shooting situations, such as self-portraits, group photos, and landscape shots.

Both models feature a 12x optical zoom lens, which is further enhanced by Intelligent Resolution Technology to extend the zoom to an 18x Intelligent Zoom. The Intelligent Zoom corrects image degradation in ordinary digital zooming, extending the camera’s zoom ration to approximately 1.3x, while maintaining the image quality, thus delivering stunningly clear full-HD images***.

Both models feature a 3.0″ touch-screen LCD that allows users to navigate by selecting icons on the display. These models also have a manual ring allowing creative flexibility, so users have intuitive control of the zoom, focus, aperture, shutter speed and white balance. An Electronic View Finder, earphone terminal and microphone terminal allow for even more control. The HDC-HS700 records to its 240 GB HDD, which can store 102 hours of recording (in HE mode). When combined with Panasonic’s new 64 GB SDXC Memory Card, the camcorder provides an additional recording time of 27 hours and 30 minutes. The HDC-TM700 has a 32 GB built-in memory for 13 hours and 40 minutes of recording (in HE mode).

Other features of the Panasonic HDC-HS700 and HDC-TM700 include:

* Power O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilization) – Uses gyro sensors to detect hand-shake to reduce blurring. When the camcorder is held, it moves at low frequency due to the breathing of the operator or other slight movement. POWER O.I.S. corrects even the slightest movement approximately five times more effectively than the previous version.
* iA (Intelligent Auto) – Function that automatically selects the most suitable shooting mode at the press of a button, and this year iA adds Face Recognition, which finds the faces of registered people and automatically optimizes the focus and exposure for them. In addition, the camcorder continues to track this subject as the person moves anywhere within the LCD frame. Up to six faces can be registered.
* Smile Shot – Feature that automatically takes a still photo during video recording when it detects a smiling face.
* 5.1-Channel Surround Sound System with Zoom Microphone – Uses five microphones so when voices/sounds recorded from front, right, left and back are played back on a 5.1-channel home theatre system, viewers are surrounded by clear, detailed sound. The Zoom Microphone lets users zoom the sound only to hear the subject while continuing to record a wide-angle shot.
* Wind Noise Canceller – An evolution from the previous wind noise reduction system, this advanced function automatically detects and suppresses wind noise only, to ensure only the natural sounds of the shooting environment remain.
* Auto Power LCD – Automatically adjusts the brightness of the LCD screen according to the shooting environment. In dark places, the screen brightness is reduced to 1/3 the normal level to minimize the possibility of disturbing nearby people. In bright outdoor places, the screen brightness is increased to twice the normal level.

Pricing and availability for the Panasonic HDC-HS700 and HDC-TM700 will be announced 30 days prior to shipping date. Both will be available in black.

* GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. Usable capacity will be less.

** 35mm-lens equivalent.

*** Approximately 810 TV lines. 1920 horizontal pixels x 1080 vertical pixels.

Everyone knows that laptops can get hot. We’re talking uncomfortably, disconcertingly, something-in-there’s-gotta-be-melting hot. Belkin’s new laptop pad not only lifts your computer off of your legs but packs a USB-powered fan to keep your laptop cool. Cool!

With a sleek, curved shape, a USB-powered fan to circulate hot air away from your machine, and some patent-pending bit of design dubbed the AirFlow Wing, Belkin claims their new F5L055 cooling pad is “proven to cool better than others on the market.”

That may be true, but in a category cluttered with music-playing monsters and featured-packed lapdesks, Belkin’s simple, unobtrusive design is really what makes this cooling pad worth checking out.

If you agree, you can pre-order the pad, also available in black, from Amazon for $25. According to Belkin, it will make its way to laps everywhere in April. [CrunchGear]