Sony integrates digital framing and printing with their new S-Frame DPP-F700. It’s got a 7-inch (800 x 480) 16:10 LCD display and image editor for printing 4 x 6-inch photos in 45 seconds. It prints at 300 x 300 dpi quality and basic edits including zoom, crop, brightness, contrast, hue, and sharpness adjustment are a snap on screen.
If you are looking for something smaller than your average router, you’ve found it. TRENDnet’s new wireless Router N Travel is launching today. It is only 6.4 x 8.2 x 1.9cm. This 300Mpbs wireless router has 802.11n connectivity, has a LED indicator, 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna and an AC socket. The kit contains a thin 3-foot Ethernet cable, an electrical adapter and a handy alternate USB cable to power the router from a computer. Its price is $79.99.
Backing up data can be a very painful process for many people. It’s complicated and takes a long time to complete. But if you’re not backing up your computer, you really have no excuse when you incur data loss. But we have some good news! Clickfree launched its new back-up driver C2 last weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
Livescribe is preparing to launch its new smartpen to the market. The new Livescribe Pulse captures your handwriting while recording audio and lets you sync that with your PC or Mac. It has a built-in infrared camera and a highly sensitive microphone. Optional for this device is a special Livescribe notebook that has Play and Record buttons printed on their pages aswell as dots printed across the page that the infrared camera on the pen is able to interact with. This new model can store 4GBs of data or 400 hours of audio. Livescribe Pulse with Titanium color has a $200 price tag. Read the rest of this entry »
If you want to plug your iPhone or iPod into a USB port without awaking iTunes, you have to find one of these. The Sync Blocker Cable is an excellent solution for recharging Apple products, especially if you want to charge your iPhone through a different computer but are worried about unwanted syncing to foreign iTunes libraries. It’s just $12.99 from USBFever.com and supports all iPhones and iPod Touch models, as well as the more recent versions of the iPod Classic and Nano.
The New generation Rubik’s Cube Touch will hit the market on October 18th. The first Rubik’s cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik and was released to market in 1980. Now, the Hong Kong based company Techno Source is preparing to release this new generation Rubik’s Cube. It will be available to the public with a $149.99 price tag.
It has no moveable parts, all six sides are designed to be interactive with the touch of your finger. Each color lights up when you swipe your finder over the squares. You can swipe your finger in an L shape or straight and Cube will mimic your manual moves with its touch sensor technology. Its accelerometer remembers the moves and allows you to rotate cube. Active side hikes upper side automatically. The Touch Cube also has a bundle of choices for sound effects.
The Chumby is an ambient consumer electronics product, which provides Internet and LAN access via a Wi-Fi connection, has a small clock radio and touch screen. Its software is open source, running on Linux.
Two years after the first Chumby, a new version is coming most probably in November. The Chumby ‘One’ has a more serious look without the old model’s squeezable shell. It has a speedier 454 MHz core and there are over 1500 Chumby widgets for all sort of things, like Google Calendar, Facebook and Pandora Radio. Chumby’s 3.5 inch touch screen remains same, like the other aspects of the gadget. Chumby was awarded by Wired as one of the top devices of the year 2008. Chumby One’s price rumored $100 when it hits next month.
The contest has been ongoing for almost 3 years. The objective was to improve Netflick’s current movie recommendation system, called Cinematch, by at least 10%. BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos team did so, and the 7 team members were awarded the $1,000,000 Netflix Prize today.
So, how did BPC do it? We’re not sure, but here’s their explanation, and also here … their approach seems to involve improvements to Collaborative Filtering via Neighborhood Models and Latent Factor Models.
Anyway, their maps look interesting – they have zoomable interactive affinity maps for music, movies, books and TV shows. The map for movies, for example, shows that if you liked the original Terminator, you’re also likely to want to rent The Fly, whereas fans of Terminator 2 would go for Lord of the Rings instead.
Recommender systems are software applications that aim to support users in their decision-making while interacting with large information spaces. They recommend items of interest to users based on preferences they have expressed, either explicitly or implicitly. The ever-expanding volume and increasing complexity of information on the Web has therefore made such systems essential tools for users in a variety of information seeking or e-commerce activities. Recommender systems help overcome the information overload problem by exposing users to the most interesting items, and by offering novelty, surprise, and relevance. Recommender technology is hence the central piece of the information seeking puzzle. Major e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Yahoo are using recommendation technology in ubiquitous ways. Many new comers are on their way and entrepreneurs are competing in order to find the right approach to use this technology effectively.
Plus it’s a great way to keep customers and build business and ward off competition as per the following interview with Netflix exec Reed Hastings:
One Il-Gu Cha of Royal College of Art designed this rolling radio with a dead simple interface. The R-1 Radio as it’s called, won a silver medal at the IDEA ‘09 awards.