Gear & Gadgets

Europe Adopts Universal micro-USB Cellphone Charger Standard

One cell phone charger to juice them all

Ever lose your cellphone charger? When your doomed search for friends or family with a phone of similar brand/vintage eventually fails, it's off to the third-party charger vendor where confusion and high prices await.

We can all agree, then, that proprietary charger plugs are among the larger pains in the respective behinds of cellphone users everywhere. But not so anymore in Europe: the EU is leading the way to create a standard micro-USB charger for all cellphones sold.

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Dyson's New Vacuum Driven By the Fastest Motor Ever


James Dyson with the DDM2:  Anthony Upton via the Telegraph

Though it may not be much comfort as you use it on the usual round of chores, inside the new Dyson DC31 vacuum cleaner is a motor that's ten times faster than a jet engine, and much quieter. At 104,000 rpm, the DC31's digital switched reluctance motor actually spins faster than any motor on earth.

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Google Voice Gives You One Number to Ring Them All

The service, which launched publicly this week, includes automatic transcription of voicemail and recording of calls

Google Voice is one of those technical advancements that could change your way of communication. With it, you can sign up for a single phone number that rings every phone you own. Then you can hand out the number to everyone you know.

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The Grouse

The Curious Case of Flash on the iPhone


Earlier in the week, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced that a mobile implementation of the full Flash Player 10 would be making its way onto several smartphones by October. In addition to Android, other mobile operating systems, including Windows Mobile, Palm's WebOS, and Symbian have signed on. Missing from that list, to absolutely no one's surprise, is the iPhone.

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Tested: HP 15C Classic Calculator Reborn on the iPhone


HP 15C Calculator Emulator for iPhone:  HP
In the ongoing quest to turn real-world objects into iPhone applications, HP has released a calculator app that is a near perfect imitation of the original HP15C. Released in 1985, this full-function scientific calculator had a root-solver, could handle matrix operations, and supported numerical integration. It also lasted about six months on one battery-–or about five months and 29 days longer than the iPhone. But save for that sacrifice to modernization, the HP15C on the iPhone is pretty slick.

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Face-Recognition Software Shields Your Computer Screen From Eavesdroppers

When someone glances over your shoulder, all they'll see is scrambled text

The dropping price of laptops and netbooks has resulted in a proliferation of computer use in public spaces. Whether at the airport, in a cafe, or on the Chinatown bus, more and more people are using their computers in the view of others. This has made protecting personal data from eavesdroppers a high priority. Sure, a couple of dollars can get you a polarized screen that offers some protection from the wandering eye of the person next you, but for people with sensitive military, industrial, and intelligence information on the screen, that simply isn't enough.

Enter Oculis Labs. This software company has married face-recognition technology with encryption, to create two programs that protect on-screen data from prying eyes.

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iPhone Game Gets Your Kid off the Couch and into an Alternate Reality

The Hidden Park uses the iPhone to reveal the secrets of the world's metropolitan parks

Kids these days. It seems that they were born into a society that spends 90 percent of its time staring at glowing rectangles, much to the chagrin of parents everywhere. Playing outside just seems like too low-tech of an option for them to bother wasting their time with. However, Bulpadok, an Australian app company, might convince them to take the screen with them outdoors, with The Hidden Park, a new iPhone-based scavenger hunt.

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Unleash Your Inner Centaur

New mechanical legs turn you into a cyborg centaur


Do you live in a magical wardrobe where you constantly reread Edith Hamilton’s Mythology hoping one day to transform into a centaur? Thanks to artist Kim Graham, you can now strap on some robotic horse legs and live the fantasy.

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Solar Tent Charges Your Phone, Glows So You Can Find It

At last, the Internet comes to the wilderness

Solar Tent: Nighttime: The tent glows to show its location  courtesy Orange

The problem with the great outdoors has always been the lack of full mobile connectivity, electric lighting, and a power source for your laptop. The Orange Solar Concept Tent, which will debut in the UK starting today, in time for the Glastonbury rock festival, tackles these critical problems.

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Tested: Bedside Brainwave Scanner Grades Your Ability to Sleep

What's it like sleeping with a new device that scores your slumber quality, minute by minute, night by night?

Zeo Headband:  courtesy Zeo

I'm still waiting for the technology that finally does away with my need to sleep. But since I do need my nightly dose (I've tried going without, and it's ugly), I'd like to make sure I'm doing it as efficiently as possible. A new device called the Zeo promises to help stamp out bad sleep and wasted time in bed, by bringing deep analysis of sleep patterns, formerly the province of professional sleep laboratories, into the home.

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