Okay, so in a few weeks we are expecting to hear from a bunch of readers who decided to brave the cold in order to be one of the lucky few to nab a PS3 at launch. However, why suffer frostbitten fingers if you don’t have to? This is where the Butterfly Heater comes in. You fill this bad boy with a little lighter fluid, and it goes to work pumping out warm air through it’s butterfly pattern stitched front. Yeah, it’s a little more girly than we would have hoped for, but for an $18 device that will stay warm for a solid 25 hours, we think we can handle that. You can grab two for $30, and then you’ll be the envy of the line at your local Best Buy.

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Gallery: Butteryfly Personal Heater

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For all you 3D designers out there, if you want to get your game face on, check out the SpaceMouse Plus. This mouse features a total of 11 programmable buttons that allow you to map specific functions to each, saving you that precious design time. Oh, and it also looks pretty space age. Always a plus with these things. The SpaceMouse Plus is available from 3D Connexion for a cool $500 USD. They say that it works with over 100 programs, and support Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Linux operating systems. Yes - that’s right. A product focused on design that shows no OS X love. Oh well.

Read More | SpaceMouse Product Page via Gadgetizer

Gallery: SpaceMouse Plus: The $500 11-Button Mouse

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Since the term is all the rage, maybe we can christen this as Rocking Chair 2.0? I mean, this is certainly not something we would expect grandma to be sitting in while she’s getting her knit on. This unique piece is designed by Contraforma in such a way that you should be able to rock comfortable in it, despite the lack of what we like to call a “rocking crest.” Definitely a conversation piece, and we all need one of those in our homes, don’t we not? How else do we curb that whole “awkward silence” thing?

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Gallery: The Ten Legged Rocking Chair

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Over on Unboxing, we just did a video showcasing an Unboxing Ceremony for a few SumoLounge products - namely their gigantic Omni, and miniature Otto beanbags. Don’t let that fool you though - these things are off the hook, and nearly indestructible. If you are looking for a couple of pieces of “furniture” to add to your den, you may want to check these babies out. Let us know what you think of the video.

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Gallery: Unboxing Sumo Lounge Omni and Otto Beanbags

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Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - MPEG-4

Read More | The Bleeding Edge

Gallery: Bleeding Edge 056: How To Turn A Human Into A Borg

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Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - MPEG-4

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Gallery: Bleeding Edge Byte 033: Nintendo DS Electroplankton Review

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An AMD press release today details AMD’s plans to put its Torrenza initiative into the public domain.  The idea is to create an industry standard CPU socket architecture with all necessary specifications available to the public.  This will allow third party companies, and even interested hobbyists to develop their own processors that can be used in the “Torrenza Innovation Socket.” This idea has been met with great support by AMD’s corporate partners including Dell, Cray, Fujitsu Siemens, IBM, Sun and HP.

“This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem. Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms. Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at the platform level, with new levels of platform stability, upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server infrastructure.”
—Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD

The new architecture will allow for customization of multi-processor systems for specific needs, rather than forcing conformity to the AMD64/X86 architectures.  Tech companies could create custom processors, or even just co-processors connected over AMD’s high speed HyperTransport for specific server applications, games, multimedia enhancement, etc.  It is no surprise that IBM is on board with this initiative as it somewhat lends itself toward the versatile Cell architecture. I myself am amazed at what open source has done for software, let’s hope it can do the same for the hardware side as well.

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Gallery: Open Source Processor Development from AMD

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Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) are everywhere in today’s world.  Air bag sensors, G-Tech vehicle performance systems, inkjet printers and DLP TV’s are just some of the mainstream uses of MEMS technology. The concept is, take something you know works well on a large scale, and shrink it down as much as possible.  Well, MIT researchers are trying to use this technique to replace today’s concepts of personal power sources such as batteries, and more recently fuel cells, a MEMS device. 

This new device is a miniature turbine engine.  As with most MEMS projects, this idea is based on current “real size” technology. One of the methods employed by power plants is using large turbines to generate power for its customers.  These MEMS devices will accomplish the same task, but on a much smaller scale. It will be a “Personal Power Plant” if you will.  The turbines will spin at speeds of around 1.2 Million RPM (20kHz) and it has been estimated that due to the quality of the device and materials used, they should be able to achieve better efficiency numbers than the current turbines used in power plants. What does all this mean?  Well, for now, not much, but for the future, this may be a step in the right direction to creating cheaper safe power for millions across the globe.

Read More | MIT

Gallery: MEMS Turbine Power Source

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TDK has developed the world’s largest capacity small form factor solid state drive. The drive is 20% smaller than a 2.5” laptop disk drive and includes all the driver chips necessary for ATA communications. A total of 16x16Gbit NAND flash chips cover the circuit board giving the drive a storage capacity of 32GB.  That’s fairly impressive for a solid state drive in that form factor.  The GBDriver RA5 NAND controller which provides the ATA interface to the flash, supports UDMA33 giving the drive a maximum transfer rate of 33.3MB/second. No details are given about the drives sustained data speeds however.

No released date for this device has been given.  I fully expect to see similar form factor drives in the near future from Samsung, possibly utilizing their new Charge Trap Flash technology to compliment their already released 2.5” plug in laptop hard drive line.  Begun the solid state drive war has!

Read More | Tech-On

Gallery: New 32GB Solid State Drive from TDK

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After its recent debut at the IFA, Philips has released its Ambilight TV with models 32PF9731D and 42PF9731D, featuring 1366 x 768 resolution panels, and its 37PF9731D with a 1920 x 1080 1080p set. All three feature Philips’ Pixel Plus technology integrated with digital tuners and boast 2x HDMI ports along with two RGB scart sockets, component video input, S/PDIF in/out and an Ethernet port on the rear. Philips also utilizes Dolby Digital for full surround sound, and a USB connector for easy play.

Philips claims that Ambilight “makes an impressive contribution to the overall viewing experience with ambient light to complement the colours and light intensity of the image on screen. It creates ambiance, stimulates more relaxed viewing and improves perceived picture detail, contrast and colour.”

To experience Ambilight for yourself visit Philips. At price points of £1,799 (~$3396), £2,499 (~$4717) and £3,000 (~$5663), we may have to wait to catch Ambilight at the neighbors’ next Superbowl party.

Read More | Trusted Reviews

Gallery: Philips Releases New Ambilight HDTV Models

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