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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In these green times, companies are looking everywhere to make a buck — er, save the planet. Philips Simplicity didn’t go much further than the sidewalk to find inspiration for its latest eco-friendly innovation, the Light Blossom, a self-sustainable street lamp that has triple-duty petals. They’re peppered with energy-efficient LEDs to illuminate the street, naturally, but also have solar panels on top and can spin around in a stiff breeze to recharge. At night they’ll emit a soft glow, intended to cut down on light pollution, but will grow brighter whenever a pedestrian comes by. It all sounds wonderfully efficient, but with lights popping on and off as you go, it could make that late-night walk of shame a little more conspicuous than you might like.

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Source: Tim Stevens

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

By this point, you should fully understand that “Dubai” and “world’s largest” go hand-in-hand, so it’s quite fitting that said city is receiving the planet’s most humongous LED screen. Designed by UAE development company Tameer Holding, the 33-story high display will reportedly be “embedded on an intended commercial tower in the Majan district of Dubailand,” where it will stand tall and blast out advertisements to onlookers some 1.5-kilometers away. Dubbed Podium, the building will also house 33 levels of “premium commercial office space, two floors dedicated to retail and four floors for parking.” There’s no word on when the project will be completed, but we don’t suspect Tameer will be dragging its feet in getting this up.

[Via Coolbuzz]

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Kyoto-based company Rohm impressed us at last year’s CEATEC with a mega-tiny OLED display but it didn’t rest on its laurels. A larger prototype exhibited this year emitted ambient light at 3,000 to 4,000cd/m² and a brief flash at 100,000cd/m² — that’s respectively 10 and 250 times the brightness of a typical LCD display. But the impressive bit was this: nothing illuminated cast a shadow. Obviously a light like that is a poor match for a haunted house or romantic restaurant, but surgeons use shadowless lamps at the operating table, so there are applications. The short shelf life of OLED materials is still a nagging disadvantage, but as Dr. Eldon Tyrell would say: “the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly.” Then again, he was talking about cybernetic killing machines, so, maybe not such a great endorsement.

[Thanks, Erik]

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Source: Samuel Axon

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If you’re a habitual destroyer of snooze buttons, there’s at least a smidgen of a possibility that picking one of these up could stop that habit. Seiji’s stylish LED Alarm Clock Blocks (¥8,190; $76) rely on a trio of LED-filled boxes to convey the time (right down to the second), and best of all, the trifecta can be arranged however you’d like (horizontally, vertically, etc.) in order to please your fuzzy eyes in the AM. Unfortunately, you’ll still have to use that spare travel clock while this thing gets imported from Japan, but you know what they say about the early bird…

[Via technabob]

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Displays, Laptops

Word on the street — and by “street” we mean “the internet” — is that Apple will begin exclusive use of LED BLUs for displays in all of its MacBooks come 2009. According to the Chinese-language paper Economic Daily News, the computer-maker’s Taiwanese supplier of LED backlight units, Kenmos, will increase shipments in the coming year of the brighter, longer-lasting, better dressed components. Of course, the paper could be making this all up to toy with our emotions and break our little hearts… but why would they do that?

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Source: Joshua Topolsky

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Filed under: Displays, Laptops

Got a hundred bucks to burn? Lucky you, ’cause that Benjamin will now take the stock 15.4-inch 1,440 x 900 display of Dell’s XPS M1530 and squeeze in a full 1,920 x 1,200 pixel resolution. Toss in the optional $500 Blu-ray Disc drive and you’ve got yourself a sweet portable HD rig pumping Intel’s Penryn at the core. Another $50 and you’ve added a presumably brighter, LED backlit display but you’re now back to the original 1,440 x 900 resolution. Oh decisions, decision.

[Thanks, Jonaid]

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Source: Thomas Ricker

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Filed under: Wearables

For as many patently awful watch designs as we see, this here device has given us a newfound appreciation for timepieces. Yes, the Ilya Yakovlev-designed Real Crystal LED Watch is merely a concept at the moment, but creating such a device with crystals and LEDs is entirely plausible. If ripped into the realm of reality (pretty please?), wearers would be allowed to “increase the luminosity and change colors to suit [their] mood.” We’re just going to hope the question isn’t if we’ll see this one day, but when.

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Look, we’re sorry, but 1,420 LEDs just isn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe back when we were children a touchable 14-foot by 6-foot wall lit up by a myriad of magical blue lights would’ve managed to pull us away from our Lincoln Logs for a minute or three, but the kids of today grew up on Baby Einstein and a post-Steve Blue’s Clues — they aren’t easily impressed. The Philips “Imagination Light Canvas” is being shown off at the Mercy Medical Center in Rogers, Arkansas, and allows visitors to touch the wall and “paint with light.” Whatever you draw slowly fades over time, and apparently you can draw using a bunch of different colors and shapes, though we’re only seeing blue squares here. The wall can accomadate six people drawing at once, and pulls about as much electricity as a regular toaster. It’ll be unveiled on March 16th.

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Source: Paul Miller

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