Category: Techie

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From Engadget: BASF, Philips team up to create transparent OLED car roof

If you’re the sort who wished your car had a transparent roof when the rain falls down but want some shielding when the sun’s up (or, you know, vice versa) then BASF have good news for you. It’s showing off the transparent OLED technology it developed with Philips that behaves like glass when inactive, turning opaque when activated. We’re already familiar with the technology here, because it’s the same kit that the chemicals giant showed off on its custom Smart Forvision it produced with Daimler back in September. As before, it’s also been able to pair them up with transparent solar cells, for environmentally friendly sky watching: just remember that people will be able to see you pick your nose from all angles now, okay?

Continue reading BASF, Philips team up to create transparent OLED car roof

 

from Engadget

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From Ars Technica: Hands on: building an HTML5 photo booth with Chrome’s new webcam API


Experimental support for WebRTC has landed in the Chrome developer channel. The feature is available for testing when users launch the browser with the --enable-media-stream flag. We did some hands-on testing and used some of the new JavaScript APIs to make an HTML5 photo booth.

WebRTC is a proposed set of Web standards for real-time communication. It is intended to eventually enable native standards-based audio and video conferencing in Web applications. It is based on technology that Google obtained in its 2010 acquisition of Global IP Solutions and subsequently released under a permissive open source software license.

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from Ars Technica

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From Technology Review RSS Feeds: Fracking Quakes Shake the Shale Gas Industry

Well shutdowns prompted by fracking-induced seismicity may inspire technology tweaks.

Geophysicists are increasingly certain that expanding production of shale gas is responsible for a spate of minor earthquakes that have upset some communities and prompted authorities in Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and the U.K. to shut down some natural-gas operations. The question now, say the experts, is whether the underground operations causing the trouble should be scaled back or more closely monitored to minimize future quakes—and whether the relatively small quakes may yet have the potential trigger truly destructive ones.


from Technology Review RSS Feeds

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ifttt: Loving this service!

It has been a royal pain to get the ‘net to do things for me.  Getting links to share and posting them on my site has been a pain.  That’s why you rarely saw any updates.  ifttt came to the rescue! ifttt stands for “if this then that”.  How simpler can you get?!

If you haven’t heard of them, I am not surprised.  ifttt implies like you would assume.  It allows you to create “if… then…” type of scenarios on big level and scale.  I for example, set up the following:

It calls each of these services “channels”.  So you have to setup the 2 channels, Google Reader and WordPress, which is very simple!  Once you set it up, it allows certain logic to be set.  Best of all, it’s FREE!  :-D   You will see more and more of posts from me sharing stuff that interests me and I think you should know!

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From Engadet: One-quarter of South Korean phone owners have a Galaxy S II, according to Samsung

My thoughts?!  Really?!  1/4 of Koreans own an S II?!  Wow… that’s insane!
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Since going on sale last April, Samsung has moved some five million Galaxy S IIunits in its native South Korea. According to the company, that number means that roughly one in every four phone owners in the country now rocks the popular handset, enough for the company to unofficially declare it the nation’s “national smartphone,” a fact that’s pretty tough to deny, given that South Korea’s total population is somewhere in the ballpark of 49 million. All in all, not a bad haul for a handset that launched around nine months ago.

 

from Engadget

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From Google Reader: Hack breaks Hulu Plus free from supported device chains, embraces Androids of every shape and color

It’s not TV, it’s Hulu Plus and it’s coming to the Android device of your choosing — somewhat, unofficially. While the main ad-supported, streaming video site may have failed to seek refuge in the arms of a new owner last year, its subscription mobile offshoot is now finding a home in all Googlefied phones and tablets via a modified .apk created by XDA Developers member Vgeezy. But before you get all hot and bothered, keep in mind this jailbroken app stillrequires a subscription to work, although you won’t need root to install it. So, any users looking for a quick and illicit content fix will have to look elsewhere. For everyone else, there’s the source link below.

 

from Engadget