A germ of an idea: Virus-made batteries

What if the common cold can yield more than a week's worth of runny noses?

At MIT, viruses are more than just a reason to see the doctor. It's also a reason to junk the batteries. An MIT research team led by Angela Belcher, a professor of materials science and biological engineering, has created a way of coaxing viruses into become building blocks that can be used to manufacture a thin fiber.

And the tech value? These viruses can bind to a variety of inorganic materials such as those used in battery electrodes and solar cells. Imagine, a bundle of charge-carrying fibers can be woven into a shirt and used to power a mobile phone.

Now that's an epidemic geeks will welcome with megawatt grins.

Via Dailytech

Crave UK visits Nokia's R&D facility

Remember we wrote about the Symbian S60 platform going touchscreen not too long ago? Well, our privileged colleagues at Crave UK had the opportunity to visit Nokia's R&D facility in Oulu, Finland, recently where they caught a quick demo of the S60 Touch user interface. The new platform allows for multiple ways of interaction, including using a stylus for handwriting recognition and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Those lucky people even got to see Frankenstein robodog wagging an Internet Tablet head. Gee. More pictures here.

Sony Ericsson K850i available in stores

The wait has finally ended. Sony Ericsson has announced that the highly anticipated K850i Cyber-shot phone is currently available in all Asia-Pacific markets at a recommended retail price of S$898 (without plan). We've just received our commercial review unit and a full review of the camera-phone will be coming up early next week. For now, content yourselves with our hands-on of the K850i here. While you're at it, check out our first looks video, too.

Nokia gets into the Asian music scene

Homegrown music talents in the Asia-Pacific region now have a new platform to showcase their latest song creations. The Independent Artists Club (IAC) Web site launched recently by Nokia aims to promote local artists in the region by allowing them to upload their songs on the Web for music fans around the world to enjoy.

The IAC program will launched in Singapore and Thailand first, before being rolled out over the next six months to selected Asia-Pacific countries including Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

With each IAC country launch, selected local artists will initially be invited to upload their tracks. After which the Web site will be open to all artists for song uploading. The Singapore IAC site is expected to open up for the public to upload their songs in Mid-December.
Read more »

Hi-def photos at a TV near you

In the US, Sony styles itself as a company with a DNA that's tightly woven with HD. So it's no surprise that it has stitched pictures into its HD family of products. Most of the Japanese firm's cameras include an HD output.

The HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album is the hardware statement of all that needlework. Simply, it's an 80GB device to store, edit and output photo slideshows to a high-definition display.

Pictures can be loaded via memory cards, optical drives, USB or Ethernet. To figure out which picture goes where, there's an x-Pict Story HD software to handle the slideshow generation. It's pretty advanced stuff that does music upload and printouts as well, so there's no real need for a computer if you don't need one.

So what's the cool factor? This gadget utilizes a face detection engine to locate faces in a photograph and adjust slideshow transitions to match the placement of the faces. There's also an x-ScrapBook application that groups pictures based on event-clustering and common faces.

Altogether, this is a nifty device. But while HD is in its genes, the family tree is not extending to most parts of Asia. According to Sony Electronics Asia Pacific, the HDMS-S1D is available only in Japan and the US for now.

     

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