Inkless pen

Curse of the leaking ink? Tell us about it. Stained fingers aside, yours truly had a perfectly good bag strap accidentally inked to the point where no ink remover would salvage it. Which is where this little pen makes a great addition to your writing arsenal--since there's no ink involved. Uncapped, all it has is a solid metal tip that actually writes on any paper type. No tricks. Just good, old science which borrows from medieval times when scribes and artists used silver-tipped styli to scribble on specially prepared paper. Silver being too rich for today's humble stationery, the modern version employs a metal alloy that leaves marks on paper much like a pencil. There're tradeoffs, of course. You can't rub those marks off, and you certainly won't be marking papers in red.

Get up close with the writing

Via popgadget.net

Price: US$23.53
Availability: Mid-January at Grand Illusions catalog
Device: Pen
Specs: 8cm long

AMD launches logo: Better by Design

AMD engineers are taking a break as the marketing department goes into overdrive, with a skew of new logos coming out in conjunction with upcoming Windows Vista systems.

Better by design. That is AMD's latest moniker to describe PCs based on its processors and optimized for the Vista platform. For systems to merit this badge, they must contain a Turion dual-core chip and an ATI or Nvidia graphics card. Notebooks have an additional requirement in the form of an Airgo, Atheros or Broadcom wireless radio. Better by Design systems should be rolling out in the coming months.

Creative to fight the scourge of blurry Web video

Your Webcam videos look like they've been taken in a fog? Creative's latest video-capture device brings autofocus functionality to your table for clearer images.

The 2-megapixel Creative Live! Cam Optia AF may be the first autofocus Webcam in the market. By quickly and quietly adjusting the focal length via the face recognition software, this peripheral puts an end to blurry videos and snapshots. Another notable feature is the audio effects application which allows you to imitate another voice as you are speaking with another person online. The Creative Live! Cam Optia AF will be retailing for US$130 when it hits US stores before June.

Image sensors 2,000 times more sensitive to light

If you're wondering like us what's next in line for image sensors, well, we think Planet82 has the answer with a chip that's supposedly 2,000 times more sensitive to light, and 50 percent smaller than current CMOS and CCD sensors.

Shooting at high sensitivity settings with current image sensors usually results in pictures plagued with an obscene amount of noise. In worst cases, this can make your snaps look like they are covered with a layer of sand. So if Planet 82's new Single carrier Modulation Photo Detector (SMPD) technology can get rid of those issues, we're more than glad to see it in our cameras.

Planet82 is showcasing black-and-white, full-color VGA, and 2-megapixel color sensors at CES this year, capable of taking "clearer and crisper images in low-light situations without the distortion or energy drain of a flash". Sounds like a mouthful, but if it's going to allow us to snap some reconnaissance pictures in the dark, hey, we're all for it.

more than normal objects

More gems from annual design competition designboom, with this interesting product entry from Germans Müller Johannes and Moritz Willborn. The name's a dead giveaway, taking a trio of simple household items and giving them a "more than" twist. "more than chopsticks" adds branches to make life a lot easier for chopstick idiots, while looking good enough to make you want to pick them up. "more than a straw" is a little disappointingly obvious. The finale is a "more than a toothpick" which gets more party snacks onto those sticks than the usual variant. No quibble with that there from us. Reviewers are always hungry people. Amen to that.

See more than chopsticks | more than a straw | more than a toothpick |

Price: N.A.
Availability: More info at designboom
Device: Household items
Specs: N.A.

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