Perhaps if the iDesk is ever produced, it will be more affordable than Surface, but I have my doubts. Regardless, operating a multitouch display desk like this sounds pretty sweet, since it would be capable of not only running apps of its own, but providing you with virtual input devices for your laptop and mobile devices, including keyboards and touch-input surfaces.

Will Apple ever make something like the iDesk? There are certainly rumors that the next version of the iMac might have a touchscreen, but that’s not been confirmed. If they do, maybe they’ll be able to scale touchscreens successfully larger screens in time, and eventually drive the prices down to make something like this affordable. For now. We just get to look at a pretty concept.

[via MacLife]

Samsung has teamed up with Absolut Vodka to show off the screen on a commercial cooler for its liquor. The screen is the front of the glass cabinet door. The buyers can see advertisements on the door of the cooler and still look inside to see if the cooler is stocked.

The 46-inch LCD screen has a contrast ratio of 4500:1 and a resolution of 1366 x 768 allowing it to show (720p) HD content. The downside is that the see-through design makes the display have worse than normal color reproduction with a 70% color gamut. Still, it’s pretty cool.

Samsung showed off a similar transparent display demo at last week’s CES, which was used to create what they called a “Smart Window.” What other cool uses do you see for a clear display like this?

The display will ship out this month starting at $8,400 (USD). That price is for the screen only, if you need a table stand as well it will set you back $9,049 for both the stand and display. For that much money, you get a 40-inch screen with 1920 x 1080 resolution. That screen is sealed against water and external shock. It also uses one of the biggest pieces of Gorilla Glass in the industry to protect it from scratches.

The display supports 50 points of touch at one time. It can be hooked to all sorts of accessories via USB ports and Wi-Fi connectivity. The processor inside is an Athlon X2 245e running at 2.9GHz. Other hardware includes 320GB of storage and a Radeon HD 6750 video card.

I think it would be awesome to have one of these in my game room.

Sony is using a red, green, and blue LED for each of the corresponding pixels on the screen. That means that the 55-inch prototypes it’s showing off at CES each have about 6 million LEDs to generate a 1080p image. The tiny LEDs are mounted directly to the front of the display. The contrast is said to be so high that it can’t be measured.

The TV also promises some very intense colors and perhaps the most awesome image quality ever. The LED tech allows the set to have a 1.4 times wider color gamut than conventional backlit LCD screens. There is no word on when the tech will come to market or how much it will cost. You can count on it taking a long time and being expensive when it lands though.

Other than the fact that the displays will support 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band Wi-Fi, and WMM multimedia standards, there really isn’t any additional info available yet. Both series were certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance on December 30, 2011, so I can only imagine that these are some of the displays we’ll see at next week’s CES show.

While the “X Series” moniker doesn’t sound like anything too mysterious, my curiosity is definitely piqued by the “Echo-P” name. Any guesses as to what might be special about those displays?

The 23-inch AOC e2343Fi monitor has a somewhat awkward name, but it seems like a functional device. The simple plug-and-play dock is easy to use, letting you view video content from your iOS device on your monitor, while at the same time charging it. The dock saves you the burden of using Apple TV, AirPlay or an HDMI adapter cable to view content on a bigger screen, though it’s likely that much of the content on your mobile device already exists somewhere on your computer (like in iTunes). The dock also includes SRS Premium Sound and built-in speakers, so you can actually hear what you’re watching.

Pricing and the exact release date will be announced at CES 2012. Should Apple integrate something like this into their own screens? I don’t think so, but if this is something that you absolutely need, then you should look for the e2343Fi early next year.

[via SlashGear]

Developed by Sanden, in cooperation with Okaya Electronics and Intel, this concept vending machine has a 65-inch full HD vertical display on front. The transparent touchscreen display can not only show animated graphics, but provides product information and merchandising, and even acts as a clock while waiting for its next customer.

The prototype machine even offers facial recognition technology so it could display customized menus based on the individual user as they walk by.  And if it doesn’t know you, it can display products based on what demographic it THINKS you fit into based on your age or gender. How Minority Report of them.

[via DigInfo.TV]

The Korean electronics giant recently released a video showing off the future potential for bendable OLED screens, and it sure looks cool. In this concept video, we get to see the potential for portable displays which can be rolled up, act as a touchscreen interface, and even let you see through them and interact with the environment around you. Here, check it out:

Pretty slick, eh? I for one can’t wait until I can finally buy a device which can be rolled up like a piece of paper. Not because it’s any more practical than a hard surface, just because it’s the stuff of science fiction, and that’s the sort of gadget I just have to have in my collection. While it’s doubtful we’ll see anything as sophisticated as what Samsung shows off in the video in the next few years, they do expect to start producing flexible OLED panels which can be attached to curved surfaces sometime in 2012.

[via OLED Info]

Instead of putting up just the usual tree this year, the Holburne Museum in Bath, England decided that they wanted to do something different and called in an artist to do their lights for them. And boy, did Bruce Munro get creative with the lights.

He painstakingly connected and set up over 5,000 glass spheres to come up with the Field of Lights on the grounds of the museum. The bulbs are planted on the ground, with the spheres supported by acrylic stems. Each of the spheres is threaded with fiber optic cables and are lit by a color projector.

Of his work, Munro says, “I think it is a piece with universal appeal and I’ll be happy if it makes people smile at Christmas time.”

I definitely think there will be a lot who will be smiling because of the Field of Lights this Christmas. I know I would, if I had a chance to visit the museum.

[via Daily Mail and Flickr]

Here’s Rosenfeld’s description of the set up: “The wearer’s face is captured with a video camera looking through a half-silvered mirror. There’s a second camera, which captures a view from the front of the box, near the eyes of the on-screen face. The outside view is shown on an internal LCD, which reflects on the half-silvered mirror; this way the wearer can look directly at the LCD and the camera at the same time.”

Rosenfeld finished the device back in October, and wore it for Halloween:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

While he was quite a hit in his neighborhood, the Big Head project is more of an experiment than a costume. Rosenfeld is currently taking a look at why videoconferencing – a technology that’s been around for decades – has not been widely adopted yet. Now I want to see a palette swap costume.

[Guru Ramen via Laughing Squid]

Sony has announced that it has a new screen that will find its way into future cameras that has much great resolution and is slightly larger than the old screen. The new screen is an OLED measuring 0.7-inches and called the ECX332A (Japanese PDF). The coolest part is that the screen has 720p (1280×720) resolution.

That means the tiny little OLED shows HD images giving you a lot more resolution to decide if what you are seeing in the photo you want. The new screen uses the same white OLED and color filters as the old one. Sony has offered no word on when the new screen will land inside a camera, but these appear to be the same displays found in their HMZ-T1 720p 3D head-mounted display.

[via OLED-Info]

Following in the footsteps of Apple’s sharp iPhone 4/4S Retina display, Toshiba is now showing off a 6.1-inch display with an astounding 2560 x 1600 resolution. If you do the math on that, it works out to a whopping 496 ppi. In comparison, Apple’s Retina displays are already a razor-sharp 326ppi. The image above is an example screen from the display. Here’s a zoomed in section from the image to give you a sense of how much detail it holds:

Enough resolution for you? The prototype LCD/TFT display offers a contrast ratio of 1000 to 1, a 176-degree viewing angle, and support for a full 16-million colors. Not too shabby for a display which could almost fit in your pants pocket.

No word on when we’ll actually see these displays in a production device. I’m still waiting for the TV in my living room has the same resolution as a 4K digital cinema.

[Toshiba [JP] via Newlaunches]

I say this 1969 Ford Mustang is biodegradable because it’s made entirely from paper. It was crafted and made into a reality by Jonathan Brand, who decided to work on the Mustang after restoring three vintage cars with his old man. Jonathan has printed out a 1:1 scale paper model of every component of the car, but actually has no plan to assemble the entire car.

With the help of 3D software, Jonathan flattened out all of the different parts of the car, printed them all out, and then folded and glued them together to come up with each specific component.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can view Jonathan’s work, aptly called One Piece At A Time, at the Hosfelt Gallery from September 20 to October 29. Bring your papercraft Leica to take photos of this cool set of paper wheels.

[via Colossal Art & Design via Oh Gizmo!]

One of the most popular social networks around is Facebook with around 750 million active users. A lot of apps have been released to try to make it easier for people to broadcast their lives online; but what about the reverse? What if you happened to just pass by a store you really liked, or saw something that you just want to tell the world about?

Cue the real-life Facebook “Like” button by Mario Klingemann. Of course, it’s virtually impossible to put up one of these buttons on every single thing in the physical world, but the idea in itself is just, well, extremely “like”-able, if you get what I mean. The Arduino-based “Like” button is actually part of the ”Ultra Social” UAMO-Festival 2011 that will be held in Munich.

I like Klingemann’s idea. What do you think?

[via Make: via Geeky Gadgets]

Each panel measures about 31.5″ square, and has an 8×8 grid of “smart” RGB LEDs. PixelInvaders LED panels use software called PixelController to drive them. You can even control them using a MIDI device or using OSC compatible software. The hardware is open-sourced, and is targeted at geeks, artists, and DIY enthusiasts. The panels themselves are able to playback real-time generated video or simple color changes. The PixelController software was released as open-source software on GitHub.

To support the project and get your own PixelInvaders LED panels, you can visit the IndieGoGo PixelInvaders page. Minimum contribution is $25, but to get anything back, you’ll need to give at least $282, and that only includes the LED modules. You’ll need to spend as much as $626 for all the parts needed to assemble a full panel, or $1499 for a fully assembled and tested one.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Similar to Toshiba’s Mobile Monitor, Lenovo has announced a new portable LCD called the ThinkVision LT1421. It’s a 14-inch 16:9 display, and combined with the screen already on your notebook it will give you a lot more screen real-estate or can also provide display mirroring. It uses a picture frame stand on the back and has 16-levels of brightness. The display is angle adjustable and comes with a cover to protect it on the go. The display is very portable and will make it much easier to get more screen space on the road.

Lenovo is mum on the hard specs of the screen right now, but considering that the thing only needs a single USB connector for power and video, you might not want to run it on full brightness unless you want to drain your battery laptop quickly.

That ship date is too bad really, a few weeks earlier and many gamers would have found the monitor under their tree Christmas morning. The kit will sell for $499.99 (USD), and for that price you will get a smallish 24-inch screen, a pair of Active 3D glasses, and a copy of the game Motorstorm Apocalypse.

The glasses needed with the set are the active type, and charge via USB. The screen also supports Sony’s cool SimulView tech to allow two users to see two different images on the screen at once, instead of using split-screen mode. The display also has dual HDMI inputs and integrated speakers.

You can pre-order the PlayStation 3D Monitor Kit over at Amazon now. Additional glasses will set you back $69.95 a pair.

[via 3D-display-info]

As a response to today’s quick-to-dispose society, Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves have come up with a stylish and innovative collection of glasses and spectacles that are made from… human hair.

Designers Murakami and Groves, who are both graduates from the Royal College of Art, collaborated to come up with this collection of fashion-forward eyewear that is 100% biodegradable and 101% wearable.

I’m not sure how a lot of people would feel, wearing someone’s hair on their spectacles, but these are actually bound together and coated with resin for good measure so it won’t even feel like you’re wearing hair, at least.

The collection is currently being displayed in London as part of the graduate exhibition of the Royal College of Arts until July 3. If you’re in the area, drop by to catch a glimpse of these hair-ific creations!

[via Gizmodo via Dvice]

The display features a dot-matrix of illuminated rocker switches spelling out the classic programming test phrase “Hello World.” It’s is supposed to speak to the beginnings of modern technology and the visual language of minimalism. I like how even old technology like light-up switches can be hacked together to form a screen of sorts.

The switches can still be turned on and off, but I want to know if they let people flip the switches to show other stuff, or if they’ve got it locked down. It would definitely be more fun if it were interactive.

It’s part of an exhibition called Fünf Räume at The Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City, where you can view it until September 5th.

[via Triangulation via Colossal Art + Design and Make:]

The Geo-Cosmos ball will be used to show information about our planet, from ocean productivity to temperature changes. It’s got a resolution of almost 10 million pixels (!). The most impressive display is the one where it shows constantly updated images of Earth, thanks to satellite imagery. This display can then change each minute when new info is downloaded into it. That’s kind of amazing.

This sort of thing is like Google Earth in 3D, but instead of fake 3D, it’s on an actual 3D surface, thanks to the spherical nature of the design of the Geo-Cosmos. While it was being constructed, it almost looked like a mini Death Star!

[OLED Display via DVice]