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Philippe Starck Wrapped Watches: Analog Gets Modern

Technabob — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:45:28 +0000

The latest watches from renowned French designer Philippe Starck may look incredibly modern at first glance, but their roots are firmly grounded in analog technology.

Starck’s new Wrapped watches feature an electroplated face which conceals almost the entirety of the watch hands. A small sliver of the hands shows through an open ring in the face, so all you see are little dots indicating hours and minutes, and a thin line representing seconds.

Each minimal watch offers a durable stainless steel case, and is available with either a mesh metal band ($125) or a grey leather one ($110). Both models available now from Fossil.

Gray Xbox 360 Coming Soon?

Technabob — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:16:40 +0000

There’s an image circulating around the web this morning showing what looks suspiciously like a GRAY Xbox 360 model.

Notice the console on the far left is decidedly darker in appearance than the white models in the middle. The photo was snapped by the guys over at Gamerscore Blog, who managed to sneak a peak at Microsoft’s press conference venue for this week’s E3 event.

There are a lot of theories on what this case could be, but the most likely scenario is that it’s a new “low-end” model that would retail for around $249, perhaps running on new, lower cost hardware. This would fit in nicely with all the rumors that Microsoft is going to drop prices on the consoles as a direct response to Sony’s PS3 price drop this week.

I’m sure Microsoft will spill the beans later tonight, but for now it’s fun to speculate.

[via Joystiq]

Daniel Rozin’s Circles Mirror Reflects, Distorts Reality

Technabob — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:33:47 +0000

Artist Daniel Rozin has been creating mind-blowing interactive artworks, combining computers, video cameras and mixed media since 1999. One of his more recent works was this hybrid digital/analog mirror which reflects images from passers-by using a huge grid of rotating circles.

Daniel’s Circles Mirror is an amazing combination of mechanical and digital technologies. By using a radial gradient from black to white, each of the 900 overlapping discs rotates to create the illusion of shades of grey.

Rozin create custom software to convert the digital images captured by a video camera into data which could be used by the motors which rotate the circles.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Be sure to check out Daniel Rozin’s other interactive works. If you’ve never seen them before, they are really quite amazing. Daniel is represented by bitforms gallery in New York if you’re interested in any of his works.

E Ink Improves Electronic Paper Display Modules

Technabob — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:32:03 +0000

E-Ink has announced a major upgrade to their electronic paper display technology which should substantially improve the quality over the earlier generation of displays.

E Ink’s new Vizplex display modules have a new switching mechanism which will allow the displays to refresh almost twice as fast as prior displays. In addition, the new units will be 20 percent brighter than the earlier models.

Previously, refresh (switch speed) was rated at 1200ms, while the new version will switch at 740ms. In addition, the new displays will support 8 levels of grey, versus the 4 levels in previous models. All of these improvements should lead to higher quality electronic book readers and other e-paper devices within the next year or so. Display panels will come in a variety of sizes ranging from 1.9 to 9.7-inches diagonal.

[via MobileRead]