They have been developed by Pol Pla i Conesa of MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group. Each cube is assembled from a set of six 128×128 OLED displays powered by their own microcontroller, capable of showing video, images or other visualizations.

Conesa thinks that the cubes could be used in tasks where different sets of information about a large collection of objects need to be rapidly accessed. On a larger scale, the cubes could be assembled into larger ad hoc displays, each of them functioning as a pixel.

Here’s some video footage from the guys over at Engadget showing off the prototype and some potential applications:

[via Engadget via designboom]

The SmartWatch is compatible with most Sony Xperia phones, as well as some Motorola, HTC and Samsung handsets. The full list of compatible phones is here. The watch connects via Bluetooth to your phone, allows you to accept and reject calls, mute the microphone, access social networking services, watch movies and play music stored on your phone.

The watch face is an 1.3-inch multitouch OLED screen with 128×128 resolution, capable of displaying 65,000 colors.The watch is a little bulkier than most, but not enough to really be a problem, and certainly no bigger than an iPod nano watch. You can also take the face off the strap and clip it almost anywhere.

The SmartWatch ships with a black wristband, but you can swap out colors to pink, mint, grey, white or blue as well. MSRP for the Sony SmartWatch is $149.99(USD), and you should be able to find one over on Amazon now.

[via TrendsNow]

The cooler of the two designs is the Mark 2 tricorder, and it is crammed with dual OLED touchscreens and uses a clamshell form factor. This particular tricorder runs Debian Linux and uses hardware that you can readily buy at specialty shops. Its CPU is an Atmel AT91RM9200 with an ARM920T 32-bit core. These tricorders don’t measure health stats, so won’t win that massive X Prize purse, but they will totally get you laid at Comic-Con.

The Mark 2 tricorder uses six AAA batteries for power. Inside the case are sensors for measuring temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, magnetic fields, color, ambient light levels, GPS location, and the distance to a surface. It won’t ferret out Klingons or help you figure out what killed that hapless redshirt, but I like it anyway.

Details on how to build both the Mark 1 and Mark 2 tricorders are available over on Dr. Jensen’s website.

[via ArsTechnica]

The project is aimed at making a roof for a car that would allow the people inside to see out at during the day and capture solar energy as well. Then at night, the roof turns into a glowing OLED light. I think the windows of homes could someday use this technology too. They could capture solar power during the day to power the house and then turn into room lighting at night.

The OLED light is only 1.8mm thick and provides a uniform and soft glow across the entire surface. By combining this with an invisible solar panel, you get power and light in one device without blocking your view. Apparently, the technology is being developed for the sunroof of Daimler’s unusual Smart Forvision concept EV, shown below:

[via TG Daily and OLED-Info]

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]

First shown off a couple of years ago in Milan, You Fade to Light uses a grid of Lumiblade OLED panels which light up to follow your every move. Stand still, and the panels act as mirrors. As soon as you move, the OLED pixels light up. Wherever you go, so goes the light. The 107.9″(w) x 50.4″(h) interactive display can also be set to an inverse mode, which lights up everywhere that you’re not, and leaves the mirrors where you are. It’s a really cool effect, captured here by the guys at A3Network:

The installation was created by rAndom International, with custom software written by Chris O’Shea. You Fade to Light has been produced in a limited edition of just eight units, and is selling for €140,000 (~$188,000 USD). I suppose that if you’ve got the money – I’m talking serious 1% money, that is – you could hang one of these on your wall. Or you could just watch the video above and enjoy it from afar.

[Thanks for the tip, Buster!]

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]

Lee Jung Hoon calls his concept the On Air Cam. It’s a Web-connected video camera that not only captures video but can upload or stream the footage live via Wi-Fi, 3G or Bluetooth. Since the On Air Cam already has an OLED screen that can be used to view what’s being shot, Lee sacrificed the viewfinder and designed a second camera in its place. This allows the user to superimpose his face – or whatever he wants to shoot behind the camera – on the footage, similar to what news outfits do. It also makes it easier to record oneself, because the second camera and the OLED screen are facing the same side.

I’m no expert but I think it’s just a matter of time before something like the On Air Cam is actually produced. For all I know today’s smartphones may already be powerful enough to do this. A device like the On Air Cam will make it even easier to share events from the real world because it bypasses the process of uploading the footage to a computer before it gets to the Web – and perhaps more importantly, bypass anyone who may want to censor the information, just like what people are doing now on sites like LiveLeak, Twitter and YouTube.

But at the same time, if the On Air Cam did exist, I’m sure that there’ll be an exponential rise in the amount of narcissistic, poorly shot or overall worthless videos on the Web, crap that gets stored on servers, that use up drive space and electricity while contributing nothing useful. But that’s not the gadget’s fault is it? Check out Lee Jung Hoon’s portfolio on Coroflot to see his other designs.

[via Tuvie via Walyou]

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX55 is a slim 16.2MP camera that offers some interesting features, such as software that will boost the camera’s zoom without reducing pixel resolution and some basic filters to edit your pics. There’s an extra 5× digital zoom on top of the 5× optical one. This camera is just ½ of an inch thick, making it the thinnest in its class. It’s capable of full HD clips and 16.2MP stills. 3D stills are also possible, even though it only has a single. The back has a 3.3-inch high-res OLED touchscreen, which will look gorgeous.

Sony’s ‘Pixel Super Resolution’ processing means that the camera can simultaneously snap 12-megapixel still photos while shooting 1080i video, without interrupting the video capture. It will be available in September for about $350 (USD), and they’re available for pre-order now over on Amazon.

The screen is made from curved scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass, set into a polycarbonate body. Under the hood is a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, and a PowerVR SGX530 GPU. The MeeGo OS recognizes a swipe gesture to return to one of the three home interface screens. You’ll unlock it with a double-tap. You’ll have an ‘event’, ‘apps’, and ‘open apps’ view. Nokia has implemented NFC (Near Field Communications) which permits the sharing of images and videos between devices just by touching them. The phone comes with an 8MP camera, with a Zeiss sensor and two built-in LED flashes. It can capture HD videos and display them on its 16:9 widescreen, and Nokia claims the camera has the fastest startup time of any phone.

The phone also is the first to feature Dolby Digital Plus decoding and headphone post-processing. There are free maps and navigation included for over 90 countries thanks to the Drive app. The Docs app can visualize Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF files. Sounds pretty cool, but only time will tell how well the OS holds up. The hardware looks impressive though. Full specs can be found here.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via designboom]

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]

So it’s only fitting that this concept by Nils Ferber is aptly named the Fukushima Plate.

Because of the nuclear disaster, a lot of reports have come in saying that the majority of Japan’s food supply was contaminated with radiation. The Fukushima Plate is basically an ordinary plate that’s been fitted with a radiation meter.

In case you’ve got some foodstuff that’s imported from the Land of the Rising Sun, just heap it all up onto the Fukushima Plate and wait for the OLED rings to come on to tell you that it’s not safe to eat. While it looks pretty when it’s all lit up, what you’re aiming for here is actually no rings because that will mean that there’s no radiation in your food.

What do you think? Does the Fukushima Plate deserve to see the light of day and be made available commercially?

[via Dvice]

The sleek curves and silver aluminum casing are impressive, and it reminds me a lot of MacBooks, but the best thing would be the folding screen. The design assumes that a flexible OLED screen could be built with no seam where the top two pieces hinge. One thing that I don’t think we’ll need is the pop-out mouse. I’d rather have a Kinect-like sensor could just track your movements and translate them into actions, or just project a virtual trackpad on the side instead.

Another thing is the optical drive. I barely use mine and there will be MacBook Pro models next year which will completely remove it. I’m fine with that, but Hoof’s concept still has one. How futuristic is that?

Regardless, once we’re able to get folding screens, this design proves there could be compact laptops that end up being as useful as desktops.

[via Yanko Design]

The watch has a plethora of interchangeable digital faces, which you can access by simply touching the bezel in the right way. The screen is LED but there will be an OLED option.It looks like this digital watch is trying hard to look like a horological machine, those über expensive watches that can cost over $100,000.

There’s no word yet on how much the actual watch will cost, but we do know the digital watch dials each will cost between $50 to $100 extra. My guess is that the watch itself won’t be cheap.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via DVice, Gizmodo and TimeZone]

Samsung’s new concept design envisions a lightweight 3D OLED TV [Korean] that could fold, and easily be brought with you wherever you want to watch high-def 3D content. Plus, a large enough flexible display could provide for an immersive 3D experience with the display literally wrapping around your field of vision.

At this point, the flexible 3D OLED TV is just a design concept, but it’s definitely in the realm of possibility that a device like this could be made in the next 5 to 10 years. OLED display sizes have been rapidly progressing over the last couple of years, and Samsung is already showing functional – albeit small -  flexible displays using the technology.

[via OLED-Display via DVICE]

Designer Valentina Trimani’s Lightleafs light-up bookmark would use a bright OLED light source, and not only would mark your pages, but provide sufficient illumination to read in bed with the lights off. The proposed design not only calls for a wireless, rechargeable lightsource, but would also offer adjustable brightness.

I really do hope that Valentina finds an OLED partner to produce these. While I can certainly read self-illuminated books on my iPad, I still like to pick up the occasional magazine or physical book and read in bed.

[via Buzz-Beast via Design You Trust]

Samsung Mobile Display has started showing off an AMOLED display that’s completely transparent. The 19-inch screen is the largest see-through display yet, and Samsung is working on techniques to produce this technology in displays up to 40-inches diagonal – although there’s no plan to produce the sort of curvy screens seen in Avatar.

While I’m not sure what Samsung’s market plans are for the technology, I could see it being great for heads-up displays on windshields, cockpits, head-mounted displays, news anchor desks, and other locations where seeing through a display is useful. Better yet, I’d just like to have one because it’s flat-out cool looking. Samsung hopes to ramp up AMOLED production in 2012 and beyond, but has announced no further plans for these transparent prototypes.

[via ETNEWS (translated) via OLED Display]

Using a technology similar to that found in OLED displays, the nightvision material uses seven layers of OLEDs, which are designed to react to infrared light wavelengths. The light passing through the film layers gets amplified in intensity by each of the subsequent layers, and the end result – light where there once was darkness.

At this point the researchers have only managed to make a 1 cm square prototype, but it’s their goal to expand the concept to eventually be the size of a windshield.

I want my all of my car windows covered with this stuff, then I want to “run dark” and drive with my headlights off.

[Discovery via PopSci via Gizmodo]

The Dell Thunder looks pretty slick from these early pics the guys over at Engadget managed to get their hands on. The Thunder is expected to have a nice big 4.1-inch WVGA OLED screen, and sports an 8-megapixel digital camera. Rumor has it that it will have a zippy Snapdragon CPU powering its brains. Connectivity will be provided by 7.2Mbps HSPDA and Wi-Fi.

From the looks of the user interface screens, Dell has added their own menu system, but under the surface, there’s a full Android 2.1 operating system. Internal documents from Dell indicate that the Thunder will include built-in support for Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu, and also play Flash 10.1 content.

At this point we don’t know a firm release date, but word on the street is a Q4 2010 release for the initial version of the phone.

Assuming the watch ever gets made, the Instant Trend would receive instant Twitter and Facebook notifications when paired with your smartphone via Bluetooth.

Messages and time would be displayed on a bright (presumably OLED) blue-on-black dot-matrix display, set into a modern black stainless steel body.

Reading time on the Instant Trend doesn’t have to be as challenging as most Tokyoflash watch displays either. Sure, you can use one mode which tells time using blocks which represent hours, 10 minute intervals, and single minutes. Alternatively, you can view the time with numbers, on a clever multiple time zone display.

As is the case with all of the watches up at the Tokyoflash product design studio, you’ve got to go and cast your vote if you want to see this watch produced. I definitely think this one deserves your support.

[via The Awesomer]