Laptop-DRV » Travel

Virgin Galactic reveals SpaceShipTwo, plans commercial spaciousness flights in 2011

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:07:43 +0000

We’ve been waiting an awful long time for this day to come, and now we ‘re doing our darndest to rush away 2010. Today, Sir Richard Branson officially took the wraps off of a spacecraft that we initially peeked back in June of 2008: the SpaceShipTwo. Des igned to ho ld six passengers and two pilots, this magnificent cra ft will reportedly be ready to ship wealthy tourists into space as early as 2011. Reportedly, the craft will be taken up to launch altitude by the WhiteKnightTwo, after which the 2.5 hour tour will take patrons high enough to experience around 5 minutes of weightlessness. Of course, the ship still has an awful lot of regulatory passing to do, and the Spaceport America in New Mexico still has to be built, but it’s nothing short of fantastic to see the wheels turning in the right direction. Just think — you can final ly tell you kid that an aeronautical engineering degree isn’t required to leave the atmosphere. Future, we heart thee.

P.S. – Peek that MSNBC link for the unveiling shots!

The Huglight, or, Sappy Designation, Sugary Result

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:26:15 +0000

If you’ve ever been in bed at night longing for a good read, but sick of all the various book lights out there–they sit on the nightstand, they hook the book, maybe you’ve tried head lamps or resting the light on your shoulder. Well, Amazon has heard your pleas for a better alternative, and over there, you can buy yourself the Huglight.

Just $15.00 on Amazon gets you what may well be one of the most versatile booklights of all time, with the ability to wrap it around your neck and provide light in most any direction thanks to its flexible frame construction. You can bend it into a bedside lamp or wrap it around your wris t for job s t hat need light in tight spaces, and there are plenty of alternatives where that came from.

There are a whole lot of uses for something great like this, and I’m sure you can already think of several. And they probably don’t all involve a copy of J urassic Park in bed, either.

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Waze’s “Way Goodies” Makes A Amusement Of GPS Betterment

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:51:45 +0000

You may not have heard of a Waze lately, but it’s a GPS application that started out as an Android only app, but quickly expanded to iPhones, WinMo and Symbian, and all for free besides.

Well, recently, Waze changed just a bit by turning itself into a kind of mobile game. Called “Road Goodies”, it essentially operates like a giant g ame of Pac-Man for your GPS. You control your character on a field that looks a lot like a map of your immediate a rea, and you move your character outward, gobbling up icons for points.

Not only is this app actually a good shot of Pac-Man-esque fun, it’s als o a good deed. See, those icons that you’re gobbling up for points represent a map problem spot, and when you play the game and much the icons, you’re helping Waze improve its mapping.

Better, there’s word that Waze will be holding a “Holiday High Points Challenge” to recognize high scorers, and future ve rsions of the game wi ll not only change icons on a seasonal basis but also offer “surprise filled treasure chests”.

Game and improve a GPS app? Sounds like a plan to me!

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Yoomi Flask Warmer Gets Drain The Ideal Temperature

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:35:04 +0000

Parents out there, you know how hard it can be to get a baby’s bottle warmed just right. But now, thanks to the Yoomi bottle, you can get the temperature of a bottle of milk EXACTLY to the right temperature.

The Yoomi bottle takes up to five ounces of milk and heats it to the exact temperature of breast milk, between 32 and 34 de grees Celsius, and it does it in just one minute. It was invented by a husband and wife duo who were desperate for a fast and easy way to heat milk. They’d fussed with microwaves, begged hot water off waiters at restaurants, everything in between. And then, after six years, the self-heating milk bottle was born from a sketch on a bar napkin.

Cold milk flows through heated warmer channels, thus h eating the milk inside to the appropriate temperature. Never too hot or too cold again, the unit itself can be recharged fully 100 times before needing to be replaced. Frankly, I call this one a good ideaR 11;never again will you accidentally scald a baby with too-hot milk. Plus, they cost around forty bucks with replacement nipples at nine b ucks for a two-pack, so her e’s a shower gift that can’t miss.

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Altered Charged Skateboard Goes Up To 19 MPH

admin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:04:03 +0000

Electric skateboards aren’t exactly all that new but this one from Altered is definitely top of the line. Capable of achieving 19 MPH in 4 seconds, this robust electric skateboard has a 600 Watt motor that can carry riders weighing up to 225 pounds.

The board itself weighs 40 pou nds and is powered by a 36 volt battery. Priced at $600, this longboard of electricity is quite the real deal. The board even has a wireless trigger for you to control you r speed with. This whole product looks really en gaging with some spectacular wipeouts just waiting to happen with this thing. On sale now.

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D3O Contrivance Cases Proffer Unbelievable Startle Opposition

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:59:15 +0000

You may remember reading here, back in March, about the D3O protective plasticine goo being used in soldiers’ helmets, but now it’s got a more mundane use–as a gadget protector.

Parent company Tech21 recent ly launched a wide array of smartphone and laptop cases that off er between, get this, “140 and 221 percent more protection for a mobile device or laptop than existing case s can”.

See, D3O is a strange sort of chemically engineered, enhanced Silly Putty of sorts that, when you pull it ap art slowly, stretches much like Silly Putty would. But if you jolt it abruptly, it hardens and becomes rigid, offering a shock absorption capability for relatively low space.

D3O cases are now available, and cost between twenty eight and fifty bucks depending on where you shop and what sizes you get.

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The Symbol Speech Translator Turns Ameslan Into Oral English

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:08:14 +0000

Remember how we just finished talking about the Tele Scouter, which interprets every language and translates automatically? Well, it’s a bit of a misnomer because there’s one language it won’t interpret–American Sign Language.

That’s right, folks–Ameslan is completely out of the Tele Scouter’s bailiwick. But now, we may have the answer for that one–the Sign Language Interpreter.

Basically, what this is is a camera connected to a microprocessor that “sees” the motions of sign language, matches them against its own internal systems, translates them, and announces the word or letter that the gesture is the equivalent of. I’m doing a bit of interpolation there as the read link wasn’t exactly clear on if it can handle words and letters or only letters, but either way, a sign language interpreter gadget will change the lives of deaf people everywhere.

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Conmoto Rolling FirePlace Lets Every Space Turn A 9-Alarm Flames

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:58:50 +0000

Combining the most primitive elements discovered at the dawn of mankind, this rolling fireplace from Conmoto wants to go off-roading down your stairs with a passion. From the look of the picture it seems pretty fake but it actually runs off of ethanol and is a real heat source believe it or not.

Imagining some awesome YouTube videos involving bowling and day care centers this fireplace isn’t designed to roll at all. What are we supposed think? Anyway, cool concept and I’d love to mess with one.

Philips Tapsters Probable Won’t Strike Stores

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:05:11 +0000

Several months back, we introduced you to the Philips Tapster headphones. But there’s some bad news here for everyone who was looking forward to them–there’s now pretty much no way they’ll hit store shelves.

The folks out at Crave on Cnet’s Asian subsidiary believe they know why, too–they don’t work.

It’s a strange theme these days, gadgets that don’t work, but the beat goes on (or rather doesn’t) from these headphones. They were supposed to be a major innovation in playback and volume controls, which are supposedly controlled by tapping and swiping the ear modules. Under normal circumstances, this would dislodge them from the ear, but with these, they didn’t dislodge. Something of an accomplishment there, but the problem was, the purported tap-and-swipe system of volume and playback control never materialized.

So a little bit of vaporware for you, folks…and that’s always at least a little sad.

The Docupen X-Series: A Writing instrument Sized Scanner

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:44:39 +0000

Way back in the depths of 2005, we talked about a kind of ultra portable scanner called the Docupen. Well, the company that makes these has just released a brand new kind that they’re hoping will be so extreme you’ll likely ignore the mostly pointlessness of the device and buy several. It’s the Docupen X-Series, and the X is almost certainly for X-treeeeeeme.

The Docupen is essentially a scanner the size of a standard ballpoint pen, and allows you to scan a document or a photo into JPEG format by rolling the scanner part along the surface of the thing you want scanned. It has 64 gigs of internal memory, microSD card compatibility, and can scan to 600 dpi, which is no mean feat for a pen-sized scanner.

If you do a lot of photo manipulation or deal with a lot of actual paper documents–like, say, business cards at trade shows–then you might feel pretty good about the Docupen X-Series. But you likely won’t feel good about its price, a whopping $369.

Chances are you’ll almost never need to use this, and chances are even greater that you’ll lose it in short order anyway, so it’s probably not what you’d call a good investment.