

How high a resolution do you need on your phone? The upcoming Qisda QCM-330 offers a whopping 1,280 x 1,024 resolution on its 4-inch screen, which is higher than many laptop screens.
The phone is being unveiled next month at the CeBIT tradeshow, and it looks like it'll be coming to Europe on Vodafone. How such a high pixel density will look on such a small screen has yet to be seen, but just spec-wise, it's impressive. We're looking forward to seeing more details of this monster once it's officially available.
Unwired View, via Slashgear, via Gizmodo
Tiny earbuds made of aluminum have been a Klipsch specialty for a couple of years now, and now the company adds to its stable of the world's tiniest cans with its high-end Image X10i in-ear headset, now sporting iPhone capability. Let's give them a listen, as well as try them out on our iPhone 3GS, determining if they're really worth their unusually steep $350 price.
Gallery: Are Klipsch Image X10i earphones too good for the iPhone? (8 images) view full gallery
Canon just surprised the photo world with this fresh announcement, showing off its EOS Rebel T2i that will take its place atop the company's Rebel line of lower-cost digital SLR cameras.
This 18-megapixel powerhouse is the beneficiary of a lot of trickle-down from Canon's twice-as-expensive EOS 7D camera. That means you'll be able to get a $799 camera (body only) with such advanced features as 9-point autofocus, a 63-zone dual-layering metering system just like the 7D, a 3-inch live-view smudge-resistant viewfinder, ISO of 100- 6400, and 1080p video shooting at 24, 25, or 30 frames per second with an external mic input.
Canon's not saying yet when this relatively cheap camera ($899 with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 image-stabilized kit lens) will be available, but soon thereafter, the company's going to need to raise the bar on its higher-end cameras just to keep up. And whoa, Nikon, you have a lot of catching up to do now.
UPDATE: The T2i (also known as the EOS 550D) shoots some really nice video, too — take a look, or see it in 1080p directly on YouTube:
Gallery: Canon EOS Rebel T2i: new king of the cheap DSLRs? (11 images) view full gallery
When we first heard about Airship Ventures, a company that's resurrected the Zeppelin for air tours of San Francisco and other locations, we said: Sign us up! Well, the company took us seriously, giving us a free ride on one of their airships for a quick flight around the Bay Area (such a ride typically costs about $500). The result: some top-notch sightseeing, and the only flight we've ever taken when it was okay to open a window on the aircraft. It's all caught by our trusty camcorder — experience airship travel via the video and continue reading for the full story on the Zeppelin.
Gallery: You can see Google from here: a Zeppelin view of San Francisco (8 images) view full gallery
Increasingly, the problem of creating sustainable, eco-friendly solutions extends beyond transportation and is moving into the realm of home building. Europe-based design team A&V first came up with a concept design and then executed their vision that is the MercuryHouseOne.
The tiny raindrop-shaped structure is not just futuristically styled, but also features a highly efficient set of solar panels on the top of the building allowing energy to flow into the home year round. You can find out more about the design and possible real world applications for the structure here.
Via Tuvie
When I was a kid, I had dynamo powered lights on my bike. They worked great as long as you were moving along, but quickly dimmed if you slowed down or stopped. Now a California company called High Tide Associates has updated this technology for the 21st century with the RollerGen, a bike mounted generator that charges your portable electronics.
Rather than the wimpy 3-5 watts of my old dynamo, the RollerGen can spit out a whopping 30 watts, which get stored in a small battery called the BOS (bar of soap). This sits next to the generator in a small rack over the rear wheel, and there's enough extra room for your electronic gizmos.
This all sounds great, but I wonder how the RollerGen works in the rain. Also, at $495 for the complete system, it seems pretty darned expensive compared to the alternatives.
RollerGen, via GeekSugar.com
Gallery: RollerGen charges your devices with pedal power (5 images) view full gallery
Want to impress your Super Bowl visitors this weekend with more than 7-layer dip and mini-sandwiches? Have some extra time on your hands? Happen to have 66 feet of salvaged particle board sitting around?
Well, even if you don't meet all of those requirements, this is still a pretty neat project. Roommates Jandra, Priya, and Ruella cobbled together their very own apartment photo booth for pretty cheap, though they got a little help and used their heads to keep the price down. Still, none of it is stuff you couldn't find at a hardware store or IKEA.
Check out the full list of instructions here.
CBS will be getting tricky with the Super Bowl XLIV broadcast, rolling out a special magnifying glass effect created by Orad TVs Motion Video Play (MVP) system. As you can see in this video, the MVP can give you a much tighter look at what's happening, and it can automatically follow a player wherever he goes in the shot.
That's not all the MVP can do. It's loaded with image analysis tech that works beautifully on live television, generating real-time tracking information of multiple players or objects. You might have seen some of these tricks on football broadcasts, tracking the trajectory of the football. Amazing stuff.
Via Orad
While hundreds of millions of Super Bowl viewers munch on enough potato chips to reach the moon if laid end to end (293,000 miles' worth, to be exact), this Sunday's game will feature spectacularly detailed slow motion replays. Among the 50 cameras deployed for the broadcast, CBS will be using six Vision Research Phantom V640 super slow-mo cameras.
Super cameras indeed. Surprisingly, CBS won't be cranking them anywhere near as high as they can go, where we'll see slow motion at a rate of between 480 to 540 frames per second on the Super Bowl XLIV broadcast. The Phantom V640 is capable of shooting 1,500 four-megapixel frames per second, or 2,700 HD frames per second. That's almost fast enough to see a bullet going through an apple, or a water balloon popping in a very special way.
Via Vision Research
Some of us are so Mac-obsessed (your humble narrator excluded) that we would even want to refer to one hanging on the wall to determine the time of day. If you fit that description, you might want to hurry and pick up this recycled Apple iBook G4 clock, because there's only one left. Barring that, you could make your own without too much trouble.
We especially like the clever flourish of using one of Apple's iconic no-button mice as the pendulum. And unlike most Apple products, this one has replaceable batteries — a couple of AAs keep its quartz clock going and going. Hey, Apple taxpayers, it's incredible! Revolutionary!
Etsy, via Geeky Gadgets
Gallery: What time is it? Check the recycled Apple iBook clock on the wall (1 images) view full gallery
Nobody questions that high-def TV is a massive leap over that fuzzy picture we used to watch way back, oh, five years ago, but did you know that not all high-def is created equal? We've seen how cable companies can mangle the picture while trying to stuff too much signal down too small of a pipe, but now it looks like CBS wants to get the Super Bowl signal to your TV as pristinely as is possible.
Normally for a big live remote event like this, the broadcaster will do all of the video production work on site at the stadium, then compress the signal so they can deliver it by satellite to their broadcast center in New York or LA. From there it gets compressed again for distribution to broadcasters around the country and the world. This time though, CBS is taking a different approach. Instead of doing the production on site, uncompressed video feeds will be sent to their New York production center via fiber optic cable, where the director will create the show before it is distributed in the normal way. To do this, CBS is using a 1.5 Gigabit-per-second fiber optic line provided by Level 3 Communications, the company that built a big part of the infrastructure for the Internet. Over 2,800 hours of uncompressed HD video travel over this line, at a bit rate almost six times faster than the normal satellite hookup.
Sure, your cable provider will still be doing their best to screw up the signal before it reaches your home on the signal, but CBS says that by providing them with a cleaner signal that's been through fewer compression/decompression steps, the results will still be a clear step up over the old method.
Come this Sunday, I'm going to do what most of you are, I imagine: find out which of my friends owns the biggest HDTV and then invite myself over for the Super Bowl. That got me thinking, though — if I wanted to watch the Super Bowl in my TV-less home instead, I couldn't. Well, correction: I couldn't legally.
I'm used to watching all my shows online, you see, on sites like Hulu. After poking around, I found that there's no way for me to watch the Super Bowl online through the NFL. There are dozens of different sites where I could find a stream of the game, of course. The NFL gets a lot of them shut down for rights violations, but there are simply too many to get them all. This whole sideshow plays out because there's no official NFL stream. There should be.
Apparently, blasting your face with steam is good for your skin. Who knew? Even better than normal steam is the fancy-pants steam this Panasonic Nano-Care Ion Steamer pumps out. They claim it "creates ion steam particles that are extremely small, thereby enabling the moisturizing steam to deeply penetrate the outer layers of a user's skin."
If that sounds like legit science to you rather than fancy-sounding claptrap, well, feel free to spend $416 of your hard-earned money on this thing. Better you than me, friend.
GeekStuff4U via Technabob
Fighting video games have always had their roots in the arcades. That's where the games are released first, and arcade sticks are much better for controlling them than the game pads that come with consoles. If you're looking to bring the arcade experience home without buying a full cabinet, this Hori Real Arcade Pro Premium VLX arcade stick should do just that.
This monstrous controller is basically like taking the entire control panel from an arcade box and plopping it on your lap. Sure, it's big, heavy and impractical, but isn't that part of its charm? It'll set you back about $330.
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