The Red Ferret Journal

The Matrox M9188 is an 8 headed video card that fits into a single PCIe slot. Each output on the card is mini DisplayPort, but it ships with eight mini DisplayPort to DVI adapters so you’re fine whatever you’re running. It has 2Gb of memory and it can display a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600 per output in DisplayPort or 1920 x 1200 per output in DVI mode. It works with Vista (32/64bit), Windows7, XP (32/64bit), Server 2003/2008 (32/64bit) and Linux. If 8 monitors aren’t enough, stick two cards in and get 16 monitors. Sheesh, they should have called this thing the Hydra. Priced at US$1995 and available at the end of the year.

The Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 multi-display Octal graphics card addresses the need to visualize large amounts of data at once in order to effectively make decisions. The latest offering from the M-Series family is the world’s first single-slot PCIe x16 octal card, featuring the ability to support both DisplayPort and DVI Single-Link outputs to ensure wide compatibility with today’s monitors

Tags: gadget, matrox, 8+head+video+card, matrox+m9188

The Bamboo Keyboard made quite an impact with Red Ferret readers way back in July. We’ll if you’ve been longing for one of your very own, Brando now has a Bamboo Keyboard and Mouse. The keyboard is a 106 key version with a slightly odd layout. The mouse is optical with scroller, but doesn’t say if it’s 2 or 3 button or what dpi it runs at and both only work with PC and Linux. US$19 for the mouse, US$39 for the keyboard or US$52 for the set.

USB Bamboo Keyboard + Mouse are making of eco-friendly bamboo. The Bamboo material give them a natural look. The 106-key USB Bamboo keyboard and Optical Scroll-Wheel Mouse works with PCs and Linux.

Tags: gadget, usb, brando, bamboo+keyboard+and+mouse, bamboo+keyboard, bamboo+mouse

The new 2010 model Hyundai Equus limo apparently cost around $300 million to develop and is aimed head on at the Merc, BMW, Lexus end of the car market. You can’t fault the Koreans for bringing it to the table either, since the thing bristles with enough tech to rival the space shuttle.

The £80,000 5 litre flagship model features a bulletproof option (for Soccer Moms on a mission, no doubt) as well as a 17 speaker sound system, heated steering wheel, a Lane Departure Warning System (attention, you are about to leave the planet madam) and a Pre-Safety System which automatically does some hard braking and seat belt tightening for you if a crash is looming.

Video cameras front and rear and a CGI based Parking Guidance System are obviously a part of the feature set – ‘natch – but it’s the addition of a knee air bag for the driver that really does it for us. And of course, the piece de resistance, a fully automated power footrest and massage system in the rear seats. More tea, Vicar? Here’s a video of the rather operatic launch.

Faster than you can say Eee PC, the auxiliary USB monitor range has exploded. They’re all about the same size and resolution and they work with PCs and some with Intel-based Macs. Here’s a quick (but not exhaustive) list of what’s currently available:

Buffalo 7″ USB Monitor – Definitely the quirkiest looking one in the bunch. The screen rotates 90�, it’s got 300cd/m� brightness with a resolution of 800 x 480. Priced at US$163.

Century Plus One LCD-800U – This is an 8″ monitor with a screen resolution of 800 x 600 and it uses a kickstand with 3 positions to help with viewing angles. It also has a unique feature with it’s DVI pass-through which I presume lets you plug in another monitor via DVI. US$171.

Century also make a 800 x 480 4.3 inch USB monitor , (pictured at the top) however it’s US$143 and doesn’t make a lot of sense price-wise.

Doublesight DS-70U – The “Smart” 7″ monitor from DoubleSight is a 16:10 monitor with 800 x 480 resolution. It’s fairly limber too, and you can adjust the height as well as the tilt, and you can remove it from the stand if you want to transport it. Priced around US$139 and there are also 9″ versions with 1024 x 600 resolution and with a webcam .

I-O Data 7″ – The I-O Data 7″ is a bit of a power miser, consuming a maximum of 2.9W however it only packs a brightness of 200cd/m�. It’s got a resolution of 800 x 480, an LED backlight and a price of US$165.

Mimo iMo 7″ – the confusingly named iMo from Mimo is the replacement for their original Mimo 710, one of the first auxiliary USB monitors. The iMo sports a ball-and-socket pivot stand that allows the screen to be rotated and tilted ad nauseum . The monitor can also be removed from the stand to sit on a flat surface via a kick stand. It has a 400:1 contrast ratio, 800 x 480 resolution and a power button integrated into the USB cable. Just hope you don’t lose it. US$129.99 from Mimo US.

Mimo 710s – is a folding version of the discontinued 710. It can be rotated into either orientation and folds flat with the screen against the base to protect it while in a bag. It has the same screen as the iMo but is lighter, weighing less than 0.5kg and is also available with a touchscreen. US$149.99

Samsung U70 – 7″ USB monitor, 800 x 480, 400:1 contrast ratio and rotates 90� with integrated kickstand. Prices vary but seem to be around US$120.

Tags: gadget, usb, auxiliary+monitors, usb+monitors, usb+external+monitors

Remember those old satellite broadcast trucks that you used to see outside live television broadcast events? Well think of them as historical artifacts from now on, because this new Livestream Livepack wireless video streaming system replaces that whole dinosaur $250K rig with a backpack. Yep, that’s it.

Just hook your Firewire DV camera up to the backpack, which contains 6 load balanced 3G/EVDO SIM card modems, press the record button and you’re live to the world from anywhere there’s a 3G cell phone signal. The box contains the encoder and battery, and you can attach an external battery to give up to 3 hours of continuous recording at a time. The video is HD, 1 Mbps, H.264, so your viewers will not be disappointed with the image quality either.

They’re calling it a satellite truck in a backpack, and at $2500 a month rental ($1500 a month on the annual plan) it could just revolutionise the whole news and local event reporting business in a big way. The monthly fee covers 30 hours of streaming including data fees, so small operators suddenly have a way to compete with the big shot news reporting outfits at a price that’s a game changer. Amazing tech. US only at the moment alas.

The Airtop is a tent which fits on your car roof. Not only does it sleep up to 3 bodies and come with its own little ladder, but you can also buy a range of accessories to turn the darn thing into something approximating a full blown RV. Almost but not quite. Astonishingly clever Italian tech.

 The universal attachment system offers complete versatility, fitting any vehicle, it can be positioned or adjusted easily and quickly to ensure complete safety of the tent and vehicle at all times. The exclusive Autohome security system allows all tents to be used on any vehicle: small cars, off-road vehicles, station-wagons, MPV’s (or people carriers), camper vans, and pick-up trucks,… A universal, quick attachment system, allows you to position the tent safely in any position, with no risk of damage or modifications to the body of the vehicle. Various fixing kits are available to suit.

This long but interesting ieee Spectrum article takes an in-depth – and very scientific – look at the mystery surrounding the drive to make our LED lamps more efficient. The problem, known as droop in the trade, means that LEDs cannot be manufactured to emit more light, because the output drops off significantly above a certain wattage. That’s apparently why most household LED lamps only go up to 20W or so.

It’s a fascinating, albeit geeky, tale which shows how much science funding gets poured into problems with potentially massive commercial payoffs. Once they crack this problem – and it seems we’re talking quantum mechanics in there somewhere –  the incandescent and fluorescent bulb business is going to be rather dead in the water, and we’ll all be using less power to receive more light.

The Taser Shockwave is disturbing in one of those “you now have 15 seconds to comply” ways that’s hard to explain. Designed to provide ‘increased safety and stand-off capability during hostile situations’, this menacing array of taser muzzles can be combined in multiple groups to offer the perfect ‘pesky student’ clearance device for those times when things are getting a little embarrassing for an administrative body.

The Shockwave can shoot a barrage of tasers at a warm body up to 25 feet away and be controlled from a safe place 100 feet back using a nice cuddly remote control unit.  Nice to know our laws can be enforced so securely, eh? Enforcement droids are just a fraction of a step away, peeps, you wait and see. [Video – oops, wrong one!] Oh and look, you can stick them on the front of your car too. Joy!

Now don’t get me wrong, solar rechargeable gadgets are a great idea if that gadget spends all day in the sun anyway. As for leaving your phone, camera or MP3 player lying around catching some rays? Not such a good idea. That’s why gadgets like the FreeLoader Pro are so brilliant. Basically it’s a pair of flip-out solar cells with a rechargeable battery all in one simple unit. It comes with most of the common phone (Nokia, iPhone, Samsung, LG, Sony) and small device DC adapters (iPod, DS, GPS) as well as mini USB so it can charge pretty much anything portable.

It gets better though, the Freeloader doesn’t just charge your phone and your iPod, it charges pretty much anything. The rechargeable battery can put out 9.5 volts which puts it in the realm of power hungry devices like camcorder batteries, SLR batteries and media players. The best bit is the universal battery charger adapter which has configurable charging pins so you can charge any battery that will fit in it, and that’s an awful lot of batteries. The battery compatibility list must have 500 devices in it including what looks like every Canon and Nikon camera.

When you’re back near civilisation you can recharge the battery using USB instead of the sun. A full charge of the 1.6 Ah battery using the sun takes about 8 hours, via USB about 3 hours. It’s made from aluminium and it’s built tough, so if you’re heading bush, you definitely need one of these. �69.99 from Solar Technology.

Freeloader Pro is the ultimate solar charger capable of powering virtually every electrical device, anywhere in the world, whether on a beach, a mountain, jungle or the Polar ice cap. Freeloader Pro uses its high power solar panels or USB (cable supplied) to quickly charge its internal battery (7 – 9 hours in sunny conditions)

Tags: gadget, freeloader+pro, solar+recharging, solar+gadget+recharger

All too often printers are the victim of their own functionality. Because they’re so good at placing ink onto bits of paper, people choose to ignore the creative capacity of these clever machines.

Thankfully there’s a select group of valiant pioneers pushing the boundaries of print technology in weird and wonderful directions, inventing and building unusual (and occasionally pointless) printing machines. Here we take a look at 10 of the wackiest printers around.

[Photo from Flickr]
Continue reading…

The Erase-o-Matic degausser uses rare earth magnets enclosed in a specially formulated case to zap magnetic data media such as diskettes, cassettes, VHS, zip drives and all that kind of stuff. Its bigger brother will do for larger media and hard drives. Are we allowed to say we love the name? It’s so…homely isn’t it? Like Robbie the Robot and Lassie. OK, enough of that. The base version is priced at $395.00. zzzzztpfffzsttzing.

The Riversimple car may look a bit like a Batmobile that’s shrunk in the wash, but this tiny vehicle may well change the way cars are made in future times. It’s not just the fact that it’s a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that you can’t buy, but only lease (with fuel).

Nor even that it is aimed at car clubs rather than individuals in order to try and reduce the total number of vehicles on the road. Nope, the big thing is the company’s desire to encourage open source principles to apply to the manufacture and design of the product. Pop along to the wiki pages at 40Fires and you’ll be invited to contribute to make the whole thing a better mousetrap.

To say that we’re impressed is an understatement. The root designs are all Creative Commons licensed, although at the moment you’re not allowed to set up a commercial operation using them (in order to stop big muscle bound conglomerates taking over). They’re planning on charging a paltry $10.00 for a manufacturing license to cover costs as well. You go for it guys, this is an awesome idea, and let’s hope it really takes off in a big way.