Video: Intel's four-screen laptop prototype hands-on

Well, here's something you don't see every day: Intel's got a concept laptop here at IDF that features three OLED touchscreens below the 15-inch screen. In keeping with the hype of the moment, the primary idea is to run widgets and other passive apps on the little screens, but they're actually integrated with the main screen, so you can flick content up to view it full-size, and even use the mouse to interact with the widgets instead of your fingers. It's definitely cool, but it's also definitely a little odd in practice -- although Intel says they're talking to OEMs, things will have to be significantly refined before this can hit production. More pics in the gallery, video after the break.

Intel unveils Light Peak 10Gbps optical interconnect for mobile devices

USB 3.0 might be one of the big stories here at IDF, but Intel just showed off a glimpse of the future: Light Peak, an optical interconnect for mobile devices that can run as fast as 10Gbps. That's fast enough to do everything from storage to displays to networking, and it can maintain those speeds over 100-meter runs, which is pretty astounding. Intel says the idea is to drastically reduce the number of connectors on mobile devices, which should allow them to get even smaller -- but the demo was on a huge Frankenrig, so don't expect to see Light Peak devices shipping any time soon.Update: We just snapped a quick pic of the connector -- it's a connector, that's for sure. Check it after the break.

Entelligence: The Muddled MID market

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

There's a growing category of devices that fall in the space below laptops and above smartphones. It's not a new space, there have been various incarnations over the years, most recently Microsoft's Ultra Mobile PC devices, originally known as Origami. These days, Intel's the one talking about this space, pushing what it calls MIDs, or Mobile Internet Devices. Well that's all well and good -- but what's a MID? Frankly, MID is an Intel marketing term coined around 2008. In a 2008 Engadget post Intel's Dan Monahan described MIDs as having the following attributes:
Consumer-class lifestyle devices
Runs a 'lightweight" OS with quick startup like Linux
Optimized for things like media playback and web surfing
In 2009 (or so) Moorestown-based devices will be classed as MIDs only And Intel is aggressive about MIDs -- the company was showing off so many of UMID's devices at IDF last week you would have thought they were among Intel's most strategic and largest customers. But it's clear that the definition has changed over time, as the MIDs at IDF didn't match the specs Mr. Monahan talked about in 2008. These devices all ran Windows and were really scaled down models of netbooks. And although they were impressively tiny, let's be honest -- I'm really skeptical about the future of this class of device, Intel's aspirations aside.
For one thing, this class of devices -- often called 'tweeners -- have never done well historically. For years folks have attempted to bridge the laptop and the phone with something in the middle and it just hasn't worked. I'm not seeing anything in any of these MIDs that might change that.Second, there's a limit to the number of device consumers will carry. For most consumers, it's two, and the max three. A MID therefore must dispalce something else in a user's hierarchy of functionality. If MIDs are just one more thing a user has to carry, they're not going to carry it. New generations of MIDs running Windows might look like they're designed to replace your laptop, but unless they can actually replace it, they're going to fail.Let's not forget price is also huge issue. Dynamism sells the UMID mbook M1 for $599. That's for an Atom processor, 512MB of RAM, and 16GB of storage for a machine that doesn't run Windows at high levels of performance or usability. Other versions are going to sell for close to $900. Seriously, who's going to buy one of these things, except a gadget enthusiast? And not very many of them.
Consumers don't want a device that is too big for the pocket, provides less functionality than a netbook, and is priced like a laptop.In the US, we don't pay a premium for small things with fewer features because the device is smaller. As a culture, we pay a premium for bigger stuff. (Japan is generally the opposite, to be fair -- that's partly how Sony can bring an 11" OLED TV to market with a price tag of $2,500). One of my long-standing laws of consumer electronics is that there's a worldwide market for 50,000 of anything when it comes to gadgets. In the case of MIDs, however, it doesn't even appear that there's a for even that many. DigiTimes recently reported sales of just 30,000 MIDs worldwide compared to the 150,000 - 200,000 units Intel had estimated. Intel claims that the weak sales were due to the global economic downturn but I agree with Thomas Ricker's opinion: consumers don't want a device that is too big for the pocket, provides less functionality than a netbook, and is priced like a laptop. Adding telephony to the mix, as Intel announced with Moblin 2.1. won't change that at all.Of course, a lot depends on how you define a MID. I think there's actually millions of MIDs out there, but it depends on whether you count devices that essentially are MIDs in terms of functionality (pocketable, connected, designed for web, email, media and other apps) as opposed to being branded as MID or running an Atom processor. What am I referring to? It should be obvious. The most popular MID on the market isn't called a MID.It's called an iPod Touch.

Revolutionary digital cameras to see in gigapixels

A Duke University scientist will soon be developing futuristic digital cameras that could capture images in giga or even terapixels.
Working with the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, David Brady is designing and building a camera that could achieve resolutions 1,000 or even 1 million times greater than the technology on the market today.
And Brady has said that his goal to reach giga or terapixels is currently being held back by the difficulty of designing a spherical lens that will not distort small areas of a scene.
He not only wants to modify the shape of the camera lens, making it aspherical, but to link together thousands of microcameras behind the main lens too.
Each of these cameras would have its own lens optimised for a small portion of the field of view.
"Now, when you use a camera, you're looking through a narrow soda straw. These new cameras will be able to capture the full view of human vision," said Brady.
And his three-year project would result in a device about the size of a breadbox.
However, Brady is hoping to scale the technology down to create a single-lens reflex camera with a resolution of 50 gigapixels.
Brady presented his innovative technology at the Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO) in San Jose, Calif.

HTC Hero voted Gadget of the Year

HTC Hero, the phone that uses technology developed by Google, has been voted Gadget of the Year at a ceremony organised by Stuff magazine.
The device has a five-megapixel camera and a 3.2in screen.
It uses the Android operating system that allows users to access emails, the internet and texts easily, reports The Independent.
Fraser Macdonald, one of the judges at the 2009 Stuff Gadget Awards, said: "With the HTC Hero, we've finally got a phone that fully exploits the potential of the Android OS to be as clever and as sexy as the iPhone."
Apple's iPhone 3GS picked up awards for Phone of the Year and Readers' Gadget of the Year.
The award for Audio Gadget of the Year went to the Spotify website. The site allows users to access any song they want legally and for free.
The Sony KDL-40WE5 television was crowned Eco Gadget of the Year, thanks to its energy-saving features.

Now, a lamp that uses 'human blood' to create light

An English designer based in The Netherlands has come up with a lamp that uses "human blood" to create light.
Mike Thompson's lamp contains a chemical called luminol that reacts with the iron in blood, and creates a bright blue glow.
To use the lamp, according to Thompson, one has to first mix in an activating powder, break the glass, cut oneself, and drip blood into the opening.
He conceived this idea, recently reported by New Scientist magazine, a few years ago while he was studying for his masters at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
While researching chemical energy for a project, he came across luminol-the same chemical that forensic scientists use to check for traces of blood at a crime scene.
"It kind of triggered this thought in my mind, that if energy somehow came at a cost to us, then maybe it would make us think differently about the way we use it," LiveScience quoted him as saying.
Thompson said that his lamp was intended to "challenge people's preconceived notions about where our energy comes from."
He said that it would force the user "to rethink how wasteful they are with energy, and how precious it is."
He described his invention as a single-use light.
"You have to really decide when to use this lamp because it's only going to work once. So it makes it kind of a poignant moment," Thompson said.
Thompson designed and produced the lamp in 2007, and made a video of his project this year.

Female hormone drives male aggression in mice

The female hormone oestrogen seems to drive male aggression in mice with the help of certain nerve cells in the brain, a new study led by an Indian American has found.
The study, conducted by University of California San Francisco (UCSF), suggests a pivotal role for oestrogen -- as well as the enzyme aromatase that is responsible for oestrogen synthesis -- in male territorial behaviour.
Oestrogen's role in the mating behaviours of these mice, however, was less clear, which indicates that territorial and sexual behaviours are likely influenced by distinct and separate connections in the brain, according to Nirao Shah, assistant professor of anatomy at the UCSF and senior study author.
'This really changes the way we view male and female behaviours,' said Shah, who also is affiliated with the UCSF programs in neuroscience.
'What we previously looked upon as a single unit of gender-related behaviour, we now see as a collection of separate behaviours controlled at least in part by distinct neural pathways.'
Males and females across all sexually reproducing species display gender-specific behaviour in many areas, including mating, territorial marking, aggression and parental care, Shah explained.
Collections of cells form circuits in the brain, referred to as neural pathways, that control these and other behaviours. Shah said that both oestrogen and the male hormone testosterone are known to be essential in developing these circuits and in sex-specific behaviour.
But the precise role of these hormones and how they may interact genetically to control these behaviours has been unclear, says an UCSF release.
The current study fills in at least one piece of the puzzle, he said. The study suggests that the conversion of testosterone in the brain to oestrogen by the enzyme aromatase is critical to developing and activating brain circuits that control male territorial behaviour.
These findings were published in the journal Cell.