posted Mar 2nd 2011 1:53AM 
We've been talking about flexible batteries for years now, but a team of Korean researchers have presented a new solution to bendable energy sources that is not only more powerful than standard lithium-ion batteries, but also potentially cheaper to produce than its malleable predecessors -- and unsurprisingly, everyone's favorite wonder material, graphene, is at the heart of the innovation. The rechargeable battery contains a vanadium-oxide cathode, grown on a sheet of graphene paper, an unidentified separator, and an anode made of lithium-coated graphene. According to the folks behind the new power source, it sports higher energy and power density, as well as a better cycle life than the literally stiff competition. Similar advances have also out-performed rigid lithium-ion batteries, but have enlisted carbon nanotubes, a material more expensive to produce than graphene. Of course, like all technological advances, we won't be seeing these things for years, if not decades, so you might as well get used to ye olde standard bearer. This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
Nintendo Entertainment Systems have proven to be fertile ground for the DIY community -- purses, guitars, and belt buckles are just a sampling of the more unusual NES mods out there. We've also seen our share of NES PCs, and now an enterprising Finn going by the name Ana-5000 has crammed a fully-fledged home theater PC into everybody's favorite 8-bit console. An Asus AT3IONT-I Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Atom 330 dual-core processor and an NVIDIA Ion GPU provides the computing power and offers HDMI and VGA ports, six USB 2.0 ports, optical and RCA audio connections, integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless and Gigabit ethernet, and Bluetooth connectivity. Ana-5000 gave the repurposed Nintendo a fresh black and white paint-job to set it apart from your garden variety NES as well. Hit up the Source link for pics and an explanation of the entire mod process if you feel like doing some console recycling yourself. 
In addition the the announcement of the iPad 2, Steve Jobs just unveiled iMovie for iPad, so all your tablet video editing dreams are about to come true. So what does this new version of iMovie have in store for you? A precision editor, multitrack audio recording, some brand new themes, AirPlay to Apple TV, and the ability to share videos in HD. It'll be available on March 11th (the same day as the new iPad) for $4.99. 
We can't say we were expecting to be impressed by a case for the new iPad 2, but Apple's pulled something of a surprise out its hat with its new Smart Covers for the tablet. Available in multiple colors and in your choice of polyurethane or leather variants, the covers attach to the iPad with a self-aligning magnetic hinge and can also be folded into a triangle and used as a stand. What's more, they'll automatically wake or put your iPad to sleep when you open or close the cover, and they even pack a microfiber lining that cleans your screen each time you flip it open. As Steve Jobs explained, Apple designed the covers right alongside the iPad itself and, as he points out, "it's not a case -- it's a cover." Look for the poly covers to set you back $39, while the leather ones will run $69 apiece -- video is after the break.
This collection of devices -- from Germany's SKS Hinkel, and winner of an iF Product Design Award this year -- is really a video intercom system. But if you use your imagination, from left to right, it looks like an iPod shuffle, an iPod classic, an iPhone shuffle, and an iPhone classic all developed in some awesome alternate dimension where coiled phone cords are still cool. 
We've seen WiFi detectors used for various DIY projects before, but none quite like this rather ambitious project cooked up by Norwegian designers Timo Armall, Jorn Knutsen, and Einar Sneve Martinussen. They built a four-meter long WiFi-detecting rod that boasts 80 LED bulbs and carried it around various neighborhoods in Oslo, picking up signals of various strengths from nearby WiFi networks all the way. That's only the half of it, though. The real kicker is that they also captured the whole thing with long-exposure photographs to effectively paint the "invisible terrain" of WiFi networks with light. Head on past the break for a video, and hit up the source links below for a closer look at the entire process. 
Last year, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students built a virtual reality contraption that let them soar through the sky, held aloft by a trapeze harness and seeing through HMD-covered eyes. This year, they're controlling it with the power of their minds. For his master's thesis, project leader Yehuda Duenyas added an Emotiv headset -- the same one controlling cars and the occasional game -- to make the wearer seemingly able to levitate themselves into the air by carefully concentrating. Sure, by comparison it's a fairly simple trick, but the effect is nothing short of movie magic. See it after the break. 
Let's face it -- humans are lazy, yet incredibly industrious. We've seen everything from a self-making bed, to a channel-changer to even a touchless keyboard. And now, we're blessed with a robot that plants seeds for us. That's right, the image you see above is of a five-legged machine that has the ability to complete all of the necessary steps to grow a plant. Thanks to a Parallax Propeller chip that's mounted on a Schmart Board, Prospero is able to autonomously navigate in any direction and avoid obstructing objects. There's a sensor that lies under its body that senses where seeds have been deployed. If the robot detects that the ground is in need of a seed, it'll dig a hole, drop the seed, move the soil back over the hole and then spray paint the ground white to note that the process was successful. The belly of the bot is also equipped with fertilizers and herbicides, and Prospero can 'talk' (via infrared) to other robots in order to maintain crop-creating efficiency. You can check out a 48-second clip of the planting process after the break. Or, if you're a harvest-enthusiast, hit the more coverage link for 5 minutes of glorious green thumb action. 
Look, not even the source of these images is absolutely certain that the device in his possession is a legitimate iPad 2, but we can't very well leave you spending your entire day anticipating Apple's new tablet launch without a potential candidate for what it might eventually look like. The above mockup has been procured over in China (where else?) and seems to tally closely with speculation we've been hearing about this hardware refresh -- namely, a slimmer profile, an almost entirely flat back, bigger speaker, and of course, rear- and front-facing cameras. We've looked into the digits on the back of the device and the model number is one for the original Apple TV while the FCC ID is for a WiFi-only iPad, but those could be mere placeholders on what is, once again, a mockup and not a real working tablet. The SIM card slot looks to have been repositioned to a slot that was once expected to house an SD card reader. Other tidbits of interest here include the 3G antenna, whose white cover is expected to be black on final units, and the sloped power button and headphone jack, bringing those witty "jumbo iPod touch" jokes to mind. Boy, those never get old. Jump past the break for a few more pics. 
Remember when NVIDIA was caught selling defective mobile graphics chips, and agreed to provide bargain-basement replacement laptops to make a class-action lawsuit go away? At least one gentleman wasn't happy with how that went down, and is suing to see that affected customers get a fair shake. Ted Frank of the Center for Class Action Fairness says that NVIDIA has no business passing off cheap laptops, and we think he might have a case -- after all, the judge ordered that NVIDIA provide "a replacement computer of like or similar kind and equal or similar value," and it doesn't take a lawyer to see that the $400 Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX that the company's offering doesn't come close to compensating owners of faulty machines. We joked that you might be better off selling your old laptop for parts on eBay, and that might not be far from the truth. 
It's not enough that you'll soon be able to make in-app purchases on Android, Google wants to give you an outlet for your app spending online as well. The search giant is hard at work turning last year's acquisition of Jambool and its Social Gold software into a web-based in-app payments platform it can call its own. Jambool's proprietors have word that Google's system is now in beta, which has led it to close new signups for the Social Gold offering, ahead of halting payment processing entirely on May 31st. That should serve as a pretty reliable guide for when to expect Google to flip the switch on its in-app purchasing service, which we're hearing will include some level of integration with Google Checkout and Google accounts. As TechCrunch points out, the next Google I/O gathering is scheduled for May 10th -- sounds about the right time for us to be introduced to this new, app-based way for separating us from our hard-earned cash. 
You might know them for seemingly ridiculous innovations like Segway shoes or the HRP-4C pop star robot, but the folks at AIST have put away the gimmicks for their latest invention -- a full-color night vision camera. Produced by Nanolux, an arm of AIST, the camera uses a series of algorithms to read and process wavelengths reflected by objects lit with infrareds, allowing it to successfully reproduce reds, blues, and greens in the darkest of conditions. The company hopes to make the device available by the end of 2011 at a price point lower than conventional night vision cameras, and says they will work with different lenses to improve long-range photography for the device. Such an invention could have serious implications for fields like surveillance and wildlife observation, but fear not, AIST hasn't lost its sense of humor -- the company used a Bullwinkle figurine rotating on a Lazy Susan to demo its latest invention at Printable Electronics 2011. Check out the video after the jump. 
You don't have to go to the lengths of compiling a statistical project to know that advertised and actual broadband speeds are two pretty disparate entities, but it does help. Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, recently took a thorough look at 11 broadband packages, which collectively account for over 90 percent of all British broadband subscriptions, and found that actual download throughput was less than half (only 45 percent) of the advertised "up to" speed. The worst offenders were resellers of BT's ADSL lines, with Orange dipping below 3Mbit on its 8Mbit lines and TalkTalk occasionally offering only 7.5Mbit to users paying for a 24Mbit connection, while Virgin's cable connectivity won out by sticking most loyally to its listed rating. What Ofcom proposes for the future is that all these service providers start offering Typical Speed Ranges that more accurately reflect the bandwidth a potential subscriber would be buying into -- a proposal that might actually have some teeth as the British Advertising Standards Authority is currently in the midst of a review specifically concerned with broadband advertising practices. Transparency in the way we're sold broadband? That'd make a welcome change! 
We're going to be liveblogging Apple's iPad 2 announcement (and whatever else they have in store). Check back at the times below, and get ready to make history together!