July 22, 2009

Foldable e-reader Readius provides last headlines

Filed under: Gadgets,Online by Branko Collin @ 4:34 pm

“Readius is dead” (CNet), “… goes under” (Washington Post), “… closes its doors” (Geek.com), “… files for bankruptcy” (IT Pro Portal)—news sites are struggling not have to use the headline PC World did: “Flexible eBook reader company folds.”

Polymer Vision, the Dutch display company that came up with the foldable electronic reading device Readius, has, as you may have inferred by now, filed for bankruptcy. CNet quotes CEO Karl McGoldrick as saying that the product itself may survive: “We are working hard to find new investors to take over and re-start and get our technology and product into the market, where it should be.”

There is some speculation among tech sites whether the arrival of the Amazon Kindle may have led to Polymer Vision’s demise, but that seems unlikely to me. The Kindle is only sold in the USA, and there is plenty of room for e-readers in the rest of the world. A more probable assumption is that the Eindhoven-based company has serious competition from recent, large screen mobile phones. Early press photos of the Readius suggested that the device was to be used by business people on the move for reading up on stock reports and news.

(Photo: Polymer Vision.)

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July 20, 2009

Portable ice bath on Tour a Dutch thing

Filed under: Gadgets,Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:05 pm
IcyDip (assembly) 2

It’s a day of rest for the Tour de France and a good time for us to find a Dutch angle to it. Dutch cyclist Niki Terpstra of Team Milram tells us of a cool way to freshen up and feel better after a long day of cycling: sitting in a plastic dustbin with ice water, designed by Icysolutions, a Dutch company. The ‘Icydip’ was thought up by two former students of the Delft University of Technology, Hicham Shatou and Tarek Ghobar.

You can watch this promotional video to see it properly or a shaky video in Dutch with Niki Terpstra (scroll down a bit), or both.

(Explanation with English subtitles starts at 0:45, albeit with football players)

(Link: bizz.nl, Photo: icysolutions)

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July 19, 2009

Dancing in the street

Filed under: Gadgets,Music,Photography by Orangemaster @ 4:00 pm
rock4

On Saturday, July 18, three motivated parties got together and created a real ‘happening’ in front of the Rockarchive photo gallery in Amsterdam. A group of enthusiastic rock n’ rollers from the Gel Vereniging danced until dark right on the pavement to the delight of many people, the gallery got people paying them a visit to look at their unique photo collection and Orangemaster (aka DJ Natashka) scored the music and took some pictures.

Considering the slightly somber mood of downtown Amsterdam as of late with increasingly more odd rules on how to behave on terraces and on the streets, we had expected complaints or even the police, but it was smooth sailing from 6 pm to 11 pm. Many people took pictures, a film crew came by and now more people know how cool the Rockarchive photo gallery really is.

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July 16, 2009

Bookcase stores books in the shelves

Filed under: Design,Gadgets,Technology by Branko Collin @ 11:26 am

Upon his promotion, product designer Ianus Keller’s friends gave him this bookcase where every person had created one shelf. One of the shelves contains 1 GB of memory, and Ianus writes in this Bright.nl thread (Dutch) that he uses this shelf both to store books on and in.

The original Bright story was about a design by Marlies Romberg, recently graduated from the HKU (the U stands for Utrecht), called Dear Diary 1.0 and shown below. I am not sure though whether this is an elaborate case mod or a table with a memory.

Update: Marlies Romberg replied to an e-mail I sent her, saying the table is a case mod. For those who don’t speak geek-speak, this means that this is a complete computer with a customized case.

Source photos: Ianus Keller and Marlies Romberg respectively.

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July 1, 2009

World’s first mobile Augmented Reality browser

Filed under: Dutch first,Gadgets,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am

Mobile phone Augmented Reality browser Layar, designed by Amsterdam’s Sprx Mobile has been the talk of the Dutch IT town on Twitter (we’re all friends in this neck of the woods) and just about everywhere else for some two weeks.

Layar is an application that can find everything using a mobile phone with a compass, although for now it can only be used with Android and soon the iPhone 3G S as well. As the name implies, the application provides extra ‘layers’ to reality. “You don’t have to browse on the Internet, you can see your immediate environment using Layar,” Sprx Mobile Director Raimo van der Klein explains.

For more cool developments, follow Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald (@dutchcowboy) on Twitter. He twitters in English as well, and his wife Lori Lens-Fitzgerald (@lorilens) already made this blog with her photo book about world famous restaurant El Bulli.

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June 24, 2009

Kite your way from Amsterdam to New York in four days

Filed under: Aviation,Gadgets,Science by Branko Collin @ 10:05 am

The vehicle pictured above consists of a kite, a cabin and a keel, and should be able to take you across the Atlantic Ocean. The 157 m2 kite should produce enough power to make you go 90 km/h, the cabin seats two, and the keel makes sure you can actually steer the thing. The only catch is that the Hydrokite so far only exists in the minds of former astronaut and kite nut Wubbo Ockels and ten of his students at the TU Delft.

At 90 km/h you should be able to reach New York from Amsterdam in four days and 1 hour, which would break the old record with three hours, although Kennislink doesn’t say what record that would be (sailing? flying? kiting?).

Laurens Alblas, one of the students, told Kennislink that it will probably “take a couple of years before a control system for kites is developed. But once we have such a system, and assuming we can find sponsors, we will build the Hydrokite and we will try and break the record.”

(Link: Kennislink. Source image: TU Delft)

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June 4, 2009

TomTom GPS device goes girly

Filed under: Fashion,Gadgets by Orangemaster @ 10:12 am
whitepearl1

We’ve all heard men and women drive and read maps differently (both have their faults) and that despite all the business talent out there, gagdets are still mostly marketed to men. When electronic products are aimed at women, oblivious marketing people make the thing pink and call it a day.

Dutch GPS brand TomTom decided to jump on the marketing to women bandwagon and came up with the White Pearl, based on the TomTom ONE IQ Routes edition, but a bit different. It’s more luxurious and has ‘special content’ for women.

I’ve used a TomTom often because when I passed my Dutch driving licence this year, we had to use one as part of the exam. By the way, they axed that part of the exam, as we memorised the three routes and ignored the GPS. Basically, driving instructors all bought thousands of TomToms for nothing.

The White Pearl has a matching silk pouch that fits easily into a handbag. It has a ‘Help Me!’ menu and even tells you what lane to be in when things get hairy. The ‘special content’ includes categories that are in English in the Dutch version as well such as “Places to be seen”, “Shop ‘til you drop” and “Everyday fashion”.

The look appeals to me, no question. The content is clearly for “girly girls”, the kind that can’t even a change bike tire and wear high heels all the time. At least, that’s the very icky vibe I get from it. The special content I find insulting and useless, and I know my Dutch girlfriends will totally agree. And they’re the kind of women that drive big motorcycles, kick board of director ass and still look cocktail ready come happy hour.

Of course, the darn thing is more expensive than the regular model: 199 euro instead of about 120-150 euro, and will be available in mid-June. So I’m not sold at all, I find it insulting at first glance, but I would accept it as a gift.

And then the jokes:
– Does it feature a man’s voice that says, “Hey doll, fix your hair and let’s roll!”
– Turn right! NO THE OTHER RIGHT!

UPDATE: Marketing to women means finding out from women what they want, not guessing or letting men fill in the blanks. It remains a mystery why something so simple is so difficult to understand.

(Link and photo: rtl.nl, gadgetrider.eu)

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May 14, 2009

Robotic safety blanket keeps toddlers busy

Filed under: Gadgets,Technology by Branko Collin @ 9:51 am

The Play’d is “a soft, thick blanket, developed for very young children that doubles as an interactive play environment.” It is made of squares of differing materials, each with a sensor hidden underneath, for the toddler who knows where their safety blanket is. The blanket can produces light, sound and vibrations. A sample application is when a kid is in its “rolling phase”: lights and sounds can be used to lure a child to roll in a certain direction.

The Play’d netted its inventor, computer scientist Viktor de Boer, first prize in the Nieuwe Ideeën Prijsvraag (New Ideas Competition) of Science Park Amsterdam last Tuesday. Second prize went to Vanessa Evers for her robot “that supports human-robot interaction research.” I am not quite sure what that means, but I do see a pattern of robots trying to get to know us here.

Photo: Viktor de Boer. Link: Sargasso (Dutch).

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May 8, 2009

Watching your watts with the Wattcher

Filed under: Design,Gadgets,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am

wattche1

“Wattcher is a product that monitors domestic electricity use, designed by Marcel Wanders for Dutch company Innovaders. The device plugs into a Dutch electrical socket and displays electrical consumption, encouraging users to reduce their energy use.”

Wanders Gained popularity with his Knotted Chair, designed for the world famous designers at Droog Design in 1996. Today he dabbles in all kinds of things and designs for European design firms such as B&B Italia, Bisazza, Poliform, Moroso, Flos, Boffi, Cappellini, Droog Design and Moooi.

(Link and photo: dezeen.com)

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May 7, 2009

New small and cheap e-book reader by Endless Ideas

Filed under: Gadgets,Online by Branko Collin @ 2:54 pm

It seems Endless Ideas, Dutch manufacturer of the E Ink based BeBook electronic book readers, has announced a sub-200 euro e-book reader. “Who will break the 200 euro barrier?” the company mused philosophically on Twitter last week. Bright believes (Dutch) that Endless Ideas may have been thinking about itself.

Another Tweet revealed a picture–shown here—of the old along side the new, which suggests the diagonal for the new device may be 5 inch. That’s approximately four times the size of the Palm Pilot I use for reading e-books, which may still be small enough to be carried around in a coat pocket or so.

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