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Intel on Thursday issued a press release detailing USB 3.0’s software and hardware interface. And given that the Intel Developer Forum is just a week away, it’s reasonable to expect the company will showcase USB 3.0 at the event.

USB 3.0’s software and hardware interface, which Intel calls xHCI, will allow manufacturers and developers to ready their USB devices and computers for the 3.0-transition. The new interface will retain the same architecture as USB 2.0, meaning the ports will be backward compatible. Delivering 10 times the bandwidth of its predecessor, USB 3.0 will achieve speeds of up to 4.8 Gb/s, which translates to 600 megabytes per second.

USB 3.0 comes at good timing, given the increasing size of data files and storage devices consumers and professionals are dealing with today. Intel’s move is also directly competing with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers upcoming speed boost of the FireWire data-transfer interface, expected the end of the year. 

(Photo credit: O’BrienDigital/Flickr )

When technology is used to aid the visually challenged, sometimes amazing things happen–like in the case of this new prototype camera created by Chueh Lee of Samsung China. What he has created is a digital camera for the blind called the Touch Sight. Sound confusing? Actually it is a pretty simple concept.

Instead of viewing pictures using a LCD display screen on the back of the camera, the Touch Sight uses a flexible braille display that lets the user feel a 3D embossed image of the pictures they have taken. Organizing pictures is also uniquely handled because each photo has attached to it to three seconds of recorded audio which lets owners sort through their pictures almost as easy as regular digital cameras.

No word on when the Touch Sight will hit the marketplace, but you can bet that this kind technology can’t be kept quiet for long. After all, letting the blind take and feel pictures is something very remarkable.

Read more at Yanko Design, via CruchGear.

According to security expert Neil Livingstone, domestic airlines and government officials are seriously considering pushing RFID chips into every part of the flying process.

gadgets under consideration include RFID tagging and tracking of luggage, and a ‘non-invasive’ personal RFID chip (in the form of a card or pin for the breast pocket, perhaps?). The latter will prevent people from opening doors they’re not supposed to, and we suppose this includes the stewardess’ ’special’ rooms.

Mr. Livingstone mentioned this update while commenting on the recent news that an official at the Department of Homeland Security looked into buying up EMD "safety" taser bracelets. The Canadian company promoting these tracking bracelets believes airplanes would be safer if everyone wore them — if a person shows potential dangerous properties, they’d be immobilized.

While he believes that the government won’t ever go so far as to put shocking mechanisms on all passengers, he says that flying is ‘a privilege, not a right’ and that RFIDs are a viable security need.

But if tasing bracelets ever see the light of day, you can bet there will be a few miscommunications, leading to the following exchange:

“I am not causing a SCENE. I AM perfectly NORMAL. See, I’m not even yelling! Why are you pointing that device at me? Please don’t! . . . Tase! Me! Braa!”

If I had to choose, I’d take the Big Brothery, genteel RFID-enabled pin over that.

With GPS-based phones and the frenzy of social networking that has taking place over the web it has become very common for people to want to make their location available so that friends and family know just where they are. Also, if you are out on a Friday or Saturday night it might be nice to know that a friend of yours is literally just around the corner. Well, to facilitate the demand for location-based social services Yahoo! has announced the general availability of Fire Eagle.

Fire Eagle is an open platform with the ability for users to manage their location information. Users can decide how that information is shared in addition to who it is shared with. Location information can even be updated manually or automatically.

For added security, a person can even completely hide their location. Other security features include the ability for a user to decide which Web, mobile or desktop application has access to their location information. Fire Eagle was designed by the Yahoo! Brickhouse which Yahoo! utilizes as a home for start-up projects.

Read more from the Yahoo! press release or the Fire Eagle website.

Brian’s Opinion

This is exactly the kind of stuff Yahoo! should have been doing years ago. It’s only fair to compare Yahoo! to Google and when it comes to breakthrough stuff Google has had the upper hand many times over. That’s not to say it’s not too late for Yahoo! to turn things around.

Yahoo! should really put some more money into the Yahoo! Brickhouse. What attracts visitors is breakthrough software and services offered online for free. Yahoo! seems to have been stagnant the last few months when it comes to that. That’s what makes Fire Eagle so refreshing.

Yahoo! should keep stuff like Fire Eagle coming. It will be a sure fire way to get the company back on the map. Right now it seems the company is just doing whatever they can to survive. They need to move from survival mode to going on the offensive.

Pocket-lint does a first look review of the Samsung Omnia and writes, “Promising full touchscreen functionality with a business rather than consumer focus, the Omnia sports a 3.2-inch screen, comes with HSDPA 7.2Mbps and Wi-Fi connectivity, a 5 megapixel camera, accelerometer and will come with two memory options 8 or 16GB…It might feature a large touchscreen, but an iphone competitor this isn’t; nor is the i900 likely to stand up to any Android handset prototype we’ve seen to date down to the unimaginative user interface.”

Read more about the Samsung Omnia.

Now this is one floor that will definitely make you want to walk on it over and over again. After all, it leaves not dirty footprints behind, but luminous once that helps hit a chord for those who have forgotten that each of us leave a carbon footprint that will adversely affect our environment.

The floor graces the entrance to the Spain Pavilion, “Comunitat Valenciana.” The 250 Square foot (25 square meter) floor system consists of over 1000 Sensacell HSI64-36-W interactive modules, each module contains capacitive sensors and a LED lighting system, the capacitive sensors allows the floor to detect and respond to visitors footsteps right through the 20 mm thick architectural glass that forms the surface of the floor. The floor will be available for viewing for the duration of the 2008 World Expo - June 14 through September 14, 2008.

It makes me wonder just how green the manufacturing process of this floor is, and the amount of juice required to power it shouldn’t exactly be environmentally friendly either.

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It’s happened to everyone. We all have dropped valued items like cell phones and MP3 players only to helplessly watch them become instant paperweights when they hit the ground. In the future, however, gadgets could be less fragile when it comes to slips of the hand combined with gravity, thanks in part to some scientists and some very tiny springs.

Researchers over at Clemsen University have devised a method to create beds of very small carbon springs that act as shock absorbers. With collaboration with the University of California at San Diego, these tiny nanotube springs have been shown as a very effective means to protect fragile items from the damaging shock forces of radical deceleration–a.k.a. damage from falling and hitting the ground.

These researchers, however, don’t just see these tiny springs as protection for future iPods and the like. They also see these beds of coiled nanotubes being used in applications such as body armor, car bumpers, bushings, or even the soles of shoes, to name a few. So add this feat to the ever growing list of amazing carbon nanotube tricks. Who knows what scientists will discover they can do next.

Read more at Physorg via Engadget.

Sony regularly revise all of their games hardware either to solve problems, introduce new features or save some money. It’s no surprise then to see a new model of the PSP appear on the Federal Communications Commission exhibit list called the AK8PSP3001, or PSP-3001 for short.

So what does this new model include and is it worth an upgrade? Well, it looks like this is purely a manufacturing update with no evidence of new features or drastic changes present in the FCC submitted documents.

Back at E3 SCEA president Jack Tretton did mention an update to the handheld, but it was to try and stop the system being hacked and that they were also considering bigger storage for the device.

There is nothing that points to the PSP-3001 having on-board storage so I am guessing this really is just a hardware revision. It’s likely they’ve found a way to make it cheaper, possibly reduced power use slightly and extending battery life, and may have some new security for hackers to bypass.

Read more at Gizmodo.com and Gamasutra.com

According to a post on Reddit, Eggbert ("Bert") Praetorius died this week at approximately 90 years of age. Praetorius, the post claims, invented the video rewind: Not the physical rewinding of tape, but the ability to play video in reverse smoothly and without glitches.

While there appears to be a real Bert Praetorius (until recently, he had a ham radio license, and he has a white pages listing that matches the info on his ham license), there are a few reasons to doubt the story.

• He was supposedly on the show I’ve Got a Secret, but the list of guests on that show doesn’t mention his name.
• The ability to show video in reverse, smoothly, is dependent on a helical scan videotape system. The first of these was invented by Ampex and Sony in 1976, not by an NBC engineer in the postwar years.
• Seriously: Eggbert Praetorius?

Gadget Lab readers: What do you think?

Photo: Leo Reynolds / Flickr

The projector market is about to have a new competitor with the IN80 from InFocus.  It is able to process 1080p images, and project them on the wall at a 4 meter diagonal. 

Other features include a Texas Instruments DLP DarkChip system with BrilliantColor, as well as Integrated Pixelworks DNX 10-bit video processing.  It also has a 2,500:1 native contrast ratio, and 1,300 ANSI lumens of brightness.  It also comes with HDMI inputs. 

As far as setup is concerned, there is an automatic color gamut and black level calibration, along with the digital vertical lens shift and digital keystone correction for greater flexibility in installing the projector.  There is also ISF Day and Night presets. 

If this is something that you’re looking at for the future, it will be available in September, for about $2,430. 

Via [Tech Digest]

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