display

If you've seen the film "Avatar," you may have noticed one of the characters plucking a display panel from a desktop and continuing to use it as a standalone control screen. While we probably won't witness epic wars between human colonists and sapient humanoids in the near future, the technology depicted in the science fiction film is available in our current time, albeit in unrefined form.

At the recent computer graphics event Siggraph Asia 2009, a pair of researchers from the University of Tokyo's Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory demonstrated their Volume Slicing Display, a screen prototype … Read more

I'm not one to get excited about patent filings, but this one was enough to make me think twice about what the future might hold.

Apple filed a patent this week with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It describes an "electronic device for providing a display that changes based on the user's perspective." The patent says that the product would include "a sensing mechanism" that's capable of detecting the user's position relative to the display. MacRumors originally reported on the patent.

The filing said that the device would include "… Read more

At the Cop15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen on Tuesday, a group of advocacy groups and high-tech companies including Google and Intel urged governments to ensure consumers get real-time information on energy use.

Giving consumers regular data on consumption will help them take steps to be more energy-efficient and will be an effective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to the coalition.

Studies have shown (click for PDF) that access to detailed information, rather than only getting a monthly bill, can reduce energy use by 15 percent in a home.

When aggregated at large scale, these savings would be significant. … Read more

The days of learning about your electricity consumption once a month are the on the wane.

Driven by consumer interest in energy and utility smart-grid programs, home energy information displays are poised to enter people's kitchens and living rooms in large numbers over the next few years, Pike Research forecast in a report on Thursday.

The research company predicts there will be 28.1 million users of energy displays by 2015. About half of the users will have actual devices, while more than 11 million will access that information from Web-based dashboards and 2.6 million from mobile phones, … Read more

Apple has released a firmware update that corrects some problems associated with the iSight camera that is built into their LED cinema displays. Additionally, a couple of updates for Camino and Firefox Beta have been released, so if you use those browsers it's worth updating.… Read more

I've been talking about the Samsung LD190 since January (and by "talking about" I mean I've mentioned it once and really haven't since then).

Samsung is pushing the LD190N as a companion monitor for use with a laptop. Meaning, they expect you to use it in extend mode when in need of extra screen space.

The monitor includes a 18.5-inch, 1360x768 resolution screen, VGA, and upstream USB. The USB includes DisplayLink technology, which allows you to circumvent the VGA connection altogether.

Check out the pics below of the $150 companion piece and look for … Read more

Flash2X Screensaver Builder lets users create screensavers from pre-existing Flash files. Unfortunately, we had trouble getting the program to run correctly, and the built-in Help file was no Help at all.

To test this program, we downloaded several sample Flash files that we planned to turn into a screensaver. To its credit, the program's interface is very intuitive, letting users first enter information such as the screensaver's name and publisher contact information. The next tab is where the program fell apart for us. We attempted to add some Flash files for our screensaver, all of which were files … Read more

If Japan-based NEC has its way, people who act as language translators could one day be replaced with head-mounted displays that project translations onto a retinal display. Come again?

The Tele Scouter system is composed of an eyepiece with a front-mounted camera and a mic that picks up conversations and sends the data to a small computer worn on the user's waist.

The computer then transmits information to a remote server, which does the heavy processing work converting the foreign speech to text, translating it, and wirelessly sending it back to the tiny eye display for viewing. That seems … Read more

When running Snow Leopard, you may run into a small problem with your monitor colors where after running a full screen graphic application or system feature such as the screen saver, the colors on the screen will appear washed out and tinted blue. This will not always happen, but seems to be particularly prominent after running applications such as games, or when using multiple displays.… Read more