Blu-ray

Blu-ray true High Definition DVD. Blu-ray and HD-DVD enables a disc the size of a current DVD disc to hold an entire film at HDTV resolution or allow you to record two hours of high definition video content. It is getting closer to become primary media slowly but steadily in the market of home theater. More news titles are being released every day. 2011 will finally be the year when Blu-ray will take the place of DVDs in the mainstream market.

Blu-ray disks are about to get a whole lot bigger. The Blu-ray Disc Association has announced two super-sized new specs for the already capacious disks, letting them squeeze up to 128GB onto a single silver platter. How is this done? The boring, old-fashioned way: layers. There are two new specifications, both with jaw-crunching names: BDXL (High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable disks) and IH-BD (Intra-Hybrid disks).Neither of these new formats will work in your current Blu-ray player, nor should they. It’s pretty clear these generously-sized disks are for storage rather than publishing, although the new machines required to use them will be backward-compatible with existing disks. Still, imagine the movie-extras you could fit on this thing.

New Energy Powered Gadgets..

Most gadgets are powered by batteries, especially those with mechanical motors and lights while emitting sounds for an even more engaging experience. Energy-efficient gadgets are getting more and more attention since the Green wave has begun to influence the most part of people's daily life. People become more concerned about the result of their consumer behavior. If the environment and technology for such products increases, the proliferation of energy-efficient and eco-friendly products will increase tenfold. Solar technology has been growing and bounds lately, with such products as solar powered lamps, solar heater, solar-powered battery chargers. 

M2E Power are working on a range of alternative energy generation devices that exploit the Faraday principle.The M2E Power team are working on a highly efficient variation that offers between 300% and 700% more power from other kinetic energy devices.M2E Power are focusing their efforts on mobile phones in particular, so that the phones charge up as you move around.A neat eco-friendly gadget, as mobile phones use a vast amount of energy.

Electronic Butterfly in a Jar – It’s Your's Forever to Keep..

Did you experience catching butterflies and putting them in a jar when you were a kid? If yes, for sure you had so much fun watching those colorful little creatures flying inside the jar. But because you didn’t want them to die, you just freed them after. And then you felt sad doing so. Hey, why not try having a butterfly in a jar again? This time, you don’t have to catch it which makes it more convenient for you considering your busy routine. Not only that, you don’t even have to free the butterfly so it’s yours forever to keep. So what to do? Get this thing called Electronic Butterfly in a Jar.

As it names suggests, the jar contains an electronic butterfly that looks exactly like a real butterfly. There’s a wire inside, which is responsible in making that fake butterfly move inside the jar. All you need to do is tap the top or make a loud noise and the electronics in the cap will make the wire wiggle, thus creating an illusion that the butterfly is moving as well. You’d certainly love how it flexes its colorful wings. So if you aren’t in a good mood, just look at the Butterfly in a Jar and you’ll experience a sudden change in your mood. It’s like feeling the calmness of nature right before your desk.

If you want, you can even get all the four different colors available: Blue Morpho, Pink Morpho, Yellow Swallowtail, and Monarch. Take note, however, that there is only one butterfly per jar and that the butterflies should not be combined in one jar.

Electronic Cigarettes..

The new introduce you to the all electronic-cigarette. These battery-powered gizmos sound like a ridiculous party gag, and as a matter of fact they are. But they also deliver users a serious portion of vaporized nicotine that is supposed to sate even the most demanding of smokers in USA. As Der Spiegel reports—with a healthy puff of irony and caution—e-cigarettes could be “Smoking 2.0.” In particular, these gadgets sidestep the 4,000-plus chemicals present in standard cigarette smoke that plume into one’s lungs from the burning of tobacco and tar. This allows e-cigarette smokers to avoid the 50 or so cancer-causing components of normal cigarettes. Not surprisingly, e-cigarette companies in USA make grandiose statements about the health benefits of their wares. E-cigarettes work like this: Nicotine is dissolved in propylene glycol, and the combination is stored in a cartridge that is designed to look like a traditional orange cigarette filter. The nicotine cartridge screws onto the main body of the e-cigarette, which contains a rechargeable battery that powers an electrical circuit. When the smoker inhales, a sensor in the circuit is activated. This causes a red-light-emitting diode at the tip to turn on. More importantly, the nicotine and propylene glycol are heated up so that they vaporize and get sucked into the smoker’s lungs.

Check out the most advanced surfboard..

Considering that practically everything has some sort of technological upgrade, I have always wondered why surfboards have never received one. Believe, it has nothing to do with the fact that they get wet. We have waterproof technology now. After all, don’t you think that it would help to have a gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS, and compass on board? This is what Pukas and Tecnalia have done, and there is a video of their creation after the jump if you want to see it in action. Not to be too much of a spoiler, but the video shows the board moving around on the water, and it looks like its movement is being matched on real-time. This is because the team installed the data and gathering electronics like sensors and hardware into the surfboard to transfer it to the computer. 
I can see how this would easily improve surfing. Imagine being out on the waves, and a computerized voice tells you that a huge wave is coming, and tells you how you should hit it. Man, the Beach Boys never sang about this.

Of course, I’m sure it will be the Beach Boys and other hardcore surfers that will frown on this technology, saying that it makes it too easy to become a great surfer. After all, just because you can technologize something, doesn’t mean that you should.

The Latest Verizon iPhone Commercial Strikes At AT&T : “Yes, I Can Hear You Now.”

While it's definitely not the first time that Verizon has taken a public jab at AT&T, this new iPhone 4 commercial is certainly rather harsh. Youch.! 

I’ve made note of both the first Verizon-made iPhone commercial and then the first Apple-made Verizon iPhone commercial. Both are effective and interesting in different ways. But neither takes a shot at AT&T. But a new Verizon one that has just started airing on television, does. At least, indirectly.

The new commercial, which is embedded below compliments of quick-with-the-TiVo TechCrunch reader Kacy Fortner, has a very different tone than the initial “clocks” Verizon commercial. In this one, there is triumphant music playing as glimpses of the iPhone 4 are shown. It almost seems as if it’s meant to conjure up Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The voice-over begins:

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s intelligent.”

“Ingenious.”

Then the music speeds up.

“But does your network, work?”

A call comes in. And the person answering the call is revealed. It’s the Verizon guy!

“Yes. I can hear you now.”

Boom! Then we get the typical message of Verizon’s network being the “largest and most reliable”. Very nice. Wonder if Apple was hesitant at all to sign off on it? Or maybe they just prefer not to know as their two partners about about to enter an escalated war of words with one another.

For what it’s worth, I agree with the commercial.