HP is launching the Wireless TV Connect accessory for streaming wirelessly Full HD 1080p multimedia content such as images, movies from notebook to a home entertainment system or HDTV. The two-piece system includes a USB-powered PC adapter that works with any notebook with HDMI port and a TV adapter that connects to HDTV via HDMI.

HP will release the Wireless TV Connect next month with a starting price of $199.

[hp]

• HP MediaSmart Connect for your HDTV
• Philips Wireless HDTV Link
• LG 52LG71 LCD HDTV with WiFi
• LG 55LHX and LH85 Wireless HDTVs
• Samsung MediaLive HDTV Media Center Extender

Sony announced in at the IFA the VPL-VW90ES, a new 3D home cinema projector, “which gives movie fans the opportunity to enjoy an unrivalled 3D cinematic experience in the comfort of their own home.”

The Sony VPL-VW90ES can project 3D in Full HD 1080p and it is capable of taking 2D video and simulating 3D image. It features upgraded SXRD 240Hz Panel which minimizes image distortion or crosstalk,  a dynamic contrast ratio of 150,000:1, Advanced Iris 3 technology for true depth of colour and brightness. The VPL-VW90ES 3D home projector will be released in November.

[sony]

• Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 705HD Home Cinema Projector
• Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 700 LCD Projector
• Sony BRAVIA VPL-HW15 and VPL-BW7 Home Projectors
• Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 6500 UB Projector
• Avielo Kroma RealLED Home Cinema Projector

Other than updating the iPod shuffle and iPod touch, Apple has also refreshed the iPod nano, The new iPod nano 6G (2010 model) has a design similar to the shuffle, getting a built-in clip and a ultra small form factor. The new sixth gen iPod nano has given up the click wheel control pad and the camera we found on iPod nano 5G, instead it gets a 1.54-inch 240×240 multitouch LCD display, dedicated volume buttons and a sleep/wake button.

The iPod nano 6G is equipped with an accelerometer sensor and FM radio and supports VoiceOver. It has an icon-based UI that is very similar to that of iOS. It is compatible with Nike +. Available in silver, charcoal, blue, green, yellow, pink and PRODUCT (RED), the 8GB model costs $149 and the 16GB model is priced ta $179.

• Apple iPod nano Gen 3
• Apple iPod nano 4G
• Griffin iTrip nano for iPod nano 4G
• iThreeSixty iPod nano Infused Beanies
• iSkin Duo for iPod nano 5G

Remember the button-less iPod shuffle 3G that relies on VoiceOver for control? Apple is now bringing the buttons back to the new iPod shuffle 4G (2010 model) featuring clickable control pad for music and volume control. VoiceOver is still available though.

The new shuffle is just like a smaller version of the iPod shuffle 2G. It has 2GB internal storage and offers a clip, just like other shuffles. The new fourth gen iPod shuffle is available in silver, blue, green, orange and pink and the price is $49.

[apple]

• Apple’s New iPod shuffle talks to you
• Apple iPod nano 6G with Touchscreen
• Apple iPod Shuffle 3G now in Five Colors, and a Stainless Steel Edition
• Dexim Shu-Lip adds USB to iPod Shuffle
• iPod Shuffle Gen 2 in Gold

Apple officially announced its new iPod touch 4G (2010 model) with both rear camera for 720p HD video recording and a front camera mainly for FaceTime video conversation with friends. The new iPod touch is even slimmer than the previous generation, measuring just 7.2mm thick.

The new iPod touch is basically a simplified version of the iPhone 4, taking away the phone/3G data function and packing less advanced cameras. It features the same 3.5-inch 960×640 Retina Display, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and WiFi 802.11b/g/n connectivity. The player is also equipped with 3-axis gyro, accelerometer and ambient light sensor. It’s built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery offers up to 40 hours music playback and 7 hours of video playback.

The iPod touch 4G comes in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, which are available for $229, $299 and $399 respectively. It will be running the new iOS 4.1 that includes GameCenter.

[apple]

• Apple iPod touch
• Apple iPod touch 2G
• Apple iPod nano 6G with Touchscreen
• Apple iPod touch 3G Announced
• mobiBLU T50 touch PMP is iPod touch-alike

Epson launches the new Stylus NX625 all-in-one printer with built-in WiFi 802.11n wireless connectivity. The NX625 is one of the fastest all-in-one offering 15 ISO ppm (black) and 7.2 ISO ppm (color) print speeds. It comes with a large paper tray that holds up to 150 sheets of plain paper and a 2.5-inch LCD, built-in memory card slots.

The Stylus NX625 also does photo printing, capable of producing a 4″ x 6″ photo in as fast as 20 sec. It’ scanner offers up to 2400dpi scanning resolution. The printer also feature built-in image enhancement tools that automatically correct poorly exposed photos and easily remove red eye. Thanks to built-in WiFi connectivity, wireless printing is possible and users can print photos from iPhone, iPad or other mobile devices.

The Epson Stylus NX625 is available at Amazon for $149.99.

[epson]

• Epson Stylus NX420 Sub-$100 All-in-one Printer
• Epson Stylus SX525WD Printer with WiFi
• Epson Stylus SX620FW 4-in-1 Printer with WiFi
• Epson Stylus Photo PX650 Hi-Definition All-in-One Printer
• Epson Stylus Pro 3880 17-inch Large Format Printer

That’s what A.M.O.S. Design and A Plus are all about, yes! Designing an entire campus is something I’m sure many architects would dream of. With architecture by A PLUS a.s. Brno and Corian realizations in interiors by AMOS Design s.r.o., Masaryk University Campus was bound to be spectacular! This project spans back over 10 years, being set up and 2000 and the first bit complete in 2005. And now, in 2010, the last parts of this gigantic high-tech building are near completion.

This campus will comprise of sporting, scientific, and research facilities, detail park, office park, and residential premises in the near future. The aim of this project is to tie together contemporary architecture with science and technology. Interiors boast a ride range of modern materials including significant Corian applications.

*Corian is a brand name for surface material made of acrylic polymer and alumina trihydrate, created by DuPont. Solid and non-porous.

The photos in the gallery below are described thusly:

1. Aerial view of the campus area under construction

2. Roads connecting individual buildings of the campus at night

3. One of the entrance buildings of the campus

4. Morphology Centre

5. Information and check desk – Corian

6. Central counter in the library – lit through Corian

7. Information desks in the entrance hall of the area – Corian

8. Central desks made of Corian in a part of the sports hall

Architects: A PLUS a.s. Brno

Designer: A.M.O.S. DESIGN s.r.o.

———-

Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!

Hip hop is a rich culture that has deep meaning to those who live it. By interviewing DJs, MCs, B-boys and Graffiti artists involved in the hip hop community, designer Vanessa Chew create a series of table pieces called Scratching Beneath The Surface. It’s energetic and expressive, modern and emotive, just like hip hop.

Designer: Vanessa Chew

———-

Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!

Airport terminals pride themselves at being these huge structures, that commuting from one end to the other can be time consuming and tiring; especially with a heavy suitcase. If the fun-element in you has not yet died and are up for the quirk, how about suitcase-blading (think rollerblade and scooters) the concourse? Here’s the TITAN High-roller Suitcase, which turns into a kickbike when you pull out the footrest. I think it would be funny to see head-honchos of big companies ride their suitcases for a match, and if I were to pick 2 I’d pick Steve jobs and Bill Gates….who do you think would win?

Designer: Sindre Klepp

———-

Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!

The working mechanics of tech gadgets in futuristic movies can really stump me at times, so for my sake, I’m going to try and keep this as simple as I can. The Smart Plus is a combination of a laptop case, projector keyboard and a Smartphone. There is no screen or a dedicated hardrive involved in the setup; the Smartphone itself is the “brains” in this combo. The inside of the case doubles up as a screen and the projector beams images to it or any other surface you desire. All of it together can be used as a laptop, gaming console or a phone.

The phone splits up into two where the bottom half is gaming controls and top touchscreen half, docks with the projector board. The idea for this new system is to do away with unnecessary electronic clutter and use the bare minimum. If nothing else, you can save up on individual internet options for your various devices and use only one for the Smart Plus.

Designer: Eunggyu Lee

———-

Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
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This project goes by the name “Braille Buddy” and it’s created by designer Yasaman Sheri. What this Braille Buddy consists of is a 2-phase educational device aimed at the visually impared, hoping to help them out with the most difficult stages of learning Braille, that being the reading and the writing. It’s a small device with two setups: the Braille Cell and the Braille Keyboard, in place in such a way as to make the transition from one to the other easier than ever before.

An interesting observation Sheri notes is that there’s a move away from society-employed or public-service sort of visually impaired help (like Braille on signs, for example), and a move toward useful products and tools used by each individual. Sheri hopes to participate in this move with this Braille Buddy device.

Both the Braille Cell and the Braille Keyboard are integrated into the learning process of Braille now, this Braille Buddy turns two into one to assist with the transition from the Cell to the Keyboard, a transition that should be more fluid as they are based on the same system. Simple surface changes are employed throughout the device such as raised keys, raised screen (made of Electro-active polymer,) and Braille indicators throughout. This device was tested and worked on directly with a visually impaired teacher in the field and went through multiple iterations before the version you see before you was made ready for presentation.

This device is meant to make the transition into visually impaired literacy easy, and to make it (or in some cases keep it) inexpensive. Sheri intends to have these devices available at libraries and schools for checkout, allowing them to be used during the transitional period for which they were designed, then turned back in for the next person to use.

Designer: Yasaman Sheri

———-

Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!

I’ve always wondered why some people absolutely loathe touch screen devices, but now I realize that it was insensitive to not even consider that physical limitations play a role in that hate. More »

Next time you’re watching an inane YouTube video, close your eyes and imagine these graceful dots instead—each representing a packet sent between your computer and YouTube’s servers. The video represents only 4 seconds of a RickRoll, slowed 12x. More »

Nvidia gave us a taste of what its Fermi-based notebook graphics cards would be like with the GeForce GTX 480M, but now it’s time to meet the whole family. That’s seven Fermi GPUs, running the gamut from face-melting to face-singeing. More »

It may look like it, but no, this is not a dollhouse. It’s a very real, completely full size house. More »

Need some extra storage? Sounding like something out of a TV infomercial, LaCie’s new MosKeyto (Get it? Geeeet it?) is so tiny, you won’t even know it’s there! But really, this thing is clever—stick it in and forget. More »

Watching the 1985 classic Back to the Future last night, I was struck by how much things can change with time. The main character Marty McFly travels 30 years back in time, only to find that his house hadn’t been built yet, skateboards hadn’t been invented and nobody had ever heard rock ‘n roll.

Looking back today on Chrome’s second anniversary, it’s amazing to see how much has changed in just a short time. In August 2008, JavaScript was 10 times slower, HTML5 support wasn’t yet an essential feature in modern browsers, and the idea of a sandboxed, multi-process browser was only a research project. All browsers have come a long way in the last two years and the web has become much more fun and useful.

Since Chrome’s first beta launch for Windows, we’ve brought our Mac and Linux versions up to speed, and continued to make the browser faster, simpler, and safer across all three platforms. We’ve also introduced a boatload of features, including a more customizable New Tab page, browser themes, side-by-side view, password manager, better privacy controls, built-in Adobe Flash Player, Autofill, automatic translation, HTML5 capabilities and synchronization of various settings such as bookmarks, themes, extensions and browser preferences—just to name a few. Finally, there are now more than 6,000 extensions in our gallery to enhance your browsing experience.

Behind the scenes, we continue to extend the security features that help you browse the web more safely. This includes Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology—which serves as a warning system if you’re about to visit a site suspected of phishing or hosting malware; Chrome’s auto-update mechanism—which helps ensure that the browser is always up-to-date with the latest security updates; and the browser’s “sandbox”—an added layer of protection which prevents malicious code on an exploited website from infecting your computer.

Today, we’re releasing a new stable version of Chrome that is even faster and more streamlined. Chrome is now three times faster than it was two years ago on JavaScript performance. We’ve also been working on simplifying the “chrome” of Chrome. As you can see, we took the already minimalist user interface and stripped it down a bit more to make it easier to use. We combined Chrome’s two menus into one, revisited the location of the buttons, cleaned up the treatment of the URL and the Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme of the browser to be easier on the eyes.

Sliding back into Doc Brown’s DeLorean and setting the dial ahead by a few months, we have more in store for Chrome. As always, we’re hard at work on making Chrome even faster, and working on ways to improve graphics performance in the browser through hardware acceleration. With the Chrome Web Store, we hope to make it much easier to find and use great applications on the web. We also ratcheted up the pace of our releases so that we can get new features and improvements to everyone more quickly.

If you haven’t tried Chrome recently, we invite you to download our new stable version today at google.com/chrome. For those of you who have been using Chrome, thanks for a great second year! We hope that Chrome has made your life on the web even better, and look forward to the next year.

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

People around the world are modeling everything—from a new design for their kitchen to entire cities in Google Earth. For our small part in this global phenomenon, I’m proud to announce that SketchUp 8, the next major version of our 3D modeling tool, is available for download today. We’ve added significant new geo-modeling capabilities that leverage Google’s vast collection of geo-spatial data to make it quicker, easier and more fun than ever to build models of the world around us.

Head on over to our website for the whole story, or just grab yourself a new build and get back to modeling.

Posted by Posted by John Bacus, Product Manager

For millions of online publishers—from the smallest blogger to the largest entertainment, news, e-commerce and information sites—online advertising revenue is vital. When publishers can maximize their returns, everyone benefits from more vibrant online content and websites. But the pace of change in the industry can be intimidating—how can a publisher keep up with what’s new, let alone grow their business?

We believe that the new technology we’re developing to make display advertising work better will help to grow the display advertising pie for all publishers, by orders of magnitude. We shouldn’t be asking how publishers can eke another 5 or 10 percent out of display advertising in the next few years. We should be looking at how the industry can double or triple in size.

We’ve previously described our three core display ad products for publishers:

• AdSense, which places the most valuable, relevant ads on our partners’ websites, without the publishers having to sell the ad space themselves;
• DoubleClick for Publishers, our ad serving platform, which maximizes the value of ad space that publishers have directly sold themselves;
• DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time auction marketplace, which maximizes large publishers’ overall returns, by “dynamically allocating” the highest value ad, whether directly sold, or indirectly sold through an ad network.

I wanted to highlight the key principles guiding our future product innovations in this area, as we work to help all publishers maximize their online ad revenues.

1. Making life more efficient
For most large publishers, directly sold ads (ads sold by their own sales force) comprise the vast majority of their ad revenues. But today, selling and managing these ads is frustrating, expensive and often involves tedious manual processes.

Imagine a TV network that receives TV commercials in 100 different formats, languages, lengths and video dimensions, and then has to manually convert, translate and edit them all, then manually count the number of TV sets on which the ad appeared before sending a bill. Sounds crazy, right? Well, that scenario is far less challenging than what most large online publishers face today with display advertising. Today, across the industry, for every dollar spent on display advertising, 28 cents is eaten up in administrative costs. If we can reduce that proportion, it would mean a lot more money going to publishers.

Things like new standards for video ad serving and systems that connect buyers and sellers are helping publishers support the most engaging and creative ads across their sites. But there are quantum leaps to come in this area, for small and large publishers. Think of a political candidate who is seeking donations on his or her website—the candidate can receive money in seconds. Imagine if publishers—even the smallest website—had tools that enabled advertisers to click a button on their site to upload an ad, let them pay for it with a credit card, and then deliver this ad—through the publisher’s ad server—within minutes. This sort of “immediate ad” will become possible as ad serving technology continues to simplify the process of buying and selling ad space.

2. Total revenue management
AdSense selects the most valuable ad for publishers from a large number of ad networks, to maximize ad revenues every time a page loads.

New ad serving and “dynamic allocation” technology, like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, is emerging that enables ad revenues to be maximized across both directly and indirectly sold ad space, ad impression by ad impression, using real-time prices. Second by second, across millions of ad impressions, this can meaningfully boost major publishers’ revenues. Using this technology, the average price that a publisher receives for ad space sold through the Ad Exchange is more than 130 percent higher than the average price of ad space sold directly to ad networks. In fact, without this type of dynamic allocation across sales channels, a publisher’s revenues can never truly be maximized.

In years to come, this true revenue maximization can get even smarter. There’s no question that delivering the right ad to the right user at the right time delivers better results. We have years of experience in doing this with search and text ads; we’re now bringing that experience to the world of display. This means investing in a smarter ad server that can automatically learn where and when a given ad will get the best response, as well as manage delivery to deliver those improved results for publishers. This new ad server can even anticipate a publisher’s future events and adjust delivery accordingly—for example, if traffic drops off every weekend, the ad server can automatically speed up during the week to keep everything moving smoothly.

3. More insight and control
Our vision is to provide all publishers the smartest possible advertising system that can give them knowledge and control of everything going on with their ad business. The vision is already becoming a reality: the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers platform offers publishers 4,000 times more data than its predecessor. And in recent years, we’ve been constantly adding new reporting options for our AdSense partners.

By putting publishers in firm control and empowering them with more data, reports and controls (for example, over what advertisers and ad networks they allow), they’ll be able to make fully informed decisions about ad space forecasting, segmentation, targeting, allocation and pricing. This helps them to extract the maximum value from their sites and uncover new advertising opportunities—the gold that’s buried under their own sites.

4. Betting on openness
An open ecosystem drives meaningful results for publishers. When a wide range of buyers can bid for a publisher’s ad space, through an advertising exchange or network, this creates more competition for that ad space, while giving publishers choice over whose ads they want to appear. On the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, an enormous number of advertisers, belonging to over 50 ad networks, compete for publishers’ ad space. Of course, at the same time, we’re also providing publishers robust technologies and controls that can block any unwanted ads or networks.

Similarly, we believe that one of the best ways to encourage innovation is to open code to the web developer community. Look at the incredible mashups that have been created through the Google Maps API, or the range of mobile devices that have been created from our open source Android code.

This same approach can generate significant advantages for publishers. When we rolled out the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers, we launched a new public API. This gives publishers and developers the tools to drive innovation and deliver value-adding “advertising apps” for publishers—like inventory analysis, sales workflow tools and more—without having to build an ad server from scratch. This will help drive the next generation of better, more valuable ad innovations.

5. Everything is going to be “display”
Display advertising is about much more than ads in web browsers. People are watching video, reading newspapers, magazines, books and listening to digital music at an ever-increasing rate. They’re turning to a plethora of new devices—smartphones, tablets, e-readers and even video game consoles. We’ve designed our platform, and are continuing to invest in it, to give publishers a single base that can deliver ads into this expanding world—including streaming video, mobile ad delivery and more.

Looking forward, what we call “display” today will just be “advertising”—a single platform that can coordinate an advertiser’s campaign across streaming audio ads in car stereos, interactive mobile experiences on smartphones, and HD video ads on set-top boxes. Imagine if that single platform could optimize the campaign, automatically delivering the best-performing ads, best returns and best mix, across all those platforms. That’s the future we envisage.

An exciting time ahead
We’re unapologetically optimistic about the future of display advertising for online publishers. There’s great innovation taking place in this area that will make the current landscape look primitive within a few years. We’ll keep working hard to help all publishers take advantage of these opportunities.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management

People tell us all the time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean—here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.

Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.

Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”:

As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)

After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the “New! Priority Inbox” link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.

Posted by Doug Aberdeen, Software Engineer