Matias Quiet Pro Claims to be the 'Wworld's Quietest Mechanical Keyboard'

Canada's Matias Corporation has made something of a name for itself with its tactile keyboards, but those have primarily appealed to those who also enjoy (or at least accept) the sound of a mechanical keyboard in addition to its feel. The company's hoping to bring a few more into the tactile fold with its new Quiet Pro, though, which it claims is the "world's quietest mechanical keyboard." That, Matias says, comes without any sacrifices to tactile feedback, and is said to be the result of more than two years of work. As usual, the keyboard comes in both PC and Mac specific models (all-black and silver & black, respectively), each of which boasts three USB 2.0 ports and laser-etched keys with beveled keytops as opposed to the increasingly common flat variety.

Not surprisingly, you can also expect to pay a bit of a premium over your average keyboard -- each model will set you back $150, with US models available today (UK, German and Nordic versions are promised for January). More here.

Suitcase Laptop Support Gives You a Standing Desk Wherever You Travel

The next time you've got time to kill at the airport—whether at the hands of inclement weather or a never ending security line—you can still stay productive with this laptop stand that turns your suitcase into a miniature office.

When moored to your suitcase's extended handle it creates a three-legged desk that can support a laptop up to 13 pounds in weight. So as long as you've upgraded your hardware in the last ten years, you should be ok. And when no longer needed the $40 aluminum stand folds away a like a tripod—or a monopod at least—so it won't fill up a plane's overhead compartment during your flight. More here.

Apple’s Shake-To-Charge Patent Trades Calories for Battery Life

Its larger form factor and bigger battery mean the iPhone 5 should last longer on a single charge. But to overcome the fact that battery technology still basically sucks, Apple has applied for a 'shake to charge' patent that uses electromagnetic induction to convert everyday motions into extra battery life.

In Apple's system a small lubricated magnet would move across a series of printed coils inside an iPhone or iPod, inducing a small current which could be used to generate power and charge the battery. What sets Apple's design apart from the various radios and flashlights that already use this approach is the flat coils which can be easily printed using modern circuit production techniques. Just don't expect this to be the flagship feature on the iPhone 5S. Smartphones use far more power than this induction system could ever replenish, even with continuous vigorous shaking. But as their components get more energy efficient, somewhere way down the line this could be a plausible alternative to plugging in your phone every night. More here.

Samsung Building 128GB Flash Memory Chips For Next Year’s Superphones

There might just be a 128GB memory option when it comes to upgrading to the Galaxy S4 next year or the S5 the year after, thanks to Samsung now mass producing 128GB memory chips for use in mobile devices.

Samsung's newest 128GB eMMC NAND chips read data at 140MB/s and can write at up to 50MB/s, plus they're designed to fit the same slimline form factors as its current 16, 32 and 64GB memory chips. No mention's been made of any devices that'll use them yet, so keep your eyes open for a whole new level of onboard storage complete with unprecedented RRPs. More here.

When Did Handheld Vacuums Get So Beautiful?

If you haven't shopped for a handheld vacuum since the Dustbuster owned the market, you're apparently in for a real treat. Vorwerk's new Kobold VC100 looks like a piece of contemporary art you'll want to frame and hang on your wall, instead of the old lowly workhorses you kept hidden behind a dresser.

It sucks (in the best way possible) for up to 20 minutes on a single charge, but with two suction settings you can probably expect even less cleaning time if you use it full throttle. You will have to fork over almost $170 for this functional masterpiece, but think how much better your life will be with this on display in your living room, and your shirt free of Doritos crumbs. More here.

Toshiba Intros Camileo BW20 Waterproof Camcorder

Toshiba might have missed the summer vacationers by just a bit, but with the beautiful fall season just around the corner in the US, it's that period to introduce a new Camileo to the group. This time out it's the the follow-up to the company's rather colorful BW10 from last year. Enter the adequately named BW20.

Aside from nabbing a numerical bump on its moniker, the BW20 brings the same 1080p video recording found on its predecessor, plus improved waterproof capabilities that now allow the camcorder to handle up to 16 feet below water. Perhaps, the most interesting fact here is the BW20's new price tag, which is now $130 -- 20 bucks less than the BW10. More here.

iOS 6 now Available to Download for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Cupertino's newest hardware may have us purring, but Apple hasn't left those of us with existing hardware out in the cold. iOS 6 should be appearing as an available update right now, or at least very shortly -- depending on how taxed those servers get. It'll be compatible with every iPhone since the 3GS, iPod touch 4G / 5G and this-and-last-year's vintage of the iPad. Given the inexorable march of technology, some of the newer features won't work on the older devices, but you can use ourcompatability checker to determine what new things you'll be able to do in the next few hours. More here.

Twitter Revamps its iPad App for Expanded Content, Adds Header Photos and ImageStream

Twitter's iPad app is sometimes the neglected stepchild of its mobile app family: newer features usually come to the Android and iPhone versions first and are handed down to the iPad later, if they come at all. The company is making amends for that in style with a major update to the iPad version as of today. Whether you like them or not, expanded tweets are now baked in and will optionally show some photos, videos and web links within the timeline rather than disrupting the entire experience.

You'll soon notice a much more visual spin on people's profiles, regardless of whether or not Apple's slate factors into the daily routine. Both the Twitter site as well as the official Android and iOS apps now show a header photo behind the bio to provide a little more color than avatars and background pictures can manage. If you're on one of the mobile platforms, you'll also see a photo stream in the profile that will help relive memories without hunting down individual tweets. More here.

iPhone 5 Promo Parody

Laser Bike Light Creates Your Own Tron-Like Virtual Lane

The best way to stay safe while biking is to stay visible to those you share the road with. And while concepts for laser-based systems that create a highly visible virtual lane around your bike have existed for years and years, they're finally real (and cheap!) now.

A Korean company called Slancio makes this rear safety light that includes a requisite set of flashing red LEDs, but also a pair of lasers that produce a thin set of lines on the road on either side of your bike. Not only do they add to your visibility at night, they also create a safe space around your bicycle that most drivers and other riders will subconsciously stay clear of. More here.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD Torn Down, Proves an Easy Fix

Interested in what makes your new Kindle Fire HD 7-inch tick? The crew at iFixit certainly is. As is the repair shop's custom, it just tore down Amazon's new reader tablet to gauge its repairability as well as look for any surprises. In the case of the revamped Kindle Fire, the fixable design is the main surprise -- despite being skinnier than its ancestor, the tablet is easy to open and its components (usually) easy to replace. 

The choice of hardware makers, include an LG Display LCD, the expected 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4460 processor and Samsung flash memory.  More here.

PCs no Longer Command Biggest Share of DRAM Market

Times change, this is an indisputable truth. But nothing reminds us of this fact as well as a landmark statistic. If there was ever any doubt about the shift towards of mobile computing, then let this be it: personal computers no longer account for the majority of demand for DRAM chips. With 49 percent of all new memory still headed for PCs, it's hardly time to book the hearse for desk- and laptops just yet, but the statistic from IHS iSuppli remind us of the increasing market share that mobiles and tablets are taking. 

In fact, even though total DRAM shipments for PCs continues to rise, it's estimated that the total share will slip another 6 percent, to 42.8, between Q2 this year and the end of 2013. More here.

Twitter Might Be Looking To Kill Off Third Party Image Hosts

Twitter's big API changes have been causing all kinds of problems for third party Twitter clients, but they aren't the only ones affected by Twitter's new outlook on life. According to Buzzfeed, third party image hosts are in danger as well.

It shouldn't come as a huge surprise considering these image hosts are yet another set of sites drawing eyes away from the main Twitter pages, where the ads are. While Twitter can't exactly prevent people from tweeting links to third party services, they can (and are) removing the services from their apps, the apps which have less and less competition as third party ones get pushed to the side. It makes sense; as Twitpic founder told Buzzfeed "They're trying to control those eyeballs on their apps, they're an ad-based company, they make money that way." More here.

This might not be as disastrous as the API changes that are sure to drive some third party clients into the ground, but there's sure to be more to come. This distancing from third party image clients just goes to show that Twitter seems willing to ride this train all the way to the end. Hopefully it won't be stagnant and ad-bloated by the time it gets there.

Uros' Goodspeed Hotspot Packs 10 SIM Cards

Snagging international data service usually involves either special agreements or steep roaming costs. Not Uros and its new Goodspeed hotspot. The pocketable, 21Mbps HSPA+ router carries a staggering 10 SIM cards and simply uses a local SIM for whichever destination country you visit. The brute force strategy helps Uros offer a relatively low flat rate for 1GB of data per day, no matter where you are on the coverage map: while the Goodspeed itself costs €273 ($352), Uros asks just €5.90 ($8) a day for occasional visits and €9.90 ($13) a month for frequent fliers. It's a very sizable bargain for the jetset, even with a current scope limited to Finland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the UK. A number of "important" countries are due before Christmas, which could make Uros' hotspot a go-to choice for those who just can't stay settled in one place. More here.

Beautiful Maple or Walnut Bluetooth Keyboards

If gleaming white plastic and brushed aluminum don't suit your fancy when it comes to keyboards, a French design shop called Orée will hand craft you a beautiful alternative made from your choice of either maple or walnut wood. But if you thought keeping your current keyboard clean was a pain, imagine having to sand and re-stain it every year.

At $164 the Orée Board is more than twice what you'll pay for Apple's own wireless Bluetooth keyboard, but you're paying a premium for craftsmanship, the ability to customize the key layout including the font, and of course, the occasional splinter. No pain no gain, right? While Orée promises the utmost precision when it comes to all the keys and their assembly, it's still made of wood which expands and contracts with the temperature and humidity. So depending on the weather it could either look like a beautiful piece of finely crafted art, or a C+ high school shop class project. More here.

iPhone 5 vs Fake iPhone 5

Instead of comparing the iPhone 5 with competitor devices I thought this comparison deserved more publicity. Don’t mean to burst Apple’s bubble but some of you are better off getting a fake iPhone 5. For one it has better overall specs for half the price. No complaints about the operating system since it runs on Android. More here.

Superheated Steel Balls Make Water Boil Without Bubbles

This is really cool. Scientists have found a way to make water boil without causing any bubbles. How? Drop some superheated, nanoparticle-coated steel into the water.

The phenomenon is based on something called the Leidenfrost effect. That's where water coming in contact with a super hot substance will form a layer of vapor between it and the surface. In this experiment, scientists took steel balls and coated them in nanoparticles that gave them a rough surface. They then heated the balls to 400 degrees Celsius and dropped them into some water. That's where the cool part happens.

Instead of creating a bunch of bubbles around the balls, the layer of vapor created around the steel caused the bubbles that formed to stretch themselves around the ball's rough surface. That meant that the surrounding water was mostly undisturbed. It stayed that way all the way until the balls dropped back under boiling point.

So there you go, water boiling without bubbling up. Fun, mostly-useless-to-your-life, awesome science. More here.

Intel's Core i3 NUC Mini-Boards set to Hit Market in October

Intel has finalized the specs of its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) board, and announced it'll go on sale in October for less than $400 with a case and power supply. Carrying a 4 x 4-inch form factor between aRaspberry Pi and mini-ITX board, it'll be equipped with a Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor, HD 4000 graphics, two SO-DIMM sockets, an M-SATA slot for an SSD drive, three USB ports, one HDMI port and a mini-PCI slot for wireless connectivity.

Two different models will be offered by the chip giant, identical except that one will be Thunderbolt equipped and the other will sport an ethernet port for connectivity. Originally intended for the kiosk and signage markets, enthusiast interest compelled Intel to put the board on general sale, along with a case (pictured above) and power supply option. That'll pit it against offerings from VIA and others, while offering considerably more oomph in a similar form factor -- though a mini-server slaying Core i5 option originally proposed by Intel was dropped. More here.

The Worst Thing About the iPhone 5 Is Also the Most Brilliant

The iPhone 5 is many things. It's a pinnacle of product design. It's a mild annoyance for iOS app developers. It's very probably the next phone you buy. And it's also, by broadconsensus of the people who follow these things, totally boring.

Of course it is. Anything else, at this point, would be insane.

It Ain't Broke

It's easy to forget, with as much emphasis as Apple puts on its biannual show-and-tell extravaganzas, that its primary objective isn't to entertain us. It's to sell iPhones. Millions and millions and millions of iPhones.

The iPhone 5 will be on shelves on September 21st, which is one week before Apple's fiscal year ends and the holiday quarter begins. How important are those three months to Apple's bottom line? Last year during the same period, the iPhone 4S drove Apple's smartphone sales to 37 million units, and an overall profit of $13 billion. To put that in context, that's more money than Google made in all of 2011.

Those numbers aren't just impressive. They're unprecedented. The iPhone is the most valuable asset of one of the most valuable companies in history. So the question we should be asking isn't why didn't Apple make it more exciting. The question is—other than the standard spec and feature bumps—why would Apple change the iPhone at all? There's a reason Coca-Cola's used the same formula for a hundred years.

That's why, when we say the iPhone 5 is boring, we really mean the iPhone 5 is safe. It's familiar. It's the same phone in slightly different packaging. And, most importantly, it's still very recognizably the most popular smartphone in the world. If you've won the first two legs of the Triple Crown, you don't suddenly trade in your thoroughbred for a one-eyed pony because it's more interesting to look at.

Playing It Smart

Not being boring requires taking risks, and risk is not something Apple does. Not anymore. Why would it? It can skip out on 4G for more than a year after its competitors have it and no one blinks an eye. NFC? Wireless charging? Pass, thanks. And Apple will keep playing it safe until iPhone sales decline. That might be boring, but it's also just good business.

And it's always been like this. The original iPhone didn't have 3G. The iPad didn't have a front-facing camera. USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt both came after PCS had embraced high-speed standards. Apple doesn't make products for early adopters. It makes products for the billions of people who buy things they can easily access and understand.

The worst part? In a vacuum the iPhone 5 is actually really exciting. For whatever half-baked features it skips out on, it's still technological marvel, and may well prove to be the best smartphone you can buy. If the worst thing about it is that it's not different enough from a phone that tens of millions of people a month spend hundreds of dollars to buy, well, that's fine.

The Boring Future

The only thing that will change the iPhone's design is a dramatic decline in iPhone market share, but that doesn't seem in the offing. Not any time soon, anyway. It takes years to slow down a juggernaut.

So get comfortable with your boring iPhone and your boring iPad and your boring MacBook Air. They're that way because they have to be. Because we want them to be. Because it's the only way that makes sense.

Boosted Board Electric Longboard is Lightweight enough to Carry, Powerful Enough to Haul Riders Uphill

Boosted Board isn't the first powered skateboard to grace these pages, but it is the lightest. In its current prototype form, it weighs just 12 pounds, thanks to a high-end Loaded Vanguard longboard, 2,000W brushless electric motor, 100W/h Lithium polymer battery pack and regenerative braking and drivetrain bits. That hardware will move you along at up to 20mph, provide about six miles of range and tackle up to a 15 percent grade.

The company is also evaluating different battery chemistries and cell sizes for folks looking for longer range. The board is capable of much higher speeds, but it's been limited for safety reasons. However, that reservoir of power is put to good use when rolling uphill, as the Boosted Board's got some custom firmware that aims to make cruising up inclines feel the same as riding on flats. Adjusting the speed is accomplished through a custom handheld, thumb-operated throttle that's still in development.

This design is made possible by that power-dense brushless motor, and it allows the Boosted Board to maintain the flexible feel that regular longboarders know and love. More here.