Sony Ericsson to Become Sony in mid-2012

Sony and Ericsson's decade-long partnership may have humbled Kim Kardashian, but dwindling market share and an over-reliance on feature phones signaled the end of the affair. Ericsson will have until "mid 2012" to clear its things from the spare room before the electronics giant begins a new solo venture. The revitalized enterprise will leverage its parent company's brand strength, R&D and content (since it owns a massive chunk of the entertainment industry) and in comments made to Times of India, company Vice President Kristian Tear said there would be a "fierce" advertising push to restore the company's reputation as a major player worldwide -- before taking a Pilates class to try and fit back into its bachelor pad.

 

 

Samsung Teases Flexible, Transparent Display in Concept Video

Samsung's flexible display technology isn't slated to hit the market until 2012, but the Korean manufacturer is already giving us a glimpse of how it may transform our lives, with a freshly released concept video. Yes, it's just a concept ad, and a relatively brief one at that, but it still paints a pretty mouth-watering portrait -- one full of transparent, flexible screens, smartphone-tablet hybrids, and augmented reality.

Mammoths May Be Roaming the World In Five Years

Scientists have been trying to clone woolly mammoths for years, but now they're really close. So close that in five years you may see herds of this gigantic beast—one of the favorite extinct prehistoric animals of the all-time.

Scientists from Japan's Kinki University and the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum have discovered well preserved marrow in a thigh bone discovered in Siberia, buried under the permafrost. The marrow is in such good condition that its cells' DNA could be used to replace the nuclei of elephant egg cells. This will allow scientist to create mammoth embryos.

The team wants to plant these embryos inside the wombs of elephant mothers so they can grow until birth. Although bigger than elephants, both animals are similar enough for this to work. This is a similar technique used in current cloning processes. The key is that the DNA has to be intact in order for this process to work. This discovery is their chance to achieve their objective.

 

 

Samsung's mSATA PM830 is Eight Grams of Pure SSD

The newest member of Samsung's 6Gb/s PM830 family of SSDs is designed to sit inside the Ultrabooksof 2012, which means it's had go through some slimming down. The mSATA drive uses 20 nanometer NAND for face-melting speed, but is crammed into a 50.95 x 30 x 3.8mm package, weighing only eight grams. The drive will comfortably read 500MB/s and write 260MB/s on a clear day, six times faster than a comparable HDD. 

It'll allow Windows to boot in under ten seconds and transfer "five DVD files" (roughly 45GB) in around a minute. The drives also come with 256-bit AES for those moments when your Ultrabook gets stolen, or more likely, floats away in the wind. 64GB, 128GB and 256GB variants will roll out to OEMs shortly but we expect a consumer version to be announced shortly for everyone with some courage and a screwdriver.

 

 

If You Don’t Like the Names of These New Elements, Now’s the Time to Complain

Flerovium and livermorium have a nice ring, yeah? Chemistry's governing body thinks so and wants to name two new elements with them. If you disagree, you've only got five months to come up with something better.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, a union of chemists that maintains the periodic table and vets potential new additions to it, has proposed naming recently-discovered elements 114 and 116 flerovium and livermorium, respectively. Now, the names undergo a five month comment period wherein any member of the public can suggest alternatives—that includes you.

These super-heavy elements are so large and so unstable that they can only be manufactured in labs and rapidly degrade into other elements. Both were actually discovered a decade ago but their existence has been undergoing independent verification since then. They were created by a collaboration of researchers from Lawrence Livermore Labs and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.

Livermorium is named after the Livermore lab where it was created while flerovium bears the name of Georgi N. Flerov, the founder of the Dubna lab. If the names pass muster by next May, flerovium and livermorium will join three other recently-named elements—darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn)—at the bottom of the elemental table.

 

 

Sony Reader WiFi officially drops to $129.99

Love 'em or hate 'em, one thing's for sure -- e-readers just keep getting cheaper. The latest to see a dip in price is the Sony Reader WiFi, which debuted at $149.99 just a couple of months back, but has now received a permanent drop to $129.99. What's more, Sony is also running a trade-in program through the end of December that will give you an additional $50 off if you turn in any old e-reader. Not quite the instant discount that an ad-supported Kindle gives you, but certainly not a bad deal if you're looking to upgrade from an older model.

Next-Gen Touchscreens Will Resist Your Greasy Little Fingermarks

For those with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, fingerprints over the screen of their tablet must be a living hell. But a team of German scientists think they can help with, of all things, a candle.

Making a surface that can repel water is easy. So why is it difficult to make one that repels oil? It's to do with oil's low surface tension: to make a surface that can repel it, you need a very particular kind of surface roughness. And while that sounds easy, nobody has yet managed to really work out how to achieve it.

But now a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, think they've found a solution. Using, um, a combination of candle soot and silica baked at just the right temperature. Look, I didn't say it was hi-tech, right?

They've trialled the idea with glass — which is notoriously bad for showing up finger prints. First they held the glass over the candle, which caused soot to be deposited on its surface. These little spheres of soot were 30 to 40 nanometers in diameter, and stacked fairly loosely. In fact, 80 per cent of the coating was empty space, giving just the right roughness required to shed oils.

To fix the soot in place, they coated it with a silica shell 25 nanometers thick. Finally, to get rid of the black color of the soot, they baked the glass at 600C, making it transparent.

The result? Grease-proof glass! They even managed to take high-speed photos of little drops of peanut oil bouncing up and down from the surface. Fortunately, the coating also sticks to other materials like aluminum, steel, and copper, too.

Now, they just need to think of a way of industrializing the process so that it doesn't involve holding huge sheets of glass over candles.

 

 

YouTube Goes Under the Knife, new Homepage and Social Integration Emerge

Falling into lockstep with Google's quest to redesign everything, YouTube officially unveiled a radical new look for its twenty billion strong video site. Now sporting a more somber look, the homepage is now dominated by a center feed hosting content, which is flanked on its left by a list of channels in a quasi-navigation bar. 

Besides hosting channels, that navbar also features Google+ and (opt-in) Facebook tabs, allowing you to peruse content friends are sharing and interacting with. Also tweaked are channels, which are now more easily customizable thanks to the addition of snazzy new templates.

 

 

ODDIO1 Straps an iPod Shuffle to Your Head, Makes you Inexplicably Cooler

Micro music players like the iPod shuffle are great when you're shredding the powder, but long cords can be a health hazard, even in the office -- if one wraps itself 'round your coffee mug, you risk having twelve ounces of hot liquid landing in your lap. Designers Jeremy Saxton & Jacob Hall have developed the ODDIO1, a pair of headphones that do away with all that unnecessary cabling -- holstering the shuffle on the right earpiece.

Let's be honest, this ain't exactly rocket science here, the ODDIO1 packs a pair of 30mm dynamic audio drivers, has an adjustable headband and comes in three colors -- grey / black, black / blue and black / pink (oddly, the coolest pair of the three). Because the headphone jack is still accessible, you can sync your shuffle with iTunes without having to tear it out of its holster.

Production tooling and further development of the device. The aim is that the 'phones will retail for $50 when they reach general sale, but only $35 if you pledge now (two pairs for $65 and three for $95). Throwing in $200 will get you the trifecta of regular headsets, a limited edition white version, t-shirt and iPod shuffle in the color of your choice. More here.

Acer's 27-inch HR274H Monitor Promises to do 2D-to-3D Conversion on the Fly

It likely won't win over anyone who isn't too fond of 3D to begin with, but those looking for some additional quasi-3D content beyond the standard fare now have a new option to consider in the form of Acer's 27-inch HR274H monitor. It not only includes a set of passive, polarized 3D glasses, but what Acer describes as its own "chip-based solution" that promises to convert all 2D content to 3D in real time (it can be switched on and off on the monitor itself).

Unfortunately, there's no word yet as to how well the effect works, and the monitor's specs are otherwise decidedly ordinary for the rather high $599 price tag -- you'll just get a TN panel with a standard 1920 x 1080 resolution.

 

 

TED Goes Mobile with New iPhone App

Sure the free TED app has been available on the iPad since last year but—gasp!—not everybody owns an iPad. Now, those of us without tablets can enjoy brilliant conversations on the go with the new TED iPhone app.

The iPhone version has the same access to TED's library of lectures as its large-screen brethren and allows users to bookmark and download—via Wi-Fi—videos for playback. They can even be streamed to a home television using Airplay or listened to through TEDRadio, an audio-only version of the discussions. Its available free from iTunes here.

 

 

YouTube Got Nearly 21 Billion Hits in a Month

The latest report from comScore makes for eye popping reading -- Google's video sites, of which YouTube is the most important, received 20,933,113,000 views in October. To put that into some context, that's roughly three videos watched by every person alive on the planet. According to the statistics, YouTubers spent an average of seven hours watching the month's hottest videos (such as Community's Beetlejuice easter egg and Naughty Fenton). Surprisingly, Facebook came second, but viewers spent an measly average of 18 minutes watching last night's karaoke. In other news, Hulu came top for online advertising and Vevo was the most watched partner site, you guys obviously love your Lady Gaga.

 

 

Seagate Outs Second-gen Momentus XT: a 750GB Hybrid Laptop Drive for $189

Seagate was quick to jump into the hybrid HDD/SSD fray last year, with the decently priced and capableMomentus XT. Now we have a successor with identical branding, but with the HDD upped to 742GB, NAND storage slightly increased to 8GB, plus a faster SATA III 6Gb/s interface. The 'flash-assisted drive' promises to cut boot-up and lag times compared to a standard laptop hard disk, by gradually learning which of your files are popular enough to deserve a spot in that solid state VIP lounge. We're looking at a price of $189, including a five-year warranty, and availability from today.

 

 

The Droid 4 Looks Like a Big RAZR and Will Be Here Soon

We've been expecting Motorola's Droid 4 for a while, but now official images and specs have leaked into the wild. And it looks a lot like a bigger version of the recent RAZR.

In terms of specs, Droid Life report that we can expect: a 4-inch screen (though it's not clear if it's LCD or AMOLED), 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5-row slide out keyboard, 4G LTE, and an 8MP camera.

It's not setting the world on fire with innovation, sure, but it sounds like a powerful device, and it could be just the phone if you want Android and a decent physical keyboard.

Droid Life also report that Verizon have been training shop staff ready for the Droid 4 launch, and even speculate that it could launch on 8 December. Let's wait and see.

 

 

Apple’s Got Free Shipping on Everything Until Dec. 22nd

Okay, so it's not exactly a Cyber Monday blowout. But Apple's dangling a small shopping incentive today, offering free shipping on any and everything you can buy online or through the Apple Store app from now until December 22nd.

Cupertino already offered complimentary shipping on bigger ticket items, so this isn't a huge deal for you MacBook and iPad buyers.

 

 

Unlocked Nokia Lumia 800 now Available on Expansys, Plays Nce with AT&T

You could sit there and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the Lumia 800 to arrive on US shores. Or you could just head over to Expansys, where you can grab an unlocked version of Nokia's new handset, for $789. The Mango-soaked device comes packed with 16GB of internal storage and is primed for use on AT&T, so if you're prepared to shell out the dough, check it here.

 

 

Tamagotchi Celebrates 15th Birthday and Is Still Available For Your Loving Embrace

You might remember those pesky virtual petkeychain things, which managed to successfully spawn out of Japan to populate the world, and annoy the hell out of parents everywhere. They were launched 15 years ago, November 23rd 1996.

I have to hold my hands up and admit, I had not one, but two of these things when I was a kid. When it landed in 1997, so I hope you can forgive me, right? But a quick look on Amazon tells me you can still buy them. Why on Earth anyone would obsess over such a basic toy when you've got the likes of Nintendogs to take care of these days, is beyond me. Still, if you fancy a nostalgia trip that'll likely last for about 35 seconds before you realise once again, why you hate them — an authentic one will set you backfrom $15.

 

 

Why Your Thanksgiving Meal Makes You Tired

Today, you're gonna shovel one hell of a lot of turkey and pie down your throat, then collapse in a food-coma in front of the TV. But why does your huge meal make you feel like snoozing?

As you'd expect, science has some answers. It turns out that there are two big factors that make you fancy a snooze soon after the pumpkin pie is polished off.

First, when the food starts to arrive in your belly, the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system increases and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system decreases. Huh, what does that mean? Well, the sympathetic nervous system provides our fight-or-flight response. The parasympathetic system gets your organs ready for digestion. Basically, your body wants you to stay still in order to sort out the contents of your stomach. That's why you choose not to move too much after your meal.

Next, when you start digesting your food, you get a big rush of glucose into your blood stream. If you don't have diabetes, your body creates insulin to help the body's cells absorb the glucose. The insulin works by affecting the uptake of a bunch of amino acids in the body — stick with me here! — except for one called tryptophan. So the concentration of tryptophan increases relative to other amino acids. Turns out that in the brain, tryptophan is converted to serotonin, which is itself converted to melatonin — both of which result in sleepiness.

Voila! Your nervous system and your brain both want you to sleep. So I say go with it.

Incidentally, there's a myth that turkey contains a lot of tryptophan. That's kinda rubbish, though, as turkey doesn't contain any more than chicken, beef, or plenty of other meats. So don't blame the turkey too much. Blame your gluttony instead.

 

 

Can Scientists Make a Battery That Will Survive 40,000 Charges?

The one problem with gadgets is power. Even if batteries start off long-lasting, after 12 months they start to struggle. But a new material might change that.

A team of researchers from Stanford have developed a new battery electrode that can survive 40,000 charge cycles. That's about a hundred times more than a normal Lithium-Ion battery, and enough to make it usable for somewhere between 10-30 years.

So how does it work? It's down to what it's made from: copper hexacyanoferrate. The structure of the material lets charge-carrying ions move in and out of the electrode easily, and it's extremely rugged, so it degrades at a much slower rate than Li-On batteries. That all means it can charge and discharge rapidly, and lasts for ages.

 

 

Modular USB Flash Drive Concept Offers a New Way to Sort Your Data

USB drives may come in all shapes and sizes these days, but they all basically give you one of two choices: you can buy one big drive to store as much of your data as possible, or juggle a bunch of drives if you want to keep things separate. Designer Hyunsoo Song has proposed an alternative with this so-called Amoeba modular USB flash drive, however, which let you sort your data on individual drives that can be used both on their own or together as one large drive. The idea there being that you can keep the drives together most of the time, and just detach the appropriate section if you want to share only your photos or videos with someone. Of course, the keyword here is "concept," but it's not exactly as far beyond the realm of possibility as some others we've seen.