You could almost feel the ripples of fear spreading through the tech world when, after much touting of expensive shutter glasses by the big tech companies, Nintendo rocked up to the party - late - and announced that its 3DS had a way of making 3D work without a pair of novelty plastic aviators. Because glasses-free 3D viewing, that's the future, right?
French filmmaker Francois Vogel certainly thinks so. We're not sure exactly how wide an adoption Vogel was hoping for with his own glasses-free 3D technology (or, if we're honest, if this is even a 100% serious video), but we'd wager that Sony, Samsung et al. are safe for now. It appears to work by attaching a couple of small electrode-like devices to the side of the head, which force... actually, you know what? We're not going to spoil it for you. You can watch the video below.
Far be it for us humble tech writers to speculate on how far into the director's cut of Avatar you could get before your eyeballs fly across the room in different directions; our main gripe with this technology is that it would replace glasses (which make you look silly) with blinking, skull-buzzing electrodes (which make you look like a lackey in an episode of Dr. Who). We're not saying this definitely is the start of a Dalek invasion of Earth. We're just saying that this is probably how it would look:
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New BlackBerry handsets revealed, but can they hope to compete with Apple and Android?
We reported earlier this week that a new BlackBerry handset from RIM, the so-called BlackBerry "Dakota", had somehow found its way onto the web a few months early. Well, after a bit of digging by the folks over at BGR, we can bring you another three (yes, three) handsets to go along with it.
While the Dakota is - if the leaked images are to be believed - the next generation BlackBerry Bold, BGR also has what look like publicity stills of the Torch 2, the Monaco (or the new 'Berry Storm) and the Apollo (the new Curve).
What details can be revealed about the handsets? Well, first off all the devices with the exception of the Monaco retain the signature BlackBerry physical keyboard (although the Dakota pairs it with a touchscreen), and users can swap info with each other (including business cards, phone numbers etc.) wirelessly by holding their two handsets next to each other. Nothing new in itself, but RIM are reportedly gearing up to use the same technology to allow users to make payments (as with and Oyster card) or use their Berries as keycards - slick.
Apart from some sleek outer shells, there's not a lot else right now to get excited about. Processors are all between the 800MHz - 1.2GHz range, and the cameras are 5MP, but with the release of the new 'Berry family being pegged in Q3 of this year, we'd worry that these even-now-average specs will have little to hold off future Apple and Android competitors with.
Hidden iBooks backgrounds point toward huge jump in iPad 2 screen resolution.
While some will quibble that it's not a retina display as such, it looks like the iPad 2 - follow up to T3's 2010 Gadget of the Year - will quadruple the original iPad's number of pixels from 1024x768 to 2048x1536.
Evidence of the upcoming shift in resolution comes in the shape of the new iBooks app for iPad, which contains background graphics with four times the resolution of the standard iPad version. The thinking goes: if they're too big for the current iPad, what can they be for?
This wouldn't be the first time that Apple had whacked up the resolution by four on one of its iDevices: the iPhone 4 had the same bump compared to its predecessor the 3GS. Exciting, certainly, and lending weight to the rumours that the new iPads will come with upgraded processors to boot. We'll add this bit of speculation to the pile.
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