DELL: Alienware Aurora ALX

High end gaming PC’s are the pinnacle of desktop computing power. The race to be the best of the best, to occupy that pinnacle has heated up with Dell announcing  the immediate availability of the new Alienware Aurora ALX. Faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap server towers in a single bound the Aurora ALX is a gamers Superman suit. With options including the Intel Core i7-3960X, NVIDIA GTX 590 and Raid SSD’s the Aurora is technological tour de force with all of the leading edge technology available as part of the customization options. Prices start at $3,099, from there the system can be customized to match the depth of your pockets. The fully customized Aurora ALX setting you back $6,999 for the highest specification Über gaming machine.

Every aspect of the Aurora ALX has been designed with no compromise gaming in mind. Dell could have used air cooling for the Extreme Edition CPU but that would be a cost compromise and frankly far too normal, instead the Alienware uses integrated water cooling to allow extreme CPU speeds. The top end processor option includes the Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition CPU that is factory overclocked to 3.9Ghz and 4.2Ghz turbo mode, for a 6 core CPU that is blistering fast. Even cooling the Aurora’s case has been taken to the extreme with the Active Cooling System, a series of vents that run along the top of the Aurora ALX which open when extra cooling is required. Read the full article »»»»

My Robot Nation

Fellow robot fanatics Rejoice!! A brand new source for the objects of our desires has appeared on the web. My Robot Nation’s website has recently opened for business allowing any citizen of the web to design their own Robot and then at the click of a button have it 3D printed. Designing  your Robot couldn’t be simpler, with the latest 3D WebGL interface the site feels more like a character builder in the latest computer game, this is point and click design at its simplest and best. The full 3D view lets you customize every millimeter of your new Robot. Once your satisfied with your creation hit the make my robot button and relax until your custom robot is delivered to your door. When unwrapping your robot you are required to pronounce, like an over-eager Dr Frankenstein, “It has Arrived”.

Built a top the latest web technology – WebGL and HTML5 – which limits to access Chrome and Firefox users at the moment. For Chrome users the My Robot Nation app can be downloaded from the Chrome Store, giving a slightly smoother and faster feel to the application. Read the full article »»»»

ASUS Transformer Prime: Übertablet, Portable Gaming Powerhouse and Sweet Business Suite

The ASUS Transformer Prime has already had to endure such superlatives as blazingly fast, super slim, functionally brilliant and sexy as hell, it would blush if only it weren’t true. Don’t be fooled by the name though The Transformer Prime is no child’s toy, it is in fact the must have tablet for Christmas, ASUS certainly hopes it will be anyway. Earlier this month ASUS and NVIDIA officially announced the Prime and it’s specifications. At the same time NVIDIA introduced to the world it’s brand new QUAD core chipset, Tegra 3. Only a few days after the announcement videos appeared of Google’s latest operating system – Android 4 Ice-Cream Sandwich - running happily on the Prime. Thankfully the wait for Prime won’t be long, GameStop yesterday let the cat out of the bag by listing the Prime for pre-order with the product release date of December 9. Get ready world, the Transformer Prime is about to take over Christmas.

The Prime is pushing the boundaries with firsts, the first quad core tablet, the first tablet to run Ice-Cream Sandwich. Even more importantly it may be the first tablet to pull off the split personality trick. By day with the keyboard attached the Prime is a sleek productivity machine, by night it separates from it’s keyboard doc, loosing the business suit to become an on the go entertainment guru.  The Prime’s leading edge technology may well give ASUS a generational lead over it’s competitors. ASUS has literally leap frogged a generation, the generation that it’s competition is still using. Read the full article »»»»

Augmented Reality for $35.oo!?

Transform your iphone into an interactive gaming system with the AppGun! If we could live anyplace, we’d choose Augmented reality, what a wonderfilled place to settle down! Ok, now we’re awake, this ubercool app is - AppGun for iPhone – won’t be available until 11th August 2011. Pre order yours today from PrezzyBox at www.prezzybox.com DO IT, you know you want to! At £19.95 / $US35.00 it has to be the cheapest hit your going to get into augmented reality!?

CLEVER CLEVER CLEVER! we love the cleverness of this ubertoy! This cool piece of kit means you can be a part of the action from your own living room and try and defeat the evil aliens as they try and take over! It is up to you to single-handedly halt their invasion, you can do it! Simply download the free app and you are ready to go. Your iPhone fits securely in place on the AppGun and it is really easy to get started. Shoot the aliens to win the game and emerge victorious. To reload simply tilt the gun back. You can choose to play in 90, 180 or 360 degrees so it just depends how brave you feel! Now you really can be in the centre of the action and with lots more apps coming soon you will be spoilt for choice!

Apologies for the overuse of the exclamation, we do  genuinely like this ubertoy though.

Suitable for iPhone 3GS/4 and iPod Touch

Dimensions:

• Height -28cm

• Length -51cm

• Depth - 8cm

Stanford, Translucent Devices Now Powered By Transparent Battery

Flexible and Transparent is something we like a lot, something we would definately slot into Übercool! - TDK O-EL Transparent Phone Display -  Slotted into technology, we reckon it’s the way of the future. Flexible, transparent lithium-ion batteries have been made by a team of boffins at Stanford University in California, a true technological leap that could spawn see-through electronic Übergadgets such as translucent iPads and iPhones. Many electronic components can be fabricated to be transparent, but so far this hasn’t been possible for the power supply, says materials scientist Yi Cui, who led the work, which is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Batteries are normally made up of a pair of electrodes separated by an electrolytic solution, with something to conduct the current to an external circuit, and packaging to hold it all together. But only the electrolyte is naturally transparent, says Cui. And to make matters worse, he says, these components need to be piled on top of each other, which means all of them must be clear for the device to be transparent

Batteries are normally made up of a pair of electrodes separated by an electrolytic solution, with something to conduct the current to an external circuit, and packaging to hold it all together. But only the electrolyte is naturally transparent, says Cui. And to make matters worse, he says, these components need to be piled on top of each other, which means all of them must be clear for the device to be transparent. While transparent materials can easily be found for the casing and conductors, the electrodes tend to be naturally opaque. Cui’s solution was to make the components so small that they are beyond the resolution of human eyes. This is done by creating each electrode out of a very fine mesh, instead of a solid sheet or rod of the material. Because no individual strand within the mesh is wider than 35 micrometres, they are too small for the eye to detect and so when stacked they appear transparent, much like looking through two very fine sieves.

Creating such tiny features out of active electrode materials is tricky, says Cui. Lithographic fabrication techniques are capable of creating structures at this scale but these processes involve using solvents that would be harmful to the electrodes. So Cui’s group used microfabrication techniques to first create a grid pattern mould out of silicon. Then a 100-micrometre-thick layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a flexible, transparent polymer, was applied using a technique called electro-spinning. When the PDMS was removed from the silicon an aqueous slurry solution containing the active electrode material was applied to it, which filled the grid-like trenches to form a mesh, says Cui.

Cui and his colleagues show that they can create lithium-ion batteries that let 60% of the light that hit them pass right through, and an energy density of 10 watt-hours per litre. “That’s very transparent,” says Cui. Not as good as glass, but clear enough to read text through. But 10 watt-hours per litre is a low energy density. The energy densities of conventional Lithium-ion batteries are typically an order of magnitude greater than this, says Hiroyuki Nishide, a chemist at Waseda University in Tokyo, whose own group is working on a type of transparent battery that uses nitroxide radicals as charge carriers.

Cui agrees, but says it should be relatively easy to push the energy density to roughly half that of conventional batteries. Making the electrode meshes deeper will increase the volume of the active material and the amount of stored energy without making the battery any more visible, he says. Besides the aesthetic appeal of creating transparent gadgets, this sort of battery could also help reduce the size of portable devices, says Nishide. For example integrating the power supplies of smart phones within their displays should make them more compact. But the main innovation here seems to be the fabrication technique, which may not be limited to just lithium-ion batteries. This strategy seems pretty versatile and may be applicable to a range of different battery types, says Nishide.

Source: Nature

Source: Yang, Y. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA h