The cell phone business has slowly moved away from two-part hinge designs to a more solid candy bar style, as found in the blackberry and the iphone.

But if the new design concept revealed today by Fujitsu and NTT DoCoMo is any indication, wireless technology and a little magnetism might give back cell phones its second piece back, with a touch-screen twist. It’s like a previously chopped off ugly Siamese brother that was brought back, because he’d suddenly lost some weight and bleached his teeth. 

The concept is split up into two playing card-sized touch screens, one a screen and the other a keyboard, and each contains specific hardware that balances the design. The screen piece includes the software and the video card, and the keyboard piece comes with the 3G and other communications.

In order to be able to use it with one hand, a magnetic bar is lined throughout the phone. That way, you can connect them in whichever way it’s more comfortable for the user. Unfortunately, we don’t know how much resistance the magnetism supports, and holding on to two screens might prove annoying and could lead to dropped phones and cracked screens.

Since there are two different pieces talking to each other through Bluetooth, you could have a series of apps that work with each other and are interchangeable with other people’s phones. It’s what I imagine a Nintendo DS style community would be like, if you could split your tiny console into two and give one piece to a friend.

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Do you remember a couple of years ago when Gotuit came out with “SceneMaker?” It was all new and amazing back then.  It let people take videos from platforms like YouTube, and then cut scenes from it, and tag them with metadata and stick it on a Gotuit (and eventually any other) page.  Although people could edit videos before this, it was never with quite the same precision and tagging ability that SceneMaker offered.

Back then, Gotuit also got users familiar with searching within a video and certain company names enabling this process started popping up.  One of which was Pixsy.  Pixsy started to be heard more and more.  They more than earned their stripes in the video and image search world.  They are now the number one B2B provider of private label Video and Image Search to website and apps.

First founded in 2005 by a team from Microsoft, they now power video and image search for some of the ‘Net’s top brands like Comcast, Travelocity, Lycos, and even National Lampoon. According to Nielsen ratings, the “powered by pixsy” network of websites extends it reach to over 35 million unique users every single month.

Gotuit is currently no wallflower either.  They power video for top brands such as Lifetime, Fox, Sports Illustrated, Major League Soccer, just to name a few. So what does this partnership mean?  It means that the scene-level metadata is now able to be syndicated through mRSS feeds to Pixsy, and can be included in their Video Search Playback (”VSP”) platform. 

Every scene is assigned structured and specific attributes by the publisher.  There is a thumbnail, a title, a description, URL link, embedded player code; all of this helps Pixsy identify the scene.  Pixsy then uses all of this premium metadata to drive all that more traffic back to the original site, or Pixsy can also instead offer many more video elements inside Pixsy’s VSP for publishers to reap greater rewards when their content is watched off site.

Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin said this about the partnership:

“Gotuit’s premium metadata approach is a terrific fit with Pixsy’s mission to dramatically enhance traffic and monetization for website owners. Allowing our search technology to work against each scene inside an asset, instead of just the asset itself, grows the search index for each video by an order of magnitude for the user to better search against and the website to monetize.”

For more information on either company, check them out at Gotuit or Pixsy.

Via [businesswire]

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There are some times that I curse living in the UK. And the start of the new fall TV line up is one of those times. Not only do you lucky U.S. viewers get too see my favourite series months before I do, but if you watch them online you can see them even sooner. For the third year running, NBC is making shows available via their site before you can catch them on TV. And you don’t have to watch only on NBC’s website, either: you’ll be able to see shows on iTunes, Hulu.com, Amazon Unboxed and on the Microsoft Zune, too.

Isn’t it about time CBS, Fox, ABC and the CW got with the program(s), too?

Via USA Today.

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Adobe has announced that a Flash player is in the works for Apple’s iPhone.

Paul Petiem, senior director of engineering at Adobe, confirmed at the Flash on the Beach conference in Brighton that  his company was working on an application to enable Flash playback on iPhone, according to FlashMagazine. However, Petiem noted that the iphone is a closed platform, so it’s up to Apple whether or not Adobe’s application will be approved.

Adding a Flash application to iPhone would quell one of the most common complaints about the handset. Currently, iPhone is unable to load web sites running Flash animations, audio, video or games.

It remains questionable whether or not Apple would approve of Flash, seeing as the player would compete with games sold through the iPhone App Store. Some have recently scrutinized Apple, accusing the company of being anti-competitive by rejecting applications submitted to the App Store on the grounds that they "duplicate" the handset’s features.

Flash for the iPhone confirmed at FOTB [FlashMagazine]

Photo: nialkennedy/Flickr

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At Wired.com we have often written about the Steampunk subculture that reimagines many of today’s objects and technologies with a 19th century Victorian aesthetic creating a retro-futuristic feel. That means mechanical computers and steam powered robots among other things.

IEEE’s Spectrum magazine’s latest issue has an article looking at some of the major figures in the Steampunk movement including Sean Slattery or Jake Von Slatt, I‑Wei Huang, known as Crab Fu, and Richard Nagy or Datamancer.

There’s also an amazing slideshow featuring many of the Steampunk contraptions.

The question for the movement is whether it can "remain true to its DIY principles" and yet grow or will it slowly fade away," says the article. What do you think?

The Steampunk Contraptors [IEEE Spectrum]

Photo: Steampunk Laptop by Jake Von Slatt (Pashasha/Flickr)

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Is there nothing Lego cannot build? Guess not, as some hardcore Lego fans have managed to come up with an actual working electronic V8 engine that was created entirely from Lego Technic pieces. It took the inventor approximately half a year to come up with this, but I must say, the result is stunning to say the least. Good thing it doesn’t need any grease to run as things could get really messy from there onwards.

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Is there nothing Lego cannot build? Guess not, as some hardcore Lego fans have managed to come up with an actual working electronic V8 engine that was created entirely from Lego Technic pieces. It took the inventor approximately half a year to come up with this, but I must say, the result is stunning to say the least. Good thing it doesn’t need any grease to run as things could get really messy from there onwards.

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Dell has released two more displays for the desktop in the form of the S1909WX and the S1709W. Both displays will share a 16:10 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1,440 x 900, which means you can’t use it to play back your movies in full HD if you’re rocking to a Blu-ray drive. Despite that, either monitor can be wall-mounted thanks to a VESA mount. The former targets a wide audience with 1,000:1 contrast ratio and 300cd/m2 brightness, while the latter is more suitable for the business market thanks to its 600:1 contrast ratio and 250cd/m2 brightness. You can pick up the S1909WX for $199 while the smaller S1709W is slightly cheaper at $179.

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Kanchana ’s recent article on Abunda Trade reminded me of NextWorth which actually pays you cold hard cash for your gently used iPod or iphone or lets you trade them in for an upgrade. For example, you can get a trade-in value of over $200 for a 1st Gen iPhone (16GB).

Customers simply enter the model and condition of their current iPhone or ipod online and a value is calculated based on the entered model and condition. Once the customer accepts the estimate, NextWorth sends a box, the customer sends the device and a certified check will arrive in seven to 14 days.

It certainly is safer than selling independently. If you’ve tried it, let us know.

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I have to say, sometimes people scare me, or in this case specifically some parents scare me.  I keep waiting to listen to the news to hear about a child sent to school in a giant roll of bubble wrap.  There are just some parents that see danger lurking around every corner even with the smallest of things.  One thing I never ever even considered dangerous was a dimmer switch.  I mean seriously, who finds a dimmer switch dangerous?!   At first I prayed that the Electro Puff Lamp Dimmer was just a bizarre concept design, but no such luck.

Someone actually paid to have it manufactured and some crazy parents I’m sure are snatching them up.  The switch works by you gently tapping it and it will change the light to a different level of brightness.  The puff is made from recycled carpet fiber and conductive yarns.  It also is stain-resistant and antimicrobial, which is good since this is meant for people with kids.  It’s safe for ages 8 and up and you can pick it up at the MoMA Store for $35.

Source: OhGizmo

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