Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]
By Charlie White For Mashable
1. Personal Killer Whale Submarine
Seabreacher Y not only looks like a 17-foot killer whale, it acts like one too. But this is one killer whale you'd like to be sitting inside. It's powerful enough to hydroplane along the surface at 50mph and zip along underwater at 25mph.
Besides its killer looks, it even has a rear-facing camera 's video you can watch on an LCD screen. It's not a deep-diving sub, though, going only 5 feet down, but the fun begins when you throttle up and leap the thing out of the water like a porpoise.
Save up your $100,000, and you too can turn into a virtual killer whale.
2. Valmet Dawn Electric Car
Is this a car or some strange new kind of vacuum cleaner? It's a concept for an electric car by Valmet Automotive, the same company that builds the gorgeous Fisker Karma and the cute Th!nk car. Even though this car resembles a hovercraft, there are wheels underneath those skirts -- but good luck driving it into your driveway.
There's precious little information about this concept car the company rolled out at the Geneva Motor Show this week, making me even more eager to find out about that strange-looking blue device just under the front grill.
Our friends at Jalopnik are speculating it might be a wireless induction charger. A plug-in without having to plug in? Count me in -- I'll park it on the street.
3. Start8 Plug-in Brings the Start Button to Windows 8
Windows 8 is giving users of its Consumer Preview a lot of new stuff to learn, and many especially miss that familiar Start orb on the bottom left. Now you can bring that back with a simple plug-in from interface modification specialist
Stardock. We tried it, and it's useful.
Click on the orb, and you can see all the apps in Windows 8 style. Or you can configure it to take you to the Start screen. Right-click on that orb and there's a useful Run command and a Shutdown function. And you can choose your own Start button image if you don't like that orb from Windows 7, even going back to the old Windows XP Start button if you wish.
It's an easy and free download if you give them your email address, or you could just try using Windows 8 the way it is. I've been getting used to Windows 8 over the past 10 days, and although it's a bit frustrating at times, I'm starting to think the screen full of live icons might be better than the start menu, especially after I've customized it to my liking.
4. Delta Lamp
Look at how creative you can get with lighting designed with the latest ultra-powerful LEDs. That's what makes designer Michael Samoriz's Delta lamp possible, with its chevron-shaped wing that can be tilted around to any angle.
The tiny bulbs are so slim, you can fit them inside ultrathin configurations, ganging them together to blast out a tremendous amount of light. Now, LEDs have been refined to emit natural-looking colors, too. Best of all, they're a whole lot more energy efficient than incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs.
This one's a design concept so far, but it gives you a peek into what the future of lighting will be: better, cheaper, and more efficient.
5. New iPad with Higher Rez, 4 Cores
You've probably heard enough about the new iPad that's shipping next Friday, so let me just sum up the two biggest new features: It has a spectacularly high resolution screen, higher than most anyone has ever seen, and certainly sharper than your garden-variety HDTV. And, it has a quad-core processor inside, letting you kill Angry Birds faster than you've ever imagined.
I'll have more to say about the new iPad next weekend, but in the meantime, take a look at my esteemed colleague Chris Taylor's first impressions of the latest tablet from Apple.
6. SimCity 5 Coming in 2013
Look how far SimCity has come! Its first version consisted of primitive 8-bit graphics on a grid. SimCity 5 looks like a simulation of the real world. Although the new SimCity 5 trailer released this week looks lots more realistic than the actual game will, it still has much-improved graphics over its predecessor according to its developer, EA Maxis.
The game, to be introduced in 2013, has a new multiplayer component that will allow players to compete against each other, where your city can affect those of your opponents. There's also a green aspect of the game, letting you win by creating the most energy-efficient and environmentally conscious city.
What we'd like to see is a grand design where an ultra-realistic SimCity is paired up with the inhabitants of EA Maxis's other blockbuster hit, The Sims.
7. Super-Sharp Dolby HDTV Costs $40,000
Who would spend 40 grand on this 42-inch Dolby PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor? Filmmakers and video game developers will be first in line for this ultra-accurate 150-pound display, billed by Dolby as achieving "the widest and most accurate color" ever seen on any monitor anywhere.
I've met color correction professionals who work on Hollywood movies, and these people can see colors I can't even imagine. Such a monitor would make a tremendous difference to them, showing them precisely what color they're working with, more accurately than any monitor could ever do before. And that, to them, is probably worth $40,000.
Aside from that, this is just one badass-looking monitor.
8. Beats by Dr. Dre Beatbox
If this Bluetooth-equipped Beats by Dr. Dre Beatbox sounds half as good as the
Beats by Dr. Dre Studio headphones I reviewed a few years ago, you're in for a treat. Besides this $400 iOS dock, Dr. Dre has some wireless Beats headphones on the way as well.
This iPhone dock will be launched exclusively by AT&T, and it runs on AC or battery power, charging up your iPhone or iPod touch while blasting out the clean tunes. Take your pick of black or white (both with that iconic with red trim), and see what happens when the "Beats" name spreads out to AT&T and beyond.
9. Instaprint Location-Based Photo Booth for Instagram
Imagine you're at a party and you take a picture on Instagram with your iPhone. With Instaprint, you'll be able to send that photo via Wi-Fi to a printer, and have a photo in your hands within a minute or two.
It's a Kickstarter project, and it's about a quarter of the way to its $500,000 goal -- if enough people invest enough money, it will be developed into a real product. How much would such an instant-printing system cost? It'll be $399, but of course you'll have to buy a lot of paper to go with it. Might work best as a vending machine.
10. iPro Lens by Schneider Optics
I tested this iPro Lens System from Schneider, the people who make fancy lenses for television cameras and such. It turns out this is an incredibly ingenious design for a pair of high-quality lenses for your iPhone, offering an easy way to carry them from place to place.
Included in this $199 system is a wide-angle lens where you get a 35% wider field of view, and a fisheye lens that gives you 165° field of view. The lenses can be attached together and stored inside a handle that itself attaches to a special case into which you place your iPhone 4 or 4S. You can mount that handle on any tripod, too.
I tested this system of lenses, and found their quality to be superb. The fisheye lens is fun to play with for outlandish effects, and the wide-angle especially adept at shooting video. Although this excellent design is a bit too pricey at $199, I still think it's a wonderful idea, executed with exceptional quality.
Check out the group of bonus pics, next in this gallery.
Bonus Pic 1
Here's the wide-angle lens, attached to the included case.
Bonus Pic 2
You can store both lenses inside this handle, which attaches to any tripod.
Bonus Pic 3
The two lenses are quite tiny -- good thing there's a convenient way to transport them.
Bonus Pic 4
Here's the system, disassembled.
Bonus Pic 5
Shot with the wide-angle lens, I could get really close to this lovely lily. The wide-angle lens is great for video, too, giving you 35 more degrees of view.
Bonus Pic 6
Look at how crazy the fisheye lens looks. Big fun!
Bonus Pic 7
If you crop these pictures, you might actually be able to use them for something.
In a week dominated by Apple’s iPad event, there were a surprising number of fascinating tech products introduced at the same time. We dug deep, looking for not only the coolest products and designs, but those that are unusual, useful, and futuristic as well.
We continued our experimentation with Windows 8, and found a plug-in that’s already been developed, perhaps easing the pain of the transition for those resistant to change.
We also got our hands on a spectacular (yet pricy) lens system for the iPhone, and found it to be an exceptional product.
SEE ALSO: Previous editions of Top 10 Tech This WeekAs is our wont, we found astonishing conveyances for traveling both underwater and on land, and tossed in a surprise or two along the way. So here it is, the latest Top 10 Tech This Week.
Here’s last week’s Top 10 Tech.
