New Alienware Area 51 is out of this world

Alienware have carved out a name for themselves over the last twenty years when it comes to gaming computers. The 2014 Alienware Area 51 gaming system has lived up to this name. Dell has said that the flagship gaming system offers performance that is state of the art, along with scalability, while at the same time being easy to use.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

The desktop gaming system offers a stunning new chassis and has been built around the Extreme Edition Core i7 processor of Intel. No surprises that it will support 4K gaming via three full-sized video cards.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

Dell has called the design of the chassis, the Triad. Along with having stunning extra terrestrial-eqsue looks, it was developed to be efficient for thermal management. The design of it makes it easy to get to the interior for any system upgrades. Internal fans have been fitted at the bottom front so as to pull cool ambient air in and the warm air gets expelled out of the back at the top diagonally. Even if the computer was to be pushed up back against a wall there would still be enough venting to ensure efficient heat dissipation.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

From the seated position the port panel on the front can be seen easily and the back panel has been angled away from the wall, to allow people to get a look when cable stabbing.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

The Area 51 is going to be made available with choices of 6 or 8 cores and these are the Intel Haswell-E core i7 processors, which come on the Intel x99 Express chipset. The configurations will be shipped from the factory overclocked with support for up to as much as 32GB of 2,133 MHz DDR4 RAM along with solid state storage and HDD hybrid options, which will support up to five drives.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

As many as three NVidia or AMD graphics cards are able to be installed and these will drive multiple monitors at UHD resolutions and higher. Wireless will be available in 802.11ac Wi-Fi and there is support for Bluetooth 4.0, with gamers being able to choose up to 1.5kW power for running the monster of a computer.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

The Command Centre suite of Alienware has been given an update and is now at version 4.0. It comes with utilities for overclocking tweaks along with fine-tuning to get the best performance, monitoring of hardware, auto performance profiles for apps and games, along with personalized controlling of nine lighting zones in the chassis.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

Dell has also announced a curved display of 34 inches, which is to offer immersive gaming and is said to need less in-game eye movement compared to flat panels. The 60Hz  UltraSharp monitor has a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 and comes with an ultra-thin bezel, with 9 watt stereo speakers integrated, an HDMI 2.0 MHL port, Display Port, and support for Mini Display Port connections.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

You will be able to get your hands on the Alienware Area 51 from next month, with the monitor being available around the world from December.

[Image Courtesy of Alienware]

Via [Alienware]

‘Boris’ the robot can load up your dishwasher

‘Boris’ the robot was shown off at the British Science Festival today as an one of the first robots to be able to work out how to pick up unfamiliar objects in a human like fashion. Previously, robots could only pick up objects of a fixed size in a fixed location, however, Boris can intelligently work out how to pick up objects it has never been put in front of before.

The robot took 5 years and £350,000 to develop. Leader of the project Professor Jeremy Wyatt from the Birmingham University explained why learning how to load a dishwasher was its sole objective:

“The scenario that we’ve got is to get the robot to load a dishwasher. That’s not because I think that dishwasher-loading robots are an economic, social necessity right now. It’s because it encapsulates an incredibly hard range of general manipulation tasks,” he said.

“Once you can crack that, once you can manipulate an object that you’ve never seen before, you can do a whole bunch of different things.”

It comes with humanlike hands and aluminium arms and although loading a dishwasher may seem like a mundane challenge to accomplish, it opens up doors to uses in a broad range of areas in industry and other sectors like surgery. The robot can learn new grips and test out previously learned grips on familiar looking objects. Wyatt said ‘the robot comes up with about 1,000 different grasps in its head in about 10 seconds.’

[Image Courtesy of the Daily Mail]

It can intelligently work out how to grasp, whether to curl the fingers in a looping fashion, use them in a pinching manner, or to use the palm of the hand in a power-grip – each continually growing with variations as the robot learns from experience.

“The system we have developed allows the robot to assess the object and generate hundreds of different grasp options. That means the robot is able to make choices about the best grasp for the object it has been told to pick up, and it doesn’t have to be re-trained each time the object changes.”

Unfortunately it’s going to be a while before you have a robot at home loading your dishwasher. The team says the next big task on the adgenda is to get Boris to use both arms and transfer an object from one to the other.

“Being bi-manual is a real advantage for all sorts of purposes,” said Prof Wyatt, who hopes to see the robot stacking plates by next April.

Via: [BBC]

Australian scientists close to commercialising printable solar panels

A team of solar power scientists in Australia known as the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium are closing in on finally commercialising a cheap and quick way of printing solar panels onto plastic. The team is made up of experts from the CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and Monash University, and they have all been working on the project together for seven years.

[Image Courtesy of CSIRO]

CSIRO’s senior research scientist Dr Fiona Scholes said the technology was ready for the commercialisation stage and could be used to power “laptops to rooftops“. As the solar panels are printed onto plastic it means they have a broad range of uses; thin cases for your electronics will not only protect them but could also power them.

“iPad covers, laptop bags, skins of iPhone – not just for casing electronics but to collect some energy as well and power those electronics,” Dr Scholes said.

They can also be printed semi-transparent which means they can be applied to windows, perfect for giant skyscrapers. “It can be made to be semitransparent – we can use it for a tinted window scenario.”

[Image Courtesy of CSIRO]

The team modified a normal commercial printer so that it could print what they call ‘solar ink’ which is then printed onto thin sheets of plastic. The team originally produced a coin sized solar panel before rapidly upscaling the technology to an A3 sheet.

“It’s very cheap. The way in which it looks and works is quite different to conventional silicon rooftop solar,” she said. “We print them onto plastic in more or less the same way we print our plastic banknotes.”

The CSIRO has had the solar cells on its Clayton roof for the past 18 months, with decent results. The printed cells are 10 times less efficient than standard solar panels, which are made of silicon, but scientists hope to improve that. The technology is however said to be a lot cheaper than silicone photovoltaics.

“It would be wonderful if we could achieve a similar power delivery at significantly reduced cost. Silicon is falling in price, but think about how cheap plastic is. The ink is a negligible cost, so the raw materials are very cost effective.”

Another huge benefit is the ease of transport, meaning that the tech could reach difficult and less fortunate areas of the world pretty easily. According to ABC they have already received a lot of interest from companies interested in commercialising the product.

“We can’t manufacture them here, but we are at the point where they can be taken up by a manufacturer,” she told Guardian Australia.

Source: [ABC Australia]

Have you seen the world’s biggest swimming pool?

Welcome to the San Alfonso del Mar, a private resort in Algarrobo, Chile that is home to the world’s largest swimming pool, holding theGuinness World Record for largest swimming pool by area. It stretches just over a kilometre, 13m more to be precise, and covers 20 acres with a maximum depth of 35.1 m.

It contains 250 million litres of seawater supplied from the pacific ocean which is pumped by a computer-controlled suction and filtration system and treated before entering the pool.

The pool was developed by Crystal Lagoon’s owner Fernando Fischmann and was opened back in December 2006.  Estimates suggest that the pool cost somewhere between US$1.5 billion to US$2 billion total, with annual maintenance racking up a bill of almost US$4 million.

It dwarfs the world’s second biggest pool, the Orthlieb – nicknamed the Big Splash – in Morocco, which is a mere 135m long and 90m wide.

Fischmann said advanced engineering meant his company could build “an impressive artificial paradise” even in inhospitable areas.

“As long as we have access to unlimited seawater, we can make it work, and it causes no damage to the ocean.”

The sun warms up the water to 26 degrees celcius, 9 more than the adjoining sea.

Guests can lounge on inflatable beds or partake in watersports such as kayaking, jet-skiing, water-skiing and yachting. If none of that tickles your fancy then how about hanging out with your friends on a giant inflatable lilly pad, complete with trampoline and slide.

The water is crystal clear and you can nearly see the bottom even at the 35m deep-end.

The view at night is also something quite spectacular.

The Yerka bike could be impossible to steal

If you live in a city then one of the best and most affordable ways of getting around is by bicycle. However, bikes can be stolen relatively easier than cars and even with a good lock they are often stolen. Now the Yerka project has come up with a bike that doesn’t need an additional lock as it is its own lock and the result could be close to impossible to steal.

[Image Courtesy of Yerkaproject]

The Yerka project comes from three engineering students in Chile, and they worked out how to make the bike lock itself. Often bikes that have are chained up have the locks broken and then the bike is easily taken untouched. However their design means that if you break the lock, you effectively render the bike useless.

[Image Courtesy of Yerkaproject]

The bike has a frame that doubles as the lock. The tube that runs downward on the bike frame can be opened so that the bike can be locked around any solid object, such as a lamp post. The saddle that you sit on, along with the saddle post, can then be inserted through the open ends of the frame and this locks the bike. If a thief were to try and break the frame lock they would be unable to ride the bike. The process of locking up the bike takes only the time it would take to put on a conventional lock, around 20 seconds.

[Image Courtesy of Yerkaproject]

At the moment the Yerka is in prototype and the students want people to become involved so that they can turn their idea into a reality. At the moment there are some kinks they are still working out. For instance, how to stop someone steeling the wheels and what would happen if you lost the key to your bike, or whether the materials used are strong enough to withstand any unwanted attention the bike may get. Of course there is also the issue of whether the security compromises the ride in any way. If everything adds up, then this could be the world’s first bike that doesn’t need an additional lock and which cannot be stolen.

[Image Courtesy of Yerkaproject]

Via [YerkaProject]

Paperclip thumbtack lets you pin photos without leaving a hole

A simple yet genius little idea allows you to pin up your photographs without leaving a hole in them. The combination of paperclip and thumbtack was thought up by Japanese designer Yasunori Nagatsuka and has been dubbed the Pinclip. The two have been lying around the office and at home right in front of your eyes and finally someone decided to merge their funcitonalities, but its highly unlikely that Nagatsuka was the first to think it up.

Whilst paperclips and thumbtacks are easily found for a cheap price at your local stationers, you may be surprised to learn that the combination of the two comes in it a price of around $6US for a set of three (600 Yen to be precise)! However, if you got a file lying around it shouldn’t be too difficult to put a bend in a normal paperclip and shave one end into a pin.

 

Motorola to update its flagship Moto X

Motorola’s Moto X was one of the best smartphone releases last year and the company is already looking to release an upgrade this year. In an event last Thursday in downtown Chicago they showed off plans for upgrades to the Moto X as well as the Moto G, and also unveiled more details on the Moto 360 smartwatch and a Bluetooth earpiece accessory called the Hint.

The new device is rumoured to be called the Moto X+1 (although others are saying it will remain as the Moto X classed as 2nd Gen) and comes with a 5.2-inch display with full HD resolution and 423 ppi pixel density, Android 4.4.4 KitKat, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz processor and an Adreno GPU. The aluminium frame around the phone cleverly doubles up as the antenna and Motorola have avoided an ‘Antennagate’ situation by developing a technology they call ‘dynamic tuning’ which senses where the user is holding the phone and increses the signal to other parts of the antenna.

The camera on the rear snaps in 13 megapixels, an upgrade from the previous 10, and it can also capture 4K video and has 4x zoom. It also features a ring flash surrounding the lens for neat effects and lighting. It has four mics vs. three on the original Moto X for better sound capture and background noise isolation, and it has a 2300 mAh battery with a new turbo charging feature that delivers 8 hours of use in just 15 minutes of charging.

While announcing the handset, the company stressed that the new Moto X offers “pure style and pure performance“. The rear casing will come with premium options of 4 different woods and 4 different leathers – something uncommon in the smartphone world but a choice we find rather classy.

They are boasting major improvements in the Moto Voice technology, and you can now have a customised prompt to activate the tech rather than being stuck with a standard like “OK, Google”. Another feature is that when the screen is off, it can display up to 3 notifications which remain pulsing on the screen, and with a little touch and hold of the finger it can show more details in a preview window. You can also slide left and right to preview messages without ever waking up the phone or unlocking the screen which of course we’re sure this will be subject to your personal security settings.

The device comes in at a reasonable $499 and will be available in the fall in America. UK customers will have to wait for the launch on Amazon at the end of September.