Camera Phones Plaza

Finally we used RANDOM.ORG to choose the 3 winners randomly and they are:

1. Dana, who just won the Trio MP3 Player with 1GB storage for playing music on the go;
2. Michele Curtis, who gets the Belkin’s USB 2.0 4-Port Ultra Mini Hub to connect 3 devices to her PC USB port;
3. Abeen, who will receive the $10 iTunes Gift Card to buy cool content from Apple iTunes.

We want to congratulate our readers and thank you all for participating in the September Giveaway on TechPin.



And now we invite you to enter the October Giveaway by voting for your favorite car prototype and win one of the 3 Amoco/BP gas gift cards worth $25 each!!! (For US only)

Note: The 3 winners will receive a message for email verification and destination address details.

Update: abeen is moving and doesn't have an address where to receive the prize, so we have to more forward and send it to the next person on the list: Damien Basile.

Our favorite search engine commemorates its 10th birthday and the Google logo that you see on the homepage was inspired from the original one from 1998, when the Google history started officially.

The world’s most popular search engine was registered as a domain back in 1997 and in 1998 was named the Top Search Engine by PC Magazine. In the same year it launched the Google Friends Newsletter and the first prototype for the homepage.



By 1999 press revealed the first positive reports about the Google search engine, while in 2000 the 10 language versions were released for French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish, after which it became the world’s largest search engine with 1 billion URLs indexed, announcing also the Google AdWords service and the Google Toolbar. Google Image Search was launched in 2001, when the web index reached 3 billion documents.
One year after, Google News was launched with 4000 news sources, while in 2003 it acquired Blogger.com, and launched Google AdSense.

The year 2004 was full of innovation for Google, as it brought the Official Google Blog, Gmail, Google SMS, Google Desktop Search, and many, many others, reaching 8 billion web pages index.

In 2005 It launched Google Maps, the Search History feature, iGoogle, Mobile Web Search, Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Blog Search, Google Reader, the Analytics, and Gmail for mobile.

What happened in 2006 probably starts to sound more familiar to you all. There appeared Picassa, Google Chat, Google News on mobile, Google Finance, Calendar, Google Trends, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and YouTube was acquired.



In 2007 you started to search through Google Maps’ traffic information, Hot Trends, Street View for Maps, Google Earth, and even Maps on the iPhone. Android mobile platforms became one of the hottest subjects of discussion in all newspapers.

This year, Arabians finally got the chance to search on Google writing their queries from the right to the left. Other cool new features introduced during this year include Doodle 4 Google, FriendConnect, Google Translate in 10 more languages, Google Finance real-time stock quotes, Google Search for the iPhone, Google Chrome web browser, and a big and fat URL index of over 1 trillion web pages.
Ten years and still counting…

I guess you’ve seen quite a few 3D displays this year coming from various renowned makers, but I bet you haven’t heard of Barco and their virtual reality systems. Forget all those measly 3D displays, Barco has just unveiled their passive stereo 3D system complemented by a 10 megapixel resolution.

The new 3D system should find its application in the automotive industry, engineering and scientific research and oil and gas industries. We are not talking about an LCD display here, as it would be a far too tedious job to build such a gigantic screen. Barco’s LX-5 3D system includes an advanced projector that includes a liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) technology, which allows for a much higher pixel density compared to LCD- or DLP-projectors. Another important aspect is the inclusion of high dynamic contrast ratios of up to 10,000:1 and a light output of 4,500 lumens.

According to the press release, the LX-5 is now ready to be integrated with Barco’s CADWall concept. This called for an optimization for passive 3D stereo setups. The CADWall concept is a multi-channel display system with a high pixel density. Barco also provides a superflat high-contrast screen, mechanics, and both display management hardware and software to complement the advanced projector. All these components seamlessly work together to bring an outstanding 10 megapixel 3D stereo image.

I’m not sure if this is going to end up as a commercial product. Anyway, the advanced 3D setup sure presents itself as a neat solution, but looks like it would rip wallets for more than $100k.

Remember the Deep Blue super computer from IBM, which was pitted against Garry Kasparov in a game of chess? Yes, the supercomputer that beat Kasparov was among the fastest in 1997. But compared to Road Runner, Deep Blue is just a mere server who can easily be matched by a quad-CrossFire 4870X2 setup set on “general purpose processing” mode. But what would you say about a supercomputer that knows how to handle its balls… in a game of billiards, that is. Check out the demo clip:

It’s called the "Deep Green" robotic pool playing system, probably because of the table color. According to BoingBoing, the Deep Green integrates an intricate mechanisms and advanced camera system, which might not predict all the possible trajectories of the billiard balls or your own moves, but still, its ability to adaptively analyze a table is still impressive.

But it’s not clear why you should buy or build one of these. Sure, you might not find experimented pool players to improve your skill every day, but at least you get to teach a cute girl to play from time to time and you won’t get frustrated from being beat. Plus, the Deep Green might tuna mock and get into a infinite winning streak loop. It’s a machine made by us mere humans, after all.

Why should all those Aston Martin DBS owners be the only guys to have unique watches to go with their cars? What about the Bugatti Veyron owners? Yeah, I know there aren’t many of these out there, but still, I reckon one of the most expensive cars out there should be honored with a timepiece worthy of its design. Parmigiani is proud to present their finest watch specifically made for those of you who can afford to buy a Bugatti Veyron (the Hermes pimped version, if you insist).

The timepiece, known as the Bugatti Faubourg, comes in an extravagant case and the intricate movement, along with the materials integrated in the watch raise its cost to an impressive. $233,900. At least it’s not the most expensive watch out there. The dial features an odd angle so you can easily read the time even when you’re driving at 400+ km/h, without having to twist your hand and get distracted. In fact the dial is prolonging with the rest of the case which includes the complicated movement.

Since there aren’t many Bugatti Veyron owners out there, Parmigiani decided to make only 20 Faubourg watches, so you might want to hurry up and order one today.

(Source: DVice)