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Instagram's classic 'Polaroid' icons return for its 10th anniversary
When Instagram launched 10 years ago today, the app world was more... skeuomorphic. To celebrate those pre-flat design days, the social network has introduced an Easter egg that lets you revert back to the Polaroid icons of yore, including the original October 6, 2010 Land Camera 1000 logo.
This is what it looks like when a neural net colorizes photos
We've seen the horrific results of Google's servers taking acid and interpreting photos with DeepDream, but what happens when a neural network does something altogether less terrifying with snapshots? It'll go all Ted Turner and colorize black and white images with what it thinks are the right chroma values based on analyzing countless similar photos. At least that's what a team of University of California at Berkeley researchers experimented with in their paper Colorful Image Colorization (PDF).
E Ink dashes hopes of a next gen display in 2011, but pencils in full-motion video for 2012
E Ink Holdings is brazenly making us wait until 2012 before producing a successor to its popular Pearl electronic paper display. One of the company's VPs dropped into CNET's offices to spill the bad news: developing and testing a next-generation display "takes some time", apparently, and it is sticking to a two year product cycle. Perhaps E Ink has shifted its focus to the LCD screen in Amazon's rumoured tablet. Or maybe it's still working on the Triton color e-ink display that left us so underwhelmed at CES. Either way, the monochrome Pearl has been knocking around in the Kindle and other e-readers for a while now and although it has better contrast than earlier iterations, it is still ripe for a revamp -- especially a faster refresh rate. But the E Ink VP did hint at some brighter news: the next-gen display, when it does finally arrive, could sport full-motion video. So far e-ink video has failed to go beyond a slightly jittery 10-15fps, so full-motion 24fps or 30fps could definitely be worth the wait.
ASUS Eee Note EA-800 priced at $230, launching in Taiwan this week
Woah, it was only last week that we finalized the naming scheme for ASUS's LCD-equipped note taker, yet today the company's announcing that it'll be available to buy this week in its native Taiwan. Even better news is the $230 price tag (NT$6,999), which makes the Eee Note quite the affordable little device. It's versatile too, thanks to a built-in camera and microphone for recording of notes and a 3.5mm headphone jack for playback. Running on Linux, the 8-inch tablet (1024 x 768 res) is said to be capable of 13.5 hours of uninterrupted use, which doesn't match the similarly monochromatic e-readers out there but is a decent compromise for the functionality on offer. Hong Kong should be the next market on its global tour, to be followed by Germany, Italy and Russia around the turn of the year and China and the US in Q1 of 2011.
Unicat retro TV channels the 1940s, bidding now underway
How does technology a half-century old manage to be this sexy? We're not certain. But this one-of-a-kind, handmade retro television -- which seemingly combines an old desktop lamp and a giant magnifying glass -- definitely tugs at our heartstrings. With a 5.5-inch monochrome CRT screen and no inputs to speak of, you won't be watching Blu-rays on this set, and its PAL standard and 220V plug mean non-Europeans might not be bothered to try. Still, for an old over-the-air TV, it's remarkably full-featured, with knobs for volume, band (VHF-L / VHF-H / UHF), brightness, contrast and V-sync, and we can't get over its clean, handsome design. If your Nixie tube collection is getting lonely, check out the auction at our source link; bidding starts at €300.%Gallery-90244% [Thanks, Alex]
Extremely rare Adventure Vision system up on eBay
So, you think your classic gaming collection is pretty complete, huh? You think your unopened Vectrex and mint-condition Fairchild Channel F make you a true collector, do ya? Trust us, your collection means nothing unless and until you own your own Entex Adventure Vision.Released for about two seconds back in 1982 (only about 10,000 were produced), the LED-based tabletop system is currently being sold on eBay complete with all four available games for a "Buy it Now" price of $5500. Amazingly, the auction has been up for nearly three days with no buyers, seemingly showing that people would rather put a down payment on a car than play a monochrome, 150x40 resolution version of Defender. There's no accounting for taste, we suppose ...[Thanks, Steven R.]
