Okay, so maybe it's not a huge deal if your Civic Hybrid only hums around town, but when behind the wheel of say, a Lightning GT, you're going to want that bad boy to make some serious racket. Lotus is taking a somewhat fresh concept and kicking out an idea of its own in order to give some grunt back to battery-filled whips. Currently, the auto maker is utilizing a Prius (what, couldn't net an Elise loaner?) in order to show off its "Safe and Sound" technology (video after the break), which integrates a speaker setup just behind the front bumper in order to alert pedestrians just before they're mangled by an ultra-green, eco-friendly vehicle. Wonder if we'll ever be able to purchase new exhaust tones from our in-dash navigation system -- '69 Shelby GT500, anyone?

[Via Wired]

We know how annoying it is when you're trying to bounce all of your old Rush LPs to FLAC (you know, so you can jam to Moving Pictures on the go), and your files are filled with ugly surface noise. Well, ELP (the company, not Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) feels your pain -- and it wants to help. For the low, low price of $2500 you can supposedly rid your music of pops and clicks (but not hiss, strangely) with the turn of a knob. Of course, there are much cheaper software options for this sort of thing, and you can't use it on 78s, but you probably won't be worried about that once you hear how good Tom Sawyer sounds.

[Thanks, Matt]

It should probably go without saying that anything connected to a power source within the confines of a hospital has a fair shot at being pertinent to the livelihood of at least one individual, but obviously a 17-year old teenager in Germany needed the memo. After the perpetual noise of what would prove to be his neighbor's life support machine "got on his nerves," he proceeded to simply unplug the device without precaution in order to ensure that "he got his peace and quiet." Of course, we can only assume that the sirens and squeals that were emitted due to his misreckoning were immensely louder than the prior hum, but some folks just love to learn the hard way. Thankfully, medical personnel stepped in and saved the man from perishing, but the teen at fault lost a lot more sleep after that whilst being questioned by police.

[Via El Reg, image courtesy of NAIAD]

Being able to communicate in high noise environments (like building sites, or heated LAN parties) poses particular problems: on the one hand, it's often a legal requirement that workers wear ear protection, on the other, you can't hear much with ear muffs on. The Sensear provides a solution to this problem by coupling a noice cancellation headset in the traditional ear protector style with technology that filters out background noise from speech. We'll have to wait for the reviews to hear how effective the directional microphones and filtering algorithm actually are, but just so that wearers have no excuse to ever take the headset off, the makers have thought to include Bluetooth technology to route calls through the headset's speakers. With a bit of tweaking, we'd hope that the Sensear could help people gamers ignore annoying housemates or relations, but we're not sure the current algorithm's quite up to filtering out repeated requests to clean one's room.

[Via Popgadget]

Did a noisy batch of PS3s make it to EB Games store shelves in Canada? That's the question of the hour, as a number of customers with units manufactured in January with serial numbers in the CE133190xxx and CE133212xxx blocks have reported having severe "whining" issues with their consoles. Let us remind one and all that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are both quite loud with their respective fans running at full bore, but this new high-pitched PS3 whining was apparently so severe that it drove one customer to return his console multiple times because the sound was so unbearable, while another couldn't even make it through a Blu-ray movie with his Mrs. without having to shut down the machine. Anyone having unusual noise issues with theirs? As always, shout it out.

P.S. -Listen to a recording of the high pitched whine here.

Granted, we've seen some fairly bizarre methods of promoting one's product, and while Microsoft's Zune hasn't exactly been tagged with controversial propaganda or flashy automobile campaigns just yet, all that changed in a New York minute. According to reports from Hell Square residents in lower Manhattan, a California-tagged, Zune-branded SUV rolled through Ludlow Street during the "wee hours of February 25th," but rather than handing out flyers to the night-owls still roaming, the vehicle decided to test out its "competition grade stereo system" in a densely populated neighborhood. Dubbed an "egregious display of noise terrorism," the 3:00AM blasting from a (presumably Microsoft owned) Toyota FJ Cruiser didn't garner the positive attention that the firm was apparently hoping for, and consequently, quite a few residents of the area are now flaming mad and demanding restitution. Honestly, we've no problem with a little viral marketing every now and then, but blowing out the 'hood on a Sunday morning probably takes things a bit too far, and if you're interested in catching a video of the blasting in action, be sure to hit the read link and await an official apology that will probably never surface.

It's no secret that the Xbox 360's disc drive is hella noisy, by far outstripping any incidental fan noises that might be going on inside that white box. Luckily, help is on the way -- sort of. Microsoft has started building its 360s with a new DVD drive manufactured by BenQ-LiteOn-Philips, the BenQ VAD6038, which purportedly runs "super-quiet" in comparison to the previous two drives used by MS, and even speeds up and smooths out load times. Of course, this does nothing for the 10 million plus current owners of Xbox 360s suffering from the noisy insanity of the older drives, but it does mean that as Microsoft ramps up production with this new drive, your next 360 hopefully won't fall victim to the whir.

[Via Xbox-Scene; thanks smash_linux]

As with some other recent reports concerning the trio of new consoles, we're not asserting that this decibel test is entirely accurate, as the methodology was far from scientific, but the results were interesting -- and a bit unexpected -- to say the least. While users have long since complained that the Xbox 360 kicked out an unusual amount of fan noise courtesy of the overheating problems it's been plagued with, one lucky owner of all three consoles found that Microsoft's unit actually wasn't the biggest racket-maker in the bunch, all things considered. By utilizing a standard handheld decibel meter, he measured the ambient sound output of the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 just after start-up, playing games sans an optical disc, and during disc playback to judge which console is noisiest overall. While results were noticeably mixed, it was concluded that the Xbox 360, on average, was actually the quietest of the bunch, and while the PS3 remained fairly calm initially, an extended period of play threw its fans (and consequently, the noise factor) into overdrive. Interestingly, Nintendo's Wii kept nearly silent during bootup, but after playing a few rounds of Wii Sports, it actually became the loudest of the three, clocking in at 70dB, or nearly 8dB higher than the nearest competitor. Granted, most folks won't notice the background whir when the 5.1s are thumpin' and folks are getting rowdy on the last lap of Excite Truck, but c'mon, this is the stuff we geeks are made to scrutinize, so be sure and hit the read link to make of it all what you will.

[Thanks, Alex]

Now that nearly all links between cellphones and cancer have been demolished, thanks to that pesky thing called "science," fear-mongers have been scrambling for another issue to sink their teeth into. But have no fear, we're sure they'll think of something. In fact, it looks like they already have: the hot new "OMG we're all going to die!" issue this holiday season is noisy Christmas toys. We're not even joshing. Apparently in a study done by the Deafness Research UK in conjunction with Dr. Brad Backus of University College London, 14 out of 15 toys tested produced noise levels above the recommended safety limit when held close to the ear. 8 of the 15 were just fine during normal use, but the three worst offenders -- a machine gun, a tommy gun and a cap gun -- are on the "avoid" list. So Bobby can't have a machine gun for Christmas, what else? Dr. Brad say: "Our advice is pretty simple: don't let your child hold noisy toys too close to their ear and don't let them play with them for more than an hour a day. Most parents probably don't want to listen to these toys for too long anyway!" Oh, is that all, we're sure Bobby will understand completely. After all, it's for the children!

Researchers at Binghamton University in New York have filed for a patent on a method of extracting unique identifying information from digital photos, based on pixel noise. According to the researchers, each camera generates its own digital "fingerprint" based on random variables that occur in the manufacturing process. By comparing multiple images from a single camera, the researchers say they can trace the images back to the specific camera that took the photos. The developers see potential for the method in law enforcement activities, such as tracking down child pornographers and forgers. We hope they're right; certainly, any tools they can use are worth exploring. However, we can't help but wonder whether clever criminals will just be able to run a few Photoshop filters and be able to wipe out any trace of their cam's fingerprint before uploading their pics.

[Via Ars Technica]

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

At next week Photo Marketing Association show, all eyes will be on the viewfinders, LCDs, and output of digital cameras. As growth of these cameras slows in the U.S. within the next few years, though, manufacturers need to continue to increase their appeal. One feature that has improved dramatically in the past few years is digital video capture. Many digital cameras can now capture 30 frames per second of digital video until they fill their storage media, and conserve space with advanced codecs such as MPEG-4 used by Kodak and DivX used by Pentax. Legacy limitations such as not being able to zoom while recording video are also starting to fade to black.

The expedience with which consumers can now capture high-quality digital video clips with their cameras is spurring a wave of digital video sharing services such as Google Video and YouTube, where consumers can share their amateur porn precious memories. Paradoxically, though, in this online video renaissance, the previous champion video capture device -- the camcorder -- has been left holding the accessory bag. While increasingly popular DVD-based units have greatly simplified the path to playback on the television, they've done little to bridge the online gap or shrink the size of the devices. Here slim flash memory-powered digital cameras have a great advantage.