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Twin camera concept floats in water, unites sea and sky
Taking an underwater self-portrait isn't the easiest thing in the world -- even if you're fond of robot DIY -- but this concept camera won a Red Dot award for capturing more than typically meets the eye. The UNDERABOVE floats like a buoy thanks to a pair of watertight ballast compartments, takes images with twin cameras above and below, then stitches the result into a turquoise vertical panorama viewable on the inbuilt LCD screen. If and when this device actually gets produced (and gains some serious image stabilization) the worlds of fish and man will never be the same.
ASUS Eee PC 1218 trades veil of secrecy for popular design award
Well, will you look at that. In its haste to proclaim itself winner of a 2010 Red Dot design award, ASUS has inadvertently or perhaps intentionally announced the brand-new netbook that received it -- the Eee PC 1218. She's a beaut, too, with a slim, one-piece aluminum shell that evokes the MacBook Air but still packs a substantial number of expansion ports. There aren't any hard specs quite yet, but the above shot shows it'll come with a webcam and chiclet keyboard, and in a second pic after the break we can make out three USB sockets, Ethernet, VGA, a pair of 3.5mm audio jacks and an HDMI port -- the last of which possibly suggests a dedicated GPU (here's hoping an Ion 2) for HD video playback. Oh, and lest we forget, ASUS says it's also got a soft-touch plastic underside, for all you coffee-swilling, netbook-slinging butterfingers out there. No word on pricing or availability.
BenQ's Qisda QPD-111 Creative Design Center MID wins design awards, doesn't exist yet
Not that we have anything against products that don't exist, but it would seem to us convenient to have something to show on the other end of a couple design awards. BenQ's Qisda QPD-111 just won a red dot and iF award, but BenQ doesn't seem quite ready to show it off to the world. The MID sports a 5-inch screen, and is "designed for highly mobile people pursuing the best Internet experience while on the go." That fancy little red "Hot Key" sends you to the world wide internet with a single press, and the device can handle multitouch pinch-to-zoom and other gestures for browsing. There's also a built-in accelerometer, which lets you switch between communication and Internet functions with a little shake of your precious, imaginary MID. There's obviously no information on price or availability at this point -- we're not even sure what OS it's running -- but it's certainly a sexy and almost potentially usable entrant into the confounding and primarily useless MID market.[Via SlashGear]
LG debuts "ebook" concept laptop with OLED screen, liquid fuel
As much as we like to write about the play-by-play of gadgetry innovation, it's a sad truth that some devices, like laptops, really haven't changed much since their debut in the 1980s. LCDs, a mainstay of all laptops since that period, are one of the most delicate and expensive pieces of hardware in the whole design. But what if you could replace LCDs with OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes), which apparently don't need a bezel, and consume less electricity? LG has just built such a concept machine, calling it the "ebook" (apparently no one told them about other eBooks?), which is powered by an awesome bubbly blue methyl alcohol fuel instead of a regular (read: boring) lithium-ion battery. The ebook has just won a "best of the best" Red Dot Award, a German prize for industrial design, and we're already drooling over its astonishing look and potentially awesome capabilities -- we want one, like, yesterday. Ok, LG, if you can't debut this product within a year, at least see if you can strike a deal to get some product placement in the next James Bond film, so we can see it in action, dig?[Via Laptoping]
