The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two
LCD screens -- a 17-in. primary and a 10.6-in. secondary screen.

The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes
with customers' choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro
mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as
much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive
bays for up to 960GB of storage.

It's all in an 11-lb. brick -- five times the weight of netbooks,
such as the Asus Eee 701, and at least double the weight of typical
laptops -- that is encased in the ThinkPad's trademark ebony exterior.

"This is the nitro-burning drag racer of ThinkPads," said Craig
Merrigan, vice president of global consumer marketing at Lenovo, in a
briefing this week.

The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.

News about the W700ds was originally timed for release the week of the Consumer Electronics Show in early January. But details leaked out on blogs earlier this month after a Web page went live early on IBM's Web site.

"Why two screens? Most people are using two monitors at their
desktop. So we wanted to give them all the things they are used to on
their desk," said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager for ThinkPads.

The primary WUXGA 17-in. screen is brighter and more colorful than
other notebook PC screens, Williams said. The main screen is rated at
400 nits of brightness, which is brighter than any other notebook in
the market, he added. It also has a color gamut equivalent to 72% of
Adobe RGB that is better than other notebooks and a plus for
photographers and graphic designers, Williams said.

The W700ds' secondary 10.6-in. vertical screen is about the size of
a typical netbook display, Lenovo said, or about 40% the size of the
W700ds' primary 17-in. display. It can also be tilted up to 30 degrees
like a car's rearview mirror.

The W700ds also includes a built-in WACOM digitizer, also called an
electronic drawing pad, and color calibration software. Despite its
power and weight, Williams claimed that the W700ds runs "incredibly
cool" because of the use of dual fans and dual-heat reduction systems.

The trade-offs? Besides price and weight, the W700ds is bulkier than
typical laptops, measuring 16 inches by 12 inches, and is 2.1 inches
thick. The ultrathin MacBook Air, by comparison, is 13 by 9 inches and only 0.75 inches thick.

Richard Shim,
an analyst at research firm IDC, said the W700ds is a "very niche-y,
technical showcase type of product" that will nevertheless likely be a
"big hit" with photographers, designers and developers who will value
the included productivity-enhancing tools over its shoulder-aching
weight.

Lenovo unveiled the single-screen version of the ThinkPad W700 in August. That machines starts with a price tag of about $2,500.

To connect to external monitors, the W700 includes both DisplayPort video adapters as well as dual-link DVI.

The W700ds is so wide that it boasts a separate numeric keypad, a rarity on laptop keyboards.

Can a television ever be too big?

Here's a comparison of various subways drawn to scale. I've used quite a few of these - I hadn't realised that Paris' was so small.

This chair needs to be seen to be believed.

Get a Leatherman instead.

The Falkirk Wheel is the world's only rotating Boat Lift and is used to connect the Forth & Clyde and Union canals in central Scotland.

Designed to replace a series of lock gates built in the 19th Century - long since demolished and replaced by housing - the Falkirk Wheel is the showpiece of the Millennium Link project where coast-to-coast navigation of the canals has been re-established for the first time in since the 1960's.

Do you suffer from bad vibrations? It could be the knobs on your stereo. Perhaps what you really need are some wooden ones. For true idiots audiophiles only, a bargain at $485.

Everybody wants a jetpack - with a flight time of 5 minutes the price is around $200,000.

"Conventional furniture is in contact with the earth through gravity. Floating Bed overcomes this fundamental power and falls towards the sky. With a floating distance of 40cm one can think of different functions such as a bed, sofa, Japanese dining table, display for products or as a base for a floating pavilion."

Currently, this masterpiece of the imagination only exists as a 1:5 scale model, which debuted at the Millionaire's fair in Belgium. Any millionaires in the market for a floating bed, but aware of the damage magnets can do to cash cards need not worry: "The magnetic field on top of the Floating Bed is strongly reduced, so bank cards will not be erased."

Watch an amazing demonstration of precision RC flying indoors.

Here's a cheap car that can out-do almost anything else out there - including a 600cc motorbike. Watch Clarkson's face halfway through as the wind whips it.

The size of the device changes depending on the amount of data it holds.

When the device is about to blow up you will see the familiar error message on your screen: "There is not enough free space".

When swithched off the flashbag remains pumped up, so you can estimate with the naked eye how much more pics, books and music albums can be transferred into it.

The clever new six-stroke design was developed by 75-year-old mechanic and tinkerer Bruce Crower, a veteran of the racing industry and a the owner of a company which produces high-performance cams and other engine parts. He had long been trying to devise a way to harness the waste heat energy of combustion engines, and one day in 2004 he awoke with an idea which he immediately set to work designing and machining. He modified a single-cylinder engine on his workbench to use the new design, and after fabricating the parts and assembling the powerplant, he poured in some gas and yanked the starter rope. His prototype worked.

His addition to the ICE design is simple in principle, yet a stroke of genius. After the exhaust cycles out of the chamber, rather than squirting more fuel and air into the chamber, his design injects ordinary water. Inside the extremely hot chamber, the water immediately turns to steam– expanding to 1600 times its volume– which forces the piston down for a second power stroke. Another exhaust cycle pushes the steam out of the chamber, and then the six-stroke cycle begins again.

Besides providing power, this water injection cycle cools the engine from within, making an engine's heavy radiator, coolant, and fans obsolete. Despite its lack of a conventional liquid cooling system, his bench engine is only warm to the touch while it is running.

More here.

Bleex 1, an experimental exoskeleton, lets a person carry a 70-lb load, along with the 100-lb Bleex 1 itself, but feel as if he is carrying a 5-lb load.

Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack. The plastic and carbon-fiber braces are affixed rigidly to the soldier through a customized pair of standard Army boots, with more compliant and giving connections at the chest and waist. These looser connections prevent blisters and abrasions.

The 2-hp engine turns a pump to pressurize the hydraulic system with 1,000-psi fluid. Hydraulics power the actuators, giving the exoskeleton its muscles and letting it move. The engine also turns a generator for electricity. The device carries about a quart of gas, enough for 15 min of high-powered walking. After experimenting with a number of fuels, including concentrated hydrogen peroxide, Kazerooni (lead engineer) decided on using gasoline based on its power density. It also lets the device be refueled in the field. If Darpa has its way, however, the exoskeleton delivered to the Army will probably use JP-4, the common battlefield fuel for tanks, humvees, and other armored vehicles.

Key to controlling Bleex 1 is the lack of operator controls. Instead, Berkeley researchers clinically analyzed the human gait and programmed the robotic legs to follow that pattern. The wearer simply moves his limbs, and the suit detects that movement and powers the suit to follow. The backpack load is almost entirely supported by Bleex. But because the device is so sensitive to inputs, it is almost unstable, says Kazerooni. The operator is needed to provide balance.

The device, called the Mosquito, emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.

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