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The best of Toy Fair 2011

Not all high-tech these days is serious. This week is the annual Toy Fair at the Javits Center in New York, where toy companies from around the world show off the coolest high-tech toys you’ve never seen. Here’s some of the somewhat frivolous – but far more fun – technology we found on, and above, the show floor.

Air Swimmers

Here’s the “above the floor” tech just alluded to. These are radio-controlled helium balloons – you get ‘em filled for a couple of bucks at any place that sells balloons (party store, flower shop, etc.). The fish runs on a single AAA battery, the remote takes three, and they’re good for around four hours of swimming, flying, or whatever they’re doing. The tail fin wiggles, and the fish seems to realistically swim in mid-air – it’s one of the damndest looking things you ever saw (as you’ll see from the video). A clown fish and shark will each cost $39.95 when they become available in July.

SoloWheel

Unbelievably, these people have literally re-invented the wheel. The SoloWheel is essential a single-wheeled Segway; just climb on the foot wings, lean forward, and off you go. Like a Segway, it’s self-balancing. From the demo, it looks to roll at around five to seven miles an hour. It’s got an internal battery that needs 45 minutes to charge, which gives you 12 miles of travel time, augmented by the gyroscope, which recaptures movement energy. A 45-minute charge gets you 12 miles. Also like a Segway, the SoloWheel won’t be cheap – $1,500 – when it goes on sale in March.


EyeScope

Not getting enough zoom out of your iPhone 4 camera? Snap on a special case and screw in the longer lens, which will bring you 8x closer than any zoom you slide to on the iPhone. Also included in the kit ($39.99) is a tripod, which you’ll definitely need – with that much zoom there’s no way to keep the image from shaking as if the iPhone were clamped in a hardware store paint mixer. The EyeScope comes in black or white versions to match your phone.

Joystick-It

Supposedly the iPad’s touchscreen and accelerometer is the ultimate controller, but some folks just love the feel of a joystick. Here’s the best of both worlds : It’s a joystick that you plop over the touch direction controls on most iPad games with its non-scratch suction cup. About the size and shape of a chess pawn, Joystick-It has capacitive fibers on its bottom that carry the same electrical impulses as your fingers, and providing more natural, responsive and usually faster control. You can even use two joysticks simultaneously – they run $24.99 for a single Joystick-It or $39.99 for a pair.

BeamzPlayer

Who needs instruments when you can literally trip the light fantastically with BeamzPlayer ($199.99). Connect the player to your Windows PC (no Mac) and you wave your hands to disrupt beams of laser lights to create music. You can trigger musical notes, vocals, sound effects, rhythm, even scratching, to either 50 included songs for game playing, or simply compose your own laser magnum opus.

Zoomy

Capture VGA images and video of a world beyond human vision with this egg-sized 43x microscope. Zoomy ($59.99) connects to and is powered by its USB connection to either a Windows or a Mac PC – no batteries necessary. The LED illuminating light and focusing automatically adjust. Included editing and special effects software turn your insect footage into – well, not art exactly, but something sci-fi, weird and mysterious.

Meon

Needlepoint is neither cool nor high-tech, unless you’re weaving with these strands of colored electro-luminescent wire dubbed “Meon.” You weave the wire through a grid of holes in a plastic frame that correspond to licensed characters, or freestyle to form a picture of your own choosing. Once complete, you plug the finished Meon needlework into a base powered by a C battery, which will light your creation for 50 hours. The Meon wires themselves will last 5,000 hours. There are three different kits, each with an increasing number of included colored Meon wires (from one to eight), ranging between $9.99 and $34.99. At the higher-end, your masterpiece can be animated to respond to ambient music or a motion sensor.

Mimobot Batman Flash Drives

These Batman flash thumb drives won’t help you fight crime, but they may alleviate some office boredom. You get either classical Batman or modern, Robin, Joker or Catwoman. They’re each available in 2GB to 16GB sizes from $19.95 to $59.95.

Hot Wheels Video Racer

Want to get a floor-eye view of your Hot Wheels’ travels? These 1:64 scale cars ($59.99) can record up to 12 minutes of footage, either as the car is rolling by itself, or you snap it into its protective case and strap it to a moving gadget – RC car, skateboard, bikes, helmets, or whatever you dream up. You can view your footage on the LCD screen on the Hot Wheels under-carriage, or use the included color-matched USB cable to view it on your PC. When you can actually buy it this fall, you’ll also get editing software to let you make your own POV racing movie.

80s Retro Phone Case

Arguably the weirdest iPhone case ever, this case ($19.99) will make your phone bigger and clunkier just so it can become a literal and figurative conversation piece – a replica of what clunky cellphones looked like in the mid-1980s. You slide the back off and snap any iPhone inside it. Interestingly, the hollow space behind the earpiece actually increases call volume – maybe it creates an echo chamber of sorts. A separate app that put a retro dial pad on the screen would have completed the time travel illusion – but Thumbs Up has time to cook one up since the retro case won’t go on sale until April.

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Finishing touch: How scientists are giving robots humanlike tactile senses
A woman's hand is held by a robot's hand.

There’s a nightmarish scene in Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 movie Pan's Labyrinth in which we are confronted by a sinister humanoid creature called the Pale Man. With no eyes in his monstrous, hairless head, the Pale Man, who resembles an eyeless Voldemort, sees with the aid of eyeballs embedded in the palms of his hands. Using these ocular-augmented appendages, which he holds up in front of his eyeless face like glasses, the Pale Man is able to visualize and move through his surroundings.

This to a degree describes work being carried out by researchers at the U.K’.s Bristol Robotics Laboratory -- albeit without the whole terrifying body horror aspect. Only in their case, the Pale Man substitute doesn’t simply have one eyeball in the palm of each hand; he’s got one on each finger.

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How 5G is changing journalism
best series finales the newsroom finale

There's little doubt that 5G is starting to touch every area of our lives -- from online classrooms to 5G-powered bots supplying medication to remote citizens. It’s no surprise then that 5G is also changing the way our newsrooms work. 
Once widely available, 5G tools and the faster speeds they deliver will help journalists in at least three ways, professor John Pavlik of Rutgers University. First, he says, “5G can enable journalists working in the field to report more effectively from their digital devices, particularly with regard to high-bandwidth news gathering, such as photogrammetry, and other immersive applications for augmented reality and virtual reality (e.g., volumetric video capture), as well as high-resolution video from mobile devices.”
Second, 5G can enable news organizations to operate effectively without relying on a central, physical newsroom by supporting high-speed internet file sharing. Finally, 5G can help improve newsrooms by supporting better engagement with the public.
The best example of how 5G has made journalism more effective can be seen with the latest collaboration between The New York Times and Verizon. In 2019, the two companies came together to build a 5G Journalism Lab. Tools born out of this collaboration include environmental photogrammetry, Beam, and Eclipse.
Environmental photogrammetry
“Environmental photogrammetry involves taking thousands of still photographs and stitching them together as one large 3D model, giving readers the ability to immersively navigate the space as if they were actually there,” explains Sebastian Tomich, senior vice president and global head of advertising and marketing solutions for The New York Times.
This technology was first used in a 2020 story that toured the Los Angeles mansion where gamer conglomerate FaZe Clan lived and worked. “An article that employs environmental photogrammetry uses as much data as streaming an hourlong television show,” Marc Lavallee, head of research and development for the Times, said in a press release. “Making this kind of reading experience seamless for our readers requires cutting-edge networks like 5G.”
Beam and Eclipse 

Talking about their first proprietary photography app, Beam, Tomich said it allows Times journalists working in the field to capture and automatically upload high-resolution images to the newsroom with nothing but their smartphone and camera. 
Building upon the advances of Beam, the Eclipse app leverages Verizon 5G to expand video journalism. Eclipse can use 5G to transmit professional video files that meet The Times’s quality standards at a speed that competes with uploads of mobile phone videos, which have file sizes roughly 14 times smaller, Tomich said. It allows video journalists to get material into their editors’ hands in close to real time, rather than hours later.
“This "always on" connection facilitated by Beam and Eclipse enables deeper coordination between the newsroom and photo and video journalists in the field,” he said. “With the ability to review footage in near real time, editors can now request additional photos or videos while the journalist is still on the scene.”
Real-life applications
These tools developed by the 5G lab aren’t just ideas inside four walls. The team has already started implementing them to improve the speed and quality of journalism. 
For instance, when the team went to cover the 2020 Oscars red carpet arrivals, Verizon set up a 5G network at the event. Using Beam, a Times photographer roamed the red carpet freely, without interruption or regard for file transfer limits. “He ended up sending eight times more photos than the previous year’s photographer, with an average upload time of 2.1 seconds,” Tomich said. “With Beam, shooting IS filing.”
However, creating powerful tools isn’t always enough for effective real-world practices. Factors like awareness, availability, and access to resources play a huge role in shaping journalism. As newsrooms and 5G providers are waking up to the transformational power of 5G-powered, Pavlik suggests three ideas to better capitalize on the 5G tools available on the market.
He advises newsrooms to: 

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The weirdest tech we spotted at CES 2022
circular phone

I think we can all agree that one of the best parts of any CES is seeing all the weird, wacky, and borderline insane products that surface at the show. You know what I'm talking about: It's the suitcases with ears, the cuddling robots, and all the other stuff that makes you scratch your head and wonder how somebody had the drive and determination to follow through with such a strange idea. So in the spirit of celebrating all the wonderfully odd things that make it to the Consumer Electronic Show against all odds, we've rounded up a modest collection of the weirdest tech we spotted this year.

For more interesting products, be sure to check out our Top Tech of CES 2022 Award winners!
Cyrclephone 2.0

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