Hold on a second while I plug something I like. That thing is Samsung’s mastery of all things display-related. I may run a Mac Pro, but hell if I’m buying an Apple display. It’s all about the Samsung. This year at, FPD 2010, Samsung absolutely did not fail to bring the rock in showcasing all kinds of neat stuff, as evidenced by this video from Netbooknews. Check it out – we’ve got transparent displays, flexible displays, an unbreakable, ridiculously thin display, and perhaps most impressively, a goddamn folding display. I’d like to say the future is now, but the sad fact is that we likely won’t see any…

This is bizarrely charming and cute and funny, yet at the same time practical and innovative. Everyone know the inherent danger of electronics and liquids. Cell phones, laptops and hundreds of other expensive devices entrenched in our daily lives are susceptible to fewer and fewer dangers, but liquid is one substance guaranteed to shorten the life of your favorite gadget. There’s much work to be done in the area of making our technology more robust, particularly in this area, but in the meantime, here’s a quirky, relatively low-tech solution. Floppy Legs is a system for raising a device roughly…

The problem with all this uber-cool technology is, how do we know what is actually useful and what isn’t? What will actually make it into our every day lives and what will be consigned to the tech landfills of tomorrow? 3D TV seems to be the ultimate expression of this. Of course content providers want a new product to sell us. Of course gadget hounds want a 3D TV in their living room. But does that mean every TV in the developed world will one day be 3D? Visualizing this stuff is the key, which is why shows like Star Trek and movies like Minority Report are always hailed as the creators of the vision we all hold…

You thought that Retina Display was smooth. You thought pixels 4 times smaller than regular pixels were impressive. Man, have you got something to learn about what smooth be. Smooth be this: Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a display with a resolution so, so, so, so, so fine, that the pixels used are eight times smaller than those used on the iPhone 4. Now, let’s put this into perspective. To show off the technology, the researchers recreated the U of M logo on a screen 9 microns tall. A human hair is 100 microns wide. I know, right? Created with nanometer-thin sheets of metal,…

It would be uncustomary for me to let a day go by without showing off something designy and musical. Taking a break from all that DJ gear I’ve been hyped about recently, here’s Yamaha’s Silent Guitar.Yeah, it looks like it fell out of Tron. Awesome, right? Right. If you’re a music buff, you’ll be well aware that the Silent Guitar has actually been kicking around for nine years. But the internet was young and stupid in 2001, and Yamaha has just updated it 2010-style, so what better time than now to show off to the rest of the readers one of the strangest pieces of musical tech out there. Seriously, the Silent…

Continuing today’s completely unintentional theme of movie technologies given flesh (er… or the lack thereof, in this case) is a riff straight outta Total Recall. In an attempt to better identify terrorists and other baddies in airports, theme parks and other public places, the Wright State Research Institute is developing a system that can scan a person’s skeleton on-the-fly for traces of … I dunno, badness? “[Terrorists] can’t disguise their bones,” says research engineer Phani Kidambi, who’s leading the project. “That’s where we thought this technology has some merit.”…

When Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wanted to do something creative with their logo back in 1999 to signify their attendance at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert, things were simple for the Google logo; just a stick figure stuck in the middle of the second ‘o’. Since that seemingly spontaneous burst of creativity, changes in the look of the logo have become as regular as Pink’s hair color changes. While the story of the “Google Guys” and their nerdy acknowledgment of their Burning Man attendance may be what originally sowed the seeds to the doodle concept,…

Smokers may have a new way to get their nicotine fix. The Model One, a new project by Stanford graduates, aims to give smokes a new way to get the social and ritual benefits of smoking without the majority of the downsides. The Model One has not claimed to be a healthier alternative to cigarettes, but it will most likely be a much more efficient way to get your daily tobacco fix. Considered a vaporizer, this new ‘cigarette’ will allow smokers to maximize their intake of nicotine without the waste… this means no smoke, therefore less irritating to non-smokers in the vicinity. The Model One, priced…

Forget preconceived ideas that the techi world’s digital destiny is run by the boys, for the boys – it looks like the girls are driving the digital home, with women downloading twice as much mobile content as men. Surprised? Perhaps, but these are the fresh findings found by US mobile ents firm, Myxer (a peddler of ringtones, wallpapers and video clips). Myxer claims its female users downloaded twice as much content in April as its male users. Women accounted for 67% of its content downloads for the month: 4.5 million in total. Men downloaded just 2.2 million items during the month. Myxer admits…