Watch the iPhone Swipe a Credit Card [Square]

Square, one of a few iPhone peripherals hoping to turn the iPhone into a credit card swiper, sounds promising. But how does it work? YouTube shows us!
Through its own app, Square processes a credit card, produces a receipt and even takes a signature. But as you'll see in this clip, there's one petty but fixable problem to the system—the Square dongle. Watch as Rose needs to steady the plug with his finger to swipe a card without popping anything loose.

I mention this now because I'm hoping that Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Digg's Kevin Rose—who are both behind the project—don't each have a ski house garage full of these horribly design dongles. Beef up the casing a bit to increase its surface area against the iPhone, just as Mophie has with their recently announced credit card scanner, and everything will be right as rain.
[Gizmodo via Kevin Rose via Ubergizmo]

No more scorched shirts with the Auto Lift iron [Ironing]

We all get distracted at times, whether it's the UPS guy at the door, or a baby's cry, and it takes only a brief moment to take our focus away from the task at hand. Normally, we can just pick up where we left off a few minutes later, but if you're ironing, the smell of scorched cotton will soon remind us of what we were doing before being so rudely interrupted.

Scorched clothes could become a thing of the past with the Auto Lift iron from Ariete. This Italian stroke of genius has a sensor that knows when you're gripping the handle, and only then will it retract the little feet that hold the iron up away from your fancy threads. Let the handle go, and the iron quickly lifts up again. There are additional benefits to this face down position, as the iron will be more stable with its heavy plate in the face down position, and you're less likely to fry yourself by brushing against the hot surface.

The Auto-Lift is available in Europe for about $95. Let's hope their US importer brings it in soon.

[DVICE via Appliancist via Ariete]

The Motorola Shadow: a Droid For the Light Side? [Shadow]

There's not a whole lot that's certain about these images, which popped up at Mobile01, showing Motorola's Shadow as a friendlier-looking Droid. But they're interesting.
These aren't the first rumors that have trickled out about the Motorola Shadow. One leak, a few weeks ago, pegged it as having a super-thin body and a 4.3-inch, 800 x 484 screen. These renders, of admittedly dubious provenance, suggest a more Droid-like form factor, except with a white keyboard and wrist strap.

Mobile01 also suggests that the Shadow could be a candidate for the next official Google Phone and thus the designation of Nexus Two. Maybe, but it seems a little too early for Google to be picking the Nexus One successor. And what of HTC? [Gizmodo via Mobile01 via Engadget]

ThermaHelm: Helmet Cools Biker's Brains In Case of Accident [Bikes]

Here's a pretty simple idea that may save a lot of lives: A motorbike helmet that cools down the rider's head in case of impact. According to the manufacturer, their new ThermaHelm prevents overheating and swelling of the brain.
They also claim that there are head injuries in 80% of all motorbike accidents. When that happens, the brain usually starts swelling. Traditional helmets act as insulators, and the brain's temperature may increase to the point in which it can cause death or permanent damage. The ThermaHelm prevents this by firing a chemical reaction on impact, which activates a layer that cools down the biker's head.
[Gizmodo via ThermaHelm]

Nokia Gives Us a Glimpse of the New Symbian UI

The folks at Nokia are working hard on the new Symbian^4 platform, and now we can see a part of their progress, at least where the UI part is concerned. Granted, this is just a proposal for Orbit and Direct UI, but it shows Nokia’s commitment to rectify all the issues that current implementations of Symbian undoubtedly have, especially when compared with the iPhone OS or Android.
In a nutshell, the new visuals seem to be better suited for a finger-controlled touch-phone, with a toolbar at the bottom of the screen, floating dialogs and drop-down menus from the top navigation bar.
It’s all distant future, though, as we won’t see Symbian^4 based phones at least until the first half of 2011, but one can’t deny the UI looks better than what we see on current Symbian phones.






[Mashable]

LG shows off newspaper-sized flexible e-ink display

Whoa, LG, why didn't you show us this flexible e-ink display at CES? For whatever reason, the Korean company decided to break the news now of this 19-inch-wide display, about the size of a regular newspaper page. At a thin 0.3mm, it's slightly thicker than a piece of paper (about 0.06mm), and its 4.5-ounce weight will feel a lot heftier than a newspaper.
LG accomplishes this trick by mounting the e-ink screen on metal foil instead of the usual glass or plastic we've seen in other e-ink displays. It's similar to the thicker Skiff display we saw at CES, which has a slightly flexible display mounted in a non-flexible reader. LG's big 19-inch prototype is obviously designed to capture our attention, but LG plans to actually mass produce smaller 11.5-inch flexible-ink displays by the end of June.
Too bad this breakthrough didn't happen a year earlier, because even though the current crop of computer tablets aren't flexible yet, they'll probably elbow e-paper technology aside. That is, until the e-ink is bright and colorful — but we'll have to wait a few more years for that Minority Report future to arrive.
[DVICE via Digitimes]

This $400 3D Camera May Not Be James Cameron Approved [Camcorders]

Panasonic may be aggressively pushing their $21,000 3D camera for broadcasters and indie film types, but already, smaller players are applying the laws of cheap manufacturing to 3D cams.
By DXG (if you've never heard of them, we don't blame you), this pistol-grip pocket cam shoots in dual-lens 3D. Its 3-inch display has been said to look 'almost holographic,' plus it comes with an extra 7-inch display for watching 3D content (I believe the screens use glassesless parallax barrier tech).
The video itself is recorded to motion JPEG, which while an accepted standard in 2D, probably won't be compatible with 3D systems into the future—plus there's no word on resolution. But hey, 3D, just like Avatar! Look for the 3D DXG camera this June.
[Gizmodo via DVICE via OhGizmo!]