Sony announced yesterday its latest Walkman with the NW-E060 Series available with either 4GB or 2GB of internal memory and integrated Noise Canceling solutions with the usual Train, Flight and Indoor mode.
These new walkman comes with a 1.4” color LCD, pack enough juice for about 30h or music playback and comes with an interesting external plug-in speaker that will turn your little DAP into an always ready tiny boombox.

Panasonic just announced this morning its new 12.1 notebooks with the SX and NX Series. Both models comes with a 16:10 ratio screen with a 1280×800 resolution or optional 16:9 one with a nice 1600×900 resolution and optional 720p web camera.
Depending of your specification of choice Panasonic will be able to offer you either a traditional HDD or fast SSD capable to boot your system in just 9 seconds thanks to Panasonic Quick Book Manager.
By default the SX and NX will comes with a Core i5 2450M CPU, USB 3.0, WiFi ABGN, WiMAX, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, HDMI out… and an optical drive for the SX version.

The new ActiveHybrid 3 series will feature a system that can predict the best time to charge its batteries. Since the navigation map data includes hill profiles, and the car knows the direction you’re headed this means fuel efficiency.
Say you’re about to go uphill for a while and then descend back down hill. Your car will let you use more of your battery instead of precious fossil fuel while climbing knowing it can recharge on the way down. Pretty sweet eh?
ActiveHybrid 3 will go on sale this fall. Expect to get about 37mpg on the highway before navigation

It may not be all that human-like in its current state, but a team of researchers at the University of Ottawa are promising that this robot will get there sooner or later. Dubbed “Pumpkin,” the bot will apparently have its parts replaced piece-by-piece with more life-like counterparts over time, including parts that make use of a new artificial skin the researchers have developed. It not only includes the usual array of sensors that give the robot some degree of tactile sensitivity, but a network of tubes that circulate hot water to actually increase the temperature of the skin. According to the researchers, the eventual goal is to have a robot that appears and behaves naturally enough to make humans feel at ease when they’re interacting with it, but it might get a bit worse before it gets better — the next step is to replace the head with an anatomically correct model of the human skull, which will have the aforementioned artificial skin stretched over it.

Going mobile can mean different things for different types of users, and the GeChic On-Lap 1301 Portable Monitor answers a particular road warrior need: having more screen real-estate. I have seen some solutions out there that use tablets by extending Windows monitors over WiFi, but although I really like the idea, the latency is pretty bad, when it works.  GeChic On-Lap 1301 tried solves the problem the old-fashion way: by providing a $200 USB-powered monitor that is light enough (1.9lbs) to be “mobile”.Curiously, the GeChic On-Lap 1301 is designed to be mounted on the back of a laptop, thanks to four suction mounts. Unfortunately, this will probably not work for any laptop that has a soft-touch feel, or any laptop that is curved enough to prevent the suction mounts from working. That’s a lot of laptops in my opinion

nothing wrong with that, and in my opinion, the whole laptop-mounting idea is over-engineered, or at least over-thought. The monitor connects with a couple of cables: 1xUSB (power) and 1xVGA or 1xHDMI for video signal. I really like the simplicity of having a USB-powered monitor, because it means that I don’t need to carry a power “brick” around.

The Windows setup was extremely easy, and I guess that it would work just the same with Mac OS as it is a regular monitor from the computer’s standpoint. I was up and running in a couple of minutes. In terms of image quality, it’s “OK” if you look at the monitor straight-on, but the view angle is fairly poor, even for a mobile device. Looking at the display from either sides will quickly result in a loss of brightness/colors. In my opinion, this is something that should be fixed for the next iteration of the product.

In its current state, this is not really a product that I would use “as is”, even for $200. I really like the “idea” of having a light, portable monitor, and the 1366×768 resolution was fairly good in relation to the screen size. My first piece of advice for GeChic is: don’t try to make it “mountable” on the back of the laptop: it complicates everything, and makes the while thing bulkier. Also, they should move the connectors to the side of the screen. Finally, I think that an update should integrate some kind of rigid display cover/protector could (or not) act as a stand.

In short, I really (really!) like the idea of having a 2lbs USB-powered monitor, but the display quality needs to be better, and the design needs to be more practical. The current one has too many moving parts, and the lack of real stand makes it clumsy. GeChic, I’ll keep an eye for a 2.0 version.

*Note: while the monitor “runs” on a standard USB power at 500mA, it may require more power if the brightness is superior to 30% – check the user manual of your laptop to see how much power the USB port can output. Some laptops can go to 1A.

Specifications

• 13.3″ TFT LCD
• 1366×768
• DVI + VGA inputs
• USB input (for power) 500mA minimum, up to 1A for maximum brightness (5V DC)
• 335 x 227 x 13.8mm, 865g/1.9lbs

Getting yourself a new eReader? Why don’t you take a look at this Kobo Wireless eReader which is now on sale over at Buy.com for only $89.99 (Silicone Skin included). This compact and lightweight device offers a 6-inch E-Ink display with 16 level grey scale, a 1GB of internal storage, an SD card slot, a USB port and WiFi connectivity.