This is a cool looking new UMPC from a Korean company called Raon Digital. It features a 4.8-inch WVGA (800×480) LCD withauto-rotation and auto-brightness control. What’s really sweet is it’s lithium-ion battery that lasts for about 12 hours, and the low power consumption of it’s AMD Geode processor helps too. You get your choice of an SSD (up to 6GB) or HDD (up to 60GB), with a max 512MB of RAM. It also has Wifi, Bluetooth, an optional HSDPA/Wibro modem, QWERTY keyboard, and optical touch mouse. In Korea only as of now, no plans for a U.S. release. More Images [Aving]

Lithium Technology has rolled out a new line of batteries for use in all-electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.

Lithium Technology showed of the new technology in a new Prius. The 7 kWh battery is made up of 63 lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) cells that push the Prius from 46 MPG to 125 MPG. BusinessWeek says, “The battery management system (BMS) is more precise monitoring fewer cells, keeping them in balance for best performance and preventing damage to the battery due to over voltage, under voltage, over temperature and short circuit.”

When categorizing this post, I felt sort of odd checking ‘Search Engines’ since Google is so much more than that now. Today at Google Developer Day 2007, Google is set to announce it’s latest venture into the offline world, Google Gears.

Gears is, as they describe, an “open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs.” Google Gears is being offered as an open-source technology for developers to extend any web applications offline, not just Google products.

The Google Gears Beta is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

ISPs retain their customers’ private data, it’s no secret. But who are the biggest offenders? Wired News sent a 10-question survey to the eight largest ISPs in the United States, only four responded.

Questions on the survey were “about what information they gather on their customers’ use of the internet, and how long they retain records like IP addresses, e-mail and real-time browsing activity. Most importantly, we asked what they require from law-enforcement agencies before coughing up the data, and whether they sell your data to marketers.”

According to Wired, “AOL, AT&T, Cox and Qwest all responded to the survey, with a mix of timeliness and transparency.”

The ISPs that didn’t respond at all - Comcast, EarthLink, Verizon and Time Warner. Who’s serving you?

Read the results [Wired]

As long as you have a connection to the internet, the new ‘Solo’ from IPEvo will make and receive Skype calls. It features an Intel PXA 270 processor, Broadcom chipsets, and a 2.4-inch color display. The device will be released first in Taiwan on June 11 then the U.S. in July for about $150.

Here is Palm’s much anticipated secret device, the Foleo, which will run Linux. Some features to take note of: one-button access to full-screen email, instant on/off, 10-inch display and full QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, WiFi. Also has USB port, video-out port, headphone jack, and slots for SD and compact flash cards for memory expansion, and it’s pretty light at 2.5 pounds and has a decent 5-hour battery life.

Palm founder Jeff Hawkins says, “Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do. However, there are times when people need a large screen and full-size keyboard. As smartphones get smaller, this need increases. The Foleo completes the picture, creating a mobile-computing system that sets a new standard in simplicity.”

The Foleo should be available in the U.S. this summer at $499 after an intro $100 rebate. Product Page

Here I’ve gathered 8 of the sweetest interactive display surfaces, but they are in no particular order. CLick through to read more about each one.

1. Microsoft ‘Surface’

   

   Microsoft just unveiled this baby today and it’s the first one we’ve seen capable of interacting with your devices through RFID and other wireless technologies.

2. Blue Eye interactive scanner table

   
   
   The Blue Eye table has a glass surface and overhead camera, a projector and a mirror underneath the table. By placing an object on the table surface you can copy it to the screen beneath.

3. Perceptive Pixel interactive touch UI

   
   
   Jeff Han is a researcher at NYU’s Courant Institute, and he has created an interface which responds to touch, hand motions, and is pressure sensitive.

4. ‘Interactive Touchless Display’

   
   
   Lets people “swipe their hand from a distance of up to 15cm away and the built-in sensors translate that movement into a command.”

5. DeLighTable by Thomas Gardner

   
   
   The table has a surface which lights up when you put pressure on it - by moving thick black liquid out of the way to let the light shine through.

6. Microsoft’s TouchLight Technology

   
   
   You will be able to tilt and pan an image, such a refrigerator or airplane. Microsoft is not going to develop the technology itself, but is instead licensing the technology, known as TouchLight, to a start-up.

7. Corian Digital Roulette Table

   

   Now this is what I call, sweet! We’ve seen our fair share of futuristic interactive tables, but this one just seems like fun.

8. iBar Interactive Bar Table

   
   
   The intelligent tracking system of iBar detects all objects touching the surface. This input is used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter.
   

More interesting developments in the world of image recognition search. This one is specific to Google and is something a Lifehacker reader has found.

When you add &imgtype=face to the picture search string, only photos with faces are showing up.

An example used is when doing Google Image Search for “Paris”, the majority of photos returned are of the city. When you add the suggested string above in a search for Paris, you get a bunch of Paris Hilton images. Now it’s obviously not perfected, but there is no doubt that this sting is working to differentiate between human faces and none-human things.

I’ve been holding Google suspect to implementing a facial recognition search ever since the acquired Neven Vision in August, and in the same month also registered GoogleImageTagger.com.

Here’s a slick looking new UMPC for Korea, it’s the Kohjinsha SA Plus. You’ll get, 512MB memory, a 100GB HDD and Bluetooth.. The 4.5 hour battery life in power saving mode is not so great, and reaches 80% charge in one hour. Starting at around $1,000 USD, this thing has a much larger hard drive than Fujitsu’s new UMPC, and basically has all the same specs.

More Images [Aving]

This Flickr set shows what happens to a keyboard in a fire. The keys were far enough away from the heat to survive, but close enough to get turned into goo. Some of the shots look like pebbles, they look like a Flintstones keyboard.

This keyboard is a victim of suspected arson in a lumber mill a couple years ago. The keyboard itself was not on fire, and the underside of it is still in perfect shape…basically the heat of the fire above it melted all the plastic in interesting ways.