SlashGear Week in Review – Week 10 2011

Welcome to the latest edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! There were big goings on this week in the tech world with a new tablet and lots more so let’s get to it. The Kinect was hacked into a 3D scanner for turning the person it scans into a 3D foam bust. The pieces it makes are like foam puzzle pieces.

An ad agency in New Zealand created a new board for park benches that presses an ad into the legs of the people that sit down. When those ad pressed folks start to walk around people behind them can read the ads. Fujitsu unveiled a really cool 22-inch screen that has no cords at all. The display uses inductive power and wireless data links for a very clean look.

TazTag announced that it would be showing off a new tablet at CeBIT 2011 called the TazPad. The little tablet is pretty slick with NFC, ZigBee and the Android OS onboard. Intel outted a new SSD early in the week called the 510 Series that uses the SATA 6Gbps port. The cool part about that is that the SSD has blazing fast 500Mb/s read speeds.

Tractor beams are a sci-fi staple when it comes to capturing enemy ships trying to escape. Chinese physicists think that they tech might actually be possible by using laser beams to turn photons in to tractor beams. LG has won an injunction against Sony and customs in Europe has seized PS3 shipments. LG has also filed for an injunction against Sony in the US but so far that hasn’t been granted.

The price on the WiFi only Xoom tablet by Motorola was confirmed Tuesday. The cool and geeky InPulse smartwatch has been updated with Facebook Places check-in capability. The feature allows the user to check in with one button press.

A company called Tobii unveiled an interesting laptop this week that is controlled using the eyes. All the user needs to do is look at an icon to launch it. Microsoft is launching the next version of IE on March 24. The new browser would be IE 9 and 36 million copies of the beta are in use.

We reviewed the new 15-inch MacBook Pro notebook computer early last week. The new notebook is dramatically faster than the one it replaced thanks to Sandy Bridge. Some shots of what was supposed to be the iPad 2 leaked early in the week ahead of the official unveil by Apple. The images showed the back of the tablet.

Olympus Tough TG-810 “crushproof” digital camera surfaced this week and it has GPS and should be strong enough for some harsh climates outdoors. The camera has a 14MP sensor and 5x optical zoom among other things. Olympus also unveiled another new standard digital camera called the SZ-30MR. The camera has a 16MP sensor and can shoot 1080p HD video and still shots at the same time.

At the iPad 2 event, mid-week Steve Jobs took a chance to bash the Android Market and the number of apps for Android 3.0. A nice little graphic noted that there were 100 Android 3.0 apps and 65,000 iOS apps. The Apple iPad 2 went official on Wednesday and we were at the event to see it firsthand. The new iPad 2 has a dual-core processor, front and rear cameras, and lots more making it a worthy update to the original.

We spent some hands on time with the new iPad and put it on film for you to look at. The video shows off the features of the iPad 2. Mid-week we also spent some time comparing the iPad 2 to the original iPad. This is the story to read if you are trying to decide if you should upgrade from your original iPad.

We learned that some of the new Samsung Galaxy S II smartphones will have NVIDIA Tegra 2 inside and some will have the Samsung Exynos SoC inside. The catch is buyers will have no idea what version they are getting. Sprint has teased that it may have a new LTE network in place across the US as early as late-2013. The final decision on to LTE or not will be made later this year.

The new dock for the much thinner iPad 2 surfaced this week with a new design. RIM is apparently getting version of its BlackBerry Messenger app ready for both Android and iOS devices. This is expected sometime in late 2011 according to source and will let the different devices chat on the BlackBerry platform.

The Apple Digital AV Adapter surfaced this week that will work on the new iPad 2 as well as the iPhone 4, latest touch, and the iPad. The adapter will shoot video in HD resolution out to the TV via HDMI. A wind-powered mobile phone charger concept surfaced at Yanko Design late in the week. It looks like the wind turbines that are used offshore to generate power and in this case, it sends power to a charge pad that needs no wires to charge your device.

If you purchased an iPad in the last two weeks and were mad when you saw the new iPad 2 launch and the price of remaining iPads get cut you can get a refund. A Samsung exec has noted that the company is looking at the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and will improve parts of it that are inadequate. The changes could include a new lower price.

The first 3D film in the Star Wars franchise has a release date. Episode I The Phantom Menace will land on 2-10-2012 in theaters around the country in 3D. Microsoft started to let owners of Samsung WinPo 7 devices get the download that was previously pulled after some smartphones were bricked. As it turns out the “fixed” update had issues as well.

Angry Birds now has its own official page on Facebook. A version of Angry Birds will be coming to Facebook soon. Asus has tipped that its will have a 3D quad-core tablet this year and might have a Windows Phone in 2012. The devices will use a quad-core chip and that chip is thought to the NVIDIA Kal-El. Thanks for reading, see you next time!