Although it looks like some sort of strange spider on your head, the Emotiv EPOC headset is actually a much smarter creature. The device lets you use your mind to interact with a computer, allowing you to control games via your thoughts.

Emotiv has been showcasing the technology at this week’s Game Developer Conference and several people have tried it out with pretty impressive results. They report being able to move a cube around the screen by just thinking about the direction it should go.

To do so, the software is first calibrated with the user’s thoughts. It tells the user to think about the box moving up, for example, and records what that person is thinking. Then, the next time the same thought occurs the box will actually move up.

The company claims that EPOC can also detect more than 30 different expressions, emotions, and actions such as smiling, winking, grimacing, and angry or happy feelings. Read more »

A tip has surfaced saying that Apple is preparing to drop the prices on the iPhone and iPod Touch by $100 within the next two months.

The price drop is believed to be making room for 3G iPhones later this year. Also, the 8GB iPod Touch might be dropped from the lineup entirely.

Apple may be announcing these price changes at the February event, along with the long-awaited iPhone SDK. Good news as price drops are always appreciated, especially when Apple is involved. We wouldn’t mind Apple keeping the 8GB iPod Touch and dropping the price to $199.

Polaroid has announced their Zero Ink mini-printer device, meant for printing digital camera issues quickly on the fly via USB or Bluetooth. The printer uses no ink whatsoever, and prints out borderless 2×3 images with a sticky backing, so you can gleefully put them up on walls and anywhere else.

The Zero Ink technology, dubbed ZINK, uses heat to produce an image on special paper, which Polaroid describes as “an advanced composite material with embedded yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals, activated with 200 million heat pulses, in 30 seconds, in a single pass…With 100 billion crystals in a 2x3in print, the paper is 100% inkless.”

The printer has a scheduled release date of June in the UK, but no mention of a US release date yet.

Financial analysts are predicting a 3G iPhone by midyear due to ever decreasing inventory of the current iPhone model in addition to growing demand for a 3G model. A 3G iPhone would also greatly boost the phone’s presence in European countries, making it seem like the next obvious step for Apple.

3G technology allows for high speed wireless access, which would greatly improve the user experience of the iPhone. 3G is not widely deployed in the US currently, and having a 3G iPhone would greatly widen the potential audience for the device. It would also provide just the boost needed to reach the 10 million iPhones sales goal by the end of 2008.

We hope to see a 3G iPhone very soon, perhaps even as early as the last week in February.
Photo: http://www.iphoneros.com

Nokia has unveiled the “Remade” concept phone, made entirely of recycled materials, at MWC.

Although just a prototype and non-operational at the moment, the message this phone sends is very good, and very green.

The case and touch-sensitive keypad are made from old cans, hence their metallic finish. Even the electrical components can be created from recycled materials.

“It really shows what can be done with materials,” said Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. “It is only a concept now – I cannot make a phone call – but it gives you an insight into how we think we can break new ground.”

It’s great to see Nokia thinking green while trying to stay classy. The phone looks good, and certainly would do more good than harm were it ever produced.

[Via Engadget, guardian.co.uk]

Designer Reuben Png brings us the D:Scribe, a digital fountain pen that can email and SMS anything that you write on paper. All that’s required is a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone.

The D:Scribe is just a concept, but it has a lot of potential (assuming, that is, that we have the technology to make one of these). It can record anything you scribble on paper, including drawings, and send them or save them for viewing later. Once a message is sent, the D:Scribe displays its status on the built-in OLED screen.

The design is loosely based on a quill and inkwell – the quill is the pen and the inkwell is an electromagnetic induction charger to juice up the pen when needed.

D:Scribe looks and sounds great, but unfortunately it’s not real. At least, for now.

As the company puts it, the XPERIA X1 “redefines premiumness,” and from the looks of the phone we wouldn’t say anything less.

The X1 has all of the features that the iPhone is missing, and then some. This one really does seem to be poised to become the phone of all phones.

The XPERIA X1 has a 3 inch VGA touchscreen sporting a resolution of 800×480. A fully functional QWERTY keyboard slides out from the side for all of your messaging, emailing, and web browsing needs. Of course to do that you need a fast connection as well, so, unlike the iPhone, the X1 supports 3G HSDPA for data transfer speeds up to 3.6Mbits.

The phone has an ‘always on’ internet connection, the ability to send and receive files while in a call, streaming video support, and a video call feature.

For more details, check out the product page here.

No word on price or availability yet, but we can’t wait until the X1 makes its way Stateside. Well done, Sony. Another picture after the jump. Read more »

Sony Ericsson has just announced quite a few new phones, including the Cybershot C902 and C702 models. The 902 features a 5 megapixel camera, HSDPA, 160MB internal memory, an M2 slot, and a 240×320 2-inch display with 260k colors. The camera is perfect for people who don’t want to carry a full-fledged digital camera everywhere but want to be able to take a high quality photograph should a moment requiring one come up.

The C702 is similar to the C902, but with a weaker camera at 3.2 megapixels and a slightly larger 2.2-inch display.

The press release for both can be found here. Nice going Sony Ericsson, these phones have some really great features that we hope will start showing up more often in other phones.