We sent 3 of our gadgetmaniacs to Tokyo last month to ferret out the latest gadget trends. So what have we got to show for it? …. a beautifully photographed travelogue of Japan, and, wait for it …. pix of two, yes, 2, gadgets!!

Direct from the Sony Ginza Building in Tokyo Japan, the image [...]

The Black & Decker Tide Buzz Ultrasonic Stain Remover uses ultrasonic sound waves to remove stains from clothes before they are washed.

Consumer Reports says it works best on smaller stains such as motor oil, ketchup, lipstick and chocolate, but not quite as well on ballpoint pen, mustard and Cherry Kool-Aid.

Ars Electronica, the International Competition for CyberArts handed out its awards for 2004 a while ago. One of the entries in the category of “Interactive Art” was a work entitled “Augmented Fish Reality” which ended up winning the Award of Distinction.

Augmented Fish Reality is an interactive installation of 5 rolling robotic fish-bowl sculptures [...]

The SEIKO Epson corporation has just announced an ultra-sensitive, ultra-small, 1-chip GPS Module for mobile handsets.
The new S4E19863 chip is similar to the Motorola Instant GPS chip introduced last year. While this new chip is more sensitive than the Motorola (-160dBm vs. 153dBm), it is somewhat bigger (13×13 mm vs. 7×7mm).
The primary benefit of [...]

Casio has just announced a 2.2 inch LCD screen, intended for mobile phone displays, with a record 368 pixels per inch, thereby providing VGA (640×480) resolution. This is quite an achievement considering that the majority of cell phones today have QVGA resolution (320×240) or less.
This new Casio 2.2in LCD beats out the Samsung 2.6in [...]

The Toyota Hub is to be announced at the Mondial de l’Automobile auto show, which starts in Paris this weekend.

The “Hub” is a PDA-centric service providing drivers with some integrated features in the 4 areas of multimedia, telephony, GPS navigation and a subscription-based service called the Toyota Club. The multimedia quadrant, for example, plays [...]

There is an interesting article on the subject of Voice over IP by Daniel Berninger over at this link. The piece is entitled “The Voice over IP Insurrection“, and covers some historical, regulatory, technical, legal and competitive issues related to the rise of VoIP, and the effect on the telcos.
The author portrays the VoIP movement [...]

Handtops.com is reporting that Sony will be dropping the recently-announced U50/U70 from it’s product line.

Speculation as to Sony’s motivation includes poor sales related to a high product price.

Sharp’s new Mebius Muramasa PC-CV50F is an ultralight (1.94 pound) notebook based on the Transmeta Efficeon 1GHz processor.

Very compact at 10.0 x 6.2inches. It comes with a 7.2″ WXGA screen at a resolution of 1280×768 pixels. The notebook has a 20GB HDD, up to 512MB RAM and with Wi-Fi built-in.

The Dome Home located in Pensacola Beach FL, survived Hurricane Ivan last week with little damage.
The structure is designed to withstand winds up to 300 miles per hour. It sits on 16 pilings, driven 17 feet into the sand. It’s a solid concrete house with 5 miles of steel reinforcements for added support.
Most [...]