The After Math: beer, lasers and $5K 4K TVs

Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages

In a bid to neatly wrap up this week's events, we gaze at some high-priced 4K gear at NAB 2013, figure out whether we can physically... pocket either of Samsung's Galaxy Mega variants and think about lasers: sometimes beautiful, sometimes deadly and sometimes fighting the future war against drones. We've got the numbers -- and a few dollar signs -- right after the break.

Pricing for Blackmagic's 4K Production Camera: $3,995 Starting price for Sony's 55-inch 4K TV, coming later this month: $5,000 Advertised price of a 12-inch RCA television in 1939: $600 That price adjusted for inflation today: $10,022 Number of grip patterns on Touch Bionics' new prosthetic hand: 24 Number of bones in the human hand: 27 Screen size, in inches, of Samsung's biggest Galaxy Mega: 6.3 Screen size, in inches, of the Galaxy Pocket Neo: 3 Screen size, in inches, of the BlackBerry 6200: 2.6 Percentage of drop-off in PC shipments for Q1 2013, according to IDC: 13.9 Yearly percentage of growth in PC market in 1994, according to IDC: 27 Number of Roku devices sold so far in the US: 5 million Most minutes streamed by one Roku player in a week: 10,080 Minutes wasted by Engadget editors watching Heineken's interactive beer bottle concept: [redacted]

Number of lasers on Beamz and Virtual DJ's interactive music system: 4 Number of drone-destroying military lasers to be deployed by the US Navy in 2014: 1

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By: Unknown On 9:39 AM

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This Tiny Hover-Disc Can Be Driven Around with Nothing but Lasers

This story will display in ...Dec 29, 2012 4:00 PM  

Lasers are cool. Things that hover are cool. This is both. Developed by researchers at Aoyama Gakuin University, this little magnetic hover-disc is powered by magnets and driven with lasers.

The magnetically levitated graphite disc in the video above, while cool, isn't exactly new. It's simply balanced atop a magnetic field, allowing it to float. The new part is the ability of the laser to spin the disc, or drive it around. When the laser hits the graphite disc, it causes a slight temperature change, and the way that affects the magnetic field allows it to be led around like some kind of tiny, hovering, laser-pointer obsessed cat.

What are the potential applications? Some sort of hoverboards maybe, or perhaps some kind of solar turbine. Whatever the case, practical use of stuff like this is probably a way off, but damned if it doesn't look cool right now. [Mashable]

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By: Dilusha On 8:49 PM

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Athens university prints polymer circuits with lasers, speeds us towards low-cost electronics

By Jon Fingas posted Nov 16th 2012 5:32PM

The dream of ubiquitous technology revolves around cheaper materials, and polymer circuits could help make the dream a reality... if the solvents used to produce the circuits didn't cause more problems than they cured, that is. The National Technical University of Athens has developed a more exacting technique that, like most good things in science, solves the crisis with lasers. The approach fires a laser at a polymer layer (covered by quartz) to throw some of that polymer on to a receiving layer; by moving the two layers, the scientists can print virtually any 2D circuit without resorting to potentially damaging chemicals. Any leftover worries center mostly around risks of changing the chemical composition as well as the usual need to develop a reliable form of mass production. Any long-term success with laser-printed polymers, however, could lead to more affordable technology as well as more instances of flexible and wearable gear -- there might not be much of a downside to ditching the circuit status quo.

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By: Dilusha On 7:51 PM

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