TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

There are many things to complain about regarding Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, but the fact that its price is $350 too low is not one of them.

Nevertheless, Samsung plans to release a $1,000, leather-clad edition of its surprisingly popular and well-reviewed Galaxy Tab, according to European reports.

The 7-inch tablet usually goes for about $650 and is currently available in 5 different versions for U.S. customers, depending on which carrier you want it to be compatible with.

Google is aiming to put the “net” in netbook with Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system that focuses on web apps and online storage.

Due for release in mid-2011, the first batch of Chrome OS netbooks will come with Intel processors and Verizon data plans. They’ll download apps through a Google app store hosted on the web. Google detailed plans of Chrome OS in a press event Tuesday.

“We finally have a viable third choice for an operating system on the desktop,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO.

Apple’s latest mobile operating system update introduces a much-demanded feature: wireless printing. Problem is, it will only officially print from printers labeled “AirPrint-compatible,” which you likely don’t own. However, if you want to print from just about any printer, there’s a mod for that.

AirPrint Hacktivator offers a solution for Macs to set up wireless printing with iOS 4.2 with any printer shared on your network.

This little SD card reader is like a tiny plastic toaster for your camera’s memory cards. The little cube has four slots, each of which can take its own SDHC card, and the box comes with a detachable USB cable – essential for traveling light where you don’t want every single gadget to come with its own tail.

The blurb says that Elecom’ reader is compatible with all things SD: SD, microSD, and miniSD, but it really looks like the tiny pinky-sized microSD cards would need an adapter or get lost in the slot, just like the last runty slice of bread gets lost in the toaster and burns on the hot elements.

Check out this amazing kitchen appliance from Berlin-based designer Christoph Therard, a human-powered cabinet of mechanical wizardry which lats you crank normally electric-powered gadgets with nothing but your leg.

A machine like this needs a suitably cool name, and the R2B2 has one. The R2B2 works thusly: You hit pump the pedal and a big, heavy flywheel starts to spin up to 400rpm. Once moving, it can provide 350-watts of power for up to a minute. Gearing, switched with a big knob on the front, spins one of two shafts on the surface, one fast and one slow.

Therard’s research showed that the food-processor, coffee grinder and hand-blender are the most used gadgets, so he made them. The processor and grinder dock with the shafts, while the hand-blender gets its power from a flexible, twisting cable. A transmission lets it spin at up to 10.000 rpm. When not in use, everything can be stowed inside the main body.

Sand Glass is a concept traffic-light which gives visual feedback as to just how long you’re going to be stuck at a junction. Using the hourglass as a metaphor, Sand Glass lets its LED-pixels bleed through the lamp’s waist one by one, so you can see just when the lights will change.

It’s great, and if deployed would be diverting enough (for the first few weeks at least) to ease some of the boredom of waiting at the lights.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A 70-year old technology may soon let you embed three-second videos on a printed photo for about $5.

A company called Tracer Imaging announced that it’s open for business here at 6Sight, a digital imaging industry conference.

With Tracer prints, you can upload a series of images or a short video clip.

Apple has at last begun a proper international roll-out of its iTunes Movie Store, and with it the Apple TV. Just five years after video was first available in iTunes, non-US customers can buy and rent films.

The extent of this new wave is not entirely clear. Spain has movies to buy and rent, and the rumors says that Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Portugal, and Belgium are also on the list. There are a few non-US countries, like the UK and Germany, which already have access to video.

Well, well, well. What could Samsung be planning to do with this 10.1-inch LCD panel? The screen is on show at the the FPD International Green Device 2010 trade-show in China, and is displayed naked alongside versions in a prototype “e-reader” and a small notebook.

Clearly, that “e-reader” is really a 10-inch Galaxy Tab: It’s making a video call (not something you’d do on, say, a Kindle) and it has the same row of buttons on the bottom bezel as the smaller 7-inch Tab.

The WOWKeys keyboard from Omnio, an Apple-certified iPhone dock, manages to beat out Apple’s own offerings in almost every way. The keyboard features a bay on the right-side, where a number-pad would usually sit, into which your iPhone slides. From there, you can proceed in two ways.

First, and most obvious, is that you now have a hardware keyboard for your iPhone, giving you an iOS version of Asus’ Eee keyboard, only for $100 instead of $600 (not including the iPhone, of course).