TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Energy efficient, thin, bright. These three qualitiesperfectly describe a woman I know, and no, I’m not trying to get any brownie points here. But it’s not a mistake that makers of television sets are also eager to embody such a description for their improved designs. Simply, a set that is well-put together rises above the crowd.

But thinness only? That usually matters only to the eye of the beholder.

At CES this week, we’ll see plenty of manufacturers trying to reach ever thinner levels, while daring discriminating techies like us to find a loss in visual quality.

JVC will preview, in a private event outside the show floor, what it is calling the ‘world’s lightest 32-inch LCD TV’ at only .28 inches (or about 7mm). According to the company, designers managed to build this small set by offloading many of the heavy duty components to a separate box and by building a new optical back light system.

Apparently, JVC designers created one of the thinnest LED back lights out there and placed it behind the LCD panel for a more efficient application and quality contrasts.

This New Year, you may be planning to join a gym, or to quit smoking. Some of you might even want to cure an internet addiction (you fools!). I will be doing something I have wanted to do for some time. I’ll be getting an iPhone.

Why now? Because the iPhone Dev Team, those tireless iPhone hackers, have finally released Yellowsn0w, a carrier unlock for the iPhone 3G. As promised, it was released on the first day of the year, and as expected, it works. A simple download of the Yellowsn0w application is all you need, although you’ll have to have a Jailbroken (hacked to run non-App Store applications) iPhone to do it.

Take that sucky economy! Italian company Angelis Labor is set to show an uber-expensive turntable at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

Called the Gabriel, the device has been manufactured in an Italian Ferrari parts manufacturing factory, says the company, and can cost between $27,000 and $64,000.

The Gabriel is a magnetic suspension record player constructed by overlapping bronze over aluminum and can be customized with up to four arms.

The turntable system is composed of three parts- the table and base for one to four arms, the 13-inch arm, and the cartridge.

It takes an awful lot of of confidence for an up-and-coming company to introduce a media player in a market chock-full of ravenous brand name companies. This is especially the case when the brand names are lowering the price of their best gadgets to compete in the tough economy.

But Verismo Networks is eager to compete with its new VuNow pod.

Software maker Pony/Canon will release the first Blu-ray/DVD movie hybrid in Japan in February 2009, in a deliberate attempt to accelerate consumer transition from the DVD format to Blu-ray.

By embedding the higher-def format into a single disk, the thinking goes, people will be more easily tempted to try Blu-ray and naturally upgrade their system.

The possibility of Apple releasing an iPhone Nano is becoming more likely, despite earlier reports that were questionable.

XSKN, an iPhone case manufacturer, created a section on its web site for an "iPhone Nano." Though this wouldn’t be considered a direct leak from Apple, XSKN cases in the past accurately revealed dimensions of the fourth-generation iPod Nano as well as the iPhone 3G before Apple announced them.

If a gadget looks like a redesigned version of Darth Vader’s helmet and comes packed with high-end theater display features, I can almost guarantee it will end up in the sweaty, greedy palms of a G-Labber.

Cineversum’s new BlackWing One Projector has impressive native features, like three 0.6-inch LCoS panels with a resolution of 1920×1080, and a 15000:1 contrast ratio.

Tilt-Shift photography (and the faking thereof) is so hot right now. In fact, it will probably date the photography of today in the same way the tobacco-graduated filter dates the pictures of the 1980s.

Now, the technique is set to swarm onto iPhones everywhere with the application TiltShift, enabling casual snappers to turn their surroundings into tiny models, with little people and matchbox-sized buildings.

What is tilt-shift? As you can see from the name, it comprises two parts, the tilt and the shift.

Archos players are widely recognized as some of the best personal media portables out there, and judging by recent comments by a company executive, they’re about to get even better: they’re thinking about changing up the display to an OLED screen.

Tony Limrick, a Marketing Director for the Northern Europe division of Archos, said in an interview with Techradar that he sees the OLED in his player’s future: "There’s no reason why we wouldn’t use an OLED screen; it’s currently more expensive, but if it helps us improve the device, then it’s a good use of the technology."

In the last few years, Archos players have gone through a significant improvement in their design, and their screens have played a large role.

The iPhone 3G is at last available online. US customers can now order any version of the iPhone from AT&T’s site and have it shipped to their home, whereupon they can activate the handset using iTunes. You know, just like the old, first-gen iPhone.

There is, though, one important difference. The 1G iPhone was a dream for resellers and unlockers because it came unencumbered with a contract.