The First Watch That Automatically Can Set Itself Anywhere

By John Biggs

Space Time Sam Kaplan

 

Even watches that sync with an atomic clock aren’t accurate everywhere. They contain a radio that picks up a signal from a long-range tower connected to atomic clocks around the world. But the towers have a range of only about 1,500 miles, leaving large regions, including South America and Canada, uncovered. The Seiko Astron is the first watch that uses GPS, so it can automatically set the time anywhere.

Seiko engineers connected the Astron’s quartz movement to a custom circuit board that contains a processor and GPS radio. The team programmed the processor with a world map broken into one million square quadrants, each associated with one of 39 time zones. Once a day, the GPS radio turns on and connects with four or more satellites orbiting the globe to pinpoint its location; the processor then determines which time zone it’s in and sets the date and time accordingly. (Users can also force the watch to reset by pressing a button on the side.) The Astron takes 30 seconds to sync, whereas atomic watches can take up to two minutes. And, because the lithium-ion-powered watch’s 1.5-inch face is made from a matrix of seven solar cells, travelers will never be caught with either the incorrect time or a stopped watch.

SEIKO ASTRON

Face Size 1.5 inches
Weight 4.8 ounces
Price From $2,300


Source:                    http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-08/first-watch-can-set-itself-anywhere

iPad Mini

By Dan Nosowitz

Apple iPad Mini Apple

Alright folks, event over. Here's what we learned:

iPad Mini

Just as expected, pretty much! Super thin--just 7.2mm (about the thickness of a pencil)--and light, at 0.68 pounds, which Phil Schiller of Apple compares to a pad of paper. Aluminum, black and white colors, just like the iPhone 5. 7.9-inch screen, pretty close to the 7.85-inch we had assumed. Or maybe Apple's just rounding up! Apple's talking about total screen area, and how the wider screen will make the iPad Mini easier to use for stuff like web browsing than a 7-inch Android tablet. It's a valid point; I noted in my Nexus 7 review that web browsing is very cramped on such a narrow screen. It'll also have two webcams, LTE 4G support, that new tiny Lightning plug, and a 10-hour battery life.

And the price: Starting at $329 for the 16GB, Wi-Fi-only iPad Mini. They increase in price from there in the normal way: add $100 for 32GB of storage, another $100 for 64GB, and a flat $130 for 4G LTE. It'll start shipping on Friday, which probably not coincidentally is also the launch date for Microsoft's Windows 8.

Other Stuff

They've also updated the full-sized iPad, only six months after it debuted. It's updated with a faster processor, called the A6X, and has that new thin Lightning connector. That seems to be about the only difference. 

Live event aside: Apple has now played a weird fake cover version of "Age of Consent" by New Order twice. Unclear why they didn't get the real (great) song. Okay back to the news.

Apple also announced a refresh of most of the Mac line. Most exciting: a new, much thinner iMac. It is absurdly thin! Only 5mm at the edges (its thinnest point). Looks more like a giant iPad on a stand than anything else. It takes a lot of cues from the MacBook Air, too: comes by default with no optical drive and with a solid-state drive rather than a hard drive, though you can still get a hard drive or a new "fusion drive," which has both SSD and HDD. 21.5-inch and 27-inch sizes, $1300 and $1800 starting prices respectively.

Super Thin iMac:  Apple

Apple also announced a new, smaller MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It almost feels late; the 15-inch MacBook Pro got updated to the retina display a few months ago, but the 13-inch was left out. Not anymore! It'll start at $1700, though as it has integrated graphics, it may not be of interest to people who really mess around with video.
 

Then there's a spec bump for the new Mac Mini. Dual- or quad-core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge processors, up to 16GB of RAM, and the base model (2.5 GHz quad-core i5, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive) runs only $500.

Source: 

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-10/apple-goes-small-todays-announcement-updating-live

Rejection Can Make You More Creative

By Clay Dillow

It's Lonely At The Top U.S. Library of Congress

 

Don’t let rejection get you down--it might be the ticket to creativity, science says. That’s right: If regular rejection doesn’t cause you to lose all self-confidence and withdraw from the world entirely, it just might boost your ability to think outside of the mainstream and draw upon a unique worldview, suggesting that the kind of people society considers “geniuses” might tend to have a go-it-alone, loner mentality.

Research conducted by Cornell and Johns Hopkins University researchers has shown that people who are able to handle rejection in the proper manner--by shrugging it off and blazing their own, independent trails--can experience heightened creativity and even commercial success through an ability to eschew mainstream thought and groupthink and instead pursue their own creative solutions to problems. They tested their hypothesis through a series of experiments in which they manipulated the experience of social rejection; subjects in the study were led to believe that everyone in a group exercise could choose whom to work with on a team project, only to be told later that no one had selected them for a team.

For people with an independent mindset, this rejection inspired them to go on and complete the exercise in a way that was deemed more creative (we’re not exactly sure how “creativity” was measured). For people without an independent mindset--well, we’re not really sure what kind of impact this exclusion had on them (hopefully someone later told them it was just an experiment, it was all in good fun, and really, everyone here thinks you’re great).

The researchers acknowledge that for some, the consequences of rejection can be quite negative. Their research is only intended to show that for those of a certain mindset, social rejection can have a silver lining, driving home something that we more or less already knew: it’s not easy being a genius.


Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/rejection-can-make-you-more-creative-science-says

New Telescope To Hunt For Earth's Twin

CHEOPS will be able to tell a planet's makeup, helping explain how supersized Earths form in other solar systems.

 
By Rebecca Boyle

CHEOPS Probe University of Bern/via ESA

 

The Kepler space telescope (and several observatories on the ground) have pinpointed a plenitude of planets around other stars, but astronomers' knowledge of them remains fuzzy. A new European mission launching in five years will bring them into focus, figuring out their size, density and internal structure.

The new telescope is called CHEOPS, for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite, although it is not shaped like a pyramid. Its targets will be nearby stars that are known to harbor planets. Like Kepler, it will use the transit method of hunting planets, looking for blips in star brightness to tell if something is orbiting around them. This will allow more accurate measurements of a given planet's radius.

Astronomers know the masses of several planets, partly through observations that measure how the planets affect the wobbling of their stars. Given a radius and a mass, you can figure out density, and this will give clues about the planet's internal makeup. This will help astronomers learn how other planets form, especially the rocky super-Earths.

Measurements like this will help characterize Earth-scale planets like the one around the Alpha Centauri system, which astronomers announced last week. CHEOPS is just one in a handful of super-precise, powerful telescopes slated to start observing in the next few years, which astronomers believe could finally pinpoint whether life exists elsewhere in the cosmos. For instance: "I think it is realistic to expect to be able to infer within a few decades whether a planet like Earth has oxygen/ozone in its atmosphere, and if it is covered with vegetation," Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, told Reuters.

CHEOPS will orbit Earth in synch with the sun, flying around 500 miles above the planet. It's scheduled for launch in 2017.

Source: 

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/newest-exoplanet-explorer-will-hunt-super-earths-just-one-around-alpha-centauri

How The Sound Of Rain Helps Engineers Diagnose Unsafe Bridges

Structurally flawed bridges produce a different sound when splashed with water. If we listen in during the rain, we can hear the problem--and fix it--before it gets worse.

 
By Colin Lecher

 

Brian Mazzeo and Spencer Guthrie Brigham Young University

To test the safety of a bridge, engineers rely on some pretty low-tech methods. One common way of doing it is to drag a chain across the bridge and listen in for the hollow-sounding spots. But, weirdly, an even-lower-tech method might speed things along: Have the rain do the work for you

.

In the same way that structural deficiencies can be detected with something solid, two engineers from Brigham Young University--Brian Mazzeo and Spencer Guthrie--are listening in for the tell-tale acoustics by splashing bridges with water. They're looking for something called "delamination." In a concrete bridge deck, the layers used to build the bridge can become separated over time--it's a major concern with some aging bridges. Right now, some of the processes (like the chain-dragging) can take hours, and shut down lanes for that time. 

The water solution is simple, and could potentially fix the traffic problem. One day, the researchers say, it might be as easy as misting a bridge as they cruise by in a car. (No, you don't have to wait for it to actually rain. Although that's more poetic than car-misting.) It might also make its way into related industries, like aircraft construction, where delamination of composite parts is a problem. 

Source:   

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/engineers-diagnose-safety-bridges-listening-rain-hitting-them

Bionic Eye In a Blind Patient

In World First, Scientists Surgically Implant a Working Bionic Eye In a Blind Patient

By Colin Lecher

Bionic Eye Bionic Vision Australia

     We've been waiting on the prospect of a bionic eye for a while now; being able to surgically give sight to the sightless would be a medical breakthrough, and we're right on the cusp. Exhibit A: In a world first, scientists have successfully implanted a prototype bionic eye that has helped a woman see shapes.

     Researchers from the government-funded consortium Bionic Vision Australia made the announcement in a statement yesterday; in it the implantee said she "didn't know what to expect, but all of a sudden, I could see a little flash--it was amazing." The team is hoping they can start to "build" shapes based on what she sees, eventually creating a bionic eye that works like its organic counterpart.

The prototype device is set up in a lab. Electrodes in the implant stimulate nerve cells, and in the controlled environment scientists can get feedback from the user on the "flashes of light." That could help them adjust until the "flashes of light" reflect the actual environment enough to be helpful. It's not full vision, but it's an early step toward it.

     The next stage, the scientists say, is incorporating an external camera into a device, and creating versions with more electrodes. With 98, a person could be able to see large objects; with 1,024, they could recognize faces and large print.

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-08/world-first-scientists-surgically-implant-bionic-eye-blind-patient

Robots Invent Their Own Language

by Stephen Ornes

Australian scientists have invented a new breed of robots called Lingodroids, programmed to make, use, and share language. The bots can coin words to describe places they have been, places they want to go, and plans for getting there. “When they need a new word, they invent one,” says Janet Wiles, a cognitive scientist at the University of Queensland who leads an interdisciplinary team on the project.

The rolling chatterboxes “see” using 360-degree cameras, laser range finders, and sonar. A microphone functions as their ears, and a speaker acts as a voice box, emitting the familiar beeps of a touch-tone phone. As for brains, Wiles outfitted each Lingodroid with an alphabet of beeps that correspond to letters. Then she programmed them to play a series of games in which they paired the letters into nonsensical combinations like “ja” or “ku” and joined those syllables to coin neologisms as needed. For example, in one game two robots roamed through a course and met in an unfamiliar part of it. The meeting triggered one robot to name the spot “jaya” and share the new word with its partner, who then added the word to its lexicon. In this way the robots slowly built a new language to describe their travels [pdf] and eventually even learned to communicate and understand directions.

Wiles notes that although the language may seem simple, for robots, grasping spatial information is incredibly complex. “We don’t realize how sophisticated our use of language to describe the world around us is,” she says. Ultimately, she hopes to teach her robots to chat up humans, paving the way for robotic caregivers, companions, and butlers.

 

Source:   http://discovermagazine.com/2011/sep/16-robots-invent-their-own-language

Controlling Robots With Your Thoughts

by Jason Daley

Over recent months, in José del R. Millán’s computer science lab in Switzerland, a little round robot, similar to a Roomba with a laptop mounted on it (right), bumped its way through an office space filled with furniture and people. Nothing special, except the robot was being controlled from a clinic more than 60 miles away—and not with a joystick or keyboard, but with the brain waves of a paralyzed patient.

The robot’s journey was an experiment in shared control, a type of brain-machine interface that merges conscious thought and algorithms to give disabled patients finer mental control over devices that help them communicate or retrieve objects. If the user experiences a mental misfire, Millán’s software can step in to help. Instead of crashing down the stairs, for instance, the robot would recalculate to find the door.

Such technology is a potential life changer for the tens of thousands of people suffering from locked-in syndrome, a type of paralysis that leaves patients with only the ability to blink. The condition is usually incurable, but Millán’s research could make it more bearable, allowing patients to engage the world through a robotic proxy. “The last 10 years have been like a proof of concept,” says Justin Sanchez, director of the Neuro­prosthetics Research Group at the University of Miami, who is also studying shared control. “But the research is moving fast. Now there is a big push to get these devices to people who need them for everyday life.”

Millán’s system, announced in September at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is a big step in making brain-machine interfaces more useful by splitting the cognitive workload between the patient and the machine. Previously, users had to fully concentrate on one of three commands—turn left, turn right, or do nothing—
creating specific brain wave patterns detected by an electrode-studded cap. That system exhausted users by forcing them to think of the command constantly. With shared control, a robot quickly interprets the user’s intention, allowing him to relax mentally. Millán is now developing software that is even better at weeding out unrelated thoughts and determining what the user really wants from the machine.

Although the disabled will probably be the first beneficiaries of Millán’s technology, we may all eventually end up under the scanner. Millán and auto manufacturer Nissan recently announced they are collaborating on a shared-control car that will scan the driver’s brain waves and eyes and step in if the mind—and the Altima—begin to wander.

Source:  http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/09-mind-over-motor-controlling-robots-with-your-thoughts

The Latest Trend in Aircraft: Really, Really Tiny

by Heather Mayer

While Predator drones prove their mettle in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a new generation of far smaller flying robots is taking shape in various labs. These micro­­fliers may soon take on a variety of military missions and innovative humanitarian ones as well.

At the University of Waterloo in Ontario, microroboticist Behrad Khamesee has developed a flying robot about the size of a pencil eraser. A pair of laser-operated, fingerlike grippers allow the bot to grasp and release small objects. The device operates wirelessly, powered by a magnetic field. Kha­mesee hopes a version of the robot will someday zip around inside the human body delivering targeted drugs; first he needs to reduce the jitters in the bot’s motion.

Mechanical engineer Haibo Dong of Wright State University in Ohio is working on a four-winged robot called the Wright Dragonflyer. The design is more difficult to create than a two-winged flapping system but promises greater speed and maneuverability. Dong expects to have a prototype, about the size of a real dragonfly, completed this year. “This small craft could perform surveillance, environmental monitoring, and search and rescue,” he says.

Another insect-inspired robot is taking shape at Harvard University, where roboticist Robert Wood is building on his 2007 development of a life-size mechanical fly to create a colony of RoboBees. These swarming robots will incorporate optical and chemical sensors as well as communication systems to make autonomous flight decisions and to coordinate with colony members during tasks such as searching for objects or people.

The military is in on the game too. The U.S. Army is teaming up with BAE Systems and academic partners, including the University of Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania, to build microfliers for intelligence and surveillance through its Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology Collaborative Alliance. “Our long-term goal is to develop technologies that can produce a map of a building interior or detect bombs,” says manager Joseph Mait of the Army Research Laboratory. Current prototypes include a sparrow-size flapping-wing craft and four-blade helicopter-style robots. The consortium will convene this spring with potential users in the Army to review the current state of the technologies.

Source:  http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/04-latest-trend-in-aircraft-really-tiny-microflier

How to Make Anything Disappear

by Adam Piore

Invisibility cloaks are made of engineered materials that bend light and other waves around an object. Because no waves bounce back to the observer, the cloaked object (or person) becomes undetectable.

Back in 2006 Harry Potter was all the rage in the engineering world. That year a team at Duke University built the first rudimentary device for hiding objects, akin to the boy wizard’s invisibility cloak. But in technology as in the movies, Harry Potter is now old news. Over the past six years, scientists have moved beyond mere invisibility: If they could build cloaks for light waves, then why not design materials to conceal sound and even ocean waves?

A whole suite of invisibility cloaks are now under development, all building on the same basic principle as the first prototype. When we perceive an object, we are actually detecting the disturbances it creates as energy waves bounce off it. The Duke cloak, constructed from a synthetic structure called a metamaterial, prevented those disturbances by bending light waves around the object, allowing them to continue flowing like water in a stream around a rock (concept shown at right). Sure enough, that technology is not limited to light. In the latest designs it is being applied to mask all kinds of other waves, with the potential for zeroing out sound pollution and protecting cities from earthquakes. Meanwhile, scientists continue to pursue the original invisibility concept—work that is sparking a lot of interest in military surveillance circles.

VISIBLE-LIGHT CLOAK

The Tech: A group of physicists led by Tolga Ergin and Joachim Fischer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany built a light-bending fabric last year that—for the first time—rendered a cloaked object invisible to the human eye from any viewing angle.

What It's Made of:  

A rigid synthetic polymer composed of tiny rods spaced about 350 nanometers (billionths of a meter) apart, a gap small enough to manipulate waves of visible light.

How it Works: 

 As a test, researchers laid the cloak over a flat surface with a small bump in the middle. The cloak bent incoming light rays around the bump and bounced them back as if they had struck a flat surface. Observers would never know the bump existed.

Applications:
 For now, this cloak can hide only small imperfections on flat surfaces. But eventually, scientists hope to scale it up to conceal much larger objects anywhere in space. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) started investing in metamaterials way back in 2001, and while it doesn’t like to reveal specific intentions, the agency would certainly be interested in cloaks that conceal soldiers and military equipment.

 
Source: http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-how-to-make-anything-disappear/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

12 Biggest Missed Opportunities In Tech

#12 Motorola

What It Had: The potential. Razr, launched in 2004, was success and sold about 50 million units by 2006, it was the first thinnest Phone; made other manufacturers to follow example. 

The things which were cherished at a moment may miss the same charm with changing times. Motorola did not understand this fact or were ok with their innocence. When Apple was unveiling blockbuster phones, Moto yet hung on to Razr and Krzrs, and missed on to the innovations which could have saved the company. The user interface and software didn’t seem to matter at all.

Moto came up with MotoQ, which had windows OS. But it was too late; it only flickered for a while. By the time they tried to do anything good by themselves, the company was under Google. Moto indeed had a big fall.

#11 AOL

What it had: When people were sorted up with CDs and TV for entertainment-- AOL brought in the change. It owned the ISP business, beating its peers, introduced millions of people to internet and chat-rooms, new experience unveiled. 

What it missed: the company seemed to be more interested in sales than in growth. It offered pay per hour internet which was a norm at the time; got many ads. The company gained huge profits. The fall was hard, in 1997, as per the reports, 60.3 percent of AOL connections were dead, mostly due to busy signal. This episode was a late night comedy feed. When world moved from dial up to broad band, AOL missed the train. The customers now are addicted with greater data speeds and calls AOL as old school.

 

#10 Friendster

What it had: A social networking site that started when Facebook was a far cry. Had no strong peers for competition, could have achieved unlimited success.      

What it missed: Friendster is still popular in Philippines, but that’s not a respite. The success scored by a late starter like Zuckerberg with Facebook could be a matter of envy to friendster. Back in 2002, when it was started it had all the basic elements of a social networking site—be it friending, or writing on wall (called as “leaving testimony”). The site’s popularity grew, which was a matter of joy; but the team failed to manage traffic, so the site crashed, or hung, just behaved oddly. No surprise, the popularity was lost with same speed.

#9 Blockbuster

What it had: All the resources, and was launched at a time people were very much in to renting movies for home viewing.

What it missed: when market was ready for them, even with their resources they fumble to deliver services. For people who wanted to rent a movie, the only option was Blockbuster. The movie rental company turned blind to this opportunity, the customers were vexed by crappy movie collections, and their inability to keep the movies in stock, resulted in long waiting. So it was obvious that customers hated Blockbuster.

Even when challenge came from a nascent peer, Netflix, the company some how deluded into believing it has got strong base of customers. Meanwhile Netflix turned into primary choice for movie rentals, focusing well in all areas Blockbuster missed. An attempt by the company to improve by copying Netflix model was unsuccessful. It’s obvious, the company was sent to oblivion.  

#8 MySpace

What it had: While people were grappling with slow Friendster, the one thing they cared about was speed, and MySpace had it. It had no parallels in social networking space, the speed and a glimpse of friends on the site was thing of the day. 

What it missed: The moral of the fable—tortoise and hare fails here, MySpace was taking its own sweet time for innovations and in a jiffy the social networking space got hijacked by Facebook.

The site was chaotic and narrow. The auto loaded high metal songs and weird gif background, which was ok with youngsters,  failed to include greater bandwidth of users. And after a while even youngsters seemed to love social networking sites which had essence of suburbs. It is ironic that the site was acquired by News Corp. for a whopping $580 million in 2005, and did nothing to improve it. Overall MySpace was a flop show.

#7 Microsoft

What it had: First to rule tablet market.

What it missed: the company was the first to invent modern tablet PC. Though it was a bit ahead of it’s time, the cheap capacitive display, which made users to ditch the stylus, and mobile OS rather than fully blown windows OS would have done justice to tablet, the result—masses took it to be weird gadget.

After nearly a decade, the company is now reinventing itself, with range of ‘surface’ branded tablets. No matter they have started it, but are just competing with Apple iPads now.    

#6 AT&T

What it had: For many years, a network provider for Apple gadgets.

What it missed: Providing network service to the most desirable gadgets in the world could be a coveting aspect for network providers. AT & T was not serious about the opportunity as service providers for Apple. It failed heavily in voice and data networks in major cities, put its self up for mockery thereby drove Apple to opt for other network providers. The big deal lost even without putting an effort to hold it.

#5 Sony

What it had: Ruled the roost in the world of portable music.

What it missed: in 80s Sony invented the walkman, the toast of music lovers, and company’s inroads in to portable music. The company brought out the Discman, the first portable CD player, and thought obvious that the company will pull off the digital music players too, which did not happen. The company’s devotion to file format hindered the possibility of digital music players for MP3 format for many years. Early products from Sony made users to use messy software to turn digital data to file format, which seemed so retro even at that time. People just got migrated to portable audio players compatible with digital formats, instead going on with tedious job of converting data for different formats. If the company kept up, only iPod wouldn’t have been called awesome.

#4 Palm

What it had: First to come up with netbooks.

What it missed: Announced in 2007, Palm’s Foleo was the first netbook to be introduced. It was something between Smartphone and laptop, size you can carry anywhere, good battery life, and low price tag. It is all awesome, but the dismay by public towards the product at first glance, which was more of bewilderment than actual dismay, made company to retrieve itself in to the shell. If only it stuck on, the big was waiting just around the corner. Just after a month, Asus brought up Eee PC, a netbook based on blueprints of Palm’s Foleo, a big success.

#3 Yahoo

What it had: Lots of potential to hit it big.

What it missed: it includes so many could’s—yahoo could have gone for big-time acquisitions such as Flickr and del.icio.us or may be Facebook( too big now). It could have simply gave into Microsoft’s proposal to acquire it, for a sum worth more than the company’s present value or simply did not messed up in hiring a CEO who lied about computer science degree. Too many follies has made company creeping out for stability.   

#2 Digg

Had: There was no bigger satisfaction than finding yours story pop up on the first page of Digg in the year 2008.

Missed: there was a time when some media houses designed the news just to suit it for front page of Digg. Just a wrong redesign, to turn the company more towards MySpace and Reddit , made the Digg v4 documented in history for the worst redesign, which had lost all the glitz and glamour of its predecessor.

#1 RIM/Blackberry

What it had: A few years ago Blackberry was the most popular smart phone which offered a great web experience.

What it missed: Latest market figures shows that, RIM is loosing its position in Smartphone arena. It holds only 6.4 percent of the global Smartphone market, which means around 29 percent fall in sales of Blackberry in just one year. Well Android and iOS are present world leaders in Smartphone segment.

Blackberries fall seems quite sudden, and sometimes one may feel company is not putting enough in to the fight.

Source:  http://www.siliconindia.com/news/technology/12-Biggest-Missed-Opportunities-In-Tech-nid-131210-cid-2.html

5 Most Expensive Apple Products Ever

#5 Apple I Computer

The first brainchild of Jobs and Wozniak, originally had a price tag of $666.66. If you own any of the 200 Apple I computers now, then you are a rich guy. The antique computing device can fetch you as much as 500 times its original price.

An auction by Christie’s sold Apple I for more than $212,000 in November 2010, the item included a signed letter by Jobs.

Sotheby’s, an auction house, put a working Apple I for auction in June this year, expecting a bidding of $150,000. But the devise was sold for $374,500, about 500 times its original price. Winner was an anonymous telephone bidder. 

#4 Founding Documents

The founding documents of Apple Inc were sold to a sum which could equal as much as 8,000 iPhones.

The founding documents were signed by co-founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne on April 1, 1976. The three page agreement laid foundation to the Apple Computer Co. At that time there were no soothsayers to guess what fortune it can make or how big it can be. Jobs and Wozniak owned each 45 percent and Wayne, the remaining 10 percent. However Wayne pulled himself off the contract, forfeiting his ownership.

At Sotheby’s auction house, the initial bidding for the document began at $ 70,000 and was expected to reach $100,000 to $150,000. The house was in surprise when the document was sold to a sum of $1.6 million, about ten times the estimated price. Eduardo Cisneros, a media and entertainment mogul piped in the winning bid.

The simple company which had humble beginning at a garage has made inroads in to tech innovation, and in to human psyche.

#3 Silk screened logo by Andy Warhol

Getting your hands on any piece of art by Warhol is an expensive desire, and with Apple logo it could be whopping $26,000.

The art piece is a silk screen color print from the mid-1980s, part of Andy Warhol’s “ADS” portfolio, depicting Apple’s classic rainbow logo, it had Warhol’s sign in the corner.

The silk screen artwork was commissioned by former Apple executive Del Yocam, according to auction house O’Gallerie. And it was sold to an anonymous bidder for $26,000 in May 2009. If you think only devices can be expensive; then think again.     

#2 First trade sign

This is the first banner which is used to identify the company and promote it during trade shows at the time of its start-up era, in 1976. Eventually, this wood-framed, Plexiglas, 8 by 4 inch long sign board was placed at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters. However Jobs ordered a replacement sign board, and threw the old one in a dumpster.

M. Thomas Liggett Jr, grabbed the sign board, which was just lying in a dumpster for more than 30 years. Guess what, he sold it for incredible $18,000 in 2008. Literally found fortune from dustbin!

#1 Steve Wozniak's toolbox

If you think tool box come cheap, then read on to know how expensive it could be.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak used a tool box while building Apple I and Apple II in late 1970s. And it was a norm in that era; all the Apple engineers used these blue tool boxes to carry on with their work with computers.

When Wozniak stopped using his tool box, he left it lying in some dumpsters at company’s headquarters.

When it was auctioned, the toolbox was empty, with just a self adhesive label of Wozniak’s full name; it was sold to whopping $7000 in 2009. Yes a tool box can be this expensive, even if it’s empty.

Source:   http://www.siliconindia.com/news/technology/5-Most-Expensive-Apple-Products-Ever-nid-130953-cid-2.html

Celkon launches SIM-based tablet

Celkon Mobiles has launched a 7-inch SIM-based tablet that works on Android Ice Cream Sandwich Operating System. The Hyderabad-based mobile handset company forayed into the tablet business last month with an e-tab.

The sim-based CELTAB comes with 1 GHz Processor, 512 RAM and a provision for 3G dongle to access the Internet. ‘We have priced this tab at Rs 7,499. We will be coming out with two more tablets, including a 9-inch one, next week,” Y. Guru, Managing Director of Celkon Mobiles, said.

The company is offering in-built courseware for engineering and management graduates. “We are planning to add additional material to address the needs of students in other streams”. 

Source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/article3941495.ece