monitor

The days of manually checking your oil with a dipstick may soon be over. Debuting at this year's SEMA show, Intellistick's Oil Condition Monitor uses a series of sensors to constantly monitor the electrical properties--and therefore the condition--of your car's oil.

This information is then sent to the driver's PDA using (what else?) Bluetooth, meaning that, without even popping the hood, drivers can know exactly when to change their oil. Check out Brian Cooley's video of the device, complete with a lesson in petrochemical decomposition.

After a recent attack on Power Downloader's home system, Power wanted to find a way to monitor or block usage on his computer while away. Ideally, Power wanted a program that could block usage of certain applications and record usage if a bad guy somehow accessed his system. With the holiday season just around the corner, Power knew that he would probably need to take extra precautions.… Read more

With all due respect to the individuality of plasmas and LCDs, they pretty much all look the same from afar. There's just only so much one can do with a flat screen.

But Japanese TV maker Eizo has come up with a design that breaks the mold, especially if it's turned slightly to the side to reveal its unusual profile. The "FORIS HD" line of LCDs is the television equivalent of a stealth bomber.

Akihabara News says it comes in white too, making it far less menacing. And if its 24- and 27-inch screens end up … Read more

My wife, Amy, has done a fairly good job of convincing our daughter to wear sunscreen, at least when the sun is shining and the temperatures are soaring.

Amy also does a fairly good job of convincing her to wear sunscreen on cloudy summer days, arguing that just because you can't see the sun directly doesn't mean the rays cannot reach you. … Read more

Display maker ViewSonic has announced what it claims is the highest resolution 19-inch LCD panel on the market today.

While the price will be announced closer to its launch date, ViewSonic's VX1940w is expected to appeal to those who have a limited desktop area but need a high-resolution screen for viewing multiple windows comfortably. The company, which said the monitor will roll out in selected markets starting next month, has also revealed that it plans to introduce new displays with "super-high resolution." (ViewSonic has been on something of a high-def roll lately, having just released a new … Read more

Regardless of my cohort Tim Moynihan's beliefs, words mean something, and definitions are usually pretty clear in every field except, let's face it, technology. When tech gets involved, an "icon" ceases to be a conventional religious image and becomes a little graphic on your screen and "boot" means a startup process instead of cowboy footwear.

Global Language Monitor, analyzer of words and publisher of top-10 buzzword lists, today released its Top 10 Most Confusing (yet widely used) High Tech Buzzwords for 2007. Topping the list is the near-ubiquitous but apparently misleading iPod: "What … Read more

The price of LCD panels for notebooks and desktop monitors has been on the rise since April, though the increase has not yet been passed on to consumers. But that could change very soon, according to a new report from iSuppli.

Though LCD television prices have stabilized, monitor prices are far more volatile right now. As an example, the average price for a 15-inch notebook display has inched up from $90 to $108 between April and September, according to iSuppli. But during that time, monitor prices did not go up even as panels did, severely eating into the margins of … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--NTT, Japan's telecommunications giant, with help from Hitachi Displays has come out with a 3D LCD screen that doesn't require eyeglasses and doesn't cause eye strain.

Called SpaceIllusion, the LCD screen basically consists of two LCDs sandwiched 10 millimeters apart. The two screens carry slightly different images but the overall effect to the viewer is that 2D images go 3D. Study the accompanying picture and you can see how the two images differ.

"This 3D TFT LCD displays images without physiological unnaturalness in comparison with conventional 3D glasses type of screens," the company said … Read more

READY, SET, GO!

The RS800 has been designed for serious endurance athletes and competition runners. The system provides an unprecedented amount of feedback on body performance and enables the planning, tracking and analysis of training to an exacting level near before realized.

The Polar RS800sd Running Computer is a complete system for planning, monitoring and analyzing your training. It provides an optimum combination of features for elite level athletes and their coaches. With the new Polar WearLink transmitter W.I.N.D., the Polar RS800sd? is part of the world's first integrated training system together with adidas running gear. … Read more