TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

MIT professor Dava Newman’s new BioSuit is more Barbarella than Apollo. The little skin-tight number manages to solve several of the problems with existing space suits and look pretty hot at the same time.

Traditional spacesuits are bulky, weighing in at around 300lbs. Because they are pumped full of air to stop the astronauts’ bodies from decompressing, they have to be stiff, too, or they would blow up like balloons.

Samsung’s YV-150 may be a voice recorder but it boasts the kind of eye-catching design usually lavished on digital music players. With its hands-free mic, integrated phone adapter and 16 to 66 hours of recording time, depending on setting, it’s certainly built to fulfill its prime directive. But its sleek and shiny form gives the YV-150 a lot more personality than its more utilitarian counterparts. The YV-150 can play MP3s and other music-file formats but with just 1GB and 2GB models available, it won’t be your primary DAP. No word on the device’s pricing or availability outside of Asia.

Samsung has announced a try of new point-and-shoot cameras. All have 3x zoom lenses, 2.5′" LCD screens, light sensitivity up to ISO 1,600 and the now-standard face-recognition and image-stabilization technologies.

U.K. buyers can get them in August. No word on U.S. availability, but expect pricing to be similar to the U.K. equivalents of $365 for the 8.3-megapixel L83T, $300 for the 8-megapixel L830 and $240 for the 7-megapixel L730.

AMD has announced the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB, a thumb-sized device that brings HDTV and DVR capabilities to your computer. As part of the package, you also get a credit-card-slim IR remote, an A/V input adapter for video capture and Catalyst Media Center software. The company also announced the  ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo PCIe, which slots into your desktop’s motherboard and lets you receive unencrypted digital content from your local cable television provider.

Yesterday Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy “took it on the chin” at a low key press conference in the Kinetica museum. He was there to explain what went wrong with the Orbo free energy device. Diagnosis? Not hot lights but bearings. Precision engineered watch bearing, which Sean himself said are made to last 25 years.

The poor guy is squirming, as you can see in the video below. I’m not going to say he’s lying, but he’s not very convincing either. It’s a little suspicious that all six sets of bearings (two per machine) broke at the same time, and the two models not on display have been whisked off to who knows where.

Given that we’re in the hottest season of the year, we have to give a nod to the USB shirt ($159). Designed by an ex-Sony technician, this perfectly functional, if fashionably questionable, garment features built-in fans that suck in outside air to cool you down. If you’re concerned about having to carry a laptop with you everywhere to keep your personal cooling system running, fear not — it also runs on four AA batteries or can be plugged into your car’s lighter socket.

Supposedly, today the world will change forever. Steorn, the Irish company behind the controversial free energy device Orbo, will be displaying the technology in London’s Kinetica Museum, and online. Announced last year to widespread skepticism, Orbo supposedly runs on nothing, producing limitless free power:

Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy – that is our claim.

Capsule hotels are nothing new, but Western norms of personal space are much different to those of Japan, where white gloved attendants literally cram commuters into Metro cars. Gatwick Airport has appropriately modeled its new Yotel rooms on luxury airplane suites, making the experience more cabin than coffin.

Movies (the ones on film) run at 24 frames per second. Home entertainment systems run faster: 25fps in the UK and 30fps in the US. That means that theoretically a 90 minute movies will last only 72 minutes.

Theoretically because a “3:2 pulldown” process is used to convert from 24p up to speed for TV and DVD, which duplicates frames to use as fillers and can introduce frame stutter. Europeans can still see a 4% speed up of the movie on some titles.

Gadget Lab reader Rob V. Burr reports in from Miami’s Apple Store, where rumor has it 500 phones are waiting within.

"Hi! Rob V. Burr reporting in from The Falls Apple Store in Miami, FL. There’s about 200-250 people in line right now. They’ve blacked out the store front and the anticipation is growing. Figure by 5pm the line will start growing exponentially and things will start to get more interesting. There’s a rumor going around the line that they have about 500 iPhones here waiting for us.

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