LG's 15-inch OLED

via Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

Have you seen Sony's 11-inch OLED TV in person? The screen is fine and everything, but its design is awkward—as if vomited up by an engineer and never reassessed. LG's 15-inch OLED, however, is at least trying.

The design is both clever and functional, with the display's ports tucked behind the monitor in some sort of cross between a folded piece of paper and a photo frame. In turn, the necessarily hardware becomes its own stand, and the display can tilt, too (not that the viewing angle on most OLEDs is necessarily lacking).

LG's premium OLED will be released in Korea this November. And don't be surprised if/when you see a $2000+ pricetag on the thing.

So Close to the Moon You Can Almost Touch It

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 6/5/09

Selene— Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's spacecraft mapping and filming the moon in High Definition for the first time—keeps returning crystal-clear videos of the Moon surface. And the video will keep getting closer and closer, until it crashes.

The video next to these lines shows Antoniadi from approximately 13 miles (21 km). The large impact crater—located on the southern hemisphere, on the far side of the Moon—has an irregular edge, and it's one of the few craters in our satellite that has a second inner ring. Antoniadi's lowest point—measured by Selene's laser altimeter-is 5.5 miles deep.

The video below was taken from the perilune, the closest point to the Moon in Selene's trajectory: Just 6.8 miles high.

According to JAXA, the impact will take place on 18:30, June 10, 2009 (GMT) at E80 S63, on the near side of the moon, close to its south pole.

Until then, Kaguya—as it's called in Japanese—will keep recording high definition video at low altitude and doing whatever cool Moon probes do when they are not being watched, probably sing Sinatra songs. [JAXA YouTube Channel and JAXA]

Earth in HD from the Space Station

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 4/22/09

Today is Earth Day, you hippie treehugging commies you—you too in your jet, Al Gore—and to celebrate NASA has posted high definition video of our home planet from the space station. Ain't it pretty?

In celebration of Earth Day, NASA presents images of Earth captured by cameras aboard the International Space Station. Traveling at an approximate speed of 17,500 miles per hour, the space station orbits Earth every 90 minutes from an altitude of approximately 220 miles, and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Its crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets each day.