TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Let’s say that each of these Plattfuss Rubber Bands, made from old bike inner-tubes, is 2mm wide. You get around 70 in a pack, which requires 140mm (5.5-inches) of OG bike tube to make them. The sizes in the pack are assorted, from different tube sizes, but to keep things simple let’s assume they come from 700c tubes.

These tubes fit a wheel with a diameter of 622 mm (forgive the international standard measurements – inches are impossible to work with at small sizes). Thus the circumference of a 700c wheel (and therefore the tube) is πD, or pi x diameter, or 1,954mm, or around 77-inches. Thus you could get 13 packs of Plattfuss Rubber Bands from a single inner-tube.

The hardware specs of HP’s upcoming tablet have been leaked, and it sounds like a beast.

A document tipped to PreCentral details HP’s purported WebOS-powered tablet, codenamed Topaz. Like the photos we saw last week, the 9.7-inch Topaz is sleek, black and nearly button-free. A glossy outer finish and minimal accoutrements (a small HP logo rests on the back center of the tablet) make for a subtle slate.

But don’t let the simple look fool you — there appears to be powerful parts under the hood. According to the document, the Topaz sports a dual-core 1.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon-based processor, HP’s answer to all of the dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processors we’re going to see in Motorola’s forthcoming Xoom tablet, the T-Mobile G-Slate from LG, and Dell’s 7-inch Streak (all of which are Android OS-powered). It’s also got 512 MB of DDR2 RAM and an integrated Adreno 220 graphics processing unit to render 1080p high-definition video.

If you’re looking for a camera that it small enough to fit in a nostril but which still lets you swap out the lenses like an SLR? Or perhaps you’re in the market for a toy that can shoot photos at 1600 x 1200 pixels (almost 2MP) and take video so bad, and with such a prominent rolling shutter effect that it would make a Navy Seal seasick? Then you’re in luck!

The CHOBi CAM ONE is such a piece of junk.

Phones, iPads, cameras, pico-projectors, Bluetooth speakers, Bluetooth headsets, backup phone batteries: Gotta charge ‘em all! And, unfortunately, gotta have a charger for ‘em all.

Or do you? Not if you have the Touch-n-go from The Joy Factory. The dimpled pad is a take on the inductive “splash” chargers which need no cables but require a custom case for each gadget. Instead, you have a handful of too-short-to-tangle adapters with a plug on one end and a Smartie-shaped bobble on the other. This bobble snaps magnetically onto the Touch-n-go pad, nestling into one of its smooth plastic craters.

A survey suggests a huge chunk of AT&T iPhone customers plan on defecting to Verizon, but that seems unrealistic.

Research group ChangeWave on Friday released results of a survey polling about 4,000 customers. Most notably, it found that 26 percent of AT&T iPhone customers plan to switch to Verizon, and 16 percent of all AT&T subscribers overall say they’ll switch to Verizon because of the Verizon iPhone.

Sony Ericsson announced the latest addition to its high-end Xperia series of smartphones last week at CES with the debut of the Xperia Arc.

It’s a slick little number, and I got to spend a bit of time playing with it on the show floor.

The Arc’s screen measures in at an expansive 4.2 inches, a screen size proving to be very popular in smartphone announcements this week. The 849 x 480 resolution on the capacitive touchscreen highlights visual media well, and Sony is doing all it can to play up the entertainment-hub aspects of the Arc.

LAS VEGAS — Olympus has announced the rather hot-looking XZ1, an enthusiast compact camera that goes up against the Panasonic LX-5, the Canon G12 and Nikon’s P7000.

As befits this kind of camera, gimmicks are kept to a minimum, and pro-level features dominate. Thus there is a large 1/1.63-inch sensor (similar to the 1/1.7-inch sensor in the Canon G12 and S95) with 10 megapixels, a very fast lens (ƒ1.8 at 28mm rising to a still great ƒ2.5 at 112mm).

LAS VEGAS — Samsung has announced its latest digicam at CES 2011. The SH100’s big feature is built-in Wi-Fi, something Samsung has already tried in the curvier, dumpier looking ST80 back in July. The new camera keeps the 14.2 megapixel sensor, 3-inch touch-screen LCD and 720p HD video, and extends the zoom range to 26 – 130mm (35mm equivalent). GPS is also included for geotagging.

The camera has almost no buttons, relying instead on a phone-like touch interface.

Don’t believe the recent gossip that Nokia and Microsoft are hooking up to make a Windows phone. A former employee of Nokia claims it isn’t happening.

On his personal blog, Watts Martin explained that a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia isn’t even close to happening, because it’s unlikely Nokia would cede control of an OS to a third party. UPDATE: Martin left Nokia earlier this month, Wired has learned.

At last, somebody, somewhere will sell a credible alternative to the iPod Touch.

Apple has had the phone-less pocket computer market to itself ever since September 2007. This is about to change, thanks to Samsung’s Galaxy Player, a non-cell version of its super-successful Galaxy S.

Samsung got a rather crappier Galaxy-branded media player into European stores last year, but this one is the real deal. It sports a pair of cameras (3.2 megapixels on back and a VGA webcam up front), Bluetooth, GPS, a microSD card slot, a 1-GHz processor and Android 2.2 Froyo.

The screen is 4 inches diagonally, bigger than the Touch, but with a lower resolution of 800 x 480 (the Touch boasts a 960 x 640 “Retina” display).