While this might look like something found on Tatooine, it's actually a new Israeli drone designed for rescue and cargo operations. It just had its first hovering test, so it may be in the field before too long. [Danger Room]

Google on Tuesday is making a big move with its Docs service, opening it up to all types of file uploads. This includes photos, movies, music, and ZIP archives, all of which will be stored on Google's servers.

Along with opening up Docs to additional file types, Google is also dramatically increasing the size of individual uploads. Where the company will still limit users to 500KB for Microsoft Word documents, and 10MB for PowerPoint presentations and PDFs, the new limit for all other files that cannot be converted into a Google Docs format is 250MB. This is 10 times the size of what's allowed as an attachment in the company's Web mail service Gmail.

In a post on the company's blog, Google Docs' product manager Vijay Bangaru said that the new size and file type allowances serve to make Docs a replacement for USB drives, allowing users to access their files between computers. The company is also applying the same permissions-based sharing system it has for documents that it hosts, allowing users to share files with one another.

That said, the amount of space for non-Google Docs files that are stored within Docs will only be 1GB. Users can upgrade though, and Google is planning on that.

Just like users can purchase additional space for other Google services like Picasa Web Albums and Gmail, users will soon be able to rent space from Google. For standard Google Docs users this will be 25 cents per gigabyte, per year, while Google Apps enterprise users have to pay $3.50 per gigabyte, per year. That's a hefty price difference, but customer support, and a service level agreement that guarantees uptime add costs.

Bangaru says the new file storage features will be rolling out to users within the "next couple of weeks." In the meantime, Google has been busy readying a new documents API that will take advantage of the storage, giving third-party programs read and write access. This turns Google into more of a traditional storage provider than it's ever been, completely cutting out the need to visit the Docs site itself to add or remove files. The only caveat here—and it's a big one—is that users will need to Google Apps premier edition customers to access the API, leaving free users of Docs and lesser Apps subscribers out in the cold.

Three companies that are coming out of the gate with support for this new API are Syncplicity, Manymoon, and Memeo Connect. All three will be tapping into it to do things like file sync, upload, and backup.

So is this the GDrive?

Signs that Google was readying Docs for file storage came in late July of last year, which is when the company quietly added the "files" menu to the Docs interface. It's since been under-utilized as a place for users to store PDFs that could be read within Google's document viewer. Attempts to upload other files that could not be converted into Google's own formats simply did not go through.

But do these changes make Google Docs the long-awaited GDrive? In a way yes, but it's far from the game-changing storage service that many thought would come by now. The expectation has always been that if Google came out with its own storage service, it would be deeply tied into its properties. And more importantly, that it would be something readily available to all users.

This time last year the company had alluded to as much, almost by accident. Bundled deep within the code of the company's "Google Pack" software (which includes a handful of Google, and non-Google software installers), was mention of a service called "GDrive." It was billed simply as a tool for online file backup and storage. That included "photos, music, and documents." The software also promised to let users access these files from a variety of locations—including the operating system and mobile phones.

Sound familiar? Google Docs now does all those things, at least with the help of some third-party programs. However, the one remaining hurdle is getting the sync to non-enterprise users, which for the time being is not happening.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though. This year, Google brings its cloud-centric Chrome OS to Netbooks, and you can be sure that storage will be an important part of the equation. It's much easier to sell the idea of a cloud-based lifestyle when you can give people a place to dump their existing files. This is especially true given what could be a very limited amount of storage in the first crop of Chrome OS hardware that will be sporting solid state drives—a technology that costs considerably more per gigabyte than platter-based hard drives.

Suddenly 25 cents a gigabyte doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Where Google still has a lot of work to do is unifying its storage offerings into one big drive that's shared across all of its services. As it stands, depending on what type of media you're giving to Google, and from what service you're uploading it to, there's a different bucket with a different limit. This is further complicated by the fact that many of the services have trouble talking to one another. If they did, it would allow Google to group search indexes into one place where users could sift through content they had stored across all of Google's properties.

While Google may get there by the launch of Chrome OS, it doesn't have to. Just consider Tuesday's news proof enough that Google, at the very least, has the ball rolling.

This story originally appeared on CNET

I've written a lot about 3DTV and that I consider it occasionally incredible. But the entire concept is tough to explain because, let's face it, I can't just embed 3DTV example videos and you've probably never seen it. Allow me:

I stood on a crowded CES floor with an assignment I dreaded. I had to look at every 3DTV I could find, an attraction that seemed to be drawing the slowest, most annoying attendees of all of CES into long lines to split a few pairs of glasses.

And these stupid screens are so unimpressive at first glance. To the naked eye, the screen is a tad blurry and maybe even a bit washed out. Then you slip on a pair of lightweight, heavily-douchey, thick-framed glasses. After a moment or two, the world around you goes darker, that once-blurry image sharpens instantly, and suddenly you're watching 3D.

The image you see will vary with content. You'll note a light flickering over your eyes, somewhere between the gaping black holes of an old time projector playing silent films and smooth 24 or 30fps video of a DVD or digital projector. But the biggest change is that your TV is no longer a flat pane but a window, an image in which there's an actual depth your eye can dig through, a digital diorama, if you will.

And if you happen to be looking around a room filled with 3DTVs, or maybe a display of 15 stacked 3DTVs, all of these TVs will have turned 3D. In mass, the effect is a giggle-filled novelty ever so reminiscent of Jaws 3D.

Animation is, by far, the most impressive demo you will see. Impossibly crisp and colorful, the effect is extremely lifelike...for a cartoon. More simply put, there's a perfect front to back gradient. Every object looks, well, like an object, like something round that takes up real physical space. When, during a clip of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge's oily, porous nose protrudes from the screen ever so forcefully, you can't possibly imagine the moment done justice in 2D. The sense of flesh far outweighs what you see in the illustrative lead shot, because truthfully, these scenes have been designed and rendered with information that our displays have been incapable of showing us. With 3D animation, 3D is no gimmick—it's 2D that's the lousy undersell. And your eyes will be able to tell as they savor looking as deep as they can into the frame.

Sports are a vastly different, inferior experience. Basketball, for instance, is interesting in 3D but also indicative of the format's limitations. For one, the court has depth, but the players are quite flat, like a few paper cutouts are dribbling a ball back and forth instead of fully corporeal, 6'6" titans. Your mind can't quite reconcile the image, as it's somewhere between 2D and 3D, meaning it looks more fake, in a sense, than the simple 2D presentation we've always seen (the term "uncanny valley," though not quite suitable in this context, certainly comes to mind). I assume such is a result from the use of telephoto lenses, which are notorious for flattening even 2D images. The effect is even more pronounced in 3D, meaning that stereoscopic 3D shouldn't (and can't) be the end game for sports no matter what ESPN tells you. I could easily imagine a multicam arena setup which these blank (flattening) information spots could be filled, and an actual 3D image (a la Pixar) could be piped to consumers, rendered in real time. The effect in sports could truly be something we've never seen before (Madden 2010 crossed with real textures, essentially). As of now, it feels more like we're playing with paper dolls.

Live action film, specifically Avatar, is something I haven't seen on a 3DTV beyond a few 3D previews. The fast paced trailers—as opposed to the long, expansive shots of Pixar-style animation—don't lend themselves as well to the illusion (the 3D planes constantly break), and it's quite difficult to really assess or describe an effect that your eyes can't chew on for a while. On an IMAX 3D screen, I've mentioned that Avatar showed me textures I'd never seen before. On a plasma, Avatar looks far more like a cartoon, and its depth gradient is somewhere between the 2Dish sports and the all-out 3D animations (probably because Avatar itself is much a combination of the two). In the theater, I opened my eyes as wide as possible to take in the bioluminesence of Pandora. On the small screen, a light flicker distances you, almost unconsciously, from the content. But then again, Avatar never looked nearly as impressive in trailers as it did in final cut form, and 3D missiles firing straight at you will always be awesome.

But when things go really bad...

...watching 3D is nothing but pain. Before checking out an LCD or OLED, you put on the shutter glasses, as if all is well and good, and the lights again dim instantly. Each actual frame of the video are just as colorful, sharp and Y-axis-deep as those you've seen on better displays. But the frame rate seems to drop, with your favorite Pixar hero moving without smoothness or extreme subtlety. And of course there's a flicker on top of the odd frame rate, causing the already subpar image to strobe. The overall effect is akin to playing Crysis on an underpowered GPU along with some monitor that goes dark several times a second. It's sour stacked on sour, an experience with so little redeeming quality you should cease to even consider it.

That annoying CES line I described at the start of this piece? It was at the LG booth, right before I took a look at their 3D plasma prototype, which is slated to be released later this year for $200 over a 2D model. And right when I was ready to give up on glasses, gimmicks and eyestrain, the experience wiped my memory of it all as I stood there transfixed for at least 5 minutes, disregarding the line behind me and watching the same remarkable animated clips over and over. I thought of a new era of filmmakers speaking in an updated cinematic dialect, and I knew that words couldn't quite describe the sensations—we simply hadn't decoded them yet.

(Oh, and if you think all of this is too lovey on 3D, read all of my technological caveats here.)

You want to be green, but you also want to take your MacBook to Starbucks without bothering with a backpack. It totes ruins your look. Designer Yuji Fujimura has conjured up a laptop-docking bike concept, just for these moments.

The laptop storage space actually docks your laptop, charging as you cycle. The inbuilt screen on the handlebars not only gives you internet access via your laptop (presumably you have to stick a 3G dongle in somewhere), but also ensures you wind up in the A&E ward several times a month. I'm sure the nurses will all like your tales of masochistic hipsterdom. [Coroflot]

The street-facing side of Tokyo's N Building is covered in QR codes that can be read by your phone for up-to-date information—including Twitter updates from the building's inhabitants as they happen.

The project is a collaboration between Qosmo and Teradadesign. Any mobile device that can read QR codes can access shop information, but more in-depth content like tweets (located by GPS tagging), coupons, and reservations can be seen through a dedicated iPhone app that's available only by request.

Now this is a use of augmented reality I can really get behind: instead of cluttering up a building with billboards and sale signs, they're hidden within an aesthetically pleasing QR Code design. More of this! Please? [Creative Applications via Design Boom]