Solar-cell covered Power Purse. “About as useful in the drizzly Pacific Northwest as the Stonehenge Pocketwatch, Iowa State doctoral student Joe Hynek’s award-winning solar panel-covered Power Purse charges portable electronics in regions where the sun actually throws down some juice now and then.”
Engadget
Brain imaging ready to detect terrorists, say neuroscientists. “Brain-imaging techniques that reveal when a person is lying are now reliable enough to identify criminals, claim researchers. Team member Ruben Gur points out that, unlike the polygraph, fMRI does not rely on controllable symptoms such as sweating or a fast heartbeat. Instead it monitors the central nervous system. When someone lies, their brain inhibits them from telling the truth, and this makes the frontal lobes more active. “A lie is always more complicated than the truth,” says Gur. “You think a bit more and fMRI picks that up.”"
Nature
Dermal Display. “In his book Nanomedicine [...] Robert A. Freitas Jr. describes [...] a “programmable dermal display” in which a population of about 3 billion display pixel robots would be permanently implanted a fraction of a mm under the surface of the skin, covering a rectangle 6 cm x 5 cm on the back of the hand. Photons emitted by these pixel bots would produce an image on the surface of the skin. This pixelbot array could be programmed to form any of many thousands of displays.”
Nanogirl
Tag notifies workers so secretaries don’t have to. “RFID tags are worn by workers and RFID readers are placed throughout the company to keep tabs on their whereabouts and to send them information about meetings and other scheduled events via computer and celphone. When the time of a meeting nears, the system can notify all workers expected to attend. If a participant does not show up, the system will seek that person out and suggest the appropriate response, such as a phone call if he is at his desk or an e-mail message if he is in another meeting.”
we make money not art
Computer terms ‘confuse workers’. “Three quarters of workers waste more than an hour a week deciphering what a technical term means, the poll found. “
BBC NEWS
Project Comet. “Community Aggregation: Gives you the ability to create individual blogs and share sections of them with other users in an elegant and customizable way.
Multiple Streams: Provides a single place to keep everything that is important to you. A record of your life is created by incorporating streams from various media, like music, photos, videos and other blogs into a single customized blog with an identity of its own. “
Six Apart
WiFi plastic bunny waggles ears when you get mail. “Thanks to me, your friends and family will have a totally new way of keeping in touch: through the web, text messages, their phone or email… plenty of different ways to send you messages, music, MP3 files that I’ll read out to you… or sing out, or even dance. Your friends will no longer be confined to the depths of your computer or phone: they’ll come alive in your home, in the noble guise of a rabbit. “
Boing Boing
Survey Says: “Everything is Hackable”. “A recently released paper, wonkily entitled “Analysis of the Texas Instruments DST RFID,” documents all of the loopholes in the buzzed-about radio frequency identification technology. The website includes examples of hacking devices utilizing RFID, such as Exxon Mobile’s SpeedPass payment system and wireless starter keys for cars. There are even some devices for sniffing data from Digital Signature Transponder (DST) Tags in people’s nearby pockets. With a hack for everything, even biometric security might not save us from potential threats.”
Gizmodo
VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality. “The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction. The user wears a head-mounted display, which provides the virtual environment. Sensors under the sphere provide subject speed and direction to the computer running the simulation. Users can even ineract with objects in virtual space using a special manipulator.” “
Usability In The News
BREW-ing Up DoomRPG. “Got a hot cellphone that can run Java or BREW apps? Then you know you need DoomRPG, a turn-based role playing version of the popular Doom series. It looks extremely well done and is designed to play like everyone’s favorite favorite FPS. You can get UAC credits and buy ammo and health, interact with scientists, and level up your character.”
Gizmodo
Anti-music swapping tool launched. “The International Federation of Phonographic Industries has released Digital File Check to help people remove unwanted file-sharing programs.
The program is also designed to help firms detect if staff are using work computers for illegal file swapping. “
BBC NEWS
ObjectGraph Dictionary. “ObjectGraph Dictionary is a great new online dictionary that uses a similar technology to Google’s Suggest.
Not only will it try and suggest the word you are typing, it will provide you with a definition for the suggested words—live and in real time—as you type. This is great for trying to look a word you’re not sure the meaning of. Just start guessing and checking the suggested spellings and definitions.”
Lifehacker
She’s in the loo, I’ll check her phone. “Almost two-thirds of Swedes secretly read their partner’s SMS messages, according to research by mobile portal Halebop for Swedish operator TeliaSonera.
Some 64 per cent of those questioned this summer said they read their partners’ text messages out of nosiness or jealousy, according to The Local. Most Swedes peek into their partner’s phone when he or she is in the bathroom or shower.”
The Register
Blog censorship handbook released. “Included in the booklet, called The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents, is advice about how to blog anonymously, as well as how to identify the most suitable way to circumvent censorship. “
BBC NEWS
E-Paper RFID Tag. “At the Auto-ID Expo that recently took place in Tokyo, Epson unveiled a passive RFID tag (13.56MHz; ISO 15693) that has a display. The display component is implemented by using E-ink’s EP Sheet. The display works without batteries, by using the electrophoretic effect. “
RFID in Japan
To Find a Doctor, Mine the Data. “As their out-of-pocket health care expenses continue to grow – through rising medical costs, higher insurance premiums and heftier co-payments – many people are using consumer skills well honed by online research on everything from digital cameras to S.U.V.’s. And their employers and insurers, intent on getting the best value from their own health spending, are arming those consumers with increasingly detailed searchable databases. “
New York Times
Toshiba / Matsushita optical pen touch screen. “An optical sensor and processor are literally embedded into the display’s glass, enabling it to read signals from an optical pen. The end result may be the same as a touch screen, but since the entire system is integrated into the glass of the LCD itself, you don’t have any of the contrast/brightness loss or hardware overhead that is normally associated with slapping a pressure or capacitative sensitive membrane on top of a standard LCD.”
Engadget
Location Tracking Geta Sandals . “RFID is used to correct some positioning errors. The GETA sandals track a user’s location using a footprint-based method. The footprint-based method uses location sensors installed underneath the GETA sandals to continuously measure the displacement vectors formed between the left and right sandals along a trail of advancing footprints.”
RFID in Japan
This billboard is talking to you. “Ogilvy Belgium has launched this week a talking billboard in their campaign for Ford. The interactive poster reacts to their presence of who’s standing in front of it. The voice and facial expressions of the guy in the poster are controlled by an actor hidden in a booth nearby. “
we make money not art
Onlife. “Onlife is an application for the Mac OS X that observes your every interaction with sofware applications such as Safari, Mail and iChat and then creates a personal shoebox of all the web pages you visit, emails you read, documents you write and much more. Onlife then indexes the contents of your shoebox, makes it searchable and displays all the interactions between you and your favorite apps over time.”
Onlife
Semapedia: Real-World meets Wikipedia. “Imagine a world where you could visit a castle in Austria, press a button and read a Wikipedia article about the castle’s history and occupants. With Semapedia, now you can.
This isn’t about public Internet kiosks, it’s about using your cellphone as an active travel guide and it’s about physical annotation meeting up with information access.”
Lifehacker
U3 Preps PC on a USB. “U3 LLC is readying its new USB drives, based on a “smart computing platform,” allowing you to basically carry around your entire PC on a USB drive—independent of any other storage device, and not tied to any specific computer. Vendors such as SanDisk and Verbatim are looking to supply the hardware, and software companies including AOL and Mozilla are planning to announce products that “run directly off the USB smart drives.” “
Gizmodo
Brit’s bot chats way to AI medal. “George is a “character” which has learned its conversation skills from the interactions it has had with visitors to the Jabberwacky website, and through chats with Mr Carpenter.
Mr Carpenter thinks that in the not-too-distant future, it may be that programs or robots talk and act in place of humans, mimicking human behaviour. “
BBC NEWS
Sensing the pedestrians. “A radar technology, developed by Cambridge Consultants, coupled with a vision processing system could enable cars to “sense” the presence of pedestrians and start automobile safety systems in advance of a collision.”
we make money not art
Can AISeek give games an add-on brain upgrade?. “Back in March, there was a burst of enthusiasm in the gaming community for Ageia’s PhysX Physics Processing Unit (PPU), which promises to do for game physics what 3Dfx’s Voodoo cards did for real-time 3D rendering. September brings news of a new accelerator chip in the works from a different company, this time for game AI.”
Ars Technica
“Magical Tools” for 3D Drawing and Painting. “Teddy is one of the most well-known works of his, which allows users to create 3D models just by drawing freeform strokes. Such a 3D authoring method could allow anyone to create 3D objects and effectively support creative processes of making 3D characters and objects. Look what kids made using Magical Sketch 2. “
we make money not art
Message in an implant. “A micro-sensor that could be injected into the brain of those suffering from motor neurone disease and transmit data to a computer is being developed at Birmingham University. With the system, signals that would have previously controlled muscles could be harnessed to operate artificial speech programs, or an electronic wheelchair. Besides, the sensor package is small enough to be injected using a needle, removing the need for an operation.”
we make money not art
Camera phones will be high-precision scanners. “Using the new software with a 1-megapixel camera held at least 20 centimetres away, an A4 sized page takes about 3 to 5 seconds to scan. This produces between 21 and 35 images which the software merges together to extract the text and record any images.”
New Scientist
Nanoscale optics for data transmission. “In recent years there has been intense interest in developing ways to guide and manipulate light at dimensions much smaller than optical wavelengths. Metals like gold and silver have ideal properties to accomplish this task. Special types of light-like waves, called plasmons, can be transmitted along the surfaces of metals in much the same way as light in conventional optical fibers. When small metallic nanoparticles are positioned on the metal film, they behave like tiny antennae that can transmit or receive light; it is this behavior that has been found to mimic that of electrons. Until now, the coupling of light waves into extended nanoscale structures has been poorly understood.”
ZDNet.com
World mobile subscribers top 2 bln: study. “The number of mobile phone subscribers in the world has surpassed the 2 billion milestone Wireless Intelligence, an information service set up by industry body GSM Association and consulting firm Ovum, said on Sunday.
“The bulk of the new growth now is coming from large, less well-developed markets such as China, India, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa,” Wireless Intelligence said in a statement. “
Reuters.com
Reinventing TV: Network TV Signs Off. Networked TV Logs On.. “Plugging TV into IP rather than into a terrestrial cable system or a fleet of geosynchronous satellites, could redeem – or at least reinvigorate – the medium. The hermetically sealed world of television is about to be cracked open and rewired, transformed into an open publishing platform as a variety of new devices and services emerge to make independent video content easier – and perhaps even profitable – to produce and distribute to smaller subsets of the population. “
Release 1.0
Tiniest remote-controlled robot created. “Powered by a grid of electrodes underneath a surface layer and steered by its tiny silicon paddle, the bot crawls around at a speed of about 200 micrometres per second and can push specks of dust, or other “dead” robots. “
New Scientist
The recording toy car. “The HotCam is a manual control toy car with an onboard video camera and microphone. The car enables children to record certain “scenes” in their own stories. They can then “play” the captured scenes through a TV, re-experience their stories and share them with parents, siblings and friends in a similar way to something as traditional and tangible as a painted picture or clay model. When the push button on top of the car is ON the headlights and rear lights come on and the car is recording. When the button is OFF the lights go off and the camera is not recording.”
we make money not art
Light Emitting Roof Tiles. “Lambert Kamps’s Light emitting roof tiles allows you to add huge texts, animations and logos on the roof of your building. The translucent polyester roof tiles are illuminated with LEDs and each tile can act as a pixel and be controlled by a PC. “
we make money not art
Ten million U.S. households will have a networked storage device by 2010. “Storage and Management for the Connected Home identified several factors that are driving this market, including declining price, the entry of major hard drive and home networking companies, consumer awareness campaigns sponsored by these vendors, the emergence of system-on-a-chip solutions, and better designed software solutions.”
gizmag
TV listings IM bot. “Search the BBC 7-day TV listings with your IM client, and get SMS reminders sent to your phone. “
BBC backstage
Dutch to Open Electronic Files on Children. “The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future. Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.”
Yahoo! News
Starkey ELI hearing aid takes calls from your Bluetooth cellphone. “For those who use hearing aids, digital cellphones can be a bit of an annoyance as they create electronic interference resulting in buzzing and feedback from the unit. Starkey Laboratories’ ELI hearing aid is designed to mitigate some of that by using Bluetooth to actually route the call audio into the hearing aid itself.”
Engadget
Making Visible the Invisible. “Making Visible the Invisible” is an installation consisting of 6 large LCD screens located on a glass wall horizontally behind the librarians’ main information desk in the Mixing Chamber of the Seattle Central Library, a large open 19,500 sq ft space dedicated to information retrieval and public accessible computer research. The screens feature real-time calculated animation visualizations generated by custom designed statistical and algorithmic software using data received each hour. This data consists of a list of checked-out items organized in chronological order. The item may be a book, a DVD, a CD, a VHS tape, etc. and from the list we can collect and aggregate titles, checkout time, catalog descriptors such as keywords, Dewey classification code if they are non-fiction items.”
UCSB
Acoustic snooping. “University of California, Berkeley researchers claim that sounds from typing on computer keyboards are distinctive enough to be decoded, allowing security breaches caused by “acoustic snooping.”
The scientists fed sound recordings of typing on keyboards into a computer and use an algorithm to recover up to 96% of the keyboard characters.”
we make money not art
Toruka: a new feature for wallet phones. “NTT DoCoMo will introduce a new feature called Toruka for thier RFID-chipped wallet phones. Toruka allows wallet phones to receive information from RFID readers. This feature can be used to get discount coupons, store information, ads, etc. that are sent from reader devices. The received information is then stored in a special “folder” on a mobile phone. Once stored in the folder, the information can be exchanged with others by using a infrared port, external memory device, or email. “
RFID in Japan
Cell phone map of Graz. “The researchers used three types of data-density of cellphone calls, origins and destinations of the calls, and position of users tracked at regular intervals-to create computer-generated images that can be overlayed with one another and with geographic and street maps of a city to show the peaks and valleys of the landscape as well as peaks in cellphone use.”
Boing Boing
Killer Buzz Flocks to New Browser. “Flock advertises itself as a “social browser,” meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It’s a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user. “
Wired News
New microchip design could be the key to expanding mobile phone memory. “Researchers from Imperial College London, Durham University and the University of Sheffield say their new computer chip design will enable large amounts of data to be stored in small volumes by using a complex interconnected network of nanowires, with computing functions and decisions performed at the nodes where they meet a similar approach to neurons and axons in the brain.”
Imperial College London
DiamondTouch embeds a giant multi-user tablet into a table. “The MERL DiamondTouch is basically a ginormous touchscreen, embedded in a table, that supports multiple simultaneous inputs, so different users can be manipulating objects on the screen at the same time. This DiamondTouch is totally wasted on research and corporate meetings — all it needs is some cup holders and we’d ditch our coffee table in a second.”
Engadget
Embracing The Mobile Hacker Ethic. “First is Nokia’s release of the Python programming language for its Series 60 smartphone environment. The port of Python is a full implementation with a high degree of portability from the desktop environment, opening mobile development to a whole new class of programmers—which was its primary goal, says Erik Smartt, the program manager of Python for Series 60. “By choosing a developer-friendly, easy-to-learn language, Nokia is making it possible for casual developers to tinker with their mobile phones and innovate without the typical investment costs for embedded system development,…”
Gizmodo
VW adds USB in armrest. “Up to six music folders can be displayed as CDs one to six on the radio or navigation system screen. Any information that has been stored for the music files – for example, the number of the song and the timer – will be displayed. The scan, search and shuffle functions can be selected using the radio buttons as you would for CDs. “
Boing Boing
Users play fast and loose with corporate PCs. “Users are more likely to engage in risky internet behaviour at work because they reckon their IT department will protect them against viruses, worms, spyware, spam, phishing, and other security threats. That’s according to a recent online survey of 1,200 corporate end users in the US, Germany, and Japan conducted by net security firm Trend Micro.”
The Register
‘Bionic eye’ has potential to cure blindness. “SCOTTISH scientists are developing an electronic implant that will be capable of curing two of the most common forms of blindness. Dr Keith Mathieson, from Glasgow University’s Department of Physics, is using digital camera technology to create the ‘bionic eye’. He has developed a microchip that can replicate the role played by the retina, the sensitive lining at the back of the eye that converts light into a signal that is sent to the brain. The implant would allow doctors to restore the sight of more than 800,000 people in the UK.”
Scotsman.com
Japan sees first-ever decrease in coins. “…coin usage in Japan is down for the first time ever, and the decrease is blamed on cashless payment systems. All interesting stuff, but most interesting to me is the idea that for the first time in history, purchases of small items like cigarettes, newspapers, soda and snacks are not undertaken anonymously. “
Boing Boing
Waving at TV changes channels. “The device clips onto your hand to operate the TV with simple hand gestures and short-range wireless technology. Specific gestures are still being developed but a palm-up or palm-down gesture could mean fast-forward and rewind, while hand-up could change the channel up and hand-down could change channels down.”
we make money not art
Chinese pop idol thrives online. “Budding popstars are trying to make a name for themselves in China with just a laptop, headphones and a lip-mike. And it has worked for Xiang Xiang, China’s number one internet pop star. “
BBC NEWS
Motorcycle helmet “heads up” display adds radar detection. “The creators of the world’s first personal Heads Up displays have just created a powerful new feature – radar detection display. The SportVue MC2 alerts motorcycle riders of the presence of radar in a personal helmet-mounted display.”
gizmag
Connect With Your Neighbors Online. “Neighbornodes are group message boards on wireless nodes, placed in residential areas and open to the public. These nodes transmit signal for around 300 feet, so everyone within that range has access to the board and can read and post to it. This means that with a Neighbornode you can broadcast a message to roughly everyone whose apartment window is within 300 feet of yours (and has line of sight), and they can broadcast messages back to you.”
Lifehacker
Generation Forever Young. “Teenage girls watch Desperate Housewives, Lost and Sex and the City with their fortysomething mothers, both wearing jeans from Topshop, a funky top from New Look. The ease of downloading music means teen boys can dip into classic Stones and Kinks, while their fathers can discover the Killers and Kings of Leon.”
PSFK
Superstar Tokyo. “To play, place your own stickers (with a star on it to recognize participants) wherever you want and collect the stickers of other players by shooting them with your phonecam. Whenever a player snaps a Superstar sticker both players earn points.
A link is then created between the two players. From this point on, any time either player earns points (by shooting a new sticker or by having their sticker shot) the other one will also earn points (though not as many).”
we make money not art
Nukunukukey. “The Peltier device produces 3 different levels of heat according to how many people are present in a house. The LED emits light differently according to people’s locations in the house — whether they are in a living room, a kitchen, or a dining room. An apron-shaped device was also conceptualized for sending yes/no questions (such as “Will you have dinner at home?” or “Are you coming back home today?”) to a nukunukukey. “
we make money not art
Fail-Proof Focus. “Tired of blurry photographs? Ren Ng, a computer science graduate student at Stanford University, has developed a digital camera and software that allow photographers to refocus images after they have been taken.”
Tech Review
Virtual post-its. “The Siemens system could do everything from helping highway department personnel label pothole locations for road crews to allowing a city’s residents to craft personalized guides for visiting friends.”
Tech Review
Weather-Predicting Clothes Pegs. “Oliver MacCarthy, a Product Design student from Brunel University in the UK, has designed an intelligent clothes peg, which predicts the weather and locks itself shut if it forecasts rain, preventing you from hanging clothes out if they are likely to get wet. Two symbols on the holder – ‘clear sky’ and ‘rain’ – indicate the outlook and are positioned so they can be distinguished from inside. “
gizmag
Train Ticket Gates to Track Kids. “PiTaPa is an RFID-based train ticket system that is used by railway companies (including Hankyu railways, Nosei railways, and Keihan railways) in the Kansai region of Japan. These three railway companies announced they together will test a service that uses their RFID-enabled train ticket gates for tracking kids. When a kid passes through RFID-enabled train ticket gates using an PiTaPa train pass, which is an RFID card, an SMS message is automaticaly sent to their parents. “
RFID in Japan
Scrapple. “In Scrapple, object placed on the table become sound-producing elements that determine the score’s rhythm and pitch. They are interpreted as sound-producing marks in an active score: flexible shape-holding curves allow for the creation of melodies, a group of small toys and other moving objects yield ever-changing rhythms. Video projections on the table turn the installation into a simple augmented reality, in which the objects are elaborated through colorful and explanatory graphics.”
networked_performance
Virtual Gaming’s Elusive Exchange Rates. “Eventually, there’s going to be a portfolio of these synthetic currencies,” said Castronova. “Cyberspace nations that are issuing these currencies are going to be under legal obligation to report sales and volumes and transactions, because in worlds where those currencies can be freely liquidated into dollars, there are clear tax implications…” “
networked_performance
Dining Table That Shows Where Your Food Came From. “Yamakawa purchased fresh vegetables at farmers’ market in the town of Kizu and provided them to the cafe restaurant. When a customer eats special dishes made from the vegetables at the table, it shows interview video clips of the farmers who sold the vegetables at the market. “
we make money not art
RFID Bolts + Digital Torque Wrench. “KRD Corporation in the city of Zama (Kanagawa Prefecture) developed RFID bolts. Using special digital torque wrenches, one can maintain records about each bolt: when it was fastened and how much force was applied while fastening, etc. Potential application areas include airplane assembling factories where lots of parts and bolts are used since RFID bolts may make be used to make sure that all bolts are fastened.”
RFID in Japan
large cylinder display device for browsing the Web. “The device connects to the Internet and fetches Flash, image and text files based on certain time-varying constraints as well as users’ keyword search queries. It then shows the fetched information on the cylinder display and reads relevant text information with a synthesized voice. “
we make money not art
Radio 1 Superstar VJS – Creative Archive Licence trial. “For the first time in our history the BBC is opening its video archives to the UK public. Download nearly 100 clips especially chosen with VJ’s in mind. We’ve scoured the archives for skylines, sunsets, seascapes, wildlife, time-lapse photography & retro gadgets. We will be adding new clips/programmes and launching a major VJ based competition over the next few months so keep coming back for the latest updates. “
BBC
Augmented carnage. “The remote-controlled vehicles scurry around, while status circles and other data are projected on the surface. As the vehicle moves, cameras and photo-detectors relay the movement to tracking software. Images are projected to the areas corresponding to the actual positions and directions of the toys: virtual laser beams and missiles appear to fly out of the real vehicles; explosions are overlayed on the screen as they connect with their targets. “
we make money not art
Audiosensor turns your table into an AV controller. “this Audiosensor by Tona Interactive will make us look like wizards of home theater, as it allows you to control audio, video and other electronic components via hand movements on the surface of something like a table. The unit translates your hand signals into remote control programming commands — who needs a scroll wheel when you can just wax on/wax off your coffee table to control your tunes?”
Engadget
3D Barcode (dude!). “The 3rd dimension is not Z but time.
These are 3D barcodes for fortune telling:”
RFID in Japan
Recording who you met with at an academic conference. “At this year’s ubicomp conference, RFID tags are used to record a person one met with. This could be used to either replace or augment our existing practice of exchaging business cards. A special table with embedded RFID readers read FeliCa RFID cards on it thereby identify people around the table. The table also takes a photo. “
RFID in Japan
Backpack Generator. “The backpack’s load plate is mounted to the pack and suspended by springs, which allows the load to echo the hip’s movement. This drives a rack-and-pinion device, which in turn powers a motor that acts as a generator. The result is a conversion of the body’s mechanical energy to electricity.”
Gizmodo
Secure RSS Courts Enterprise Adoption. “Two enterprise RSS providers are teaming with XML security company Reactivity to provide secure RSS features that could allow the technology to be used for everything from notices of credit card transactions to supply chain management, according to Andrew Nash, chief technology officer of Reactivity Inc., which makes secure XML infrastructure products. “
EWeek
Exploring the City with Digi-Diviner. “Participants will provide their cell phone and email address to an attendant at a kiosk. In return, they will be given a digi-diviner to walk and explore the neighborhood. A minute or so after they go outside a real time mix of sound art and verbal information triggered by their location will start to play through an earbud attached to the diviner. The information is a mix of recordings of residents and historians, text-to-speech synthesis, recitations, musique, and other processed sound.”
networked_performance
READIUS ‘Rollable Display’ pocket e-Reader concept at IFA 2005. “The Readius is the world’s first prototype of a functional electronic-document reader that can unroll its display to a scale larger than the device itself. With four gray levels, the monochrome, 5-inch QVGA (320 pixels x 240 pixels) display provides paper-like viewing comfort with a high contrast ratio for reading-intensive applications, including text, graphics, and electronic maps.”
gizmag
Hands On Luggage passport prevents bag tampering. “The HandsOn Passport is designed to record the checked-in weight of luggage, and this can be compared with the weight at the collection point. Any discrepancy will show a removal of or addition to the luggage while it was “out of sight”. This can be reported and investigated before passing through the customs hall, thereby removing the committal of any offence. “
gizmag
Mazda’s USB Starter Key. “Mazda is trying to bond with its future drivers by installing a “USB stick key”—or flash drive—instead of the traditional cylinder lock key system. Yes, this means you’ll be able to start your car with a USB dongle as well as transfer driving directions and music to the internal hard drive of this concept car, dubbed the Sassou.”
Gizmodo
An SMS glowing on your pillow. “The Electronic and Photonic Textiles prototypes include what Philips calls the “SMS pillow” (send a text message to it and words scroll across it) and a backpack that has the same LED substrate stitched onto the back. The LED substrates are also capable of displaying Windows Media Player-style visualisations and feature responsive sensors so that the patterns of diffused light displayed can change according to how they are handled. Philips sees the customisation potential here – just as kids personalise their phones with ring tones and wallpapers, so they’ll be able to wear T-Shirts with messages that scroll across them, or have a scarf that flashes ‘Liverpool FC rule!’”
we make money not art
Memory Ball Alarm and Radio. “…at each intersection of the quilted grid on top of the radio, is actually a preset radio station. You change the station by rolling the magnetized ball to another grid intersection.”
Gizmodo
New Catalyst Produces Hydrogen from Water. “New results from experiments on a novel catalyst suggest that it can be used to coax hydrogen from water without the need for severe reaction conditions. “We have discovered a catalyst that can produce ready quantities of hydrogen without the need for extreme cold temperatures or high pressures, which are often required in other production and storage methods,”
Scientific American
Pandora. “Pandora is a music recommendation engine with a twist — instead of making recommendations based on statistical similarities between people’s tastes, Pandora makes recommendations based on the musical characteristics of a model song or artist. The interface is clean and smart and it’s already introduced me to a couple of bands I’d never heard of.”
Futurismic
New Light at End of the Tunnel. “Of course, fiber-optic cables already transmit lots of data with light signals. But Schubert is talking about things like: brake lights that tell a closely following car to stop, even if the driver doesn’t notice. headlights that tell a red stop light to turn green, if it’s safe. road signs that communicate warnings to specific cars. room lights that link your computer to the Internet, avoiding Wi-Fi signals that can be pirated. room lights that transmit messages to devices worn by only certain people, like particular doctors or nurses in a hospital, rather than speakers that spew announcements for everybody to hear.”
Wired News
An instant and mobile wireless mesh network. ” California-based start-up company, PacketHop, is about to launch a software to enable mobile and instantaneously reconfigurable mesh networks. If you have a 802.11-enabled laptop or PDA, you will be able to send, receive and route data. According to InformationWeek, this could be primarily used by police officers “caught in a dangerous situation that requires teamwork and fast communication.” “
Primidi
Installation. “.”Installation is a system created by Simon Greenwald,at the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT media lab,consisting of a viewing window and a stylus with which users can create virtual forms and install them permanently into a real space”.”
MIT
Scientists take the effort out of moving objects. “A team led by scientists from Edinburgh University has succeeded in objects move remotely and with no direct physical effort. They used nanotechnology to shift a tiny droplet of a thick liquid called diiodomethane up a 12-degree slope against the force of gravity. This is claimed to be the small-scale equivalent of a conventional machine lifting an object twice the height of the world’s tallest building.”
we make money not art
NZ Telecom plans $200m upgrade. “Telecom today announced a $NZ220 ($203) million project to switch every telephone line in the country to an internet protocol platform within seven years to replace the existing phone network.”
Australian IT
Camera phones boosting digital camera sales-study. “Mobile phones equipped with tiny cameras are seen as less of a threat to replace digital cameras as camera prices fall, IDC said in its Mobile Imaging Survey. In fact the report said new phones help to introduce users to digital photography, which uses no film and allow pictures to be e-mailed. “
Reuters.com
Missed Church? Download It to Your IPod.. “Mr. Lewis, who regularly attends services of the National Community Church in Alexandria, Va., listened to the sermon while he was at the gym, through a recording he had downloaded to his iPod. Instead of listening to the rock music his gym usually plays, he heard his pastor’s voice. “
New York Times (may require free subscription)
denCity.net. “Places and objects of the city get a virtual identification in the form of a QR(bar)-code. This code contains – in digitally readable form – the most important information of the respective location: its tag-ID and GPS-coordinates. Shot and decoded on the fly using a common camera-cellphone, through the tags one connects to the dataweb, which consists of site-specific information.”
networked_performance
Do You MySpace?. “Although many people over 30 have never heard of MySpace, it has about 27 million members, a nearly 400 percent growth since the start of the year. It passed Google in April in hits, the number of pages viewed monthly, according to comScore MediaMetrix, a company that tracks Web traffic. (MySpace members often cycle through dozens of pages each time they log on, checking up on friends’ pages.) According to Nielsen/NetRatings, users spend an average of an hour and 43 minutes on the site each month, compared with 34 minutes for facebook.com and 25 minutes for Friendster.”
New York Times (may require free subscription)
Your very own personal search engine – Breaking News. “An upcoming search tool will comb your hard drive and work out your interests before serving up web pages tailored to you and your hobbies”
New Scientist
Smart Medical Wristband. “This wristband contains a memory chip that stores all of the drug information for any patient. Chips are also placed on drug containers, when the sensors are near each other the wristband determines whether the drug is the correct one. Now while this isn’t a fool proof system, it is definitely a step-up in dosage mistakes. “
Gizmodo
Virtual facilitator could help teams solve problems faster, say UMR researchers. “Facilitation is in many ways related to therapy,” says Luechtefeld. “We help people to express ideas clearly, identify barriers, and understand the situation they’re facing. Our virtual facilitator could be used in chatrooms, e-teams, and educational situations right now.””
UMR News and Research
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