Real, Virtual Reality Roller Shoes … Huh?. “As you take steps, a computer strapped to your back will make the rollers on the bottom of the sandals roll the opposite direction canceling out your steps.”
Gizmodo
“Tourist Remover” removes people from photographs. “FutureLab has a nifty service that erases people, cars, etc. from photographs. It works by comparing several photos of a scene, and getting rid of the stuff that’s different from the other photos.”
Boing Boing
Design Concept: Wind-Driven Bike Headlight. “this design concept of a mini-turbine mounted on bike handlebars stores that wind energy in a rechargeable lithium battery, keeping its 1700lux LED light shining bright even when the bike isn’t moving.”
Gizmodo
Share video segments with Motionbox. “Using their swanky Flash 9-based in-browser editor, trim a video down to the good parts and share ‘em with a permalink or via email. Motionbox is pretty scant on the stock social/sharing features you’ll find on other video sites, but I’ll take a well-edited video that doesn’t waste my time over a friends list any day.”
Lifehacker
Pressure-Sensitive Light-Up LED Shelf. “There are three separate sensors on the shelf, and when something is placed on one, it illuminates with a super-bright LED light.”
I4U News
Touch Messenger sends and receives text messages in Braille. “Samsung’s “Touch Messenger” mobile phone for the visually impaired has landed a Gold Award at the Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). The innovative Touch Messenger enables the visually impaired users to send and receive Braille text messages. The 3-4 button on the cell phone is used as two Braille keypads and text messages can be checked through the Braille display screen in the lower part.”
gizmag
MoGo Mouse, MoFo Price: But It’s Bluetooth. “This credit card-sized MoGo Bluetooth mouse fits right inside a PC Card slot, where it charges up in less than an hour. It’s not half bad-looking, either.”
Gizmodo
Meet the Remote-Control Self. “Ishiguro, a senior researcher at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories outside Kyoto, has created a machine in his own image — a robot that looks and moves exactly like him. It sits on a chair and gazes around the room in a very humanlike fashion, just like its creator. In fact, the robot is an exact duplicate.”
Wired News
Perpetuum launches energy harvest component. “The microgenerator converts kinetic energy from the vibration of the equipment running at mains frequency (50 or 60Hz) into electrical energy. The PMG7 can generate up to 5 milliwatts of power, from a 100-mg (milli-gee) vibration and 400 microwatts of power from 25-mg vibration. It supplies a regulated 3.3-V supply and is therefore able to power sensors, microprocessors and transmitters to monitor plant equipment and machinery without the need for batteries, expensive cabling or maintenance.”
EETimes.com
What is the 1% rule?. “It’s an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will “interact” with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it. It’s a meme that emerges strongly in statistics from YouTube, which in just 18 months has gone from zero to 60% of all online video viewing.”
Guardian Unlimited
Gizmo Project makes all VoIP to landline calls free. Forever.. “e’re kind of left wondering how Skype — deep eBay pockets and all — intends to compete with archrival Gizmo Project’s latest tactic: free Gizmo-to-landline calls anywhere, anytime, any amount, forever. “
Engadget
Talking mirror now available for your home. “The “Magic Message Mirror,” aside from being a decoration of stunning novelty, doubles as a security monitor in which Basil, your on-screen tipster, gives you the low-down on what’s happening on your premises. The mirror is connected to a series of triggers and cameras mounted around your domicile, and when those alarms are activated the system springs to life while Basil magically appears to alert you.”
Engadget
Shapeshifters. “The last prototype is the TactoPhone with an active 3D surface that animates and displays shapes. The phone interface allows for interaction with location based information “on the go” and “In the pocket”. Video scenario 1: the user sets his phone to alert him of nearby events; video scenario 2: the phone tracks the location of people.”
we make money not art
Make a timeline of your life story at Dandelife. “Web app Dandelife, a “social biography network,” creates a timeline of your life linked to textual posts, YouTube videos and Flickr photos.”
Lifehacker
The Breath Car. “The standard remote control toy car features a mouthpiece the player blows into in order to control steering. Blow gradually harder and it steers to the right; blow gradually softer and it steers to the left. At least 80% of the technique of singing or playing any wind instrument is concerned with controlled breathing. This toy replicates many traditional breathing excercises in a context of play, whilst providing clear goals and requiring a degree of mastery through repeated practice.”
we make money not art
Where will we live in 2025?. “This projection, dubbed “Mapping the Future,” shows that the greatest increases in population will occur in developing countries. Of course, this projection might be wrong, but this one has been built by watching nine million ‘cells’ distributed across the globe. And the researchers also have mapped several other evolutions, including maps of countries which will be touched by a lack of water or a growth in emission of carbon dioxide.”
Primidi
rf id mon amour 1.0. “Rf id mon amour 1.0 is a kit that allows designers, artists and architects to create interactive exhibitions without fuss nor any knowledge of programming or electronics.”
we make money not art
StumbleUpon now IE friendly. “The service lets you browse around web sites that have been recommended by friends and other users with interests similar to your own. Users can also write reviews of sites. The end result is a very compelling user experience that’s likely to explode now that it’s working with the market dominant browser.”
Techcrunch
Paint-on semiconductor outperforms chips. “Researchers at the University of Toronto have created a semiconductor device that outperforms today’s conventional chips — and they made it simply by painting a liquid onto a piece of glass. [...] At room temperature, the paint-on photodetectors were about ten times more sensitive to infrared rays than the sensors that are currently used in military night-vision and biomedical imaging. “These are exquisitely sensitive detectors of light,” says Sargent, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. “It’s now clear that solution-processed electronics can combine outstanding performance with low cost.”
Eurekalert
MoveDigital launches metered torrents, mobile streaming; John Edwards and Rocketboom among first customers. “MoveDigital launched a pay-as-you-go digital media distribution service this morning that includes a very easy way to turn media into torrents and mobile streams. Senator John Edwards has announced that he will use both the company’s torrent and mobile technologies in his “OneAmerica” tour.”
Techcrunch
Videogame addiction clinic opens. “A clinic that offers treatment for people addicted to playing computer games has opened in the Netherlands. The service, run by addiction consultancy Smith and Jones, offers a program lasting up to eight weeks. The clinic estimates that up to 20% of gamers, many of which are children, could develop a dependency.”
BBC NEWS
A battleship on a real world grid. “His idea was to start thinking about “how Google Earth could become a platform for realtime mobile gaming”. An instantiation of this was then to transfr the simple game mechanic based on the old Milton Bradley Battleship game to a Google Earth platform.”
pasta and vinegar
Maybe We Should Leave That Up to the Computer. “Some of Mr. Snijders’s experiments from the last two years have looked at the results that purchasing managers at more than 300 organizations got when they placed orders for computer equipment and software. Computer models given the same tasks achieved better results in categories like timeliness of delivery, adherence to the budget and accuracy of specifications.”
New York Times
Brainy Robots Start Stepping Into Daily Life. “Though most of the truly futuristic projects are probably years from the commercial market, scientists say that after a lull, artificial intelligence has rapidly grown far more sophisticated. Today some scientists are beginning to use the term cognitive computing, to distinguish their research from an earlier generation of artificial intelligence work. What sets the new researchers apart is a wealth of new biological data on how the human brain functions.”
New York Times
Radio wand to reduce dangerous patient stitch-ups. “A deadly type of surgical error – accidentally leaving sponges inside patients – could be eliminated by waving a special type of wand over the patient’s wound, according to researchers. They have invented special medical sponges containing radio frequency identification (RFID) chips – a technology currently used to find lost pets and track food items in stores. Doctors will be less likely to accidentally leave these sponges inside surgery patients, suggests their new study.”
New Scientist Tech
Habbo To Open Virtual-Physical Shopping Mall. “Virtual community Habbo will offer a service that will allow Chinese users to purchase items that will be both virtual and physical items, reports Netease. Through the service, users can purchase items such as flowers, clothes and movie tickets online in the virtual community and the physical items will be delivered to their homes the next day.”
Pacific Epoch
Tiny radio chip can store video clips. “A radio chip the size of a grain of rice that holds up to half a megabyte of video has been developed at Hewlett Packard’s research labs in the UK. The chip, called a Memory Spot, is small enough to be attached to a postcard or a photograph and could be used to append video, audio or hundreds of pages of text to all sorts of everyday objects. In hospitals, for example, the chips could allow doctors to add detailed medical records to a patient’s plastic wristband.”
New Scientist Tech
Pong LED hat. “It can also scroll space invaders, play pong and show text. The batteries and control board are in the ear flaps”
hack a day
Robot Strider walks on water and, eventually, land. “The outer legs are made of buoyant resin to keep it afloat, while the middle legs provide the driving force. Eventually the developers are hoping it will be able to move flawlessly from the water onto land, making it a valuable tool for aquatic rescues, especially when equipped with a camera.”
Engadget
xvista Portable Iris Scanner. “Xvista has been hard at work improving iris scanning technology, having just developed the UK’s first portable iris scanner. Small enough to be fitted inside a cellphone, xvista’s technology could conceivably be integrated into heavily trafficked areas, such as airports.”
Gizmodo
Consumers to flock to VoIP. “”VoIP will convert the home telephone from analogue to digital, and once digital, the home telephone number will become unfixed,” Jupiter’s Ian Fogg said. “It will no longer only be available just at home, but also in the office, in internet cafes, and even on mobile phones. VoIP telephony is attractive to consumers because services are digital, cheap, and flexible.”"
The Register
Mobile phone companies join forces on Linux . “Cell phone makers Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics, along with mobile operators NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone, expect to announce on Thursday plans to form an independent foundation to develop a common mobile Linux-based platform. They will use this platform to develop new products, applications and features.”
ZDNet
Big.com: The Most Readable Results on the Web. “The most readable results on the web.”
Big.com
TalkShoe: host podcasts by phone and get paid. “A Windows desktop client allows up to 25 people to participate in a conversation and chat behind the scenes. Calls are automatically recorded and entered into the site’s podcast directory. Show hosts receive money from the site’s ad revenues according to the number of their show’s listeners and for referring others to the service.”
TechCrunch
Fingernail-Sized Chip Handles WiMax, No Prob. “It reportedly can boost the signal it receives by 50x, theoretically giving you a lot more range then you would normally get with WiMax, which is normally good for about a click (1km).”
Gizmodo
Codecheck – hijacking the barcode. “A potential buyer uses his/her PC to enter the product’s numerical code and sends it via Internet to codecheck.ch; what immediately comes back are comprehensive definitions and information from experts about ingredients like sodium laurent sulfate and E250. The result is the creation of a reference work that is constantly being expanded and updated with contributions from manufacturers, wholesale distributors, specialized labs, consumer organizations and individual consumers.”
Smart Mobs
Thinglink: UPCs for everyone, free and open. “Thinglink is a fast-and-easy way of adding unique identifiers to your craft, design and homebrew projects. These unique numbers work like the UPCs you see on the sides of boxes, or ISBNs for books, unique numbers that make it easy for people who encounter or seek your goods to search for them and information about them on the web. The problem is that GUIDs and UPCs cost money and require permission, while a Thinglink is free and permission-free.”
Boing Boing
A Flash Drive That Holds Your Computer. “It’s designed to turn a flash drive into a portable Windows XP ecosystem, meaning that you can jack into anybody’s PC anywhere and find yourself — and your software tools — right at home.”
New York Times
New LCD Technology Outperforms CRT. “The previous shortcoming of LCD monitors was that they couldn’t support deep blacks and real dark colors compared to CRT monitors. To solve this problem, the new technology supports “deep color”—compatible with the HDMI 1.3 spec we talked about yesterday—and can go up to 48-bit colors. That’s the point at which humans can’t distinguish onscreen color artifacts.”
Gizmodo
UltraCell launches XX25 Micro Fuel Cell. “They’ve just announced the immediate available of their Military-grade UltraCell XX25, which claims up to three days of power for a laptop off of one hot-swappable fuel cartridge. You can also have the unit configured for longer life if you need a longer duration for something like remote surveillance.”
Engadget
Japanese Lofty Pillow Tells How Well You Slept. “A sensor tracks your head movements on the pillow. If you sleep well your head does not move much.
The pillow compares the data with previous data and tells you on an LCD display in the morning if you slept well or should take power naps during the day. “
I4U News
Find wifi in the park. “This summer if you kick back in your favorite park and feel a dire need to grab your email or (cough visit Lifehacker cough) surf the Web, you’ll definitely want to check TravelPost’s list of parks in the US that provide wifi access.”
Lifehacker
Music Gremlin Hands-On. “Every user of the MusicGremlin service appears in your “My Community” menu and you can then pick and choose songs from folks who may or may not have the same music taste. For example, I found one fellow who was in love with Queensryche while another kid really liked Joan Baez. This eclectic mix makes for quite a treasure hunt.”
Gizmodo
Lack of Computer Curricula Deemed ‘Disastrous and Shortsighted’. “Only 26 percent of U.S. high schools require computer science classes and only 40 percent even offer an AP (advance placement) computer science course, according to the report. Less than one-third of students taking an introductory computer science course were female, and among the students taking the AP course, the number dropped to 23 percent.”
EWeek
Hey, Kid, You Want to Buy a Toyota Scion?. “IN April, Toyota quietly began an unusual virtual promotion of its small, boxy Scion: it paid for the car’s product placement in Whyville.net, an online interactive community populated almost entirely by 8- to 15-year-olds. Never mind that they cannot actually buy the car. Toyota is counting on Whyvillians to do two things — influence their parents’ car purchases and maybe grow up with some Toyota brand loyalty.”
New York Times
The web trail. “We have come to one of those forks in the road that affect the direction of the entire newspaper industry. From tomorrow, the Guardian will publish stories first to the web, ending the primacy of the printed newspaper. The Mail is moving internet staff into its newsroom, the Telegraph is stepping up its digital operation – possibly with some internal confusion about its ultimate destination – and every man and woman at News International is scurrying to satisfy Rupert Murdoch’s new interest in the medium. But for a newspaper to say that the website comes first is a big, big step.”
Guardian Unlimited
RuBee protocol overcomes RFID shortcomings. “The IEEE has just tasked a working group with finalizing the specs on the so-called RuBee protocol, which uses magnetic — as opposed to radio — signals in order to transfer information, making it useful for so-called “harsh environments” where RFID chips fail, such as retail locations where shoplifters line their bags with aluminum foil to fool anti-theft systems.”
Engadget
People are happier when they’re older?. “People often believe that happiness is a matter of circumstance, that if something good happens, they will experience long-lasting happiness, or if something bad happens, they will experience long-term misery,” (says co-author Peter Ubel). “But instead, people’s happiness results more from their underlying emotional resources — resources that appear to grow with age. People get better at managing life’s ups and downs, and the result is that as they age, they become happier — even though their objective circumstances, such as their health, decline.”
Boing Boing
Tire Pressure Check Caps Concept. “The tire cap has a small LCD screen that will display the current tire pressure with a push of the button. Now if only Wrightson could figure out a way for the caps to know what the recommended pressure is for said tires.”
Gizmodo
Shouldercool Ergonomic Mousepad. “According to the company, normally when people stand upright naturally, the palm of the hand turns towards the body. But when people use a mouse, the palm is forced to turn to the ground as a ligament and muscle in the shoulder is twisted, thereby causing a crick and pain.”
Gizmodo
City of Hoboken Using RFID in Parking Permits. “When it started issuing RFID-enabled parking permits, the city of Hoboken sent out a newsletter explaining the new tags, and the fact that the sticker stays with the car rather than being renewed and replaced each year. The tag is also activated and de-activated by city officials, with customer’s renewing their parking permits online. “The biggest thing is that with this special application it’s also going to be renewed online and that’s a big concern for people,” said Corea. “That’s the biggest question that’s being asked.”"
E week
Geotagthings. “Anything with a URL can be given a latitude/longitude by simply clicking a bookmarklet, picking the spot it should be assigned using a map interface, adding a little note and that’s that. The URL and note get shoved into a data store where it can be accessed through an RSS feed. Anyone can get a feed for a locale simply by going to the feed generator, picking where you’d like to get a feed from, determining a range around that spot and grabbing the URL from one of the feed badges, and dropping it into your favorite news aggregator, like NetNewsWire.”
pasta and vinegar
Design for new ownership patterns. “Stint, by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, is a music sharing service that combines physical representions of links to people’s virtual music and a widget that talks to the main music application. Each “stint” represents one friend and is made of leather. By giving it to a friend, one links it to the main player, collecting the stints into a network. By pressing each one, a song from that person’s music collection that she has sent to you, is played. A song can be sent to a friend by holding both the stint containing that music and the one representing the friend we want to send it to.”
we make money not art
Pupils get revision help by text. “Since Easter, Year 11 pupils have been able to message teachers from home with revision queries and get a text answer. The school said “text mentoring” had also seen teachers messaging pupils with revision prompts and exam tips. “I’ve used it a lot for science and I’ve found it really helpful,” said Daniel, 16.”
BBC NEWS
Neighbourhood Satellites. “Greater pollution produces more challenging gameplay. You may have to go elsewhere to find cleaner air, less radiation, or more light to recharge. In ‘map’ mode the system receives data from all the other ‘satellites’ being carried by people in the area, and displays on a map their location and contamination level. Carriers might choose the cleanest path to walk or, in a spirit of risky play, purposely seek the most contamination; either way, the city’s pollution topography is dramatically plotted.”
networked_performance
Tuning Fork. “MeeVee aims to allow users to define the content they’re looking content via categories, keywords and other attributes. “You can literally create your own personal channel,” he adds. MeeVee also provides an international list of streaming channels. Unlike the U.S., a great deal of television around the world is state owned. MeeVee plans to metatag all that content and make it available to viewers interested in a particular subject matter.”
Gizmodo
Quixun’s GrandOpera LCD with removable PC. “Fans of all-in-one PCs will all come to realize their rig’s biggest limitation in time: when a component fails, they’ve lost both a computer and display in one shot. Now, Japan’s Quixun corp are set to launch their GrandOpera series of LCDs that feature a slot-loading, removable PC.”
Engadget
Philips’ Streamium WAK3300 WiFi alarm clock. “Philips just announced this new wireless WAK3300 alarm clock as an extension to their Streamium range of connected home media devices. So as the name implies, you can stream your tunes over WiFi to this bedside pup from your WACS700 (which also got a drive bump to 80GB) Music Center or via internal storage just in case your home network is down or turned off for the night.”
Engadget
The Global Microbrand. “A global microbrand is simply a business, which would be small or unsustainable in a local community or even nationwide, but can be big business when it can reach customers world wide through the internet and serve them efficiently. High-end products which cost much more than their transport seem to be natural candidates for this kind of business.”
E-Valuation of Information Systems
Boompa. “Boompa.com is a community driven online vehicle encyclopedia devoted to showing off, tweaking and catalouging anything that drives, flies, floats or pedals. Registered users can showcase their vehicles in their boompa “garage” as well as write guides dedicated to vehicle tweaking, maintenence and humor.”
Boompa
For some, online persona undermines a resume. “When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company’s president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois. At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate’s Web page with this description of his interests: “smokin’ blunts” (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.”
International Herald Tribune
Sony’s E Series displays for the Post-It addict. “Until the entirety of the corporate world finally comes around to modern utilities like Outlook reminders and Google Calendar, those little yellow Post-Its will continue to dominate desktops across the land. Apparently Sony Europe has chosen to facilitate this environmentally irresponsible practice, by adding a special panel for the increasingly-obsolete sticky notes below the screens on their new E series LCD monitors.”
Engadget
James Cameron MMOG = Avatar?. “In my next film, I can only tell you what we’re planning on doing, which is simultaneously developing a major motion picture and, hopefully, a major game title that coexists in the same world that shares characters,” said Cameron. He continued, “Going into that world will actually inform those watching the film and vice versa. I don’t want to say anything more than that, because I don’t want to give away some of the cool stuff that we’re working on.”
GameSpot News
The Laughing Swing. “At first sight, the Laughing Swing is a regular swing and has to be used as such. When you sit on it, it chuckles. As you swing, it laughs, and the higher you go, the harder it laughs. At the peak swinging it is laughing wildly.”
we make money not art
RadarFunk. “Users are invited to frame one of the several patterns, shoot a picture, and the player starts sending notes to the server. Framing exactly the center of the image can produce a regular beat, but moving a bit off center can give a shuffle result (swing).”
we make money not art
Download of the Day: Ghostzilla. “You run it, and Ghostzilla embeds itself in a frame of the current active window. For example, in the screenshot above I’ve got it embedded in a program I never open, Outlook Express. Okay, that’s cool, right? But it gets even better from there. Ghostzilla makes your browsing as inconspicuous as possible. Everything in the browser window is gray-scaled, images only load when you hover the mouse over them (though you can change these settings if you don’t like them).”
Lifehacker
$130 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) GUI. “You can’t underestimate how much the design of this system flies directly in the face of the conventional wisdom in the US of how IT in a school is supposed to work. With mesh networking, there won’t be a hard firewall between the school and the community, or the rest of the web. Chat isn’t diabled; it is explicitly enabled. The underlying software is not locked down; it is unlocked by design.”
Gizmodo
Wearable gaze detector in the form of headphones. “This system can be used as a simple controller for many daily use devices or applications, such as audio players. It can also be used as a selector that allows the user to choose surrounding objects. When the gaze detector is supplemented with a video camera and a wireless communication device and the surrounding objects have identifying tags like QR codes, the user can get information about the object of interest simply by gazing it.”
pasta and vinegar
Google Research prototypes ambient audio contextual content. “A team from Google Research has developed a prototype system that uses a home computer’s internal microphone to listen to the ambient audio in a room, determine what is being watched on TV and offer web-based supplemental information, services and shopping contextual to each program being watched. It’s strange, but it sounds like it works and people might really like it.”
TechCrunch
Mini OEM laser projection display. “Symbol says their new model can display full color XGA resolution images and HD-quality video (although if it’s XGA, it ain’t exactly 1080p). Not suprisingly, the technology’s creators see virtually limitless applications for the technology, from handheld micro projectors to laptops to cellphones and PDAs to automotive dashboards”
Engadget
Touch sensor is as sensitive as your fingertip. “An artificial touch sensor as sensitive as a human fingertip has been developed by US scientists. One day it could let surgeons remotely “feel” tissue through an endoscope and help robots pour drinks without spilling a drop. The sensor is made from a film of nanoparticles of gold and cadmium sulphide. It is so sensitive that it can easily detect the contours of Abraham Lincoln’s head embossed on a US penny, and even make out the outlines of the smallest letters printed on the coin.”
New Scientist
New technology offers large screen on a small device. “Neochroma is a concept that has the potential to solve the conundrum of mobile phones, cameras, PDAs and other small devices needing screens larger than the device itself. It borrows heavily from the iconic billion-selling View-Master which was the first device to offer 3-D imagery to the public in 1939 and ironically may find a new lease of life in the digital era by offering a high resolution, large screen stereoscopic image projected to each eye.”
gizmag
Pooptopia, a pet waste removal urban game. “The goal of the Dark Treasure (Tesoro Scuro) game is to discover dog poo, make a picture of it and email it, with the location of the finding and your name or the name of your team. The claim will earn you points. You can earn double point if you also mark the exact location of your discovery on Pooptopia’s Tesoro Scuro Map. This “treasure map” is used to create nightly pick-up routes for the Pootectors, Pooptopia’s pet waste removal squad.”
we make money not art
TV Screen, Not Couch, Is Required for This Session. “It is Wednesday in the hinterlands of rural Arizona, and the psychiatrist is in. Sort of. Actually, Dr. Gibson was here in Flagstaff in a closet-size office of a nonprofit medical group, with a pale blue sheet behind her as a backdrop and a cup of tea at her side. She is one of a growing number of psychiatrists practicing through the airwaves and wires of telemedicine, as remote doctoring is known.”
New York Times
Seeking Workout Partner for Hot and Sweaty Fun. “WHEN Kendall Williams, a 36-year-old writer in Manhattan, decided to start running regularly, he posted a call for partners in crime on Craigslist. He wanted something specific: fellow joggers to meet him near his Upper West Side apartment at 6:30 a.m. several days a week. Four women who live within blocks answered his platonic ad, and for a few months, they ran 10- to 12-minute miles. [...] A growing number of people who can’t bear to go it alone are turning to the Internet to make sports dates with strangers, chiefly because their friends or spouses can’t work out when they desire, or won’t.”
New York Times
Arts and Crafts for the Digital Age. “By combining the traditional materials with high-tech ones, children as young as 9 can invent interactive jewelry, fanciful creatures that dance, musical sculptures and more, said Mitchel Resnick, a professor of learning research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.”
New York Times
Switched On: Taking control to another dimension. “Were the Falcom simply one of the most intuitive 3D controllers ever produced, that would be appealing enough, but the product also incorporates sophisticated haptics or advanced force-feedback. Navigate into a wall and the controller will stop. Navigate through dense, bumpy or slick services and you’ll feel it slow down, vibrate or “slip.” The Falcon could even generate a realistic “pull” as I tossed a virtual ball attached to a virtual rubber band around the screen.”
Engadget
Samsung shows off 1.98-inch VGA display. “Seems like every time we turn around somebody is doing an LCD smaller or bigger or thinner or bendier. In this case we have Samsung doing an LCD just plain awesomer, managing to squeeze a 640 x 480 resolution into a mere 1.98-inch panel.”
Engadget
BlueBox intros miJam iPod toys. “If it wasn’t yet clear to you that the age of the DIY mashup is upon us, a new set of toys from a company called BlueBox — which let even iPod-toting tweens “enhance” their tunes by dropping beats and sound effects — should remove any lingering doubts.”
Engadget
The Bundescast. “As the German federal government announced today, Angela Merkel is to start her very own video-podcast. From June 8th on, interested citizens can subscribe to the chancellor’s feed and will be informed about the state of the nation on a weekly basis.”
we make money not art
Design Concept: Paper Cellphone. “A group of designers have proposed “Paper Says,” a cellphone whose electronic innards are recyclable and whose outside is made of paper. The idea would be to rent the low-cost phones to busy travelers, and when the rental period is over the phone can be returned and recycled with a brand-new paper exterior.”
Gizmodo
Mutant ears. “Totally Amazing Mutant Ears -developed by ITP graduates Terence Arjo (who designed the Yo! Taxi! coat), David Bamford and Benjamin Brown- electronically amplifies and augments ordinary sounds creating an audiotastic experience. Point your ears towards an ordinary conversation and turn it into extra-terrestrial bandwidth!”
we make money not art
A Sixth Sense for a Wired World. “What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects — a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch.”
Wired News
Changing interiors. “Alexander Wiethoff’s Colour Vision, installed at the Museum of Perception, in Rohrbach (Austria), allows the visitor to change the room colour with the position of his body. Each posture symbolizes a different status like activity, calmness, reflectiveness and is visualized by different colours.”
we make money not art
Shredding Scissors. “With the rise in identity theft and the unrelenting solicitation from credit card companies it makes sense to shred all of the offers that hit your mailbox.”
Cool Hunting
Pin in the map – mark a spot; attach text; send to others. “1) Mark a spot. 2) Attach some text. 3) Send the link to others. Easy”
Pin in the map
Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams. “When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers. [...] And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded.”
Wired News
Scoopt Words – sell your blog content to the media…. “Sign up with Scoopt, carry a ScooptWords button on your blog and editors buy content they want to print and you want to sell.”
Scoopt
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