Warner to put ad-supported video archive online
“Revenue will be driven by advertising but music fans will be able to download the videos for an additional fee and Warner will also examine syndicating the content to a third party. The deal includes plans to develop subscription-based services and a version to be used on mobile platforms.”
Reuters.com
Miniaturized color MEMS scanning mirror-based Laser Projector
“The system contains an ultra compact projection head and a separate laser and signal processing unit. It allows the projection of arbitrary images and video sequences with a geometrical resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, 256 brightness levels per pixel and elementary color, and 50 hertz frame rate.”
gizmag
A Tiny ‘Green’ PC That Doesn’t Need the Desktop
New York Times
Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline
“The first demo of Gears will be for Google Reader, but more Google apps are expected to come. Reader will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 messages to your computer, preparing your computer to work offline or under a spotty internet connection.”
Techcrunch
Hi-tech tool tracks city graffiti
“The system – dubbed Graffiti Analysis/Intelligence Tracking System (GAITS) – takes pictures of graffiti, using GPS cameras that record the date, time and exact location. It then extracts information from the photographs and provides reports of each incident of graffiti which can be matched against other graffiti stored on a computer database in an effort to track down the perpetrator.”
BBC NEWS
Better Face-Recognition Software
“Sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the match up of face-recognition algorithms showed that machine recognition of human individuals has improved tenfold since 2002 and a hundredfold since 1995. Indeed, the best face-recognition algorithms now perform more accurately than most humans can manage. Overall, facial-recognition technology is advancing rapidly.”
Technology Review
Robots to help children to form relationships
“The idea is that the robot will be a mediator for human contact, said Dr. Robins. We are seeing already that through interacting with the robot, children who would not normally mix are becoming interested in getting involved with other children and humans in general and we believe that this work could pave the way for having robots in the classroom and in homes to facilitate this interaction.”
gizmag Article
Reconfigurable Costume
“Leah Buechley’s reconfigurable costume consists of a torso piece and an assortment of sensing appendages that can be snapped to the torso. Sensors in the appendages include muscle flex sensors, accelerometers, bend sensors and touch sensors. Sensor data is relayed to a computer, via a bluetooth module embedded in the torso, where it can be used to control or generate music, video and other multimedia content.”
networked_performance
Fujitsu shows off “Fab PC” laptop concept
“Dubbed the “Fab PC”, the laptop apparently uses fabric for much of its construction (hence the name), which is intended to make the device more reminiscent of a traditional folio — and no doubt prevent the dreaded problem of slippage as well.”
Engadget
Jitterbug makes Phones for Baby Boomers
“The company offers two types of phones. One has a keypad the other just offers three buttons and dialing is done via an operator.”
I4U News
LightHive
“A vast distributed network composed of various types of camera, infrared and wireless sensors relay back to a central exhibition space, where the communal activity of the school illuminates a scale model of its own light sources. Each light source is custom scripted and generated from the spatial and luminous parameters of its original source, and activated in real time by occupancy, contributing to an immersive form of spatial, 3-D surveillance.”
networked_performance:
A Peek into the Future
“In their vision, among other things, people will wear glasses with GPS, tracking systems will prevent children from getting lost, security robots will take care of your house, and you will buy your veggie using your mobile (they seem obsessed with this idea).”
PSFK Trends & Ideas
Move to create less clumsy robots
“The work at the University of Granada is concentrating on the design of microchips that incorporate a full neuronal system, emulating the way the cerebellum interacts with the human nervous system. Implanting the man-made cerebellum in a robot would allow it to manipulate and interact with other objects with far greater subtlety than industrial robots can currently manage, said researcher Professor Eduardo Ros Vidal, who is co-ordinating work at the University of Granada.”
BBC NEWS
Smart Desk Lamp: Robotic Lamp Brightens Your Path
“Built by MIT’s Guy Hoffman, AUR is a desk lamp that can track your movement so it’s always shining a spotlight where you need it. The lamp, which is dubbed a lighting assistant, was created to explore the relationship between humans and robots.”
Gizmodo
Oki Phone with DSRC tells Cars to Watch Out
“Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. developed the world’s first ultra small DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) wireless module for embedding in mobile phones to be used for DSRC inter-vehicle and pedestrian communication systems. [...] The Japanese government funds technologies to reduce pedestrian accidents. This is OKI’s suggested system to improve the safety of vulnerable road users including pedestrians and those on bicycles”
I4U News
SMS Technology M500 Touchscreen Wrist Phone
“The SMS Technology M500 mobile wristphone is water resistant and is a Quadband GSM phone supporting frequencies 850Mhz, 900Mhz, 1800Mhz and 1900Mhz. Other features of the M500 are a 1.5 inch color touch screen with 120 x 160px resolution, 128MB Built-in Memory, MP3 and MP4 player, Bluetooth 2.0, USB, Java, WAP, SMS, MMS, talk time of 200 minutes and a standby time of 80 hours.”
I4U News
GeoNames: Wikipedia For Geographical Data
“The goal of GeoNames is to aggregate free data from various sources and make is available as a database or via a range of web services. Users of GeoNames include Microsoft Popfly, Slide.com, LinkedIn and Tagzania. The GeoNames gazetteer includes over 8.5 million toponyms for 6.5 million places with 2 million alternate names in up to 200 languages. The information for places covers coordinates, administrative divisions, postal codes, population, elevation, timezone amongst others. GeoNames aggregates data from national mapping agencies, national statistical offices, national postal services as well as the US Army.”
TechCrunch
SeeReal Hi-Res Holographic Display
“The holographic display uses an eye tracker to know where your eyes are located, to send information only to these positions. Outside these “viewing windows” you see nothing at all. The display appears empty. With this selective method the enormous data amount to display high resolution 3D images is reduced drastically. The advantage of this holographic technology is that you also see the 3D effect with one eye which makes the display less strenuous to watch compared to conventional 3D displays that relay on stereoscopic vision.”
I4U News
Design Concept: Music Vortex Mixes Music with Water, Sends Ripples Through Your Soul
“The Music Vortex’s mission is to visualize music using the natural movement of water as it’s influenced by sound waves. Its bottom section function like a normal speaker, but check out that little bowl of water on top that vibrates and ripples with the music, all lit up with a spacey blue glow. You adjust the volume on the speaker with a little knob in the middle.”
Gizmodo
Humans helping out book scanners
“The service presents users with two words, one from a conventional Captcha test and the other an unknown word that a computerized optical character recognition couldn’t figure out. If the user correctly identifies the known word, he or she is presumed to have decoded the unknown one. Currently, ReCaptcha requires three separate people to digitize the word the same before it’s determined to be correct, von Ahn said.”
Smart Mobs
I.D.: Touchless Cellphone Concept From A Parallel Universe
“The Tarati is a phone with no keys, you pass your fingers through the keyholes to dial.”
I.D.: Touchless Cellphone Concept From A Parallel Universe
LOLED: Sony Flexi-OLED Screen Is Trouble Waiting to Happen
“Today Sony showed off some 2.5-inch OLED screens that are capable of being slightly bent. It is made out of a glass substrate and is only .3mm thick. Supposedly the display has been created for lightweight, bigger and “softer” electronics”
Gizmodo
A wearable artificial skin
“The e-Skin project aims at developing a novel type of wearable interface which mimics the sensory capabilities of the human skin. The interface consists of a multilayered flexible hightech textile and senses stimuli both on its outside and inside surface. At the same time the interface possesses actuation mechanisms to provide tactile feedback through its inside and outside surfaces.”
Architectradure
Researchers develop ultrathin compound-eye camera
“Dubbed TOMBO (Thin Observation Module by Bound Optics), the camera consists of nine tiny lenses that each capture a scene from slightly different angles. Some software, apparently designed to mimic the the process that insects use, then picks out the position, shape, and color of objects to reconstruct the images into a single 3D scene. The big advantage to this particular system is its size, which the researchers say could eventually be used in cellphones or placed on the wings of airplanes for surveillance without causing any drag.”
Engadget
Life’s Click: Heartbeat Indicator Mouse Tells You to Set Down the Dew Dude
“the Heartbeat Indicator Mouse uses sensors positioned under your thumb to assess your level of health (like, surprise, your heart rate). It also keeps tabs on how long you’ve worked, or at least how long you’ve been holding the mouse. Better yet, it can transmit all of this info via cell phone to your doc”
Gizmodo
Giant collectively controlled game of breakout coming to cinemas near you!
“MSNBC.com has done a deal with cinemas in the US to replace the dumb pre-movie ads with a giant, participatory game. The game is Newsbreaker, a simple break-out style game that rewards you for clearing lines by dropping real-time RSS news headlines, but the gameplay is the cool part: a motion sensor in the theater allows the entire audience to control the paddle by swaying in unison from side to side.”
Boing Boing
Public transport information to your mobile phone in real time
“VTT has developed a mobile guide for users of Finnish public transport systems, delivering real-time information on buses or trams to mobile phones. Hooking into a positioning system that tracks a number of trams, trains and buses, passengers can get access to real-time information on how far away their ride is, and when it’s going to turn up at their stop. [...] Passengers can also pay their fare via the application or follow their route stop by stop during the trip and select an alarm to wake them up before their stop on long trips.”
gizmag Article
Mapping Traffic Flow
“The software determines the average speed of roadways across the United States based on two years of historical traffic-speed data collected from commercial fleet vehicles; it uses real-time global positioning software and road sensors from the department of transportation. These billions of data points are then run through proprietary software to create a table of historical traffic patterns based on the hour of the day and the day of the week.”
Technology Review
Garmin Rino two-way radio
“Beam your position or a previously stored one to any Rino that is using the same code and channel, and your location will show on the other Rino’s color map display. You can signal the other Rinos in your group to send their positions automatically.”
New York Times
Where Are You?: GPS Text Message Device Acts Like an Emergency Beacon
“By programming in five numbers beforehand, you can activate the Freedom unit to send out your exact GPS location by SMS. This way your family members know exactly where you are when you get lost or stranded”
Gizmodo
Explay intros oio nanoprojector, plans to launch in 2008
“the firm was off parading its accomplishment in Long Beach, California, dubbing its minuscule PJ the “first truly mobile and fully operational nano-projector.” Of course, we’re sure more than a few outfits would love to disagree on that very point, but Explay went on to praise the oio’s ability to function in a variety of locales from a “dimly lit bar to a bright office.” Notably, it sounds like the company will be aiming for more dollars than those held by mere gadget freaks, as the oio marketing team will be targeting “medical, security, and even artistic” fields whenever Explay can get these things out of the door.”
Engadget
Samsung and PureDepth show off 46-inch Multi-Layer Display LCD
“PureDepth is describing its technology as a “a layered, multi-dimensional (using real depth between two or more LCD panels) viewing innovation that enables users to simultaneously view two separate fields of data on one monitor,” which is simply a fancy way of suggesting that users can experience “3D-like images” sans unsightly goggles.”
Engadget
Wall-mounted picture-frame-style printer
“The device hangs on the wall, has no wires, and turns printouts into temporary art, displayed under a glass screen until you pull it out. Also features a kickstand-like rear panel for desk use, in case you missed the point of what’s actually cool about this thing in the first place.”
Core 77
Street Ethnographers
“Earlier this year, 12 motorcycle couriers in São Paulo started using camera-phones to chronicle their daily lives. They get together periodically to discuss each other’s finds and decide collectively what stories they want to cover. The result is Canal*MOTOBOY, a real-time account of life on the Paulista streets.”
Smart Mobs
wikipedia activity image mosaic
“an emergent image mosaic depicting a macro view of all English Wikipedia, revealing those are areas that are currently “hot”, meaning they are being frequently revised. the dataset contains about 659,388 articles, connected by about 16,582,425 links.”
information aesthetics
Smell This: Nokia’s Foldable Phone Concept Leaves Your Pocket Smelling Fresh
“this foldable cellie is a scent-enabled handheld (much like this one), which gives your nose a treat via its built-in pores. Open it up and you get a whiff of petunias, close it shut and you can plop it in your pocket with room to spare.”
Gizmodo
Design: Electronic Roll-up Go Board
“Shaped like a roll of parchment when contracted, the Go board rolls out to show the black and white pieces with what looks like e-ink. That’s a fantastic idea, which could be extended to chess, checkers or Chinese checkers – since when I play somebody usually gets angry and knocks the pieces off the board when they lose.”
Gizmodo
Featured Download: Allocate your money in envelopes with Budget
“Budget creates virtual envelopes that you assign dollar amounts to – like your checking account, the cable bill, auto expenses – and when you get paid, it automatically distributes your money among the pre-allocated envelopes, and leaves the difference in an envelope called “Available.”
Lifehacker
Cars could run on aluminium, say US boffins
“In their process, water is combined with an alloy of aluminium and gallium. The aluminium oxidises, releasing gaseous hydrogen which could then be used to fuel a conventional car engine as in the Hydrogen Seven. The role of the gallium additive is to prevent a skin of oxide forming on the surface of the aluminium and allow all the metal to be used. [...] The only exhaust from a hydrogen-fuelled car engine would be water vapour. However, waste aluminium oxide (or alumina) and gallium would also be produced in this case. “The gallium doesn’t react,” says Woodall. “So it doesn’t get used up and can be recycled over and over again.”
The Register
Electronic glove ensures CPR is being done correctly
“Only 6 months after learning life-saving CPR techniques, around 60 percent of first aiders – including doctors and nurses – forget how to do it correctly. As a result, survival rates from cardiac arrests remain low. The Canadian CPR Glove acts as a quick on-the-job refresher course, making sure the first aider administers the correct frequency and depth of chest compression. It’s a simple and cheap device that has real potential to save lives if included in a first aid kit.”
gizmag Article
The 3D air-mouse you wear as a ring
“The MagicMouse is a true 3D mouse. Users can move the cursor about the screen simply by pointing and moving their index finger. Zooming is achieved by moving the hand nearer to or farther from the screen. Since both actions can be done simultaneously, the mouse makes it possible to work easily in three dimensions to pan and zoom through 3D maps, for example, or manipulate objects in computer-aided design (CAD) drawing packages.”
gizmag Article
Social Networking for the Faithful
“Xianz is among a bevy of new religion-affiliated sites that are drawing the faithful from across the Web in growing numbers. Year-old Xianz, which bills itself as the faith-based MySpace, has grown to 500,000 unique visitors and has 35,000 registered members, says co-founder Bob Hutchins. Shmooze, a site catering to the global Jewish community and others interested in the Jewish faith and culture, and its affiliated social networks have 200,000 members, according to Chief Executive Reuven Koret. Naseeb, a social network focused on the Muslim community, has more than 300,000 registered members.”
Business Week
Recreating the Feel of Water
“In order to make a 3-D system work in real time, Dobashi and his team created a model that approximates real-world forces acting on a fishing rod or kayak paddle by doing part of the math in advance of the simulation: the forces associated with different water velocities and different positions for the paddle or fishing lure were precalculated and saved in the software. Only the velocity of the water is calculated in real time, as the user moves the rod or paddle during the simulation. Once the software has determined the velocity, the associated forces are applied to the user’s hand.”
Technology Review
For Texting Teens, an OMG Moment When the Phone Bill Arrives
“Minutes? Forget minutes. It’s all about the text allowance. It needs to be supersized, now that instant messaging has leapt from the desktop to the mobile. Families who carefully researched their wireless plans to cover calls with no extra fees are discovering, to their horror, that their thumb-tapping teens have found a new way to blow the budget. In Sofia’s case, her parents’ plan included only 100 free text messages a month — fewer than half of what she was using every day “at all points of the day” — and she racked up massive per-message fees fast.”
washingtonpost.com
MyMiniLife: Your Embeddable Virtual World
“MyMiniLife is a Flash based virtual world/social network. Users create and customize a character and then build out a virtual space, adding walls, floors, doors, windows, etc. Users can then add customized goods ranging from lamps to cannons to the space, and embed video or photo elements into items, or link to web pages (click on my moped in the embed for an example).”
TechCrunch
Reaping Results: Data-Mining Goes Mainstream
“The technology, for example, pointed to a high rate of robberies on paydays in Hispanic neighborhoods, where fewer people use banks and where customers leaving check-cashing stores were easy targets for robbers. Elsewhere, there were clusters of random-gunfire incidents at certain times of night. So extra police were deployed in those areas when crimes were predicted. The crime rate in Richmond declined about 20 percent last year, and it is down again this year.”
New York Times
Touch Me: Dahan Unveils the T-View, 120 Inches of Touchability – Gizmodo
“Korean company Dahan has come up with a monster 10-foot touchscreen with an amazing 10 millisecond response time. The T-View runs in Windows 2000 or XP, uses rear projection and a surface mirror system, and corresponds to multi-finger touch….”
Gizmodo
Dell Redesigns The LCD: Dell’s Display Port Prototype Will Allow for Resolutions 4x Better Than HD
“It measures about half an inch thick and packs a resolution that’s 4x sharper than the current HDTV resolutions. It’s part of Dell’s new Display Port technology. The new interconnect will let you daisychain multiple monitors and connect other peripherals via one bi-directional cable. As you can see from the pic, it’ll also allow for embedded peripherals around the display (this one has speakers built in on the side).”
Gizmodo
Amish Are Ultimate Early Adopters of Solar Energy
“Solar electricity fits into the Amish self-sufficiency model. It is convenient, safe and, unlike some Amish-sanctioned alternatives, there are no noxious fumes or noise and no fuel costs. “There’s so much free sun and free air, and if we could harness it, we wouldn’t need any more power plants,” said Andrew Hertzler, an Amish farmer selling flowers and plants outside the local library here on a recent afternoon.”
Wired
product review color bars
“a new type of search engine that crawls & analyzes user reviews of brands, consumer products, politicians, actresses or musicians, & presents the results as visual summaries or “snips”, together with a bar chart of the “buzz” over time.”
information aesthetics
Under My Skin: MasterCard PayPass Embedded in a Watch
“the company has rolled out a program starting at Garanti bank in Turkey that involves this hoary-looking watch with an RFID chip embedded in it, freeing users from carrying credit cards. That is, if they’re only making purchases less than 15 Euros.”
Gizmodo
BlueQ Vibrating Bluetooth Wristband
“BQ Wireless is about to release a Bluetooth wristband that vibrates when you get a call.”
I4U News
Brother’s RL-700S prints out RFID cards
“It’s just too fitting that a company dubbed Brother would unleash a printer that enables even the little guy to become a Big Brother, but the RL-700S printer can indeed pop out IC tag labels with embedded RFID by the dozen. Presumably marketed towards businesses who need to keep better track of personnel, this machine also sports an RFID reader to keep a digital eye on those passing by, and even laminates the cards so that your dutiful subordinates will never suspect that their hard-earned “Employee of the Month” card is actually an undercover tracking device.”
Engadget
InPEN adds some smarts to the stylus
“Unlike traditional analog styli, the InPEN contains a programmable microcontroller that broadcasts a unique identifier to the tablet, which allows multiple pens to be linked to the system. InPlay is touting several uses for the tech, such as simultaneous editing (each user gets a different color ink), change tracking, and device security, but the company hasn’t explained if the system extends the current Windows Tablet Edition digitizer or totally replaces it.”
Engadget
jogging over a distance
“a new mobile application that allows joggers to socialize & motivate each other while jogging in geographically distant locations through the use of spatially distributed audio. while each partner jogs, speed data is collected & used to spatially position the audio of the conversation in a 2D sound environment. as one jogger speaks, their partner hears the localized audio & is able to detect whether the other person is going faster, same pace, or slower, & thus is in front, to the side, or behind, respectively.”
information aesthetics
Indie Download Cards
“Pricing is set at 500 cards for USD 250. Each card gives fans access to 15 credits worth of the artist’s material on discrevolt.com. Artists set their own prices, but DiscRevolt recommends USD 5 per card, which brings the price per song to 33 cents for buyers, and gives artists a 90% profit margin. Since artists buy the cards upfront, profits are received as soon the cards are sold. Which can be useful while bootstrapping a tour 
It also provides a user-friendly download avenue for bands that haven’t yet made it to the front page of the iTunes Music Store.”
Springwise
PC Design Winners: Next-Gen PC Competition Results in Some Wild, Beautiful Designs
“These PCs won’t be available anytime soon, but their industrial designers pick up some serious recognition along with a substantial wad of cash for their efforts. This year’s competition had entries from 35 countries, and the 349 submissions were judged on their innovation, user experience, aesthetics, technology integration and ecology.”
Gizmodo
Bionic Baby Seals Keep Old People From Feeling Lonely
“The intuitive baby harp seal, which I encountered at the RoboBusiness 2007 conference in Boston, is equipped with internal motion sensors and responds to petting, scratching and holding. It also emits exceedingly cute seal-like chirps and sheds its “fur” – you know, like seals do.”
Gizmodo
Robotic patient aurally, visually informs you of its ailments
“A newfangled robotic dummy packs a potent artificial brain, as it can reportedly “respond verbally to questions about how it feels and move its body in ways that exhibit the symptoms of its ailment.”
Engadget
Breath powered USB charger
“This instructable shows how to make a device that will charge your USB-capable devices while you do what you do best. Breathe. Using some parts scavenged from an old CD-ROM drive, a simple electronic circuit, and a few rubber bands you will soon be huffing and puffing your way to fully-charged pseudo-useful electronic gadget nirvana.”
MAKE
A New Spin on Silicon Chips
“While spintronic devices are easy to make using magnetic metals, to do so using semiconductors is challenging. So far, researchers have made spintronic devices from gallium arsenide, but making them from the far cheaper silicon has been difficult. Ian Appelbaum and his colleagues at the University of Delaware have now made the first silicon-based spintronic device, which they describe in this week’s Nature. Appelbaum says that silicon-based spintronics could be easily incorporated into present-day integrated circuits. Also, theory says that electron spins survive for a long time in silicon.”
Technology Review
Use Your Driver’s License as a Debit Card
“after entering her driver’s license number and bank account information online with a two-year-old company called National Payment Card (NPC), she’d be able to pay for gas just by swiping her driver’s license (linked directly, via the existing magnetic stripe, to her bank account), and entering a personal identification number. Gas-station owners are pleased with the program too. Because NPC processes the payment as an e-check with the Automated Clearing House (ACH), a network most commonly used for direct deposits, participating retailers bypass credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard (MA) – and their processing fees”
Use Your Driver’s License as a Debit Card
Researchers to compile Earth’s ‘book of life’
“magine a website where you can research, or just read about, every living thing on earth, from a microbe that lives next to an underwater volcano to a California redwood tree. A website where you can even add your knowledge of some life form or species. Over the next 10 years, researchers vow to gather every scrap of information available about the planet’s 1.8 million known species of animals, plants, and other organisms. And once the information is gathered, it will be available on the Internet entirely for free.”
csmonitor.com
Half of stored files will never be accessed
“Research released Tuesday by email archiving firm Waterford Technologies has shown that over 50 per cent of files stored by companies are never accessed again. The figures highlight the growing – and often unnecessary – cost of storage for firms, according to Gary Cosgrave, sales director of Waterford Technologies, a provider of email and file archiving products. Click here to find out more! “Even though hardware storage costs per gigabyte are dropping, the costs of managing storage are skyrocketing. It makes more sense to move data to lower cost alternatives instead of struggling with storage problems.”
The Register
Bringo: Phone Tree Killer. This Is A Genuinely Useful Service
“Just find the company you want to talk to in their directory, type in your phone number, and a couple of minutes later Bringo calls you and connects you to an operator at that company. I tried it with Air Canada and it worked absolutely perfectly.”
TechCrunch
Sex, Drugs and Updating Your BlogMySpace
“Along the way, he discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online. They pore over his blog entries, commenting with sympathy and support every time he recounts the difficulty of writing a song. They send e-mail messages, dozens a day, ranging from simple mash notes of the ‘you rock!’ variety to starkly emotional letters, including one by a man who described singing one of Coulton’s love songs to his 6-month-old infant during her heart surgery.”
New York Times
Japan looking to establish wireless island
“The nation is looking to set up an “experimental landmass” where a smorgasbord of sensors will “allow doctors to remotely monitor the health of the elderly,” and in another instance, “monitor the movement of pedestrians and notify nearby drivers.” Additionally, IC tags could be implanted into produce in order to divulge information such as where it was grown to a shopper’s mobile phone.”
Engadget
Calctech: Wireless Texas Instruments Calculators Allows Teachers to Monitor Students’ Work
“These are graphing calculators with the ability for teachers to wirelessly view the work their students do on the graphing calculator, and the teachers can even analyze and correct wrong answers in real time.”
Gizmodo
A new postal service… from space
“This spherical parcel, named Fotino, will be attached at the end of a 32-kilometer-long tether. This tether, made of Dyneema, will have a thickness of only 0.4 millimeter. When it’s completely deployed at an altitude of about 250 kilometers, it will be cut and Fotino will re-enter the atmosphere to land in Russia, inaugurating the first space postal service.”
Primidi
Hewlett-Packard’s Mobile Innovation Tour
“Hewlett-Packard has launched their 2007 “Mobile Innovations Tour,” which will visit 12 cities in the Asia-Pacific region (today’s is Singapore), showcasing product concepts for the year 2012. Items on display include a wristwatch “wireless gateway” device with an external, flexible display, a digital wallet that’s “always connected,” and a coffee table that turns into a video display.”
Core 77
Folding Tablet: Tablet PC Concept Folds Up and Doubles as Cellphone
“Design-wise, the Flexi PDA concept may be one of the most interesting Tablet PCs I’ve seen in a while. When its unfolded, it works like a tablet and features its own QWERTY keyboard. Thanks to the handheld’s flexible screen, you can also fold it in half and use as a cellphone.”
Gizmodo
Real-time athlete monitoring – the future of sport
“GPSports founder and fitness training expert Adrian Faccione explains: “We get position, we get speed, we get distance, we get heart rate, we get impacts from when an athlete runs into another athlete. We collate all the impacts, large and small, and we come up with what we call “body load” – which is basically the total physiological stress placed upon the body with all the accelerations and decelerations that take place in a training session or game.”
gizmag Article
Sensual Calling: Six Sensual Cellphones Made of Wood Transmit Emotions
“Students at the Universitiy of Dundee, where they train crocodile hunters and future product designers, have created what they call six sensual phones “to learn to communicate and interact with each other on a new level.”
Gizmodo
Clip-on converter turns any laptop into a tablet PC
“Adding a cheap, simple and portable new dimension to your laptop, clever Korean company Navisis is preparing to launch its “Laptop Tablet” unit, which clips onto the side of your laptop’s LCD screen and gives you the ability to write directly onto your screen with a stylus.”
gizmag Article
real sustainability costs plugin
“a Firefox plug-in that inserts bar charts depicting CO2 emissions data into travel related e-commerce websites. the 1st version visualizes CO2 emissions information to airfare websites such as Orbitz.com, United.com, Delta.com, etc.”
information aesthetics
Free tool offers ‘easy’ coding
“it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks. The digital toolkit, developed in the US at MIT’s Media Lab, allows people to blend images, sound and video. “Computer programming has been traditionally seen as something that is beyond most people – it’s only for a special group with technical expertise and experience,” said Professor Mitchel Resnick, one of the researchers at the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT. “We have developed Scratch as a new type of programming language, which is much more accessible.”
BBC NEWS
Sheets of Stretchable Silicon
“Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently showed how silicon can stretch in one dimension, like a rubber band. (See “Stretchable Silicon.”) Now, in the group’s most recent work, the researchers have made sheets of silicon that can stretch in two dimensions as well, which could make it possible to put electronics on spheres and surfaces with complicated shapes.”
Technology Review
GPS Concept: E-paper-based GPS Concept Keeps Tourists on the Right Track
“Designed by Nikita Golovlev, the Traveller is a GPS navigation system made from E-paper so it can fold and close like a paperback. The unit was created with tourists in mind, letting them pinpoint where they are and easily upload recent photos (the unit will have built-in Wi-Fi and limited storage).”
Gizmodo
Let Your Fingers Do The Unlocking: BioLock Fingerprint Deadbolt Lets You Go Keyless
“It can learn 50 different fingerprints, and for the old-school members of your household, yes, it has a regular old lock and key as a backup. It takes just a second to recognize your fingerprint, and you can swipe your finger to both lock and unlock it.”
Gizmodo
Contextual In-Video Advertising: ScanScout
“ScanScout technology scans each video and determines content, with ads delivered contextually to match each scene. Think of it as an Adsense for video because it’s exactly how it works, but on scenes as opposed to pages.”
TechCrunch
Thriving Office for the Non-Thriving Office
“Thriving Office is a recording of office noises. The sales pitch says it all: Small businesses know they must seem successful to become successful. So they play Thriving Office while they’re on the phone. This valuable CD is filled with the sounds people expect to hear from an established company, providing instant credibility”
TechCrunch
Claytronics: Programmable Nano-matter Creates Objects, Bad Fake Ads, Lousy Actors
“This is Claytronics, a concept technology “formed by billions of microscopic robots, each with computational abilities and sensors that enable interaction.” In theory, it will allow you to create 3D objects directly and manipulate them in real time. Like Silly Putty but smart, animated and without all the mess.”
Gizmodo
E-paper Still Coming Soon: LG.Philips LCD Teases World With A4 Color Electronic Paper
“This is their all-new, world-first A4 electronic paper, a 4,096-color flexible 14.1-inch page made using “metal foil and plastic substrates rather than glass.” They only use power when the image changes and since they are reflective like real paper, they can be seen perfectly from any angle. Even under direct sunlight.”
Gizmodo
Researchers utilize electricity to move magnetically-stored data
“Guido Meier and colleagues are purportedly using “nanosecond pulses of electric current to push magnetic regions along a wire at 110-meters per second,” which easily trumps today’s method of using comparatively slow spinning discs to access data. Additionally, their vision of the next-generation hard drive will sport fewer mechanical parts in order to lessen the “wear and tear” that existing units face.”
Engadget
Dream-Racer lets disabled kids race RC cars
“Instead of the conventional pistol-trigger controller, you simply tilt your head in the appropriate direction to operate the vehicle. The company developed the tech in response to a request from a charity group that later found the £159 ($315) toy helped disabled children improve their cognitive skills and play independently (gee, ya think?).”
Engadget
GPS guidance could be delivered through audio cues
“Essentially, DAP / PMP owners would be able to program a destination into their handheld, and if headed in the right direction, music would be delivered in a perfect stereo split. Heading off course, however, would shift the volume to one ear or the other, providing auditory cues of which way to turn in order to get back on track.”
Engadget
ambient devices keynote talk
“some conceptual ambient displays from David Rose’s (CEO of Ambient Devices) keynote talk this morning: a Sailing Zone display using multiple needles to display the ideal situation to go out sailing (they then all point towards the middle), a thin electronic display built inside a wallet, & several new electronic display designs based on the Weather Watcher”
information aesthetics
Social Bookmarking Meets Big Brother: Cluztr
“Cluztr tracks your clickstream and shares it with the world. Every site you visit is recorded and posted live to the Cluztr site in a social bookmarking style format, but without the need for active involvement; a Firefox plugin does it automatically. The wealth of data has benefits outside of letting people watch. Content matching links users with similar clickstreams and creates site recommendations based on user history.”
TechCrunch
What’s next with social networks?
“The M ARCANUM CAPSULES contain digital fragments of the life, knowledge and soul of the users and enable them to design an active presence post mortem: as infinite data particles they forever circulate the global info sphere - hosted in the shared memory of thousands of networked computers and mobile devices of M ANGELS, people who contribute a part of their digital storage capacity to the mission.”
Architectradure
Photographing your mementos
“Over the next few weeks, I went through the contents of the bin and took digital photos of the items with my camera. I organized the photos in an iPhoto album and filled in the photo’s Notes field with information about the object’s associated memory. Then, I threw away the object without any guilt or sense of loss. If I want a trip down memory lane, now I just open a file on my computer.”
Unclutterer
Students bring Pong and lasers together at last
“At the center of the system is a moveable laser projection platform that throws the necessary dot onto any flat surface, which the two players can then bat around using actual paddles. From the looks of it, the speed of the ball is somewhat limited by how fast the motorized projector is able to move (check it out in action by hitting the read link below), although it still seems to be capable of providing a satisfying ehough game. Best of all, the entire cost of the project was under fifty bucks, although it sadly looks to be beyond the reach of all but the most seasoned DIY-ers.”
Engadget
Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?
“This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions - that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs - the ‘best’ ones - should become hits in all social-influence worlds. What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.”
New York Times
The Anti-Shredder: Special Software Has the Brains to Piece Back Shredded Files
“Researchers in Germany have developed a software program that can re-assemble shredded documents. The software relies on special algorithms to help piece everything back together as it scans and analyses documents based on their color, shape, handwriting, texture and typeface. The software can even piece together files shredded by machines”
Gizmodo
Exam papers tagged to deter cheats
“Jerry Jarvis, managing director at the firm, said in a statement: “Incidents involving stolen papers are extremely rare, but the potential impact is massive. The logistics of re-issuing an alternative paper to schools and colleges around the country and re-training markers on the new paper are complicated, costly, and could ultimately be detrimental to candidates.” Of 620,000 exam packages sent out to schools and colleges by Edexcel last summer, there were around 70 reports of security breaches.”
The Register
fidg’t network tags visualizer
“a downloadable network visualization application representing the connections between Flickr or LastFM users & tags.”
information aesthetics
User-programmable OLED screens on cell phones
“South Korean company Sky’s IM-R200 cell phone has two screens, the second of which slides out of the bottom and can be programmed in different patterns and button orders (to make text-messaging more convenient, for instance). As it stands there are only 27 configurations for the second screen’s details, but that number is bound to move northward in subsequent models as OLED technology becomes cheaper.”
Core 77
Prof advocates digital forgetfulness, calls Google ‘Soviet’
“The professor suggests that the human race has “unlearned” or “lost the capacity” to forget things (he struggles desperately to avoid saying that we have forgotten how to). He doesn’t really explain why this is a bad thing, but he does note that: “If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved…our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context…the lack of forgetting may prompt us speak less freely and openly.”
The Register
Smart cameras” to tackle abandoned luggage alarms
“A suitcase lies abandoned in a busy airport terminal. Was it planted by a bomber, or carelessly left for a couple of minutes while the owner went to buy coffee? One of the commonest headaches facing security staff may soon be remedied with the help of “intelligent security cameras” developed by European scientists.”
Reuters.com
Solar Power at Half the Cost
“Soliant has designed a solar concentrator that tracks the sun throughout the day but is lighter and not pole-mounted. The system fits in a rectangular frame and is mounted to the roof with the same hardware that’s used for conventional flat solar panels. Yet the devices will likely cost half as much as a conventional solar panel, says Hines. A second-generation design, which concentrates light more and uses better photovoltaics, could cost a quarter as much. He says that a more advanced design should be ready by 2010.”
Technology Review
Advice Booth
“Every Sunday for the past nine weeks, Advice Booth has been open for business on Brick Lane. Questions ranging from the mundane (“why doesn’t he like me?”) to the philosophical (“what is beauty?”) will be answered in exchange for £1. Following an in-depth discussion, customers are given a lollipop and a typewritten piece of paper, outlining the advice. The Booth also has a refund policy, which means that if you are dissatisfied with the advice you are given, you can get your money back. So far, no one has asked for a refund.”
Londonist
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