Archive for November, 2007
An Algorithm That Makes Voices Clearer
“Able Planet, a company located near Denver, has developed analog circuitry that makes the high-frequency components of speech clearer without increasing their loudness. The technology is built into a line of headsets, telephones, and assistive listening devices aimed not only at the elderly but also at younger people who are worried about hearing damage, and even at video gamers who want to hear each other over the din of virtual battles.”
Technology Review
Beta Invites for SeeToo, Another Yossi Vardi Startup
“SeeToo could easily add more people to a chat, and is looking into it. But the main difference is SeeToo’s clever use of peer-to-peer technology. You never upload a video. Instead, if you want to share a video, you download a small 600 kilobyte app that takes any video on your desktop, compresses it, and streams it right from your computer to the SeeToo Web page that is hosting the chat. The application is currently only available for Windows, but a Mac version is due out next year. When the chat is over, the video disappears from the Web (it remains on your computer). “
TechCrunch
Robots: Twendy-One Has Man-Crushing Arms But a Featherlight Touch
“ive feet tall, weighing in at 245 pounds, Twendy-One is all sensors and cybernetic muscle. Mechanical engineers at Waseda University in Japan developed the talking humanoid helper robot to be capable of lifting a handicapped person out of bed, but also handling a piece of toast or a straw without flattening them. The task took seven years, millions of dollars and, incidentally, 241 pressure sensors on each silicon (silicone?) hand.”
Gizmodo
It’s Like Biological Twitter
“The Moody Sensiblog is a watch-like device that records and broadcasts your readings to a blog for all to read. Why would someone want to do this? The same reason why Twitter, the social community that asks one simple question, “what are you doing?”, is so addictive and popular.”
Yanko Design
Edushi.com – Possibly the Best City Maps in the World?
“The maps are a visual feast of pixel art down to the finest detail and covering vast swathes of urban China. The interface is similar to Google Maps with the ability to pan, zoom as well as run searches for local businesses and transport links”
Digital Urban
iHound: Lojack For Your USB Devices
“The software acts like a secret beacon, transmitting a device’s IP address, computer name, and ISP name whenever it is plugged into a computer. For now the software is free, but Mullen plans on charging something along the lines of $1 per device per month, starting next February. (The first device will likely remain free, though, as a way to get people to try the software).”
TechCrunch
“InsideOut” connects phones to Second Life
“Vodafone customers now have access to a new service called InsideOut that allows interaction between characters in the vast virtual world Second Life and real, actual phones (you know, like in the real world) operated by Voda. Both voice calls and text messages can be ferried in and out of the game, with SMSes running a cool L$300 (which we think is somewhere around $1) and voice calls running L$300 per minute.”
Networked_Performance
CityWall
“The CityWall is a large mutli-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki which acts as a collaborative and playful interface for the everchanging media landscape of the city. The content displayed on the CityWall is periodically organized into themes or events that are currently taking place in the city such as festivals, carnivals or sports events. The CityWall is designed to support the navigation of media, specifically annotated photos and videos which are continuously gathered in realtime from public sources such as Flickr and YouTube. To contribute content to the CityWall please send pictures and videos via MMS or email to post@citywall.org. Alternatively, tag your media on YouTube or Flickr with ‘Helsinki’ and we will pick up your media and display it here on the CityWall.”
CityWall
Caricatures are more effective than police sketches
“A study at the University of Central Lancashire found that over-emphasising prominent features on people’s faces made them twice as easy to identify than before. The researchers used computer software to alter the faces of 18 celebrities which had been created using three standard photofit techniques. The faces were then turned into caricatures by exaggerating certain features, such as the size of a person’s ears, forehead or nose, by as much as 50%.”
Boing Boing
Medicine: Brilliance CT 256-Slice Scanner from Philips Gets to the Heart of the Problem
“Philips’ scanner can give a patient a full body scan in less than a minute — and exposes them to 80 per cent less radiation than a traditional X-ray machine. The machine scans the body as well as rotating around it, sending out 256 pulses every one-third of a second. It is so powerful that it can capture an unblurred image of an entire heart in less than two heartbeats.”
Gizmodo
Turning Nonworking Gizmos Into Money“About a year ago, Mr. Mosley started BuyMyBrokeniPod.com and began purchasing, refurbishing and reselling used or broken iPods. Mr. Mosley, who is apparently comfortable around a soldering iron, started the company by posting an iPods-wanted ad on Craigslist. He has since launched a Web site, hired two employees and fixed over a thousand iPods. He recently renamed his company BuyMyTronics.com as he expanded into iPhones and video game consoles.”
New York Times Blog
Printing Cheap Chips
“Printed transistors such as this one could bring microchips to everyday objects. Different inks are used for various parts of the transistor, which include the electrical contacts, the source and drain (top and bottom), and the controlling gate.”
Technology Review
Sarcos’ military exoskeleton becomes a frightening reality
“you can consider yourself one step closer to cyborg annihilation thanks to a company called Sarcos and its semi-scary exoskeleton — which will make any regular old soldier into a Terminator-like killing machine (as far as we can tell). Sure, they demo the unit lifting heavy equipment and reducing fatigue of the user, but we know what this thing is really for — and it doesn’t involve food drops.”
Engadget
Insert Your 3D Avatar Into Movie Clips. All The Cool Kids Do It.
“Users can now take their avatar image and insert it into a number of video clips. More clips will be added over time, and Gizmoz is also in the process of licensing video from Hollywood movies and other professional content. Founder Eyal Gever actually showed me a clip over a year ago that had my face on a James Bond clip from Casino Royale. I felt pretty cool that day.”
TechCrunch
An intelligent bar of soap!
“The device senses the pattern of touch and orientation when it is held, and reconfigures to become one of a variety of devices, such as phone, camera, remote control, PDA, or game machine. Pattern-recognition techniques allow the device to infer the user’s intention based on grasp. We are now adding display surfaces across the entire device so that buttons and indicators can be created where needed for a particular mode.”
Architectradure
Korg Kaossilator Brings Groovy Music to the Masses (Verdict: Must. Get. One)
“According to Korg, this synthesizer is not only for beginners but for professionals alike. The Kaossilator comes loaded with 100 sound programs, effects and the multi-touch pad KAOSS, which allows you to modify note/pitch by moving your fingers horizontally. Vertically, you can assign different functions, like feedback or modulation depth.”
Gizmodo
Led Display: Lifefast Transparent 360º Ad Display is LED Craziness in a (Big) Can
“Placed at right angles to each other in the Lifefast’s cylindrical design are four bars, each fitted with 600 three-color LEDs, which revolve between 12 and 13 times per second, flashing up images. [...] The unit, which supports VGA, DVI and video signals, can display three 600 x 800-dot images, two 600 x 1,200-dot images, or one 600 x 2,400-dot image, and the size varies between 75 cm and 150cm tall.”
Gizmodo
Fuji Television demonstrates visible light communications system
“In the demonstration, a LED-backlit LCD TV displayed content while simultaneously beaming out information sans wires to a nearby PDA; the handheld was able to receive the textual data and display words to accompany the on-screen action. Not surprisingly, the communications system was developed by NEC, and it even supported selective distribution in order to transmit the correct information to the appropriate individual.”
Engadget
Eve, the virtual math teacher
“Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately. The animated Eve (with a human-sounding voice) can ask questions, give feedback, discuss questions and solutions and show emotion. To develop the software for this system the Massey team observed children and their interactions with teachers and captured them on thousands of images.”"
primidi
Google opens Maps for editing
“However, this will be limited to ensure that the new feature is not abused. For example, users will be unable to edit any markers where a business’s location has already been verified through Google’s Local Business Centre. And if your new edit shifts a marker more than 200 metres from Google’s original placing, a review system will kick in to double check it. Google will also keep a history of any alterations made to the markers, via a mini-map that displays the new locations and the original Google-placed one. Users need to be signed in to make changes, but before privacy groups take up the cause, other users will not be able to see your full username, but rather only the first two letters.”
The Register
Ladybug robot cleans restrooms
“The 1-meter (39-inch) tall, 1.35-meter (53-inch) long prototype robot — named “Lady Bird” — is equipped with water tanks, brushes and other tools needed for heavy-duty scrubbing. Obstacle detection sensors allow the robot to safely perform its duties without running into people. In addition to cleaning, Lady Bird can engage in simple conversation with restroom users, thanks to microphones in its “antennae,” speech recognition capabilities and a voice synthesizer. The robot has access to the latest information about traffic conditions on nearby roads, which it can relay to anyone comfortable enough to ask. “
Pink Tentacle
Flashphone: Free Browser Based Calls From Russia With Love
“Flashphone is currently in beta and has some limitations (3 calls up to 3 minutes each per day), but upon launch is promising unlimited free calls to a range of countries and services. Where Flashphone is interesting is in its interface; the service is Flash based and operated exclusively from the browser, with the (obvious) only need being that the user has Flash drivers installed. The flash based phone GUI can also be embedded on other sites.”
TechCrunch
GPS Letter Logger promises to keep tabs on mail
“It looks like the United States Postal Service is considering all its options for how it handles mail in the future, with it even go so far as to commission a GPS tracking system from TrackingTheWorld Inc. Among other things, the USPS apparently required the system to be able to report the position of a piece of mail at customizable time intervals, record down time, and interface with Google Earth, not to mention fit in a standard size envelope. From the looks of it, it appears that TrackingTheWorld managed to meet all those considerations, producing a system that’s just a quarter of an inch thick and the size of a tri-folded piece of paper. What’s more, the system also boasts a microSD card slot that allows for “future extended tracking missions,” and it includes a slim 1100mAh battery that promises to last for 20 hours in a timed configuration, or up to two weeks in “tilt mode,” which only kicks the system into gear when a tilting movement is detected”
Engadget
ZUI online presentation sketching software
“ZUI is a flash application that allows the easy creation of engaging presentations, mapping and sharing ideas, all within a very intuitive desk like augmented space. Beta release expected in 2007 November”
Kitchen
The MagicBoard
“The user works on the board as in the usual way, drawing or writing with ordinary marker pens. Whenever she chooses, the user can “grab” an electronic copy of the things that have been drawn or written with the marker pen. This copy is projected back onto the board, precisely overlaying the original markings with the appropriate colour. The physical ink may then be erased and the electronic version manipulated on the board’s surface: it can be duplicated, moved, enlarged or reduced, printed, or hidden for a moment before being recalled. Meanwhile, the user may add to her designs with the marker pen as before. At any time, these new markings can be turned into digital form to merge with the electronic version of her work.”
IMAG
LUNARR: Web-Based Collaboration with a Twist
“Colleague A logs in and begins typing a report, memo, datasheet, essay, debate, etc. Satisfied (or not), she decides to share her progress with Colleague B. Flipping the virtual page over reveals a message inbox and revision history. Colleague A is able to carry on conversations with select individuals and share the created document. Pending permission, Colleague B can now view A’s document and edit to his or her content. Other documents can be “linked” to the original for reference and an access list identifies who’s recently viewed the file. Labels allow for easy organization and all contacts are saved in a dedicated section.”
ExtremeTech
100 Seesmic Accounts, And A Disclosure
“The service, which can most easily be described as a video Twitter, is popular with the 300 people who are beta testing it so far. Le Meur says that more than half of them are extremely active, and 200 videos are being posted daily.”
TechCrunch
Exmocare’s wristwatch cares about your feelings
“The Exmocare wristwatch monitors your heart rate, heart rate variability, movement and galvanic skin response, all of which the watch uses to determine how you’re doing, specifically emotionally. If something’s too outside the norm, the watch can report the condition to a loved one or caretaker over email, SMS or IM.”
Engadget
Oculon’s Hikari Pro920 might be the world’s tiniest projector
“The pair can project a 15- or 20-inch display from a distance of just 2-feet. The $399 Pro1440 LCoS model throws 250 lumens across a 20-inch, 800 x 600 pixel display from Composite or D-Sub15 RGB connected sources including game consoles, laptops, and portable media players. Things drop down to 25 lumens across a 15-inch, 640 x 480 pixel display for the $299 Pro920 which measures just 86 x 44 x 85-mm.”
Engadget
Telecommuting found to boost morale, cut stress
“In an analysis of 46 studies on telecommuting, researchers found that working away from the office by using computers, cell phones or other electronic equipment can have more pluses than negatives for people and the companies that employ them. “Our results show that telecommuting has an overall beneficial effect because the arrangement provides employees with more control over how they do their work,” said Dr Ravi Gajendran of Pennsylvania State University. “Telecommuting seems to have some mildly positive effects on employee morale, on work-family balance and on stress,” he added in an interview.”
Reuters.com
Muscular Thin Films: Soft Robotic Devices
“Researchers at Harvard University have developed a polymer that is coated with living muscle cells. These Muscular Thin Films can bend, roll up, and writhe when electricity is applied to them, and could have many uses, including integration into soft robotic devices. “The contraction is on par with natural muscle,” says Adam Feinberg, lead author of the study. The muscle cells are heart muscle cells, and the thin sheet of polymer they are bonded to is Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a widely used silicon-based organic polymer.”
Nanoarchitecture.net
E-Paper Comes Alive
“…in recent months the company has developed ultrabright inks that reflect 47 percent of ambient light–a significant improvement over the 35 to 40 percent in existing E Ink black-and-white displays. Higher reflectivity versions should go into commercial products, such as the Sony Reader, in about two years. This higher brightness makes color displays possible. E Ink uses transparent red, green, or blue filters affixed above the picture elements. In essence, software controls groups of microcapsules sitting below filters of particular hues, and it only turns the microcapsules white when those hues are sought.”
Technology Review
Bumblebee boogie analysis in webserver boost
“Tovey and Nakrani set to work at GIT to develop a “dancefloor” for servers, assigning resources to sites in the same way as bees deal with flowers. In their research, published in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, they claim that “the honeybee method typically improves service by 4 percent to 25 percent in tests based on real Internet traffic.”"
The Register
PayPal offers secure Way to shop non-PayPal Sites
“Through a partnership with credit card issuer MasterCard Inc , Secure Card generates a unique MasterCard number each time a PayPal user arrives on an e-commerce sales checkout page that does not otherwise accept its payments. “From a merchant’s perspective this looks like any other MasterCard transaction,” said Chris George, director of financial products for PayPal. “And it’s just another PayPal purchase to the customer.”"
I4U News
Cruising in our cities
“If you drive a car in many European cities, I bet you’re not always happy to see the traffic lights stopping you. And you’re not alone: environmalists agree with you — but for other reasons. As traffic flows account for about one-third of global energy consumption, better control systems for traffic lights could reduce harmful CO2 emissions. Now, German researchers have developed a self-organized control system for traffic lights that could improve vehicular traffic flow by up to 95 percent.”
Primidi
‘Smart closet’ can suit you up for success
“The garment-integrated electronic technology works by linking electronic hangers and clothes embedded with tiny electronic panels to an in-closet computer. The panels, which are sewn into a collar or sleeve where they can’t be seen, store data such as the colour, fabric and cleaning instructions for a particular garment. “When electronic hangers, each with their own ID and metal connection, are placed on the rail, the metal band in the rail detects the hangers and their smart garments,” Thomas explains. “The technology enables wireless monitoring, data downloads and many other features.”"
Business Edge
Laser fingerprint scanner does away with dusting
“The technique provides a transparent 3D structural picture by sending light though the pattern of natural secretions left on a surface by a finger and combining the reflected beam with a “reference beam” produced by bouncing light from a laser off a mirror. This produces an interference pattern at a photodetector – the same as those found in a digital camera – which can then be used to reconstruct an image of the original fingerprint.”
New Scientist Tech
AR Magic System
“Based on an augmented reality system, AR_Magic System allows users to exchange head with their neighbours. You stand in front of the computer screen, next to one or more persons and after a few seconds, your head appears on the shoulder of someone else and you get a new face yourself. I swapped head with Edgar Gonzalez while i was there and as i didn’t like the look of myself with a beard”
We Make Money Not Art
23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics
“A much-anticipated Silicon Valley startup called 23andMe offers a thorough tour of your genealogy, tracing your DNA back through the eons. Sign up members of your family and you can track generations of inheritance for traits like athletic endurance or bitter-taste blindness. The company will also tell you which diseases and conditions are associated with your genes — from colorectal cancer to lactose intolerance — giving you the ability to take preventive action. A second company, called Navigenics, focuses on matching your genes to current medical research, calculating your genetic risk for a range of diseases.”
Wired
Terabit-class fat pipe delivers online movies in an instant
“As the radio spectrum provides this, QAM-based methods work fine for some wireless protocols, however the nature of the optical spectrum means this has not been the case for fiber-optic cables … until now. The university team has solved the stability problem using a special laser that makes it feasible to pipe data down a glass fiber using the QAM method at blistering speeds. Although we shouldn’t expect to be choosing from internet connections rated in Tbps anytime soon, the development could one day make us look back on ADSL as fondly as we now do our 56K modems. “
Digital World Tokyo
Exterminator 2000: Roaches Follow Robot Overlords to Certain Doom, Studies Show
“Halloy and his team corralled roaches in an area covered by two discs, a dark one and a lighter one. Communists by nature, roaches tend to cluster together, motivated by group instinct. Since they all dig the dark, they did as expected and congregated on that side of the arena. But when robotic roaches were sent in to mingle, and then started easing their way over to the light side, the real roaches followed about 60% of the time, overriding their own survival instincts to hang with the cool kids.”
Gizmodo
Is the VW Space Up! interface developed by Apple?
“As Autoblog describes it, the concept touchscreen monitor “controls all conceivable functions” and is meant to demonstrate how future human-machine interfaces might look and operate. The touchscreen (no mention of multi-touch support) uses proximity sensors to react to gestures, apparently, without actually touching the display. The user can simply touch the “main menu carousel” to navigate to the desired category or manipulate the system with simple hand gestures near the display. Autoblog says, “Visually, this control is just as spectacular as it is intuitive.”
Engadget
E-Ink: Seiko High-Res Super-Thin EBook Reader
“The device’s form factor is at least as thin as Sony’s Reader, but it has a 1200×1600 display. That’s a lot of res on that 6.7-inch screen”
Gizmodo
Tracing the Visitor’s Eye
“Our approach is to consider that uploading, tagging and disclosing the location of a photo can be interpreted as an act of communication rather than a pure implicit history of physical presence. For this purpose, we retrieved from Flickr, large amounts of photo taken by thousands of users in the world’s most photographed cities. Based on the time, explicit location and people’s description of their photos, we design geovisualizations. They reveal patterns of tourists and citizens consuming a city, such as the flow of people between city attractions (see figures below), the monuments areas of influence or what is happening with day/night and working/weekend periodicity.”
Pompeu Fabra University
Video of New Research Conducted with PlayStation Eye
“Anton has been using PS Eye to let users add their own content into games. So far, he’s focused on simple, familiar games (like lunar lander and tank battle) that he can code for PS3 in a day or so. These games are pretty old school, but they become amazingly fun again when you get to add your own content. And when the PS3 adds physics to your content, things become even more fun! (why does everyone keep mentioning Little Big Planet?)”
PlayStation.Blog
Brijit: A Digg For Dead-Tree Media
“There you will find 100-word abstracts on the latest articles from magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Fortune, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, and Wired, with links to most of them. The site also covers video from 60 Minutes, Charlie Rose, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show. Readers vote the best stories up or down, so you can keep up on the ones most likely to come up during a dinner party. You can even get paid to write abstracts, $5 apiece if your submissions are accepted.”
TechCrunch
Mapping the Crowd
“The BCG mapping software conducts keyword searches of patent and scholarly databases. Unlike other data trawlers, such as Google (GOOG)’s patent search, the firm’s tool arranges the data in the form of a map with circles and connecting lines, quickly illustrating which organizations are working on similar technologies and which researchers are citing a company’s patents. Companies and people show up as circles—the bigger the circles, the greater the amount of work those companies are doing in fields related to the keywords. Research or patent citations are shown on the map as links between circles.”
Business Week
Science: CAVEman Creates Amazing, Gigantic 4D Holograms of the Human Body
“A team of medical researchers up at the University of Calgary in Alberta has spent the last six years working on a remarkable “4D” hologram system called CAVEman. Combining data from CT scans, X-rays, biopsies and other medical tests, it creates a gigantic, realistic model of a patient’s body. It’s supposed to help doctors see “the big picture” by combining as much data as possible and blowing it up to gigantic size. In a word, it’s awesome.”
Gizmodo
Time for Plants
“The plant clock adds a natural energy into our homes, making us feel we are being surrounded by a calming natural environment. This design is shaped like a flower pot and recharges itself with solar energy, just as a real plant does with photosynthesis. Once the charge has taken place, the plant can then be moved to an area of the home where a more natural environment needs to be created.”
Yanko Design
Samsung’s 8 megapixel CMOS sensor for phones — another world’s first
“Samsung just announced availability of their 8 megapixel CMOS sensor which shares roughly the same 10.5 x 11.5 x 9.4-mm girth of its 3 megapixel cuz.”
Engadget
I Want Sandy – perfect productivity email bot is free and public
“All you do is CC your personal Sandy address on your mail and throw in keywords, like “Sandy, remember that this is the grocery list” or “Sandy, remind me to follow up on this with Fred on January 1, 2008″ and the Sandybot will file away all your minutae for you. Sandy emails you with reminders (she can also communicate by Twitter/SMS). She can barf up all your remembers whenever you need them — just tag your emails with the @-mark (for example @phonenumber @kids @kitchenrenovation @welding) and then ask her for all the items corresponding to a given tag. The coolest thing about I Want Sandy is the “groupware” function — if I CC you and Sandy on a message with a reminder, she’ll remind both of us. No permissions, no groups, just CC in regular email. The service is free and live and open to all comers.”
Boing Boing
Visual Desktop Charger
“Current wireless induction pads don’t give any visual indication of charge status so Sun Kyung envisages a bird bath-like charger, complete with radiating rings of light to indicate charge status and to top it all off, thirsty birds that glow once the rings of light hit ‘em.”
Yanko Design
Russians offer Terry Pratchett-style droid luggage
“Russia-Infocentre says the Terry Pratchett-style mobile, smart luggage will track a “sensor-card” carried by its user. The manufacturers seem to indicate that the card will sound an alarm if the suitcase gets lost.”
The Register
Dutch teen swipes furniture from virtual hotel
“Dutch police have arrested an unnamed 17-year-old on suspicion of having swiped €4,000 worth of furniture from the virtual Habbo Hotel – the first such local arrest for “virtual burglary”. According to Expatica, police say the suspect “allegedly hacked the accounts of other Habbo community members”, then “took their furniture and brought it to his own room”. Four 15-year-olds were also quizzed about the break-in, and police say the suspects will be charged with “hacking and burglary”.”
The Register
News Installation at NYTimes
“artist Ben Rubin & UCLA professor/statistician Mark Hansen have created an installation of 560 small screens, mounted on 2 walls, which display information culled from the newspaper’s archives, live feeds, online search terms & web commentary. information is parsed & displayed by algorithms created by the artists, for example, filtering only sentences from quotations that start with “you” or “I.”.”
information aesthetics
Gadgets to Spur Energy Conservation
“Can glorified glow lamps stop blackouts and slash energy costs? Manhattan-based ConsumerPowerline thinks so. This winter, about a thousand participants in the company’s energy-conservation program will receive small plug-in boxes that glow red when power demand peaks, urging them to turn off space heaters, defer dishwasher runs, or otherwise save electricity.”
Technology Review
Bento: Mac’s New Database App Is iTunes for Control Freaks
“What iTunes does for your digital music, Bento can do for contacts, spreadsheets and digital photos. It provides a colorful easy-to-use animated interface for storing and organizing personal data, and in doing so, it stands out among the dozens of ugly tables-and-text options. Bento can build an organization system for just about anything. Photos, PDF documents, MP3s, videos, Keynote presentations and charts from Pages can all be added to Bento. You can also drop in spreadsheets from Excel or import any spreadsheet or CSV file.”
Wired
Keynetik’s motion tracking prototype handset spotted in the wild
“Apparently, this mobile — which looks like a cross between a mobile gaming unit and a PDA — includes a UI that is surprisingly intuitive thanks to the motion tracking support and its ability to take commands from two joysticks and four buttons. For instance, users can select icons by simply tilting the device in the desired direction and subsequently pressing a button, which reportedly makes browsing through tunes and contact lists a lesson in simplicity.”
Engadget
Tok Tak Plug Plays Music
“The entire device looks like a standard audio jack, in fact that’s pretty much what it is. The plug dangles from your earphones when used on the go. People might mistake you for crazy walking around with what looks like earbuds attached to nothing but they’d be wrong. The Tok Tak also comes with a base station in which you can plug it in to recharge, upload new music, and act as a joystic controller to listen to your turns externally.”
Yanko Design
Digitus Ring
“The Digitus Ring concept holds 1,400 magnetic spheres each able to rotate in place. Micro computer circuitry controls which spheres turn to show their darker colored sides. A ring can suddenly tell time and possibly when your wedding anniversary is all without the use of power hungry LCD screens.”
Yanko Design
Atiz rolls out “first consumer book ripper,” the BookSnap
“it looks like the system should get the paper-to-PDF conversion job done quite nicely, with a promised scanning rate of 500 pages per hour (although that partly depends on how fast you can flip the pages — no robot arm here, unfortunately). The “ripping” itself is done by a pair of digital cameras (not included), and it seems that only a select number of Canon cameras are compatible with the device (at least officially).”
Engadget
GroundSurfin’ Safari: GroundSurf Electric Skateboard, Controlled by a Bluetooth Cellphone
“It’s driven by an electric motor between the two front wheels, and you can either remotely control its speed with your Bluetooth cellphone or lean forward to accelerate, backward to slow down or brake. But its designers, Paris-based company Ratleads, say it’s not a skateboard at all, but a surfboard.”
Gizmodo
Targeted muscle reinnervation enables your brain to control prosthetic limbs
“The process, dubbed targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), works by rewiring residual nerves that once carried information to the now-lost appendage to the chest; when the person thinks to move their arm, the chest muscle contracts, and with the help of an electromyogram (EMG), the signal is “directed to a microprocessor in the artificial arm which decodes the data and tells the arm what to do.” Currently, “only” four movements are possible after the procedure, but studies are already in full swing to determine if TMR could be used to bless future patients with an even fuller of range of motion”
Engadget
Arduino Earthwalk
“The user navigates on the earth´s surface using five footpads. The arrows represent the cardinal points as heading directions. Activation of one of the pads simultaneously with the center pad speeds up the pace of navigation. Simultaneous activation of the pads marked with plus or minus results in zooming in and out. Time / space / physical navigation which uses the whole body.”
Networked_Performance
Focusing Light on Silicon Beads
“A company in Japan has developed a novel way of making solar cells that cuts production costs by as much as 50 percent. The photovoltaic (PV) cells are made up of arrays of thousands of tiny silicon spheres surrounded by hexagonal reflectors. The key advantage of the system is that it reduces the total amount of silicon required, says Mikio Murozono, president of Clean Venture 21 (CV21), based in Kyoto, Japan. “We use one-fifth of the raw silicon material compared with traditional PV cells,” he says.”
Technology Review
Intra-Body Communication: Use Your Body to Download Data
“Imagine being able to download a movie or album to your media player by simply touching a promotional poster or exchanging contact information with a potential client via a handshake. KDDI’s new Intra-Body Communication technology could make this a reality by using the human body as a conduit to transmit high-volume data. In the image above, the video is being transmitted from the girl’s hand, through her body to the glasses, and out to the monitor.”
Gizmodo
cre8txt keyboard translates SMS slang to English
“This gem plugs into one’s PC via USB and actually translates texting jargon into words that Merriam-Webster would approve of, and in case that wasn’t gimmicky enough, it also includes predictive text software to complete sentences before you can even think up your own endings.”
cEngadget
Blogfriends launches next week
“Blogfriends is a smart app inside Facebook which attempts to mashup up your interests with your social network in order to bring you only the blog posts that you want to read. It’s a slick application and I’m told the feedback from users I know has been pretty good.”
TechCrunch UK
Bodymetrics: Body-Scanned Designer Jeans
“How it works is, you stand in the “Bodymetrics Pod,” where a laser takes hundreds of measurements of your body in just 5 seconds. The body scan, which accurately represents every contour of your body, is then used as a model to create perfect-fitting garments. Not surprisingly, Bodymetrics puts particular emphasis on jeans – denim is a multi-million-dollar industry, and the hunt for the perfect jeans can drive anyone crazy.”
PSFK
Momail launches UK service
“The site essentially acts as a gateway, optimising emails before delivering them to your phone. It does this by keeping track of 2300 phones across 450 features including screen resolution, screen size, pixel depth, graphics processing power, and the phone’s ability to open pdf’s and other attachments. To make it work you enter your phone number, operator and the make and model of your phone on the Momail site. It then sends the phone settings which automatically configure the email client in the phone. The advantage? If your friend sends you an email with some large picture attachments then Momail will resize those pictures to fit your screen resolution and image formats, costing you less when you stream the data and making the email readable on your phone.”
TechCrunch UK
Melody Road – speed control using music – best heard at 28 mph
“The Melody Road will allow a car passing above it to play a simple tune, which is made audible by ridges on the road’s surface. The pitch of the note created is increased by increasing the frequency of the ridges, and the opposite is also true.”
Smart Mobs
Wiimote IR finger tracking
“Just in case you needed another way to pretend that you’re in Minority Report, [Johnny Lee] sent in this video showing how to track your hands using the Wiimote’s IR camera,an infrared LED array and a bit of reflective tape to improve the gain.”
Hack a Day
Chameleon: Nissan Developing Color Changing Paint
“Using an electrical charge, the arrangement of iron oxide crystals can be tweaked, adjusting the car’s color. (It just so happens that metal-bodied cars make for excellent conductive surfaces.) But we’re really excited over Nissan’s surely bogus but juicy claim to have the technology on the market extremely soon, by 2010 if possible. Oh…except there’s one catch. Touching the car electrocutes you. A small amount of current is always needed to maintain the arrangement of iron oxide (your custom car color). So when you leave your car parked/off, the car turns white.”
Gizmodo
Dublin designer branches out with ‘tree’ PC
“Shaped as a tree, the “Cultivate” allows each part of the computer to be upgraded separately so that as a user’s needs change, the tree grows. The trunk of the tree houses the motherboard, while 10 branches also hold the central processor, RAM, battery, power supply, expansion cards, storage, two speakers, an ambient light, and a mouse. Any of these components can be “plucked” from the tree and sent back to the supplier for upgrade, recycling or remanufacture.”
The Register
Designing a Micro Solution to the Spread of Global Disease
“Using a device that’s roughly the size and price of an upscale cell phone, a team of Berkeley Engineering doctoral students hopes to halt the spread of diseases afflicting millions in the developing world. Dubbed SeroScreen, the handheld instrument will test blood and other bodily fluids for the presence of infection. It will deliver an on-site diagnosis within minutes for influenza, skin infections, mosquito-borne viruses and many other ailments. Because the microdevice is quick, portable and cheap, it could dramatically reduce testing delays and prevent contagious diseases from becoming epidemics in poor and remote regions, the students say.”
UC Berkeley College of Engineering
Mapping News
“CEO and founder James Nicholson says that what sets YourStreet apart is its extensive news service: the site collects 30,000 to 40,000 articles a day from more than 10,000 RSS feeds, mostly from community newspapers and blogs. “We’re not relying on the users to provide us with articles,” Nicholson says. The stories featured on the site aren’t of a specific type, and users will find the locations of murders marked alongside the locations of upcoming music shows. Stories featured on the site are teasers, and, if a user clicks to read further, she will be directed back to the source of the information.”
Technology Review
Pixoo Helps Michael Prepare for the Crunchies
“We were invited to try out a new service called Pixoo that takes a copy of your profile portrait and photoshops it to make you look better. Naturally, I chose to submit a picture of our dear editor Michael Arrington and asked Pixoo’s stylists to tan his skin, lighten his hair, broaden his chin, and make him look “cheery”. Since we also have an awards ceremony coming up, it seemed perfectly appropriate to dress him in a tuxedo as well. And I must say, I’m extremely impressed with Pixoo’s results, aren’t you? When Pixoo comes out of private beta at the end of this month, you’ll be able to get your profile picture touched up like Michael’s for $20 a pop.”
TechCrunch
Niche Lighting
“We usually think of lighting as a persistent element in our homes but there are areas that need very little light just for an instance. Niche Lighting fills that purpose. The light panel can hide discretely in shelves tucked in between books. When you reach for that area, the light automatically turns on only illuminating its surroundings. When your hand moves away, it switches back off.”
Yanko Design
SVM-1000: DJ Mixes Audio and Video to Awesome Effect On New Pioneer SVM-1000
“The mixer hooks up to special DVD players that scratch DVDs the same way your grandma used to scratch records. The DJ previews the video on a small LCD screen in the center of the mixer, and uses loops, cues, and cross fades to mix video the same way audio is blended today. While it seems like there is a steep learning curve to the product (Roonie said it took three months to prepare this 15-minute set, and he’s been DJing for 25 years), as seen above, the end results can be awesome”
Gizmodo
Exploding piggy bank could help Japanese save
“When a lazy user fails to add cash to the battery-operated piggy bank every day, it vibrates and makes noises on an hourly basis, finally concluding the loud reminders by exploding — or rather, automatically opening its skull-marked door and scattering all the contents on to the floor. “This is a piggy bank where you have no way but to save,” a spokeswoman for TOMY said.”
Reuters.com
Can you see what I am thinking?
“Based on the Fukidasi – the bubble form that is used a great deal in cartoons to express feelings or sayings – this design by Studio Foundations allows the same concept, yet to be used with real people. Programmable to say whatever you want, this bubble is sure to be hit with friends and family. If you don’t want to say it out loud, say it with a Fukidasi Bubble.”
Yanko Design
Bling! It – Image editing software for eBayers
“Bling! It features balloon tips to guide users in common tasks such as replacing a standard image background with a more appealing backdrop, tracing the key edges within an image to make the job of extracting the product from its background easier. Users can then select from a variety of professional backgrounds available in the Bling! It library or customize one of their own.”
gizmag Article
Software That Knows What You Like
“Cleverset’s system weighs the importance of the relationship among individual shoppers, their behavior on the site, the behavior of similar shoppers, and external factors such as seasons, holidays, and events like the Super Bowl. Using these ever-changing relationships, Cleverset’s system serves up products that are statistically likely to match what the customer will find interesting.”
Technology Review
Random-Access Warehouses
“Kiva Systems’ CEO and founder, Mick Mountz, likens the system to random-access memory chips. The warehouse is arranged in a memory-chip-like grid composed of rows and columns of freestanding shelves. The grid gives robots access to any product in the warehouse at any time. The robots serve two basic functions. First, they deliver empty warehouse shelving units to workers who stock them. The workers might stock one unit with a mix of paper, various types of pens, and computer software, all compiled from large pallets that had been delivered to the warehouse. Then, when a consumer submits an order, robots deliver the relevant shelving units to workers who pack the requested items in a box and ship them off. “We turn the whole building into a random-access, dynamic storage and retrieval system,” Mountz says.”
Technology Review
Teaching people to use feature-rich phones
“While some consumers are naturally adept at dealing with a device’s interface, menus and options, others greatly benefit from a bit of outside help. One of Mobile Mentor’s first customers explains: “All it would take is for someone to sit down with me for 1 hour. I’ve tried myself, got instructions from Vodafone, but it’s too hard.” Case studies on Mobile Mentor’s website illustrate how mastering a phone’s features can reap impressive productivity gains. In one example, a real estate agent learned how to use her phone to record appointments. In another, a doctor learned how to better use email and other mobile device features while protecting patient privacy.”
Springwise
Cocoa Jot-It Review
“What you get is a clear plastic sheet with rounded corners mounted on an angled stand for easy writing and glancing. The system includes a set of starter templates, each one laid out for various tasks. Examples are a calendar, weekly date book, and notes. The templates go underneath the clear plastic sheet from which you can write on with the included dry erase marker. It’s pretty simple but how is it in practice.”
Yanko Design
Crowdsourcing: Digital Wall Calendar Combines Everyone’s Calendars In One Gadget
“Still a concept, the brainstorming map shows that it will use an LCD screen, SD card, have music/movie playing abilities, and an internet connection for synchronization. The development of this device is interesting, too. The idea is the first finalist picked by the members of CrowdSpirit, a new gadget-by-committee project. The community has made some changes to the original idea, such as leaving out an expensive touchscreen, but overall they are very enthusiastic about its potential. All that’s left now for this concept is the software, hardware, and design experts, as well as investors, to turn it into something more than words and drawings on a page.[“
Gizmodo
hiREC, A Chef’s Companion
“It’s essentially a device that reads out sell-by-dates, nutritional information, food intolerances, and recipes. By placing any food on the device, correlating information displays on the touchscreen interface. The system can work for medicine, specifically pharmacists who need to accurately measure meds out for each individual.”
Yanko Design
Buggy Bot: Robo-Moth Hooks Up Insect’s Brain to a Robot
“This six-inch robot uses a moth’s brain and eyes to get around, and wherever the moth’s eyes look, that’s where the robot goes. Sure, moths are plenty stupid, with brains scarcely larger than a couple of commas like this, but they can still detect motion better than anything scientists can build.”
Gizmodo
Medical 3D-image display offers non-contact control
“The display was developed for medical use where traditional ways of interacting with displays through touch runs the risk of compromising the sterility of work environments. With the newly developed non-contact image control system a physician can rotate a three-dimensional CAT scan image that appears to float before their eyes with a gesture of their fingers, while with another gesture they can click onto the next image.”
gizmag Article
Video: Dash GPS + Zillow = Real Estate Stalk Fest
“At the Web 2.0 conference, Dash GPS announced that they were providing an open API for mashing up the Cellular-equipped navigator with webapps. Here’s the first live demo of Dash being used to drive through a neighborhood and call up the price and details on every house on the street using Zillow.com’s Database. See that Silicon Valley house with the red door? It’s 1150 square feet, yet 1.1 million bucks. What’s cooler is that they’ve got craigslist, yahoo! search and other plugins for the Spring launch.”
Gizmodo
Nokia shows off Haptikos tactile touch screen technology
“According to Red Ferret, Nokia’s system is also a good deal more advanced than some similar ones already on the market, with it actually allowing for a 0.1 mm movement in the screen itself. That, combined with a pair of sensor pads under the screen, supposedly allows it to “mimic exactly the sensation of pressing a real key,” complete with a “clunky click and tactile snap.”"
Engadget
Marvell chip claims to make PCs more energy efficient
“Mark this down as a little out there, but a new Marvell chip claims to improve the efficiency of desktop and laptop power supplies by determining and then optimizing the amount of energy each particular application needs. Named a “power factor correction controller,” the chip enables computers to comply with new Energy Star guidelines that require computers to use at least 80 percent of the energy supplied to power them”
Engadget
Barbie Becomes an Authentication Device for Pre-Teen Friendship
“The idea is, Sally brings her Barbie Girl over to her friend Tiffany’s house, and sets it in Tiffany’s docking station — which is plugged into a USB port on Tiffany’s PC. Mattel’s (Windows only) software apparently reads some sort of globally unique identifier embedded in Sally’s Barbie Girl, and authenticates Sally as one of Tiffany’s Best Friends. Now when Sally gets home, the two can talk in Secret B Chat. (If Sally’s parents can’t afford the gadget, then she has no business calling herself Tiffany’s best friend.)”
Wired.com
Screensaver displays security cam images
“SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screen saver that shows about 400 live security camera videos from public accessible Axis network cameras. It shows surprising scenes from underwater pool cameras, cows in milking machines, to shopping malls and street cameras.”
Boing Boing
Bookmark: I Honor the Place Where the MARK Bookmark and I Become One
“Avnish Gautam has designed an amazing concept bookmark that lights up at night and covers the area you’re reading. The MARK uses flexible OLED technology on a thin piece of plastic to illuminate the reading area to your preferred brightness.”
Gizmodo
RFID Skin Patch Aims to Reduce Medical Errors
“Our unique, patented, non-invasive solution combines disposable skin patches with RFID tags and cell phones and will allow physicians and nurses to use their cell phones or wireless PDAs to update medical charts, time of patient visit, drug administration, and also be immediately warned about possible drug interactions, prior to drug delivery.”
I4U News
Kenwood’s Smart Interface simplifies navigation
“It’s an argument we’ve all probably had: you prefer the nav, pops prefers the bedraggled Atlas. Thankfully, Kenwood is stepping in to mediate by creating the Smart Interface, which enables those less comfortable with modern day GPS systems to simply point a pen at a map and let the technology handle the rest. The location seen by the pen is wirelessly transmitted to the coordinating navigator, enabling map-lovers to more easily input destinations and coexist with their tech-savvy offspring.”
Engadget
Q-Sight lightweight helmet-mounted display
“Typical helmet displays are approximately 1-2” thick, and require multiple lenses which cause image distortions and add weight. The new system uses holographic waveguides to directly couple the output of an LCD device to a 1/8” thick credit card-size combining lens, eliminating the need for other intermediate lenses. The low-cost, lightweight display can also be attached on the right or left-side of the helmet, depending on eye dominance, and can replace existing displays without modification to the platform.”
gizmag Article
Airbox CM3 delivers the Internet on wheels
“The AirBox uses a 3G digital cellular telephone network for an Internet connection, which in most areas is an EV-DO network – a type of high-speed 3G, or 3rd generation, cellular network. The EV-DO network averages speeds of 400-800 Kbps with bursts up to 2.4 Mbps, which are comparable to an average DSL or cable Internet connection. In areas where 3G cellular signals aren’t available, the AirBox will connect to the 2G network (called 1xRTT) with speeds averaging 120 Kbps. The external cellular antenna improves cellular reception for a faster Internet connection and when multiple cell towers are available, the AirBox connects to the highest speed tower.”
gizmag Article
