Sifry Launches “Web Hot Or Not?”
“For the one person reading this who doesn’t know how Hot or Not style sites work, the site presents a website which must be scored between 1 or 10, 1 being not, 10 being hot.”
TechCrunch
Media: MIT’s 3D Installation Pwns Roger Rabbit
“Here’s a tech demo of ‘Installation’ by MIT Media Labs. After you are done drooling over their hot camera/display, watch as they place 3D objects into the image and pan around the room.”
Gizmodo
Facebook Apps On Any Website: Clever Move
“Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML. An application that uses this client library should be registered as an iframe type. This applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported.”
TechCrunch
Researchers dream up rain-powered devices
“After using computer models to find out just how much energy could be created by rainfall landing on piezoelectric materials, they determined that between 1 nanojoule and 25 microjoules of energy could be generated per drop. Granted, that won’t keep a WoW gamer crankin’ through the eve, but it could be used in everyday sensors that just need a smidgen of power in order to beam back results or data to ground control (or Major Tom).”
Engadget
WebMynd Could Change the Way You Bookmark Websites
“The service doesn’t save just an image of the page or the URL, but the full text site. That means you can also search those virtual pages later when you are looking for something.Users can turn off recording at any time, and can delete saved pages that they don’t want to have around for any reason. To see saved pages, you click on an icon at the top of the browser and the local saved copies pop up, along with a search bar.The idea is that, like Gmail, good search means you don’t have to spend a lot of time bookmarking and tagging websites to find them later. WebMynd records everything in the background, and a quick search will locate the page.”
TechCrunch
Smartex Smart Clothes
“[The unitard] reads the wearer’s vital signs and beams the data wirelessly to a computer. Information on posture and movement is measured by the stress on sensors built into the garment. Other components gauge electrical activity, yielding EKG data. Heat sensors measure temperature. In the not-so-distant future, De Rossi says, health professionals will be able to monitor cardiac patients by unobtrusively tracking their vital signs as they go about their lives.”
PSFK
Concepts: P-Per Cellphone Concept is too Perfect to be True
“The design is modeled around the same E-Paper Slap Bracelet we saw earlier, but this time the e-paper system—four layers of sustainable material, and an Organic Radical battery—is put to use in the P-Per cellphone concept, which shows a transparent display for camera mode and a browser that spans the entire surface of the display.”
Gizmodo
Is text-messaging the new word processor?
“Out of the 10 bestselling books in Japan last year, five were “cellphone novels” — books that were written on the mobile phone, with the authors tapping out sentence by sentence via text message.pparently the rise of the cell-phone novel has caused enormous consternation over there, because the style of this new genre so radically violates traditional Japanese storytelling craft. Historically, the prose in Japanese novels was ornate, with long, lavish descriptions of locations. But because these new novels are written on technology that doesn’t allow for quick, fluid writing, cellphone novels tend to consist of prose more reminiscent of Hemingway or Pinter — short, snipped sentences, with much of the book occupied by terse dialogue.”
collision detection
Flying Stick Camera
“Rub it between your palms to get some kinetic energy stored up. Then release and the Flying Stick automatically takes pictures at set intervals. You know what they say, everybody looks 5 lb lighter when photographed from above.”
Yanko Design
Interactive Graffiti Wall
“The wall now serves as an experimental platform for different technologies. By capturing Semacodes on the wall you can download goodies for your mobile such as wallpapers showing the Matroschka characters, videos about the participating artists and the creation of the wall. You can also leave comments and messages to friends on the wall’s digital pinboard. And if you’re still a little confused as to what else is hidden behind the wall, a comprehensive info guide can also be downloaded via Bluetooth.”
PSFK
Funky Forest
“It resembles an interactive ecosystem where children can grow trees with their body. By gesturing kids can divert water flowing from a waterfall to the trees in order to keep them alive.”
PSFK
Sensitive Synthetic Skin in the Works for Prosthetic Arms
“Double amputee Jesse Sullivan demonstrated a current prototype of the bionic arm at the DARPATech conference in August. Sullivan can stack plastic cups in a pyramid and pull a credit card out of his pocket—seemingly simple tasks that require very complicated feedback among nerve endings in the skin, neurons in the brain, and muscles. The mechanical-looking prototype arm currently has about 80 individual silicon-based sensors on the fingertips to give feedback on touch, temperature, and limb position.”
IEEE Spectrum
E-Paper Slap Bracelets
“The entire surface is E-Paper and possesses all its thin, high contrast, power efficient qualities. The length can be adjusted by adding magnetic snaps to the ends. Best part is there’s no recharging needed. It gets all the power it needs via kinetic energy so go ahead, go slap happy.”
Yanko Design
Cloud
“In response, we created ‘Cloud’, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. Flip-dots were conventionally used in the 70s and 80s to create signs in train-stations and airports. We were fascinated by their materiality, by the way they physically flip from one side to the other. The sound they generate is also instantly reminiscent of travel, and we therefore decided to explore their aesthetic potential in ‘Cloud’.”
Troika
Vision crosses the million-pictures-per-second with Phantom V12
“to grab that impressive burst of images you’ll have to settle for a 256×8 resolution, although you’ll still get a decent 6,315 pictures-per-second with the maximum 1280×800 resolution.”
Engadget
Last.FM Becomes “World’s Best Jukebox”: Bigger Than iTunes, All Four Majors Onboard
“It’s all available on demand (right now!) without logging in, is free (banner ad-supported) and now plays full tracks from artists you can search for directly—internet radio on ‘roids, basically. But of course, there are limitations thanks to label tightassness, the biggest point of suck being that you can only listen to a song three times.”
Gizmodo
Digital camera recreates analog tension
“Designer Sungwoo Park has created the “EazzzY”, a USB drive / digital camera with no buttons, no LCD screen and no viewfinder. The idea is that every time you plug the camera into your PC to download your pics, you will be surprised as to what’s on there. The idea is to combine the “feeling of how an analog camera works” with the ease of digital portability and image retrieval.”
MAKE:
Syndicaster.TV Launches. Gives Broadcasters An Instant Way To Publish TV on the Web
“Geared at local TV stations and television groups, Syndicaster.TV lets broadcasters log onto the Web and capture video clips from any TV station minutes after they air. They simply select the portion of the video they want by highlighting the desired section of an accompanying speech-to-text transcript. Then they can download the clip as a WMV or Flash file for republishing to their Websites, automatically distribute them across the Web through ClipSyndicate
(Critical Media’s TV-to Web syndication platform), or transcode the video clips and send them to iTunes.”
TechCrunch
malwarez cyber threats
“a series of visualization of worms, viruses, trojans and spyware code. for each piece of disassembled code, API calls, memory addresses and subroutines are tracked and analyzed. their frequency, density and grouping are mapped to the inputs of an algorithm that grows a virtual 3D entity.”
information aesthetics
DNA-Based Artificial Nose
“The scientists began their experiments haphazardly: by scavenging short pieces of single- and double-stranded DNA from neighboring labs at Tufts and looking at their responses to several standard compounds. Their first experiments with dye-labeled double-stranded DNA gave them a hint that the approach could work, but all the sequences they tried responded to odors in the same way.”
Technology Review
EU Helps Machine Translation With One Million Sentences
“The European Commission is offering translation software developers free access to around one million sentences translated between 22 of the European Union’s 23 official languages. It hopes the data will help improve the quality of a variety of language tools, including grammar and spelling checkers, online dictionaries and machine translators particularly in less well-served languages such as Latvian or Romanian.”
New York Times
Reconfigurable House allows visitors to create its interface
“The “Reconfigurable House”, an interactive art project by Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer is an environment constructed from thousands of low tech components that can be “rewired” by visitors. The project is a critique of ubiquitous computing “smart homes”, which are based on the idea that technology should be invisible to prevent DIY. According to the artists: “Smart homes actually aren’t very smart simply because they are pre-wired according to algorithms and decisions made by designers of the systems, rather than the people who occupy the houses.”"
MAKEerface
Safe Turn: the fully-automatic indicator for cyclists
“The compact (40 mm/1.6 in) and lightweight (19g/0.67oz) Safe Turn consists of three LEDs that flash in a similar fashion to a vehicle/motorbike indicator and emit the same orange light. Using an internal tilt switch to detect the change in angle rather than motion-detection, the product differentiates itself from other indicators on the market by virtue of its ability to automatically switch on when an arm is raised to execute a normal hand signal for turning and remain flashing until the arm drops back down.”
gizmag Article
3M announces micro-projector for mobile devices
“Designed for integration into virtually any mobile platform and now available to manufacturers, the company’s LED-illuminated projection engine is capable of throwing a 40-inch or larger VGA image from an ultra-compact module that’s less than half an inch thick. The miniature projector boasts a high-quality image with no-speckle and a high-fill using an advanced liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) electronic imager in conjunction with proprietary 3M optics technology.”
gizmag Article
E-reader Phone: Philips READIUS Materializes With Fold-Away Screen
“The READIUS has a slightly different design than the prototype, with a 5-inch flexible display that actually rolls up around the phone, allowing it to be stored when not in use. The phone is manufactured under Polymer Vision, which is partly owned by Philips.”
Gizmodo
Researchers hope to charge up gadgetry with body heat
“Oddly enough, the researchers admit that they’re still unclear on how their findings actually work, but they’ve nevertheless discovered how to increase the conversion efficiency of converting waste heat to energy “by a factor of 100.” The authors of the report suggest that clothing constructed of material embedded with thermoelectric modules could one day “recharge mobile electronic devices off the heat of one’s body,”
Engadget
Gadgets: Japanese Infrared Revamp Transfers at Gigabit Speeds
“Japan’s KDDI R&D labs, however, have managed to increase the transfer rate 250 times to 1Gbps with a semiconductor laser that blinks incredibly fast.”
Gizmodo
Semantic positioning system
“We present a visualization of all the nouns in the English language arranged by semantic meaning. Each of the tiles in the mosaic is an arithmetic average of images relating to one of 53,463 nouns. The images for each word were obtained using Google’s Image Search and other engines. A total of 7,527,697 images were used, each tile being the average of 140 images. The average reveals the dominant visual characteristics of each word. For some, the average turns out to be a recognizable image; for others the average is a colored blob.”
Smart Mobs
Intelligent dashboard could shut off distractions to improve reaction times
“Research done by a crew at the Technical University of Berlin has shown that a “smart dashboard” could one day deactivate distractions within the vehicle in order to improve driver response if things simply get too hectic. Reportedly, the system could switch off in-car gadgetry (you know, navigators, radios, Hello Kitty headsets, etc.) when one’s brain became overloaded in order to speed up reaction time “by as much as 100-milliseconds.”
Engadget
The Video Game May Be Free, but to Be a Winner Can Cost Money
“In a major departure from its traditional business model, E.A. plans to announce Monday that it is developing a new installment in its hit Battlefield series that will be distributed on the Internet as a free download. Rather than being sold at retail, the game is meant to generate revenue through advertising and small in-game transactions that allow players to spend a few dollars on new outfits, weapons and other virtual gear.”
New York Times
Belkin Conserve Energy-Saving Surge Protector
“Conserve offers 8 surge-protected outlets: 6 “switchable” and 2 “always-on” outlets, allowing users to easily control energy use. Multiple Conserve surge protectors can also be controlled with a single remote control from virtually anywhere in the house with user-selectable channels.”
gizmag Article
The mobile phone becomes a personal shopping assistant
“It works using 2D Datamatrix technology, an interactive bar code-like symbols that can be placed next to product information cards, on posters, on signage or on websites. By downloading a simple software application to your mobile phone via a text message you can then “scan” the 2D tags with your phone’s camera while shopping. Scanning one of the tags will mean you receive in-depth product information instantly to your phone from the retailer or brand.”
gizmag Article
Visualizar workshop: tweetPad
“The idea behind tweetPad is to not only be on the receiving end of these feeds but to be able to manipulate them, on a lower level of abstraction. It’s about dropping the meaning and just playing with the text. Instead of responding to a statement, you deconstruct it, i.e. scrambling the letters or words, breaking sentences apart, combining multiple entries into one, … Your reply is a re-hash of the original.”
we make money not art
A personal fitness coach
“Autom helps by encouraging you to stick with your diet for long enough to create long-term change and keep extra pounds off! [...] Their earlier results in controlled Human-Robot Interaction studies have shown that a robot can be seen as more credible and informative than a character on the screen. Hence, there is reason to believe that a robot may be a more effective mechanism for conveying the behavior change message.”
Architectradure
Researchers craft new testing device to detect early Alzheimer’s
“The ten-minute DETECT test utilizes a head-worn visor with a built-in LCD, headphones and a handheld controller, which the patient interacts with as he / she is put through a series of visual and auditory tests that “assess cognitive abilities relative to age,” gauge reaction time and measure memory capabilities. Initial tests have purportedly shown it to have “similar accuracy” to the aforementioned pen and paper test (which takes around 90-minutes to administer)”
Engadget
Bluebook adds tangible computing to traditional paper books
“Covered in conductive ink, when certain phrases are pressed on the book’s pages, the resulting input communicates over Bluetooth with a nearby PC, triggering different actions. Although most of this can be done with “e-books” using touchscreens, the “BlueBook” attempts to bridge the gap between those familiar with new technology and others stuck in the stone ages of paper and print.”
MAKE
Use your cellphone as a 3-D mouse
“To control a screen, a user simply aims their cellphone’s camera at it. The handset then connects, via Bluetooth, to the computer that operates that screen. Once a connection is established, the computer knows exactly where the phone is pointing because it places a reference target on top of the normal video feed and compares this to the phone’s picture.”
Primidi
Smart Party enables Social DJing
“Smart Party is polling via Wi-fi the playlists of the music players party guests would carry. This would work for instance with the iPod touch or the Microsoft
Zune players. Each collected playlist is then sent to a PC where a software analyses the most popular tracks and genres.
Smart Party would then just play the most popular songs amongst all party goers which makes those self-declared party DJs a thing of the past.”
I4U News
Minority Report: Orange Shows Off Gesture Based Interaction Screen, Touch Screens Look On in Horror
“Orange has unveiled a gesture based interaction screen that has been produced by a UK agency on their behalf. The agency, known as The Alternative, said it was the first time such a display had been on show to the general public. The purpose of the technology is mainly as an advertising opportunity for Orange, but selecting your favorite music clips have never been so fun.”
Gizmodo
Guaranteed Payment for Recycling Your Electronics
“For an upfront fee ($9 for an iPod for example) you get the right to sell the device back at a pre-determined price, based on how long you keep it. If you send back the iPod after a year, you get $40, $20 after two years.”The trade-in prices don’t look competitive with eBay auctions, but TechForward offers the convenience of free packaging and shipping. Its prices assume the item is in good condition. The company won’t pay for an item that’s broken, though it will supply packaging, pay for shipping and arrange to recycle it.”
EcoGeek
Groqit barcode scanner has your hippocampus’ back
“Owners simply scan in every book, CD and DVD they own, take it along for any future shopping sprees and use it to tell whether or not they’ve already purchased a given title. It should be noted, however, that it doesn’t play nice with jewel cases, but apparently, the manufacturer thinks the $95 price tag more than compensates”
Engadget
Knitting RSS feed data
“News Knitter converts information gathered from the daily political news into clothing. Live news feed from the Internet that is broadcasted within 24 hours or a particular period is analyzed, filtered and converted into a unique visual pattern for a knitted sweater. The system consists of two different types of software: whereas one receives the content from live feeds the other converts it into visual patterns, and a fully computerized flat knitting machine produces the final output.”
Architectradure
Controlling Cell Behavior with Magnets
“Using a magnetic field to pull together tiny beads targeted to particular cell receptors, Harvard researchers made cells take up calcium, and then stop, then take it up again. Their work is the first to prove that such a level of control over cells is possible. If the approach can be used with many cell types and cell functions, it could lead to a totally new class of therapies that rely on cells themselves to make and release drugs.”
Technology Review
Heads-up displays, “super-vision,” via contact lenses
“So far only rabbits have worn the prototype, with no ill effects after up to twenty minutes. The engineers plan to add wireless communication to and from the lens, along with built-on solar cells and the capability to use radio-frequency power. The prototype doesn’t light up, but a version with a basic display showing a few pixels could be operational soon.”
Futurismic
Robots: Scientists Invent Robots That Lie, Real Bender Closer Than Ever
“Three colonies of bots in the 50th generation learned to signal to other robots in the group when then found food or poison. But the fourth colony included lying cheats that signaled food when they found poison and then calmly rolled over to the real food while other robots went to their battery-death. Eerily wicked, to say the least. Saving the robots’ honor, luckily, there were also a few “hero robots” that signalled danger and then rolled to their death to save the others.”
Gizmodo
Time Warner Links Web Prices With Usage
“Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.”
Wired News
Visual Exploration of Multivariate Graphs
“The technique is designed specifically for graphs that are “multivariate” i.e., where each node is associated with several attributes. Unlike visualizations which emphasize global graph topology, PivotGraph uses a simple grid-based approach to focus on the relationship between node attributes and connections.”
visualcomplexity.com
Charge Your Cellphone Just By Moving – With M2E Kinetic Power
“what is so new and so promising about M2E is the fact that their microgenerator technology allows even the slightest jostling movement to provide a significant charge. So instead of having to hand-crank your cell phone (which is possible, but doesn’t sound too fun), your phone would simply just need a little minor jostling in your bag or jacket while you walk around to stay fully charged. Sounds a lot easier than having to plug in and recharge every night, right?”
Inhabitat
Information Ring
“Handshake operates when people first meet and shake hands, and the rings on their fingers gain the proximity to operate. The rings exchange the users’ information and store it while the users are shaking hands. The more people met, the more information transferred. When the users browse through the people they have met, the card displays the basic information that was stored in the ring.”
Yanko Design
Triggit: Edit Any Page Where Java Script Is Accepted
“a new startup Triggit
lets you make WYSIWYG edits on any site where you can post their Javascript tag, most likely your own. The tag is used to load their editing functionality and to insert the modifications you make to the site, such as added images, videos, and links. When you want to edit your site, you simply click on your Triggit button and are given the option to insert new photos and links. When you’re done, you save the changes where you want them, and Triggit will serve the changes whenever someone visits your page.”
TechCrunch
3-D Design for the Masses
“When Dryad opens up, a user instead sees an overhead view of a broad selection of possible trees. The trees may look as if they were culled from forests, mountaintops, bayous, and alien planets. The user can then pan through the space or zoom in and out using an interactive map interface similar to that found in programs such as Google Maps. When the user sees a tree she likes, zooming in on it produces a new map with a new set of trees whose features resemble those of the one she selected.”
Technology Review
Concept: The Zoran Ain’t Some Sissified Country Acoustic Guitar
“By assembling different sound cells (i.e. the physical parts of the instrument designed in CAD/CAM), users have complete freedom of design. For example, each string can have its own bridge and each bridge can be linked to different cells. Each of these cells, when created in a 3-D printer, can be made in any size or shape —or with any material in order to achieve a custom sound.”
Gizmodo
US boffins create darkest material ever
“In fact, the stuff’s so unrelentingly black it’s “30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness” and, with a total reflective index of just 0.045 per cent, is over three times blacker than the nickel-phosphorus alloy which currently holds the world’s darkest material record.”
The Register
Geotagging Photos on a Budget: ATP GPS Gadget Does It Like a Card Reader
“Dubbed the GPS Photo Finder, it works in a rather carefree way: you just have to carry it around with you while you’re shooting, and then insert your memory card into it, before you download your photos. All it does is work out where you were for each photo from its position log, and then embed that data into the JPEG files directly.”
Gizmodo
Nokia’s Eco Sensing Cell Phone Brings New Meaning to Connectivity
“This new design concept consits of a cell phone and compatible sensing device that allows you to stay connected to your friends as well as to your health and local environment. The concept consists of two parts – a wearable sensor unit which can sense and analyze your environment, health, weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone. You can also share the environmental data your sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data (here’s the 2.0 ideas kick in), thereby increasing your global environmental awareness.”
innovation playground
Saverclip Shames Your Electricity Usage
“The device works by reading the electromagnetic fields emitted by said devices. Conversely, this is also how it recharges itself. The embedded LCD displays information in laymen terms so you clearly understand just how much power you’re using, wasting, and could be saving.”
Yanko Design
33 megapixel Super Hi-Vision (Ultra HDTV) could be on the air in 2015
“With its 33 megapixel (7,680 x 4,320) resolution and 22.2 channel surround sound, challenges so far have included building a camera that can record it, and equipment to transfer the 24Gbps uncompressed stream.”
Engadget
Tinfinger: A User Generated Who’s Who
“People in Tinfinger’s database are sorted via a top-down category structure and a flat tag structure with tags “being expressible as RDF triples (subject-predicate-object, as opposed to subject-object).” Wikipedia style the service offers stubs of 150 words on celebrities who do not yet have a full profile on the site, that can be edited and added to by TinFinger users.”
TechCrunch
BeatBearing: Beautiful Drum Sequencer Design Has Balls
“each drum effect has a track on BeatBearing’s plastic screen, and by dropping a ball bearing into a hole you activate that track’s effect as a scanning light beam encounters it. When you watch a video of it in action, moving the bearings around in real time is like a kind of weird drum ballet”
Gizmodo
Personalised music magazine from your attention data
“Thanks to Tristan for alerting me (via the BBC’s Radio Labs blog) to the ultra-cool idiomag, which creates a daily personalised digital music magazine based on your listening preferences. The homepage invites users to enter either their two favourite artists or, more excitingly, their username from one of a host of popular online music services (Last.fm, Pandora, iLike, MyStrands, MOG, MySpace and Bebo are all supported) from where it pulls in details of your musical proclivities.”
fabric of folly
Nanotechnology: Rough Nano-Wires Hold the Secret to Efficient Heat to Electricity Conversion
“Using “rough” silicon wires, produced by a process known as “electroless etching,” where silicon nano-wires are synthesized in an aqueous solution, over a thin, semiconductor crystallized base, the scientists have been able to exploit the process of galvanic displacement of silicon. This displacement technique, which uses silver ions, causes the thermoelectric efficiency to be increased on the rough surfaces of the nano-wires.”
Gizmodo
Home thermostats: Big Brother’s next target?
“a proposal set to be considered at month’s end could allow the state of California to “require that residents install remotely monitored temperature controls in their homes next year.” The Programmable Communication Thermostat (PCT) would feature a “non-removable” FM receiver which could be controlled by Big Brother in “times of emergency” to drop load in order for “utilities to meet their supplies [when] the integrity of the grid is being jeopardized.”
Engadget
On Texting, a Question of Access or Invasion
“esperate to connect with the best players, college coaches have adopted text messaging with zeal, and some athletes have had enough. Beginning in August 2007, the N.C.A.A. banned Division I colleges from using text messaging to recruit athletes, citing complaints from students that the practice was driving up cellphone bills and intruding on personal time.”
New York Times
iriver prepping handwriting-friendly e-book / tablet?
“Tucked below all the self-congratulation, however, is what looks to be an as yet unannounced prototype from the ever-active iriver designers. The product appears to be an e-book of sorts, but with handwriting recognition and potentially a color display.”
Engadget
Krown’s handheld teaches you sign language
“This relatively low-fi device can reportedly display “short video clips showing how to sign any of 4,500 stored words in US sign language.”
Engadget
VIEVU PVR-PRO: the clip-on portable PVR
“This little bugger isn’t much larger than a traditional pager (remember those?) and can reportedly capture video at 640 x 480 (30 frames-per-second), and while we’re not told how much internal capacity is housed, it can store some four hours of content before needing to be emptied. As expected, the rechargeable battery also provides around four hours of usage, and it’s not scared to get thrown around / wet either.”
Engadget
Digital Tools Help Users Save Energy, Study Finds
“In the Olympic Peninsula, west of Seattle, 112 homes were equipped with digital thermostats, and computer controllers were attached to water heaters and clothes dryers. These controls were connected to the Internet. The homeowners could go to a Web site to set their ideal home temperature and how many degrees they were willing to have that temperature move above or below the target. They also indicated their level of tolerance for fluctuating electricity prices. In effect, the homeowners were asked to decide the trade-off they wanted to make between cost savings and comfort. The households, it turned out, soon became active participants in managing the load on the utility grid and their own bills.”
New York Times
Ces2008: MTube, the Smallest PC in the World in Action
“Maybe we missed the MTube at CES because at 3.34 x 3.34 x 0.78 inches and 5.3 ounces, this Linux-based WiMax- and Wi-Fi-enabled UMPC is the smallest “full featured” computer in the world.”
Gizmodo
A Watch That Alarms You
“AlarMe is a very unique and stylish design that has the ability to alert those who cannot hear an audible alarm by vibration on the watch. The watch has two built in multidirectional microphones that measure the surrounding ambient sound levels. Once the sound changes frequency, the vibrating alarm alerts the user that there is a situation going on and they need to leave the area.”
Yanko Design
Meraki free mesh WiFi network spreading across San Francisco
“If you can see the Free the Net signal, sign up for a free repeater to boost your signal. Volunteer to host an outdoor repeater on your roof or balcony. The outdoor units help spread the signal throughout your neighborhood and are critical to the growth of the network.”
Boing Boing
Study takes sensory approach to improve office of the future
“Installed at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and Arup in London, the sensors provide a continuous reading of environmental conditions, which are then fed back to workers via a live ticker tape designed by interaction consultancy Artificial Tourism. This information is then connected with how people in the office are actually feeling, through interactive installations designed by Maoworks. The consultancy developed a number of user feedback devices, including a simple yes/no floor mat on to which users step to register their response to workplace-related questions shown on an adjacent screen.”
Design Week
Guiding Light
“A 3-D waveguide carved into photonic crystals, he says, “can be used to trap and control light, and has potential applications in everything from more-efficient lasers to optical signal processing for telecommunications or other applications,” he says.”
Technology Review
Print Your Own Food — Now Edible!om
“Since its debut in May, CandyFab has gone from 5 ppi to 20 ppi (as demonstrated in the small photo to the right) and can actually produce edible content! Right now, they’re working on a new heater to stick the sugar together.”
Wired.com
Awdio Brings Cool Live Music Wherever You Are.
“Awdio 
spots the coolest places around the globe where live music is played and makes exclusive agreement to distribute and stream it live in real time. They gathered so far 50 hotspots like the super trendy Colette Shop in Paris, the 1015 in San Francisco or the Favela in London. They have created a technology that enables any live music source to be streamed over the internet with high quality sound.”
TechCrunch
Photo Frame: Prinics’ Digital Photo Frame Has Onboard Printer, Speakers, Plays ‘Baby Got Back’
“The back of this PhotoBox has a 300x300dpi printer, which shoots out snaps at a rate of 1 every 42 seconds.”
Gizmodo
Portable Speakers: Orbitsound T3 Portable Speaker “Plays Music in the Air Around Your Head”
“It works by using specialised amplifiers to convert stereo sound into spatial (left/right) and main audio signals, which is supposed to produce sound of one constant intensity no matter what the distance from the source may be, but only in a defined area and the defined area for the T3 portable speaker is the “air around your head.” The range will also include a valve and speaker set, as well as a swanky iPod dock.”
Gizmodo
3D Radio records and analyzes multiple radio stations
“The system gives users a freedom of navigation by scanning stations for the most recent traffic reports, providing information on songs and concerts, skipping adverts and content identified as annoying, and making station recommendations based on your personal profile.Not only does 3D Rado allow users to appreciate content from multiple sources, it also lets you listen to content at your leisure. If you have to turn off the radio in the middle of a captivating discussion, you can rewind it later and pick up where you left off. “
gizmag Article
Gadgets: uPlusPen Draws on Paper and Screen Simultaneously
“It’s not as fancy as Jesus’s favorite Wacom Cintiq, but this only costs $99 and you can use it on any old piece of paper.”
Gizmodo
360-degree automatic photo tent
“Unlike a regular product light-tent, you put objects inside the Photosimile 5000 and it takes a series of wraparound photos, by means of an automated camera positioning system and a turntable for the product.”
Core77
WowWee’s Rovio: 3-wheeled, Wi-Fi enabled robotic home surveillance
“Known as Rovio – the 3-wheeled telepresence allows you to interact with its environment, surveying the home or office remotely through streaming video and audio transmitted via the Internet to your cell phone, PC or video game console. Video is captured through a built-in camera and NorthStar smart navigation boosts the units ability to act autonomously.”
gizmag Article
Bello Touchscreen PMP
“Designer Ryan Han wanted to create a portable media player anyone could use. You have finger swipes and flicks but also the novel ideas of shaking and pouring. Shaking the player turns all your files to iconic pieces of paper you can stack and organize. Tipping the player over another (like a teapot) initiates a file transfer.”
Yanko Design
CES: Delphi’s Dashboard of the Future
“According to Delphi’s research, drivers who keep their eyes within a 20 degree range are less distracted, and therefore less likely to crash. Its four-screen dashboard prototype lets drivers keep their eyes within that range, by using video screens instead of mirrors and putting them inside the car rather than outside.”
Wired.com
Sony’s MusicPass: Albums You Can Put in Your Wallet
“Starting January 15, Sony will begin offering credit card-sized album vouchers that work a bit like iTunes gift cards at retailers like Best Buy and Target across the country. But instead of corresponding to a set dollar amount like Apple’s cards, these cards will entitle the buyer to a specific album (in digital form), sold in its entirety.”
PSFK
Text To Speech: Aigopen Reads Books So You Don’t Have to
“Hold the Aigopen up to any content in a book (text or images), and it will read out exactly what is going on, in either Chinese or English. We were amazed with the concept, clarity of audio and miniature size. As ever, there was a catch. The Catch: It only works with books made specifically for the device, which are put together by Aigo themselves. Last time we checked, Aigo wasn’t big in the publishing industry, so good try guys.”
Gizmodo
BigThink.com – Smarter Video Snacking
“With the rise in midday video snacking, BigThink is hoping to appeal to snackers looking for more than just some passive lunchtime amusement. The new niche video site (currently in beta) features experts in a wide array of subjects, from business to science to politics, usually answering one question in only 3 to 5 minutes. Simple. Viewers can watch, embed, and share videos of “big thinkers” like Senator John McCain, Psychologist Steven Pinker, and NY Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman sharing their punditry as concisely as possible.”
PSFK
Smarter Clothing Care Labels
“Using RFID technology the tags can communicate with RFID enabled washers, dryers, irons, presses, and dry cleaning equipment. Settings are automatically adjusted. You do nothing out of the ordinary. Just load your clothes, add detergent, and shut the lid. The tag itself is cleverly designed to use the RFID circuitry to form the care icons we’re all used to.”
Yanko Design
Video: Microvision Pico Projector Throwing iPod Video…on Some Dude’s Back
“At any rate, testing showed good video quality at around 50 inches, and it managed to get in the neighborhood of the advertised 100-inch range. Plus, the video proves you can project decent images onto someone’s back.”
Gizmodo
Smart Foam
“Most shape-memory alloys are driven by temperature changes. Magnetically driven alloys, however, respond faster than those that respond to temperature. Another important advantage of materials that change shape under a magnetic field is that they can be activated from a distance, says Robert O’Handley, a materials-science and engineering researcher at MIT. Because magnetic shape-memory materials can be remotely changed, he says that they are particularly promising for biomedical applications. “You could make a stent, where you apply a magnetic field to it from outside the body and gradually open up an artery,” he says.”
Technology Review
It’s a PC, No It’s a Lamp. Wait, It’s Kinda Both
“Turning Lamp is a PC mounted on a lamp base. It uses tactile interfaces people are familiar with when turning lamps on so a pull of a cord activates one of the 4 faces. Each face can display something different, i.e. – weather, news, email, music player, etc. The whole thing works wirelessly (natch) and comes with a fold out touchscreen keyboard. A unique aspect of the Turning Lamp enables multiple people to use it at once so users can work on something entirely different on each of the four screens.”
Yanko Design
Pioneer’s Kuro Plasma Will Deliver Absolute Black — Contrast Ratio Is ‘Officially Irrelevant’
“It may not be the thinnest TV here at CES (though at 9mm thick, it’s as svelte as an issue of WIRED), and it’s definitely not the biggest, but Pioneer’s 50-inch concept TV is arguably the most significant TV of the show. That’s because Pioneer is claiming it delivers “absolute black” — i.e. no light at all escapes from the black parts of the screen — and has, by implication, an infinite contrast ratio”
Wired.com
Thousands follow soldier’s fate in WW1 “blog”
“Like William Henry Bonser (”Harry”) Lamin’s real family almost a century ago, the modern reader visiting www.wwar1.blogspot.com does not know when the next letter is coming, or whether the one they are reading is in fact his last. Many are braced for the dreaded telegram from the army notifying relatives of a soldier’s death.”
Smart Mobs
Audiovox: Audiovox’s Digital Message Centers Let You Leave Videos for Your Family
“The Audiovox Digital Message Center features audio or audio/video-messaging capability through built-in camera and recorders. Family members can leave messages for audio and or video playback and can even tag them to the built in calendar so they play back on a specific date. In addition the company has designed their digital message frames to be displayed in the kitchen with refrigerator mounting systems that include unique flat wire in three finishes to match most appliances.”
Gizmodo
VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modelling from video
“The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modelled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model.”
Australian Centre for Visual Technologies
Héctor Serrano’s Reduced Carbon Footprint Souvenirs
“A collection of souvenirs that can be send by e-mail and then materialize using a 3D Printer (stereolithography rapid prototyping). No transport or standard production methods are required so the object carbon footprint is reduced to the minimum. The project questions the way objects are manufactured and new technologies are applied to propose alternative ways of reducing their impact on the environment.”
Core77
Sony BMG to drop copy protection for downloads
“Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the world’s second largest music company, will this month become the last of the big four majors to drop copy protection software on music downloads, also known as digital rights management (DRM). Sony BMG, home to artists including Beyonce, Britney Spears and Celine Dion, said on Monday it will launch a gift card service on January 15 called Platinum MusicPass that will feature digital albums from its artists in the MP3 format. The format does not use DRM protection”
Reuters.com
AutoPage C3 gives you remote access to your car
“After installing the firm’s C3 system, you can not only start your car from practically anywhere in the world with practically any smartphone, but you can also roll the windows back up, disable the starter or pop the boot. ‘Course, the system also sends you a text message should your ride just grow wheels and roll off, and if your mischievous youngster decides to exceed the speed limit, you’ll find out promptly about that, too.”
Engadget
Huge Monitor: Alienware Curved Monitor Looks Like It’s From Another Planet
“Lit by LEDs, this 2880×900 monster is well over three feet wide and is said to have an other-worldly .02ms response time, great for gaming. The Soylent Green: You can see the seams between this monitor’s four segments, but the Alienware humanoids tell us that flaw will be gone by the time this craft lands on Earth”
Gizmodo
Sony Ericsson phone quiets when waved at
“Sony Ericsson, owned by Sony Corp and Ericsson, said a user can simply wave their hand over the phone to mute the ring tone and ignore a call on the Z555 flip cover phone, which will be available in the first quarter. Similarly a consumer using the phone as an alarm clock can activate the snooze function by waving across the phone.”
Reuters.com
Pocket Printer
“The printer is about the size of a deck of cards. A user who takes a picture on a cell phone or camera can wirelessly send the file to the printer using Bluetooth, a common short-range wireless technology used in cell phones, or PictBridge, a wireless technology found in a number of cameras. The result is a two-inch-by-three-inch photo printed on paper engineered by Zink.”
Technology Review
Fujitsu intros a handful of concept designs at CES 2008
“For your viewing pleasure we present the “Card Viewer,” an information device which consists of multiple electronic sleeves that can be detached while retaining their digital data. Also on tap is the “Clerk Browser,” a device worn on the wrist which is meant to provide information to shopgirls, car dealers, and other people trying to sell you something.”
Engadget
You are currently browsing the rb.trends weblog archives for the month January, 2008.
They are also available as an RSS feed.
