Readability Bookmarklet Quick-Formats Pages for Smoother Text
“A helpful little browser bookmarklet from Arc90 strips all but the main text out of any web page and re-formats its layout, size, and margins, creating a newspaper or novel-like page for easier text digestion.” 
LifeHacker
mSpot launches browser-based ringtone creator
“Pick a song from mSpot’s catalogue of over 400,000. Drag the start and end points to whatever bit you’re looking to highlight, up to 30 seconds in length. Decide if you want it to fade in and out, preview it, and then buy away at $2.99 a pop. mSpot will then cut the track accordingly, encode it to the proper format for your handset, and set it on its way for easy downloading. We made our first ringtone in all of about a minute” 
MobileCrunch
Thanks To Skout, You Can Now Flirt Online Even When You Go Outside (Exclusive Video)
“Skout OUT will bring the startup’s LBS services to 42″ touch-screen plasma displays so people can virtually flirt with and send messages, gifts and dedicated songs to singles in their immediate vicinity that they take an interest in (including nearby venues). I’m left wondering whatever happened to walking up to someone and offer them a drink.” 
TechCrunch
Magic Mirror Shows Your Bones and Muscles In Real Time
“It’s not Total Recall material, but a tracking system developed by professor Yoshihiko Nakamura of the Information and Robot Technology Institute and University of Tokyo’s boffins. The system can monitor and display 300 skeletal muscles thanks to 16 electromyographs, which measure the electrical impulses that govern your muscles. The magic mirror marks the muscles with different colors depending on how much they are being used, ranging from yellow to red, which means major activity.” 
Gizmodo
Touch Book Is Part-Netbook, Part-Tablet
“The Always Innovating Touch Book does something I’ve never seen from a netbook: it has a fully detachable keyboard dock and transforms from a standard looking 8.9-inch netbook, to a stand-alone tablet.” 
Gizmodo
thisMoment – save and share the moments of your life
“thisMoment is a place for saving and sharing the moments of your life. A moment is any experience that has significance to you. Moments can be created by you as an individual, or in collaboration with others.” 
thisMoment
16943 by Studio FRST
“Studio FRST is going to get your squared away with a TV that simplifies(?) to an extra degree. The studio says that the form shows the function. That’s true. It’d fit right in at the home of a modernist, probably also at the house of a minimalist. It leaves space to put your tiny fern if you want! Put it right there under the side there! It will look nice, totally nice!”
Yanko Design
wearable computers
“mann now uses an ultra compact computer, which is hooked up to a special pair of eyeglasses that captures audio and video and can display things to him like a computer monitor. mann can interact with the computer through voice commands and it is with him at all times to make his interaction as fluid as possible. while his first creations were large machines hanging off his body and head, his latest model is completely hidden from view and only consists of a small computer and the specially-design glasses. mann has proven that a wearable computer can be made unobtrusive and useful to its user, however we will have to wait and see how long it will be until the market catches up.” 
DesignBoom
The Cosmo eBook Reader is coming
“There are no real details yet on what Hearst is cooking up here. Which technology are they licensing? Or does it even matter as eBook reader for magazines are just not really ready for the mass market?
For starters Hearst would have to give away the eBook reader for free to even get some sizable traction. Also, if the Hearst eBook reader is really supposed to replace the print version of Cosmo, then you need a full color eBook reader. A colorful magazine you can touch and roll up is different than the web.” 
The Cosmo eBook Reader is coming
modu – modular mobile phone
“modu is a new mobile phone concept that features a full system of modular jackets that add deeper functionality to the basic phone. the basic modu is the world’s lightest phone, boasting 2gb of memory and music playing functionality. this device feature’s a small screen and 7-digit keypad. its domino-like design is fully functional on its own, but the newly launched jackets enhance it for specific functions. the modu phone simply inserts into the jackets, acting as its computer source. this allows users to change their phone without purchasing a whole new unit or losing their information.” 
DesignBoom
SmartSwitch
"SmartSwitch doesn’t restrict the user from turning on a light, but rather it passively encourages behavior change. SmartSwitches can be programmed to respond to either personal or communal electrical usage. In a home wired with SmartSwitches, lights can become harder to turn on during hours of peak demand. The switches can also be customized to reflect household-specific energy conservation goals." 
Core77
Bebo Zeroes In On Lifestreaming For The Masses; Gets Massive Bump From AIM Profiles
"It is also introducing a visual timeline called a “Lifestory” that puts uploaded photos, events, and (soon) videos into a scrollable, chronological series of postage stamp icons at the top of members’ profile pages. Eventually, people will be able to subscribe to other Lifestories, including those from brands and bands, and embed them in their own profile pages or elsewhere. The timeline will also become the centerpiece of a Bebo iPhone app coming out soon." 
TechCrunch
Sat-nav to aid disabled motorists
""Many disabled travellers worry about the uncertainty of not knowing where to park… and consequently do not venture further afield than their own local area," said Janet Seward, sales and marketing director at Gowrings. "We want to make disabled travellers’ lives and journeys much smoother, easier and more spontaneous." The BB Nav grades car parks according to their level of accessibility and also has the location of more than 10,000 on-street parking bays." 
BBC NEWS
TimeRadarTrees: Weighted Dynamic Compound Digraphs
"The TimeRadarTrees approach shows the information hierarchy as a traditional node-link diagram, but in a radial style. Each graph is represented as a slice on the inner circle and corresponding slices on the smaller outer circles, which are called thumbnails. The inner circle shows the incoming edges, the thumbnails represent the outgoing edges." 
information aesthetics
Drilling Down – Tweeting? Odds Are You Live in a City
"Users of social networking services tend to cluster around age 25. But microblogging services “have plenty of users until about age 35,” said Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which just released the results of a survey about microblogging." 
NYTimes.com
Protonex Soldier-Worn portable power management systems
"The power managers reduce the amount of batteries soldiers have to carry into the field, and streamline the recharging of electronics. The latest line of SPMs are smaller, lighter, and easier to configure than previous Protonex models, and feature six configurable power ports." 
Gizmag
Stimulus bill requires RSS feeds of how the money is spent
"For each of the near term reporting requirements (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) agencies are required to provide a feed (preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS) of the information so that content can be delivered via subscription."
Boing Boing
Daytum—DIY Felton Report
“Egotistic, self-centred, narcissist? Then you’ll love Daytum. Created by Nicholas Felton (of recently posted Felton Report 09) and interactive designer Ryan Case, allows you to create you very of DYI Felton Report on just about anything. Daytum is a home for collecting and communicating your daily data. Begin tracking anything you can count and display the results immediately… or just look around and see what other members are recording.” 
FormFiftyFive
A New Route to Terabit Memory
“Block copolymers, which are made of chemically different polymers linked together, can arrange themselves into arrays of nanoscale dots on surfaces, which could be used as templates for creating tiny magnetic bits that store data on hard disks. Until now, though, there was no simple, quick way to coax the block copolymer to make the desired arrays over large areas. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst have found a simple way to coat square inches of substrate with block copolymers. The highly ordered pattern formed by the copolymers could be used to create hard disks with 10 terabits squeezed into a square inch, the researchers report this week in Science.”
Technology Review
The Washington Post TimeSpace: Locate the News in the World
“TimeSpace [washingtonpost.com] is an interactive map that allows users to navigate articles, photos, video and commentary from around the globe. One can discover news hot-spots where coverage is clustered, use the slider timeline to illustrate peaks in coverage, or customize news searches to a particular day or specific hour.” 
information aesthetics
Digital Foci Photo Book: a portable, digital photo album
“Just released by Digital Foci is the Photo Book: by adding a soft leather-like case they’ve turned a standard digital photo frame into a ‘book’ you can carry around and show off your photos and videos – wherever you are – and in a far more elegant and versatile way than using your mobile phone. The internal battery means there are no messy cables and it can easily be passed around a lounge room or a boardroom.” 
Gizmag
Military’s killer robots must learn warrior code
“The stark warning – which includes discussion of a Terminator-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters – is issued in a hefty report funded by and prepared for the US Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research. The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.” 
Times Online
GlobalTag combines GPS, RFID and SatComs for worldwide supply chain visibility
“Numerex and Savi have announced a technology partnership to co-develop what would be the first asset and shipment monitoring device that combines Global Satellite Positioning, active Radio Frequency Identification and Satellite Communications. The hybrid ST-694 GlobalTag is being developed to provide continuous seamless monitoring and precise location information of assets regardless of their physical location.” 
Gizmag
8 Years Old: Average Age For First Cell Phone In UK
"The Telegraph reports that British children are given their first mobile phone around 8 years old. Doug Aamoth with CrunchGear makes a good point that the survey conducted was in an affluent area, which could slant the results, but nonetheless it’s worth noting that children are actively using mobile phones a great deal more than in previous years. Who are these kids calling? Mainly their parents, although the survey highlights that having a cell phone is more about having cool ringtones and games among friends, rather than serving as a solid communicating platform." 
PSFK.com
NYTimes: A Visual Yearly Overview of News (1984-2009)
"A series of visualizations [flickr.com] that represent the top organizations and people mentioned in the news articles of the New York Times for a given year of news between 1984 and 2009. Connections between these entities are drawn, so that relationships can be found and followed. These circular graphs are based on the faceted searching abilities of the NYTimes Article Search API, that were released a short while ago." 
information aesthetics
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