Handgun Fires Only When In Proximity To Owner’s Watch
“The Armatix .22 handgun is specially designed to fire only when in proximity to a specially-synced watch worn by the weapon’s owner. This electronic safety could potentially work well in law enforcement as a safeguard against police weapons falling into criminal hands.” 
PSFK
nieuwe heren: beauty and geek
“it uses a pair jeans modified to accommodate the added technology of keyboard and mouse. the right back pocket is custom-shaped to cover the mouse which is attached to the jeans via an elastic wire. ‘the beauty and the geek’ has a wireless USB connection that allows the user to move around while still maintaining control with the keyboard and mouse. speakers are also added to the knees giving the user the freedom to listen to music.” 
Design Boom
Forcing Electrons into Superconducting Line
“Superconductors carry electricity with no loss to resistance. They are to regular conductors what a laser beam is to a light bulb. The problem is they have to be cooled to at least –100 degrees Celsius to work. Then the electrons spontaneously start moving in one direction and forming pairs. And now, scientists have caught a glimpse of a mysterious phase they call the “pseudo-gap” where the electrons line up just before they form pairs and start superconducting. Louis Taillefer from the University of Sherbrooke said they used a magnetic field to align the electron flow: “The effect was very big. It was surprisingly big.” If scientists can take advantage of this effect, room temperature superconductors could be a step closer. “If we do find or if we do arrive at a material that can sustain superconductivity at room temperature we will have a huge technological revolution, similar on a scale to the transistor.””
Scientific American
Pedestrian footsteps, converted into energy
“Each rubber slab from UK-based Pavegen Systems gets depressed by about 5 mm each time it gets stepped on. Using just that small movement, it can convert the kinetic energy used into electricity, which is then stored in the slab. Specifically, 5 percent of the energy harvested is used to make the slab’s LED glow, making it clear to users that their energy has been captured. The rest can be used to power pedestrian lighting, information displays and many other applications. Pavegen’s patent-protected technology has also been used to harvest energy from users’ footsteps on stairs; custom branding is available.” 
Springwise
Dating site lets women call the shots
“Men can join for free, if they have been invited—and if a current Bookioo member can vouch for their information. They can then post a profile for the perusal of the female—and paying—members of the site. It’s those paying women, however, who get to call the shots. Female members see all the details in men’s profiles—including ratings and comments from other Bookioo members—and it’s also up to them to initiate contact with the ones they find interesting. They can request double-dates for added security, if they wish; also available is the option of connecting with other women on the site.” 
Springwise
Sky launches 3D channel in pubs
“The match between Arsenal and Manchester United will be viewable in 3D in pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh. In April Sky will roll out its 3D channel to hundreds of other pubs. Later in the year, Sky 3D will be made available to all Sky+HD customers with a range of content on offer. This will include movies, sport, documentaries and entertainment. Viewers need to wear a special pair of glasses to watch the content.” 
BBC News
AirMouse – the mouse that fits you like a glove
“The wireless mouse utilizes an optical laser, and can run for a week without recharging. According to the company website, the clinically-tested product works by aligning itself with the ligaments of your hand and wrist. This lets you keep your hand in a neutral position, and transmits more of your vector force than would be possible with a regular mouse. Not only does this make it easier on your hand, but it increases your mousing speed and accuracy as well. The mouse is also designed to remain inactive until your hand is placed in a neutral, flat position, so you can easily go back and forth between typing and mousing.” 
Gizmag
Mobile Touch Screens Could Soon Feel the Pressure
“However, Peratech says that using quantum tunneling means that its material is more sensitive to pressure than competing materials such as carbon composites. It also means that the sensors draw no power unless someone applies pressure. The company says the sensors can be fitted to existing screens relatively easily, and can be manufactured using standard printing methods. Gadgets that use the technology should hit the market as early as April of this year, says Taysom. These devices could bring with them new interactive functionality. “The harder you press, the faster the screen will scroll or the faster a character will run in a game,” says Taysom. This could also make it easier to drag and drop on-screen items, or to perform two tasks at the same time, such as simultaneously dragging and zooming an image, Taysom says.”
Technology Review
Talking plate scale urges diners to slow down
“The Mandometer consists of an electronic scale designed to fit under a plate and a small screen. The scale weighs the food as the meal is being consumed and the screen depicts a graph that indicates the rate at which the food is disappearing from the plate. This “ideal graph for food consumption” was programmed by a food therapist. As soon as a diner deviates too much from the ideal graph, he or she is subjected to a spoken request from the computer to slow down. The idea behind the Mandometer is to train overweight people to eat more slowly so that they will feel satiated sooner and eat less, thereby losing weight.” 
mydigitallife
Interactive board games with OLED Displays
“The prototype projects back images onto each
individual OLED display. This allows for a seamless interaction experience that anticipates wireless OLED technology. The technology allows groups of friends or family members to play electronic games like they used to do board games: in a sociable and physical setting, placed together around a table. it also eases game controls by using affordances of regular cardboard pieces.” 
OLED-display.net
Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts
“Stitching Together, by Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, is a “hacked” digital sewing machine. People forward the machine one of their personal SMS and it dutifully embroiders it.” 
we make money not art
Living Homes
“This video features Brian Pene from the Autodesk CTO office giving a tour of a Mixed Reality Interface that combined physical markers on a digital screen to navigate through the interior and exterior of a Living Homes fabricated house.” 
New Ways of Interaction
Wireless data transfer record smashed
“[…] electronic engineering company Siemens just broke their own record by achieving 500 Mbps using white LED light. Researchers from Siemens’ Corporate Technology sector in Munich successfully sent the data across five meters of empty space. They did it by modulating the power supply to an Ostar LED, made by Siemens subsidiary Osram. Although the resulting 500 light intensity fluctuations per second were invisible to the human eye, they were readable by a photodetector receiver, which converted them into electrical pulses. The researchers also established that a system combining five LED’s is capable of transmitting data over longer distances, at a rate of 100 Mbps.” 
Gizmag
The 2009 Feltron Annual Report
“Calling daily on the people he met who he felt “had discerned enough of my personality and activities” to submit a record of the encounter through an online survey, the designer tracked responses and used his own subjective analysis to come up with the data set. While Felton acknowledges the variations in accuracy his methods produce, he exlpains that he “strived to sort and collate the data in a clinical and repeatable manner that could be reproduced by someone looking for the same stories I have selected.
”" 
CoolHunting
Arduino-controlled hourglass
“The USB Hourglass combines a sand timer with a rotating mechanism and an optical beam through the center of the timer to observe the falling sand. The amount of light reaching a detector is digitized at frequent intervals and processed by a microcontroller to determine when to rotate the hourglass” 
Make
This Disgruntled Artwork Perpetually Sells Itself on eBay
“No owner is quite good enough for this big-headed piece. Larsen’s “Tool,” a shiny, black cube with an Ethernet jack, pings a server every ten minutes to determine if it is listed for sale on eBay. If it’s not, it creates a new auction. Mind you, this isn’t only a conceptual function of the piece; it really is constantly auctioning itself and being purchased by new owners. You can view the current auction at http://atooltodeceiveandslaughter.com/.” 
Gizmodo
Messa di Voce
“Messa di Voce (2003-: Golan Levin, Zachary Lieberman, Jaap Blonk, and Joan La Barbara) augments the speech, shouts and songs produced by two virtuoso vocalists with real-time interactive visualizations. The project touches on themes of abstract communication, synaesthetic relationships, cartoon language, and writing and scoring systems, within the context of a sophisticated, playful, and virtuosic audiovisual narrative. Custom software transforms every vocal nuance into correspondingly complex, subtly differentiated and highly expressive graphics.” 
New ways of interaction
NSN Experience Cloud
“Based on an augmented reality back-end the Cloud is a networked experience which uses a tangible interface that connects people with content and each other. A geodesic sculpture houses multiple puck-like objects which, when presented to the surrounding screens, launch the interactive experience.” 
New ways of interaction
Pokemon for the real world
“Kids can remember hundreds of Pokemon characters but very few animals. The solution? The Phylomon Project is an open source initiative aiming to make Pokemon-type cards for actual animals.” 
Kottke
Intelius Date Check – only minutes to find out if your date is hiding something
“Information-gathering company, Intelius, has released an app called Date Check that in minutes scans billions of publicly available documents stored on numerous databases and hidden in countless files to ascertain if the guy (or girl) you just met is worthy of a second date. Does he/she have a criminal record, hold the job they say, live with mum and dad or a spouse and kids or earn enough to keep you happy?” 
Gizmag
User-Generated Nature Will Create World’s Largest Website
“The concept is based on “user generated nature”, where each website user is invited to submit a 1 square meter image of nature which will be pieced together to ideally form the largest website in the world.” 
PSFK
Live Building/Billboard Texturing from Webcams: Live3D
“Live 3D is a Google Earth-powered web application that allows users to transform photos into 3D geometry in Google Earth – ie you can drap webcams onto the buildings for a ‘live view’ of a city and it has notable potential for a live Google Earth.” 
Digital Urban
Carbon nanotubes used to make batteries from fabrics
“Ordinary cotton and polyester fabrics have been turned into batteries that retain their flexibility. The demonstration is a boost to the nascent field of “wearable electronics” in which devices are integrated into clothing and textiles. The approach is based on dipping fabrics in an “ink” of tiny tubes of carbon, and was first demonstrated last year on plain copier paper.” 
BBC News
Shelf computer!
“Appearing to be hanging from the shelf, the cool “Shelf computer” besides being techie in all sense, is visually so appealing that it is sure to become the important part of your living room. The shelf undoubtedly holds your books, cds albums and lots more. The shelf is endowed with speakers, projector and lighting.” 
materialicious
HULC robotic exoskeleton to get fuel-cell Power Supply
“HULC, the Lockheed Martin (LM) powered robotic exoskeleton is being extended in its range to support 72+ hour extended missions. LM is working with Protonex Technology Corporation to evaluate and develop fuel cell-based power solutions that can be carried by the HULC, while at the same time powering the exoskeleton and the soldier’s mission equipment during extended dismounted operations.” 
Gizmag
SlideScreen Android App Replaces Homescreen With Beautiful Information
“In the middle of that is the app’s namesake, a slider (itself displaying date, time, weather, battery, and signal strength) that can be moved up and down to reveal and highlight each of the other sections in full. Tapping the menu button takes you to a traditional list of apps, with space for eight favorites at the top. It’s pretty confusing to explain, but it’s really easy to use. Check out this video for a nice walkthrough.” 
Gizmodo
MIT’s Digital Food Printer Creates Nutritious Meals
“Cornucopias’ printing process begins with an array of food canisters filled with the “cook’s” foods of choice. After a meal selection has been made using the device’s multi-touch translucent screen, users are able to see their meal being assembled while simultaneously manipulating real-time parameters, such as calories or carbohydrate content. Each ingredient is then piped into a mixer and then very precisely extruded, allowing for very exact and elaborate combinations of food.” 
Inhabitat
Add “Affordable” HP Printers To The 3D Blitz
“HP and Stratasys have teamed up to deliver a 3D printer that should cost less than $15,000. “This is the boldest step we have seen so far in 3-D printing,” says Scott Summit, chief technology officer for Bespoke Innovations, a company that creates 3-D artifacts for medical use. “A lot of people want to do 3-D printing but it is a mysterious world. With HP embracing it, it is likely to demystify the idea to many consumers.” 
Gizmodo
Bacteria Transformed Into Living, Blinking Clocks Could Provide Precisely Timed Drug Delivery
“To synchronize the bacteria, the researchers co-opted a phenomena called quorum sensing. In quorum sensing, bacteria exchange small molecules to other cells in the colony to help regulate colony conditions. By tweaking the triggers and feedback loops used by E. coli in its quorum sensing protocol, the UCSD scientists created a clock-like circuit. They then linked transcription of the fluorescent protein gene to ticks of the bacterial clock to create the waves seen in the video. By adjusting the pH, temperature, and other environmental factors, scientists can engineer the bacteria to react in unison at any interval of timing desired. ” 
Popular Science
Hacker shows porn on Moscow highway
“Late-night traffic on one of the Russian capital’s busiest roads slowed on Thursday as a couple’s explicit escapades appeared on the 9 metre x 6 metre display. Some people took pictures of the sight with their mobile phones and posted them on the internet. Passer-by Alyona Prokulatova told The Associated Press that she was “so shocked that I couldn’t even shoot video or take a picture of it”. The screen’s owner, 3 Stars, told the AP that a hacker attack was likely to blame. ” 
The Independent
centrala: sensorama
“‘sensorama’ is a winter-making machine by polish design studio centrala.
the interactive installation was presented in the heat of summer during the blue festival in jaffa, old harbour, israel. it provided a sensory trip for participants, carrying them away for a moment, to poland’s hardest winter of the 20th century in 1979. the machine reproduced all the sensations generated by a frosty winter, such as images, temperature, smell, sound and the level of air quality. by putting their heads inside ‘sensorama’ three persons, strangers to one another, simultaneously experienced a reality completely alien to them.” 
Design Boom
Phone texting ‘helps pupils to spell’
“A study of eight- to 12-year-olds found that rather than damaging reading and writing, “text speak” is associated with strong literacy skills. Researchers say text language uses word play and requires an awareness of how sounds relate to written English. This link between texting and literacy has proved a surprise, say researchers. These latest findings of an ongoing study at the University of Coventry contradict any expectation that prolonged exposure to texting will erode a child’s ability to spell.” 
BBC News
Insite Programmable Global Alert and Monitoring System (PGAMS) – monitoring for the masses
“Insite can be used to monitor liquid levels, pressures, voltages, temperatures, weights, switch states – anything that can be measured. It can be used in agriculture, the energy sector, manufacturing, data storage, food storage, construction, you name it. On a more personal level, it can also be used for home or office protection, alerting the user when their security system is tripped, the power goes out, or the temperature changes. It can even track the location of vehicles, yachts, planes or even skateboards, presumably. Using Google Maps, it can then display all of the users’ assets, along with data on their current status.” 
Gizmag
Diego-san humanoid robot baby
“The baby robot — named “Diego-san” — is designed to help researchers study how infants develop motor skills during the first year of life, according to a recent Kokoro newsletter (PDF). In addition to providing clues about how infants interact with the physical world, researchers will also use the robot to explore how babies acquire and refine the ability to use nonverbal communication such as gestures and facial expressions.” 
Pink Tentacl
Human Recorder System Monitors Daily Biometric Health
“The WIN Human Recorder system is a device launched in Japan that continuously tracks the wearer’s biometric state, including heart rate, brain waves, accelerated velocity, body temperature, and respiration. With a battery lasting three to four days the device is meant to be worn on the body at all times, transmitting data wirelessly to PC or mobile device.” 
PSFK
Noteput Brings Musical Notation To Life
““Noteput” activates by putting a treble clef on the table. As soon as a note is placed on the staves, the respective sound is heard. If several notes are on the table, you can hit the play button and listen to the notes in relation to each other and considering note values. In addition to piano other instruments like guitar, flute, vibraphone or e-piano can be chosen.” 
PSFK
Flexible e-paper newspapers
“LG Display has announced its development of a newspaper-size flexible e-paper. The 19-inch wide (250x400mm) flexible e-paper is almost as big as a page of A3 sized newspaper. The product is optimized for an e-newspaper and able to convey the feeling of reading an actual newspaper. Additionally, as the product measures 0.3 millimeters thin, the e-paper weighs just 130 grams despite its 19-inch size.” 
Make
Video games recognised by Ivor Novello awards
“Announcing the new award, Mark Fishlock, director of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) and a member of The Ivors committee, said: “The Ivors has always sought to reflect the ever-changing world of songwriting and composing. The video games market has matured beyond recognition and big budget orchestral scores are regularly being commissioned. Writing music for games also requires a number of specialist skills compared with conventional film scoring, such as non-linear and multi-layered composition.” Under standard Ivor rules, all entries must have a British or Irish composing contribution of at least one third. “
BBC News
ABS avalanche airbags now offer wireless remote activation
“The electronic system allows specific groups to be defined. Group members simply need to touch all their trigger handles together to become a unit with either one person, such as a ski instructor (the ‘master’) able to trigger the others’ airbags, or all members of the group designated masters, able to assist each other in the event of a slab avalanche.” 
Gizmag
Silver: Kinetic Dress (Concept & Design process)
“This research investigates the design, implementation and evaluation of a kinetic dress, which functions as a wearable display that visually externalizes the emotional and non-emotional stress of the wearer.” 
Vimeo
Drawing in mixed reality
“This platform mixes hand-drawing with digital features by projecting a digital layer on top of sketches. This digital layer can be manipulated with a tangible interaction tool.” 
New Ways of Interaction
Knee deep
“Knee Deep invites children to jump in and explore unexpected worlds of different proportions with their feet. The installation combines real-time greenscreening, computer vision and stomp detection.” 
New ways of interaction
Voice Band iPhone app – stunning multitrack rock band recordings using only your voice
“Voice band takes your voice as an input, and uses it essentially as a programming code for a bunch of different instrument sounds, which you can then layer up into a multi-track rock song. Instruments include electric guitar, electric guitar power chords, bass, sax, 2 synths, drums and a basic recording mode to layer vocals on the top. There’s multi-mode pitch correction, distortion, reverb and delay effects, plus an adjustable octave option and adjustable tempo. You can play along an MP3 from your iPod music library and sing over the top of it too, if you like.” 
Gizmag
Turn your iPhone into a WWII fighter? Yes, there’s an app for that too
“The app turns the iPhone itself into a WW2 fighter plane that you hold in your hand and fly around the room, accompanied by flying and shooting noises, and attachable paper wings.” 
Techcrunch
light touch
“the light touch allows users to turn any flat surface, vertical or horizontal, into an interactive touchscreen. the device is pocket size and hooks up to a variety of devices such as a mobile phone to provide a large multi-touch display. the projector uses holographic laser projection which create bright and high quality images on any surface. infrared sensors detect motion so users can control their device uses gestures on the projected surface. the company isn’t set to release the product anytime soon, but they do think it would be useful for individual users on the go or in the home, workplace or even commercial environments.” 
Design Boom
RGB MusicLab Turns Photos into Music
“RGB MusicLab is a portable application, available for Windows or Mac, that takes the RGB color values of an image and converts them, based on intensity, into sound. You have a high degree of control over the output of RGB MusicLab. You can adjust the size of the mosaic it creates for pieces of greater or lesser complexity, select from over a hundred instruments and sound effects that the Red, Green, and Blue color values will be represented by, and whether or not the individual color channels will play independently or harmonize, among other options.” 
Lifehacker
Lego Universe Impressions: The Next Step In Lego Building
“Lego says you have access to pretty much every part they have, from many of the unique Lego sets over the years (pirates, space, etc.). You have your own “home” area that you can build castles or whatever inside, invite your friends to visit and customize however you like. You can also assign behaviors and actions to what you build as well, by dragging and dropping actions onto easily-connectible UI segments. It’s intuitive enough for kids, since Lego has been doing research into that segment for years. The MMO part comes from the fact that it costs pieces (obviously) and in-game money to build, so you have to go out into the MMO world and adventure in order to earn both.” 
Gizmodo
MyFord Touch In-Car Interface
“MyTouch introduces many new features—the ability to send Mapquest directions to your car from your phone or computer, customizable screens, full voice control for Pandora, voice delivery of stock quotations and tweets, HD radio and iTunes tagging among them. Ford has opened up their API with the expectation that multiple applications will be developed.” 
CoolHunting
Cannondale Simon Electronic Suspension Reads Trail
“This data is processed by the Simon system to access more than 10,000 terrain-response maps to provide optimal bicycle suspension control. Unlike previous mountain bike front suspension technologies, which relied on mechanical devices with slower response times, the Simon front suspension system incorporates ADI’s accelerometers for real-time response, which allows riders to instantly adapt to changing trail conditions.” 
I4U
Intel’s Intelligent Digital Signage demo
“Intel’s Intelligent Digital Signage concept puts us one step closer to the type of store displays we saw in Minority Report when Tom Cruise walks through the mall. It aims to “put the customer in control of their own experience;” presumably this is aimed at tech-savvy youth, but watching the video, I can’t help but notice which features my tech-unsavvy parents would benefit from and which would completely perplex them.” 
Core77
parrot AR drone
“the AR drone is an iphone controlled flying robot by parrot which is equipped with a camera for enabling augmented reality. the flying bot comes with four helicopter like propellers which enable it to fly both indoors and out. the camera is located on the nose of the device and is sent through a wireless signal to the iphone interface.” 
Design Boom
Digital scents
“Her newest gadget is the button-sized ‘eScent’. It contains bio-sensors that monitor changes in the blood pressure, respiration and skin’s electric potential. When it detects a change, it sends signals to the lab-on-a-chip devices, which then change the type or intensity of fragrance released. Though currently crude at detecting more subtle mood changes, the idea is that eScent will eventually be able to detect stress or anxiety and then release appropriate scents to soothe the wearer. “I’m more interested in health aspects linked to aromachology, the science of fragrance, rather than just a gimmicky scent delivery system that substitutes the perfume bottle,” Tillotson says.” 
COSMOS magazine
New Device Converts Wi-Fi Signal To Power
“The device, called the Airnergy, uses an antenna and circuitry to harvest the energy and an internal battery to store the electrical charge. A company representative told OhGizmo that they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30 percent to full charge in about 90 minutes using the ambient Wi-Fi signal at CES, although the charge time varies depending on how close the battery is to the original signal.” 
PSFK
TwitterPicture 2: Twitter Inspired Drawing Created Live
“From 0900 Thursday January 14th till 0900 Friday January 15th, artist Johanna Basford will create her second live “TwitterPicture”. Twitter users are invited to tweet suggestions to Basford, which she will incorporate into the over sized drawing.” 
PSFK
American Pixels
“ajpeg is a new image compression algorithm where the focus is not on making its compression efficient but, rather, on making its result interesting. As computer technology has evolved to make artificial images look ever more real – so that the latest generation of shooter and war games will look as realistic as possible – ajpeg is intended to go the opposite way: Instead of creating an image artificially with the intent of making it look as photo-realistic as possible, it takes an image captured from life and transforms it into something that looks real and not real at the same time.” 
Kottke
Ion Audio Peripherals Use iPhone As A Digital Core
“Ion Audio’s line of 3 peripherals act as physical interfaces which help transform the iPhone into the digital core of a 25 key piano, DJ control unit or full size keyboard.” 
PSFK
Staying Connected, Even Underwater
“They’ve recently worked with professional swimmers Michael Phelps and Natalie Coghlin to create the Interval Waterproof Headphones System, which allows users access to their iPods even while 12 feet underwater.” 
PSFK
Tunebug Shake turns your helmet into a speaker
“The products are all based on patented NXT speaker technology which generate sound waves that pass through the surfaces the speakers (aka “sound generators”) rest on, effectively turning those surfaces into speakers. Predictably, there’s a desktop solution which sits on your desk. Now there’s also a helmet-top solution which sits on your helmet, giving you a kind of ambient bone dome surround sound like you’ve never had before – ideal for skateboarding, bicycling, skiing and motorcycling.” 
Gizmag
Scottish crimes to be reconstructed in 3D
“The technology, developed by the SPSA’s multimedia forensic unit in Glasgow, can make complex situations more understandable while virtual models can be created of a body to show how a bullet or knife caused injury.” 
BBC News
Kompis by Francisco Lindoro and Regimantas Vegele
“Stop right there! Why make a compass digital? Couldn’t I just find north using a real-deal analog compass? Why yes! But this compass right here doesn’t tell you north, south, east, and west, it tells you the direction you want to go! No more maps for you. No more reliance on the magnets of the world! No more even relying on the electricity of the world, this little puck right here has a dynamo for hand charging. How about that?” 
Yanko Design
Self-feeding robots hunt for power outlets
“His electric field sensing robot […] uses a series of electromagnetic sensors to hone into the 60 Hz signal produced by an electric outlet, and then plug itself it. This is a neat approach because it is actually detecting the thing that it wants (power), rather than relying on a computer vision system to find something that looks like an outlet.” 
Make
DustTag
“DustTag is an iPhone application designed for graffiti writers that visualizes the motion involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived in a free and open database, 000000book.com, where writers can share 3-D animated representations of their hand styles. All tags created in DustTag are saved as Graffiti Markup Language (GML) files, a new digital standard used by other popular graffiti applications such as Laser Tag and EyeWriter.” 
Graffiti Analysis
FrameWizard Photo Frame Brings Digital Photos Alive In Eerie Ways
“FrameWizard by FaceCake Marketing Technologies is an upcoming Photo Frame with unique software features that allow you to animate your digital photos in eerie ways: Suddenly eyes blink or hair waves of people in your snapshots. FrameWizard is making it apparently very easy to add these effects to your photos using four software components: Moving Memories, Element Effects, Change of Scenery and Matte Magic. Users can then display their one-of-a-kind memories on a feature-loaded, state-of-the-art digital frame.” 
i4u
Ti eZ430 – Chronos Development kit unboxing
“Did I mention it retails for $49. I picked mine up for $25 during the pre-order. Not bad for a watch with a 97 segment LCD, 3-axis accelerometer, pressure sensor, temperature sensor, and built in wireless! The kit comes with everything you need to program the watch. It even includes a screwdriver and extra screws! I’m not sure how much you can actually hack it, but you can send and receive data from the watch, and that should make it useful for a lot of different projects.” 
Make
Digital Art Frame from Casio Redraws Your Photos into Something Akin to Genius
“It takes your own digital photos and transforms them into paintings – well, it turns them into digital images with special effects. There are, apparently, eight art form effects, including oils, pastels and watercolors, and the frame also plays audio files and videos. But let’s focus on the pictures for the moment. I reckon you wait for Digital Art Frame 2.0, which will be able to turn your pics into Van Goghs, Velazquezes, Reubens, Basquiats, Picasso, Johns and the like. Oh, and the guy who did the Dogs Playing Poker pic.” 
Gizmodo
France ponders right-to-forget law
“A proposed law in the country would give net users the option to have old data about themselves deleted. This right-to-forget would force online and mobile firms to dispose of e-mails and text messages after an agreed length of time or on the request of the individual concerned. Divina Frau-Meigs, Professor of American Studies and Media Sociology at the Paris Sorbonne University, believes the law would counter against unguarded communications becoming an official record. ” 
BBC News
Soft Drink Powered Battery For Mobile Phones by Daizi Zheng
“It feeds off carbohydrates (sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst to generate electricity. With the promise of lasting three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries, investing in a can of coke (Sometimes Alcohol!) every now and then doesn’t seem to be a bad proposition. Add to this, water and oxygen as residue when the battery dies, makes the concept sweeter!” 
Yanko Design
Kodak’s 25-Foot Touchscreen Video Table
“This is Kodak’s 25-foot-long, multi-faced touch table. It is huge.” 
Gizmodo
Nano-magnets in metamaterials pave the way to invisibility cloaks
“Metamaterials are a broad class of materials which have been specifically engineered to exhibit peculiar properties, particularly with regard to how light behaves when traveling in them: metamaterials with negative refractive indexes could even reflect light so to make entire objects invisible, and scientists have been making progress towards an invisibility cloak that, a few years back, belonged more to the pages of a fantasy novel than to those of a scientific paper. There’s certainly still a long road ahead, but continous advancements have consistently made this dream less and less laughable in the recent past.” 
Gizmag
Augmented Reality Platform Covers Building Exterior
“Located in the shopping district surrounding Tokyo’s Tachikawa Station, the exterior of the mall-like N Building has been covered with QR code data so that store information can be captured from street level. The design teams at Qosmo and Teradadesign Architects have also put together an iPhone app that gathers real-time information and conversations within the building through an AR-like interface.” 
PSFK
enTourage eDGe Dualbook On Sale in February For $490, Combines Ereader With Tablet
“The dual-screen enTourage eDGe sounds more than decent, for anyone considering either an ereader, tablet PC or PMP. I like convergence when it actually works, and this Android job sounds like it works. The device has a 9.7-inch e-paper screen on the left, and a 10.1-inch LCD screen on the right. Wi-Fi is included for web browsing, or downloading ebooks, and a noise-cancelling microphone and 1.3-megapixel camera allows for video and audio recording, with audio files saved as MP3s.” 
Gizmodo
London unveils digital datastore
“More than 200 data sets detailing life in London are to be put online by the capital’s governing body. Information about planning decisions, crime rates, abandoned vehicles, house prices, road accidents and many other metrics will form the London datastore.”
BBC News
ESPN To Launch Dedicated 3D Channel
“Anticipating a booming emergence of 3D HDTV sets in 2010, ESPN has announced the launch of ESPN 3D in June. Beginning with South Africa vs. Mexico in the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, ESPN plans on broadcasting 85 events in 3D during the channel’s first year.” 
PSFK
Flickr Flow
“We began with a collection of photographs of the Boston Common taken from Flickr. Using an algorithm developed for the WIRED Anniversary visualization, our software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. The image below is an early sketch from the piece. Summer is at the top, with time proceeding clockwise.” 
Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg
The Future Of Play: Siftables Make Digital More Physical
“Siftables, their first product, are sets of cookie-sized computers equipped with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. Working harmoniously to form a single interface, users can physically manipulate Siftables by piling and organizing them to interact with the digital information contained within, creating a new platform for tangible games.” 
PSFK
Garmin ecoRoute HD turns nuvi Nav Device into Onboard Computer
“The device plugs into the onboard diagnostic port of a vehicle and sends data wirelessly to compatible nuvi units. The module fits standard OBD II ports, which should mean it is compatible with all modern computer controlled vehicles regardless of the brand. The device can show the driver all sorts of data from RPM, temperature, and manifold pressures and more. Perhaps the coolest part is that the device can show trouble codes and allows the driver to reset check engine lights. The device works with current model nuvi devices like the 1260, 1370, 1390, 1490, and 1609. It will ship in March for $149.99. ” 
I4u
Light Blue Optics Light Touch Turns Every Surface Into A Touchscreen
“Light Touch not only frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, but also lets users interact with that content in the same way as they expect to on their other hand-held devices – using touch technology.” 
I4u
Touch-free input interface using a single camera
“a touch-free, in-air typing interface for mobile devices. Using a custom-built parallel image processing board, they are able to track objects in 3d using a single camera.” 
Make
Gowalla Plays Around With Virtual Product Placements In Apple Stores
“Apple has nothing to do with it, but because the location of Apple Stores is known, Gowalla can trigger the promotional badges whenever someone enters a store. The badges serve as a virtual product placement. The hope is obviously to raise awareness of Incase products at the point of purchase. “Our experimental goal is simply to encourage people to visit a real world location where they can actually find and sample the Incase products,” says Gowalla founder Josh Williams.” 
TechCrunch
Twitter/Facebook Integrating Internet Radio Tells Your Social Networks That You Buy Stupid Things
“Witness convergence in its dumbest form: the Pure internet radio that has Facebook and Twitter integrated right in. You know, for when the world needs to know that you’re really fiscally irresponsible. Do you know what else is an internet radio with the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter? Any computer with speakers. And what exactly would an internet radio tweet, anyways? That you’re currently listening to the radio? Sounds like a pretty boring Twitter feed.” 
Gizmodo
Retailers Spot Trends Through Virtual Mannequins
“In October, Wet Seal created its own iPhone application, called iRunway. With it, a customer in a store can tap in an item’s ticket number — bar code recognition comes later this year — and see how it has been used in outfits that other customers have created online. The user-generated product selections and recommendations, combined with mobile phone access, build a community of customers that should increase sales, Mr. Thomas predicts” 
PSFK
Horizon Unveils World’s First Personal Hydrogen Station Hydrofill At CES 2010
“The Horizon HYDROFILL is a small desktop device that simply plugs into the AC, a solar panel or a small wind turbine, automatically extracts hydrogen from its water tank and stores it in a solid form in small refillable cartridges. The cartridges contain metallic alloys that absorb hydrogen into their crystalline structure, and release it back at low pressures, removing concerns about storing hydrogen at high pressure.” 
I4u
Spiraling Skyscraper Pod City For a Future London
“Dubbed Mangal City, the project is an “urban ecological system” composed of modular pod capsules that shift to adapt to environmental and contextual conditions. A beautiful example of biomimicry and certainly a flight of fancy, the plan proposes a futuristic building system based upon flexibility.” 
Inhabitat
Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 Is One Smart Dual-Processor Laptop/Tablet Hybrid
“When both halves of the U1 are together, it runs on Windows 7 on a Intel Core 2 Duo SU processor, but when you split them up, the tablet will use a custom version of Linux and a Qualcomm ARM Snapdragon processor. This means that you’d be getting the best combination of power and battery life for each scenario.” 
Gizmodo
3D Color Printing
“The Dutch company is a pioneer in providing 3D printing services to the masses and have recently offered ‘Full Color Sandstone’ that can be printed at 650 x 540 DPI. The material is sand based, very rigid and the colors do not bleed.” 
PSFK
(Pics) Our Technological Remains: Modern Fossils
“These are modern fossils. They are made from actual archaic technology that was once cutting-edge. Most of these examples were discovered in the United States, although the various species are represented all over the world. It is sad, but most of these units lived very short lives. Most people attribute the shortened lifespan to aggressive predators or accelerated evolution, but this is not necessarily true. It has been shown recently that the true demise of most of these specimens came from runaway consumerism and wastefulness at the high end of the food chain.” 
PSFK
ThingsYouSawInAMovie Helps You Find Products Used in Movies
“The editors at ThingsYouSawInAMovie pore over movies and search out the products seen in them. You can search by movie or simply browse the titles. Each movie has the identified items listed and when available a link to the item—the famous red dress in Resident Evil is identified, for example, but not linked to because it is no longer produced.” 
Lifehacker
panasonic batteries for the home
“panasonic’s president fumio otsubo stated ‘we’ll be the first to bring to the market a storage battery for home use, which can store sufficient electricity for about one week of use’. while most recent discussion of battery technology has revolved around cars, this news is no doubt welcome. the companies have already developed test devices that would allow users to run their home with no carbon emissions.” 
Design Boom
WakeMate Helps You Sleep Smarter With Your iPhone
“The WakeMate wristband uses Actigraphy to monitor your sleep cycles and pinpoints the precise moment when you should wake up, in a twenty minute window set to your specifications. (Otherwise, my “optimal wake up time” would be sometime around noon, seven days a week.) But that’s only half of it. The WakeMate collects your nightly sleep data and over time develops a detailed analysis of your sleep schedule.” 
Gizmodo
This Radio Is Hard To Tune, Easy To Look At – Radioactive
“Radio Active consists of a main module—the blue one—and several satellite modules, three of which are attached to the central one by string. Those strings are the key to the radio’s uniquely annoying conceit: you control the Radio Active’s volume and tuning by pulling those connected pieces to different places on your wall.” 
Gizmodo
Airstash brings wireless storage to iPhone
“Enter AirStash, an expandable flash drive (via SD memory) that you will be able to access from your iPhone. Simply plug AirStash into your Mac, drag and drop some files to the mounted volume, and head then out the door with AirStash and iPhone in your pocket. How the technology works is currently unclear (expect to see a demo at CES 2010), but a logical solution would be that AirStash automatically syncs its contents with an off-site server — similar to what Dropbox does today. If it truly is as portable as that, it will obviate Dropbox’s (and MobileMe’s) need to install any client software if you are, for instance, using a friend’s computer.” 
TUAW
App warms your hands by overheating your iPhone
“it works by making the iPhone max out 100% of its power processing capacity. A slider lets you adjust the temperature and illuminate the “heating elements.” According to several App Store reviews, it doesn’t work so well. ” 
TUAW
Website archives to be fast-tracked
“The libraries warned that they had now lost millions of pages recording events such as the MPs’ expenses scandal, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Iraq war, and would lose millions more, because they were not legally empowered to “harvest” these sites. The powers are very similar to copyright laws which require every publisher in the UK to provide the libraries ‑ chiefly the British Library and the NLS, but also the National Library of Wales, the Bodleian in Oxford, Cambridge University library and Trinity College Dublin ‑ with copies of every printed book, magazine, journal and newspaper.”
guardian.co.uk
Datadecs
“Each snowman has a unique head size determined by the number of followers the recipient has on Twitter. These figures varied from around 5000 to 50 so they were mapped on a maximum and minimum head size. Ben was concerned that the snowmen should always look like snowmen with a smaller head than body. From some initial experiments like the ones below we chose to have a consistent body size and vary only the head.” 
Andy Huntington Interaction & Sound
extracts of local distance
“Digital scans of analogue architectural photography form tiny pieces of a large resulting puzzle. The original pictures are being analysed and categorised according to their vanishing-points and shapes. Based on this analysis, slices are being extracted from the source image. These slices retain the information of their position corresponding to their original vanishing-point and thus form a large pool of pieces, ready to be applied to new perspectives and shapes.” 
Local Distance
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