Archive for March, 2010
First advanced prototype revealed for the Australian bionic eye
“The system consists of a pair of glasses with a camera built in, a processor that fits in your pocket, and an ocular implant that sits against the retina at the back of the eye and electronically stimulates the retinal neurons that send visual information to the brain. The resulting visual picture is blocky and low-res at this point, but the technology is bound to improve, and even in its current form it’s going to be a major life-changer for those with no vision at all. And the future potential – even for sighted people – is fascinating.”
Gizmag
Setting droplets on a one-way street has huge implications
“By creating specific kinds of tiny structures on a material’s surface researchers can make a liquid spread only in a single direction. While this may not appear to be a momentous breakthrough it has important implications for a wide variety of technologies, including microarrays for medical research, inkjet printers and digital lab-on-a-chip systems. Up until now the designers of such devices could only control how much the liquid would spread out over a surface, not which way it would go. This new system changes that.”
Gizmag
Playing computer games with the blink of an eye
“Gizmag has covered similar technology before of course, this time though the team at ICL used off-the-shelf components costing around US$37, rigging up an infra-red sensor and a webcam to a pair of glasses to track the movement of a player’s eye and feeding the information to synchronization software on a laptop that translates it into onscreen paddle movement. Although the developed game is quite simple by today’s standards, because the technology is readily available and affordable it holds great promise for future application in devices to assist people suffering from limited movement.”
Gizmag
Tactile Gaming Vest Punches and Slices
“As conference participants steered their character in a shoot-em-up computer video game based on Half-Life 2, the vest variously smacked them and vibrated as they themselves got shot. Sometimes it smarted, depending on how tight the vest was on the user, or if the “shots” hit right on the collar bone. For me it was more like a series of surprise punches. Four solenoid actuators in the chest and shoulders in front, plus two solenoids in the back, give you the feeling of a gunshot, says Saurabh Palan, a graduate student who works on the project. In addition, vibrating eccentric-mass motors clustered against the shoulder blades make you feel a slashing effect as you get stabbed from behind.”
IEEE Spectrum
Look Sharp: Video Search Engine Helps Monitor Criminals, Employees and Consumers Alike
“3VR enables its users to search digital video by time, location, individual camera, motion, color and other characteristics. Hilton Americas has been testing 3VR’s technology since November, even using it to find lost luggage for hotel guests by sifting through surveillance video using colors and shapes as criteria, says John Alan Moore, the hotel’s director of security and life safety. Long investigations can require Moore and his staff to put in several 16-hour workdays to solve. “Now we can do it in a day or day and a half,” he says. Each of the 3VR searchable video recording systems that Hilton Americas is installing has 16 cameras. In addition to providing security, the hotel wants to use the technology to monitor a number of other activities, Moore says. If a guest claims his car was damaged while parked in the hotel’s garage, Moore and his team will be able to determine whether the car left the garage at any time and in what condition, for example.”
Scientific American
SolarBeat
A simple ambient musicbox, with sounds generated using the orbital frequencies of our solar system.
White Vinyl Design
In the US, algorithms are already reporting the news
“Automated journalism can basically be understood as search algorithms programmed to look out for certain key findings. then to put them into a certain structure. For a report on a football game for example, the StatsMonkey calculates the narrative based on the numerical data. Using the score, the algorithm captures the overall dynamic of the game, highlights the key plays and key players, looks for quotes, and generates a text out of these elements. In addition, it configures an appropriate headline and a photo of the most important player in the game – and there goes a very rough sketch of a sports article.”
guardian.co.uk
Folding Laptop Concept Offers Full-Sized Keyboard
“A niche concept for those who really miss their full-sized keyboards when using a netbook, designer Yang Yongchang has cooked up this folding laptop idea with top-notch spec”
Gizmodo
Research points to full-screen braille reading possibilities
“Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a concept called a “hydraulic and latching mechanism,” which would not only use a series of dots to represent letters and numbers, it would also translate images into tactile displays, effectively mapping pixels in an image and allowing the full-page Braille display to represent the images as raised dots.”
Gizmag
Augmented reality hits the catwalk
“It’s not unusual to see some bizarre and extraordinary creations at the London Fashion Show and this year Cassette Playa continued this fine tradition with a live augmented reality catwalk performance. CGI animations on screens behind the models on the catwalk were triggered by different symbols on the clothing being shown, transporting the audience into a rich, colorful digital world where the boundaries separating reality and the virtual are blurred.”
Gizmag
Researchers equip robot sub with sensory system inspired by blind fish
“Fish and amphibians for example possess an organ, the lateral line, which is non-existent in land animals. With this sensory organ, which extends along the both sides of the body, they are able to perceive minute variations in pressure and current flow. […] biophysicist Dr. Jan-Moritz Franosch, aided by a group of students, has developed an artificial lateral line for the robot, enabling “Snookie” to detect obstacles and movements in the water a hand’s breadth in front of its nose and on either side. This artificial organ measures changes in pressure and flow around the robot not with conventional dynamic indicators, which would be far too large and imprecise, but with thermistors. When a change in flow velocity occurs, this immediately causes a change in the heat dispersed through a heated wire. This in turn can be measured electronically by the sensor elements with great speed, and in a minimum of space. At intervals of a tenth of a second and using only a tiny amount of electrical energy, the sensors register pressure fluctuations of less than one percent over an area of just a few square millimeters.”
Physorg
ReadMore
“ReadMore is a reading log, a diary to show you your reading habits and motivate you with relevant feedback. It helps break large books into more manageable pieces and keeps track of your progress. Want to look back over what you read by the end of 2010?”
Navel Labs
Tracking the Colors One Wears Each Single Day
“My Daily Color Palette [zago2010rgb.wordpress.com] depicts the colors Jacobo Zanella wears about everyday. Between two and four minutes each single day, he observes the colors of the shoes and clothes he wears and how much skin is exposed, to reproduce a digital translation of this information as a simple pixel graph.”
information aesthetics
A Bendable Heart Sensor
“This implantable medical device bends and twists, thanks to transistors made of ultrathin ribbons of silicon. The electrode array shown here has 288 electrodes that can maintain contact with a heart even as it beats. ”
Technology Review
‘Ring tone therapy’ sweeping mobile phone-mad Japan
“Across Japan the arrival of spring is bringing out the cherry blossom but it is also making people reach for their handkerchiefs as, at this time of year, hay fever is rife. A company called the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory has developed what it claims is a cure. For relief, sufferers need only wait for a call on their mobile phone. The sound is supposed to dislodge pollen if the user holds the handset up to their nose. Another of the so-called therapeutic ring tones is for those trying to lose weight. ”
BBC News
Mixr Shows the Delicious Promise of Multitouch Music iPad Apps
“The developers are looking to create a professional-grade DJ app, including “cross-fading, equalizing, cue, drag & drop tracks, and full effects such as delays and auto filter.” Mixr also has a specially-designed library for displaying all of your tracks, so you can quickly grab and mash up, say, “A Kind of Magic” and “Revolution #9“”
Gizmodo
phone halo
“phone halo is actually a small device that you can attach onto your things that will allow you to track them down when they are lost. the small dongle has bluetooth and GPS built-in so that it can contact your phone or computer to give you details on where to find your things. to find a missing item, users simply open up the phone halo application on the phone or computer. a signal is sent to the dongle and at first an alarm will go off, allowing you to find something if it is within earshot. if it isn’t there, the device will give users a map that will lead them directly to the item.”
design Boom
New RFID Tag Could Mean the End of Bar Codes
“Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.”
Wired.com
AnthroPosts
“A web project featuring found Post-it® notes collected from the street and read by anonymous online workers. * 335 notes from 21 cities and 6 countries, if you’re into numbers”
AnthroPosts
TUME – Top-up Mobile Electricity Solution by NOS Design
“Developing countries and emerging economies are facing challenges in properly distributing and building out their electric grids. Unfortunately energy needs are now being met by people running the black market and many are getting hurt. Some people have resorted to stealing it by creating their own makeshift access lines leaving a tangled and hazardous mess behind. The TUME concept solves these issues by creating a new infrastructure that can grow just as fast as demand. TUME BASE stations are setup in public spaces. Anyone with a TUME ACCESS unit can plug into the base station to draw power”
Yanko Design
A Photoshop for Graphs – Introducing Gephi
“The last 12 months have seen the release of vast amounts of publicly available data, which has led to a bit of conundrum on how to easily visualise complex networks. What is needed is a ‘Photoshop for Graphs’ which is exactly what Gephi is. In short, Gephi is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs”
Digital Urban
Intelligent Urban Vehicle Can Drive Itself
“The EN-V, which was revealed yesterday in Shanghai, is fully electric and only has two wheels. It can fit two passengers, and produces no emissions. A degree of intelligence is built into the car as well. It’s able to communicate with other vehicles to avoid accidents, and can navigate itself with a detailed GPS system.”
PSFK
iPhone App Diagnoses Disease Through Sound
“The software is designed to diagnose respiratory disease using the sound of a cough. It works by simply coughing into the microphone of an iPhone, and the sound is compared against a database of coughs which indicate various maladies.”
PSFK
VR and Haptics for Rehabilitation
“The stylus moves freely on the mount, but becomes more or less resistant depending on the user’s onscreen actions. In a demo at the conference, I donned 3-D glasses and used the stylus to push virtual blocks around. The stylus pushed back when one block was pushed into another as it would in the real world. Pressing a button on the device and rotating a block around produced the centripetal force, which I felt through the stylus. This type of set-up can be used for rehabilitation. Turning exercises into a computerized game encourages patients to complete their exercises and keeps precise records of their performance, says Tommy Forsell at SenseGraphics, a company that provides open-source software for the combined device. ”
Technology Review
Visualizing the Daily Traffic Patterns in Lisbon
“Traffic in Lisbon condensed in one day [mondeguinho.com] presents several visual experiments that map the routes of about 1,534 (taxi?) vehicles during 24 hours in Lisbon.”
information aesthetics
Limited-edition, gadget-friendly jeans
“iPods, iPhones, USB sticks and more can all be accommodated in these high-tech jeans, which feature “Twitter bloo” stitching and microfiber lining for extra gadget protection. Along with the mobile-device compartments, there’s a special USB stick pocket on the front of the pants, which are sold in men’s sizes. There’s also “extra protection” padding along the crotch sides”
Springwise
silke hilsing: impress flexible display
“impress is a flexible display created by german designer silke hilsing that enables touch interactivity with feedback. the display uses arduino and processing to run sensors sandwiched in between pieces of foam. when the user touches down on the foam, they trigger the sensors which in turn communicate with an overhead projector. the motivation behind the project was to remove the technical stiffness from touch screens, bring the technology closer to the user by making it more human. unlike a regular touch screen, impress also measures the intensity of the pressure”
DesignBoom
infinitec USB memory
“for anyone who has experienced the frustration of a full USB flash drive while wanting to transfer files to a friend, there is ‘infinetec‘ USB memory. while it does not actually store any content of drive itself, it does provides users with an alternative means to moving digital data. when plugged into one’s laptop it uses the wifi signal for connectivity and leverages the laptop’s storage capabilities as it own.”
infinitec USB memory
Tiny Generators Charge Up From Random Vibrations In the Air
“The latest and smallest device, which measures one cubic centimeter, uses a piezoelectric material, which is a type of material that produces charge when it is stressed. This version has applications in infrastructure health monitoring. The generators could one day power bridge sensors that would warn inspectors of cracks or corrosion before human eyes could discern problems.”
Gizmodo
Mojito Stand-Alone Social Aggregator
“It could look smashing in a kitchen or corporate public space and could definitely keep you from pulling your iPhone out of your pocket every thirty seconds, for updates. Truly that seems to be one of the benefits the Mojito offers; it relaxes social media a tad and puts it a bit more in the background.”
CunchGear
Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer is the first hardware MIDI interface for the iPhone
“Introducing the only MIDI interface for iPhone and iPod Touch, Marcus Ryle of Line 6 said: “We’re very excited to announce MIDI Mobilizer, the first MIDI interface of its kind. It will connect MIDI musicians to the most portable platform ever, and allow them to play, record, and store any MIDI information.”"
Gizmag
eric whitacre: lux aurumque.
“He used his blog, his Facebook page, and YouTube to audition hundreds of singers to virtually perform his newest choral work, “Lux Aurumque.” The chosen 185 vocalists, from 12 different countries, were sent the sheet music and each individually videoed themselves performing their part. Whitacre and his team then synched them together and created a video of a virtual choir, complete with all the singers, in video form, standing like a choir with a video of Whitacre himself conducting from the centre.”
shape+colour
Auto Smiley inserts smileys when you smile
“Theo Watson cooked up a chunk of code with OpenFrameworks that types a smiley face into your text chat, email, etc. when it recognizes that you’ve smiled. =]”
Make
Modular 3D-printed Gothic cathedral
“Skimbal created this 3D-printable Gothic Cathedral playset — you can print and add as many segments as you’d like and assemble a church to your specification.”
Boing Boing
Reading and the Web – Texts Without Context
“In his deliberately provocative — and deeply nihilistic — new book, “Reality Hunger,” the onetime novelist David Shields asserts that fiction “has never seemed less central to the culture’s sense of itself.” He says he’s “bored by out-and-out fabrication, by myself and others; bored by invented plots and invented characters” and much more interested in confession and “reality-based art.” His own book can be taken as Exhibit A in what he calls “recombinant” or appropriation art. Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers like Philip Roth, Joan Didion and Saul Bellow — quotations that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says, “also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.” He only acknowledges the source of these quotations in an appendix, which he says his publishers’ lawyers insisted he add. ”
NYTimes.com
hobnox audiotool
“the flash based application uses drag and drop interactivity to combine instruments, pedals and a variety of other modifiers. users can plug the devices in using virtual cords and mix tracks using every knob and button as if it were a physical instrument. users can choose a default setting ranging from a digital tone matrix to electro and drum and bass. however, more advanced users can build their own setup from scratch. once you create some music you like, audiotool even allows you to record your mix.”
Design Boom
Scientists Use 3D Printer to Create First “Printed” Human Vein
“The printer is loaded with cartridges of “bio-ink” a substance that acts as a kind of scaffolding for the cells to retain their shape. A sophisticated computer is linked to the printer that is pre-programmed with the 3D blueprint of whatever is being made. The computer instructs the printer to lay down two dimensional layers of bio ink and cells that eventually form into the 3D body part.”
Inhabitat
Sky to kick off 3D TV broadcasts in April
“It has now revealed that Saturday April 3rd will be the kick off date, with the broadcast of a Premier League clash between Manchester United and Chelsea. Football fans will be able to don 3D glasses in over a thousand pubs and clubs across the UK and Ireland that have already signed up for the 3D service as will residential subscribers with the necessary 3D capable equipment. Following the April 3 launch Sky will show at least a further five yet to be announced Premier League games before the end of the current season on May 9. It will also show the Cocoa-Cola Football League Play-Off Finals from Wembley Stadium at the end of May, all live and in 3D.”
Sky to kick off 3D TV broadcasts in April
An Ecosystem Is Born: Animoto Opens Up API
“The API essentially allows any website to tap into Animoto’s video creation flow. The aim is to make Animoto one click away from any website that has photos, videos or music. Quickstart allows websites to connect their own content, including photos, video clips and music to Animoto as the first step in creating an Animoto video. So partners can integrate Animoto’s video slideshow creation tool into their sites. And the startup promises that Quickstart takes only hours to a partner to set up on a site.”
TechCrunch
Demonstrating the Newspaper Stand of the Future
“We can’t wait for the day when we’ll read newspapers and magazines on our tablet computers, but what will happen to those darling newspaper stands and kiosks when that day comes? Based on this demo, they’ll become better than ever.”
Gizmodo
virtusphere
“virtusphere is a new virtual reality system that utilizes a large rotating sphere to allow users to walk around in virtual environments. the design is a plastic sphere that is mounted on a wheeled platform that allows the sphere to spin in all directions, based on the user’s actions from inside. as the user walks forward the ball spins to keep up with them. users wear a wireless head mounted display that syncs with a computer to allows them to play video games or experience virtual environments”
Design Boom
Storing Your Data For a Billion Years
“The solution, discovered by researchers at the University of California, takes an entirely new approach to data storage. The proposed device would place a microscopic iron crystal inside a carbon nanotube. With the application of an electric signal of just a few volts, the iron nanoparticle moves back and forth along the tube, registering a binary “1″ or “0″ depending on its position, basically acting as data bits.”
Gizmodo
Walking in Salman Rushdie’s Digital Footsteps
“The Salman Rushdie archive on display at Emory, with its handwritten journals and 18GB scattered across four Apple computers, is unlike any other—you can log in to a computer, search his folders, scan his Stickies, run his apps. Emory is emulating his desktop computer, creating a simulation of his original work environment. This is the power of what librarians and archivists call “born-digital” material: It can go beyond preservation—bits are bits are bits, after all—and through emulation, you can actually inhabit his digital world, use the tools he used. You can’t write in the leather-back books that Dickens did, but you can scribble in simulations of Rushdie’s Mac Stickies. It’s preserving more than material, it’s preserving, in part, circumstance.”
Gizmodo
PHILIPS SPECIAL EDITION LUMIBLADE NOW AVAILABLE
“When we saw the debut of the Philips Lumiblade Mirrorwall prototype last year in a special exhibition during the Milan Furniture Fair, we fell head over heels for this sophisticated use of lighting technology. The series of linked OLED modules act as a mirror in the off state, and as an interactive lit curtain wall when powered. Well, it’s been almost a year since the prototype debut, and Philips has announced that a version of the mirrorwall, called Lumiblade Reflections, will be available for sale in limited quantities. The technology is cutting edge, extremely energy efficient, and perfect for the eco-enthusiast looking to splurge on one of these limited edition museum-worthy products.”
Inhabitat
Human Arm Transmits Data At Broadband Speeds
“A recent research project done at Korea University in Seoul used the human arm as a communications conduit to transmit data. The experiment, in which two electrodes were placed on a subject’s skin, was able to record a data transfer speed of 10 megabits per second.”
PSFK
solar pixel
“swiss-based drzach & suchy (drzach is an architect in basel, suchy is a cryptographer, software engineer working in zurich) have designed ‘piksol’, a solar cell pixel which enables one to create arbitrary patterns and images on sun facing building facades. it represents a single pixel of an image, so when multiple ‘piksols’ are combined in a desired arrangement, they provide a visual design, while at the same time exercising the capabilities of collecting solar energy. this combination allows for both an aesthetically interesting and environmentally-friendly facade design.”
Design Boom
Blinded Merseyside soldier ‘sees’ with tongue device
“L/Cpl Lundberg said it felt like “licking a nine volt battery or like popping candy”. “You get lines and shapes of things, it sees in black and white so you get a two dimensional image on your tongue, it’s a bit like a pins and needles sensation,” he said. “It’s only a prototype, but the potential to change my life is massive, it’s got a lot of potential to advance things for blind people. “One of the things it has enabled me to do is pick up objects straight away, I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them.” ”
BBC News
“Quantum Microphone” Puts Naked-Eye Object in 2 Places at Once
“In the new experiment Aaron O’Connell, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his co-workers have shown for the first time that larger objects can also be in two places at once. “It tells us that quantum mechanics works for macroscopic objects in space,” says O’Connell, who presented the results here at a meeting of the American Physical Society.”
Scientific American
The Pentagon’s Artificial Intelligence Camera Will Narrate What It Sees – The mind’s eye
“The mad geniuses at DARPA have their next project lined up: a camera that can guide itself and report back from the field. That kind of visual intelligence has been an exclusively human trait, until now. The plan, called “The Mind’s Eye,” is going to be outlined next at a one-day conference in DC in late April. The hope is to make up for human weaknesses, like fatigue or bias, that can result in unreliable intelligence. These cameras will be endowed with both the intellect to process a scene and the imagination to contextualize and describe it. It’s a reminder, also, that even those events that we capture on video are prone to memory bias. We choose where we point the camera and where we don’t. When we narrate, we often say what we think we’ll want to hear later instead of what we’re actually thinking and feeling. A cognitive camera couldn’t care less. It couldn’t care at all.”
Gizmodo
GM Experiments With Augmented Reality To Make Driving Safer
“Using a combination of GPS, sensors and video cameras, the company is imagining a windshield based display that would highlight the road during adverse weather conditions, and mark destinations and relevant information within the driver’s field of view. This “enhanced vision system” would use an unobtrusive kind of glowing transparent light to call attention to such data, allowing drivers to keep their eyes on the road.”
PSFK
Electronics ‘missing link’ brings neural computing closer
“A memristor is a device that, like a resistor, opposes the passage of current. But memristors also have a memory. The resistance of a memristor at any moment depends on the last voltage it experienced, so its behaviour can be used to recall past voltages. Now memristors are being used in a US military-funded project trying to make brain-like computers, says Wei Lu, who led the team at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor that demonstrated the new behaviour. Memristors lend themselves to the task because the way that their resistance gives a glimpse of an earlier voltage is analogous to the way that a synapse’s electrical behaviour is dependent on its past activity.”
New Scientist
Becoming a sculpture
“Xavier Veilhan 3D scanned his friends and made low-poly sculptures of them”
Reluct.com
McDonalds Franchise Openings
“This animation chronicles the spread of McDonalds across the globe.”
Vimeo
Invisibility cloak created in 3-D
“The “cloak”, described in the journal Science, hid an object from detection using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans. Previous devices have been able to hide objects from light travelling in only one direction; viewed from any other angle, the object would remain visible. This is a very early but significant step towards true invisibility cloaks.”
BBC News
Personalised font software that mimics your face
“Billed as a “typographic photobooth”, Typeface’s software translates facial dimensions into generative type design. Users of the software, which was created by Mary Huang of Rhyme and Reason Creative, sit in front of a webcam-enabled computer. Typeface then builds and adjusts a font based on the user’s face, movements and facial expressions. When the user smiles, for instance, the font alters to reflect that; when they turn their head slightly, it changes again. The resulting individual typefaces can be saved and exported in PDF form”
Springwise
Worldwide bicycle registration service
“Users register their bike on the MyBikeNumber site using the frame number, and add photos to the profile page to help visually identify their bike. Registered bikes are allocated a unique QR code, which can be printed as a sticker and affixed to the frame. The code can be read by many mobile devices. MyBikeNumber also allows bike retailers to register their entire inventory under a single “dealer code”. Registered cycles can be reported as stolen or lost, or recorded as sold to a new owner, through the site.”
Springwise
New York City Mapped in 8 Bits
“As a result of a widely funded Kickstarter project, 8-Bit NYC [8bitnyc.com] represents a real-world place like New York City to look like as an 8-bit video game map. (An Austin version exists as well) The resulting map mixes the lo-fi overhead world maps of 1980s role-playing and adventure games with the kind of geographical data that drives today’s web maps and GPS navigation. The map is interactive (similar to Google Maps), allowing zooming down to an individual street.”
information aesthetics
RandomPlay
“a neat and visualized way to explore a random presentation of your iphone/ipods music library. the app takes one track from each album (with artwork) and presents them in a stacked grid. you can edit the order, delete tracks, pause/play and randomize yet again by shaking your phone. one thing though is that if you exit the app, it ends the randomized musical fun.”
app.itize.us
Boards Magazine
“For the March 2010 issue of Boards Magazine, Emily Gobeille and I worked with Nexus Productions to develop an interactive cover experience called Rise and Fall. Here is a little preview of the experience.”
New Ways of Interaction
Fourface Is Foursquare As Modern Art
“Fourface is a free iPhone app built using Foursquare’s API. It takes the basic functionality of the service (check-ins, seeing who else is at a venue) and puts a stylish user interface on top of it. Specifically, you can choose from “Arcs,” “Clouds,” “Bubbles,” and “Spots,” for your new interface. Each offers a slightly different way to interact with Foursquare, and different ways to do things such a check-in. With Bubbles, for example, you simply find the venue bubble you want (represented by different colors) and hold it to check-in.”
TechCrunch
Exploring Google Suggest
“What Do You Suggest? is a site that lets you visually explore how Google Suggest autocompletes a query. “What Do You Suggest takes a seed from you, then guides you on a journey through language and the collective lives of Google users.”"
Google Operating System
Laser-activated nanotube speakers could be invisibly embedded in windows and walls
“It is known that intense sound can be produced by electrically-powered nanotubes stretched into sheets, but researchers from University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) have furthered this principle by arranging sheets of carbon nanotubes into “forests” which produce high-quality sound when struck with lasers. This is an exciting advancement in the field of acoustics since it is thought these forests could be used to form invisible wireless speakers that could be embedded into walls, windows, computer screens, cars – the list is endless”
Gizmag
By Your Accelerometers Combined, I Am Quake Catcher!
“Elizabeth Cochran, an earth scientist at UC Riverside, has already managed to get about 1,000 people to install Quake Catcher and has been tracking the date submitted by the software—including disruptions from the recent magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile. The system isn’t perfect as it’s limited by the sensitivity of accelerometers built into computers or ones connected by USB, but at least it does have a mechanism in place to ignore vibrations that are limited to a single machine. This means that accidentally letting your laptop fall off the desk won’t make anyone assume there’s an earthquake”
Gizmodo
(Concept) Digital Wall Art That Checks Air Quality
“Designers Park Jun Seok and Kwon Hye Rim have created the Green Ring, a conceptual device that can be installed in homes to check air pollution and filter it to some extent. It is made from recycled materials, and is powered by pulling on the little branch on its side. Green Ring has different colored lights to indicate the level of air pollution.”
PSFK
Twendy-One ready to lend a robotic helping hand to the elderly
“Described as a “human symbiotic robot” Twendy-One is designed to co-exist with humans and assist with nursing care and housekeeping. To this end its developers focused on safety, dependability and dexterity in constructing their robot. For collision safety the robot’s outer shell is overlaid with soft silicone skins and force sensors that detect physical contact with a person on any part of its body. This is a key component of a “passive impedance mechanism” that enables the robot to adapt to unexpected external forces on the fly.”
Gizmag
Water Pebble watches you (and your water usage) in the shower
“Paul Priestman from design company Priestmangoode has created the Water Pebble – a gadget that monitors how long you’re taking in the shower by flashing red when it’s time to get out. But what makes Water Pebble different from other timing devices is that the Water Pebble memorizes how long you took for your first shower and sets about gradually minimizing the amount of water you use by reducing the time it takes for the device to flash red in subsequent showers.”
Gizmag
Technology Review: Fingerprinting Computer Chips
“The security of Verayo’s chips relies on the fact that no two chips are exactly alike. The components of a computer circuit are measured in billionths of a meter. So a stray atom here or there during manufacturing can cause a wire to turn out slightly thicker or thinner than the specs call for. That leads to miniscule variations in how fast the circuit works, and there’s nothing that can be done to prevent it. […] A signal traveling through a simple circuit will go faster or slower depending on these physical variations. By sending a series of signals through, and measuring how fast they travel, he can generate a string of numbers unique to each circuit. This has been dubbed a “physical unclonable function”–PUF for short. ”
Technology Review
Is ‘Power Gig’ the next step for music video games?
“Tired of jamming down on a multi-colored plastic fretboard? Seven45 feels your pain. This week, the Boston-based production studio unveiled a video game called “Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring,” which will ship with – wait for it – an actual electric guitar. Players can reportedly use the guitar as a controller in the game, or plug the thing in an amp, and create real, live guitar music.”
CSMonitor.com
Quantum dots could lead to faster computers
“The new work, reported today in the journal Nature Materials, describes a class of quantum dots that not only control electrons, but also have good magnetic properties allowing them to read the electron’s spin. The research team claims it’s the first successful synthesis of magnetic quantum dots above room temperature. The researchers were also able to demonstrate electric field control using the quantum dots at temperatures up to 100 Kelvin, or –173 C. Prof. Jin Zou, chair in nanoscience at the University of Queensland’s Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, said that by detecting electron spin, scientists can find new uses for quantum dots. “Quantum dots with magnetic properties have multiple uses both optical and magnetic,” said Zou.”
CBC News
Windbelt: Innovative Generator to Bring Cheap Wind Power to Third World
“The device is revolutionary for being non-revolving — most wind power is produced by something going around in a circle and turning on an axis to drive a generator. Windbelt, however, uses the oscillation of a thin strip of material held in tension with a spring to vibrate a magnet that generates electrical power.”
Inhabitat
3DSwitch knows when you are wearing 3D glasses
“For active glasses, given the already high cost of the glasses and [that] these already contain a battery and some electronics, our solution comprises a capacitive sensor that ‘feels’ the head of the viewer and uses this information to send infrared commands to the TV, hence the additional cost of this solution if basically zero. “For passive glasses, the TVs have to be equipped with a camera that looks at the viewers and has some special electronics to recognize if they are wearing glasses and can differentiate between ordinary glasses and polarized glasses for stereoscopic viewing.”
Gizmag
Doritos’ Massive Augmented Reality Experience
“Last year, we wrote about Brazilian interactive advertising company Cubocc, and the augmented reality app they developed for Doritos sweet chili flavor. The video below shows that, following up on their earlier execution, they have created (what they claim to be) the world’s largest augmented reality experience on a building’s rooftop.”
PSFK
Penguin’s Incredible Vision of Books on the iPad Doesn’t Look Anything Like Books
“This is what digital books from Penguin—one the mega-publishers—will be like on the iPad. Children’s books that are games, interactive anatomy books, and an augmented reality intergalactic GPS system. This is the future we’ve been waiting to see.”
Gizmodo
Fotobabble: Add Audio To Digital Photos
“With a few clicks, you can add audio content to your photos and share it with friends across different web platforms. Aside from the obvious benefit of enhancing photo albums for family and friends, Fotobabble could prove useful to content creators of all kinds. Journalists and bloggers can breathe additional life into images tied to a story or post, and brands and agencies could use the app to create engaging campaigns or tutorials for products or services.”
PSFK
Converting Body Movements Into Electricity
“The solution developed by Dr. McAlpine and colleagues, which is described in the journal Nano Letters, is to first make the crystals, in a series of narrow ribbons, on a rigid substrate of magnesium oxide. Then, after the substrate is etched away from the crystals, they are transfer-printed on a flexible biocompatible polymer, called PDMS.”
NYTimes.com
The i-Tab electronic songbook for guitarists
“Guitarists are bound to suffer the occasional spot of memory loss given the volumes of material they’re expected to remember. Those new to the instrument often have problems keeping up with all those bothersome chord and key changes. Happily, there is shortly to be a product released which can help with both issues. The i-Tab can be mounted on the guitar’s headstock or on a mic stand or cabled up to a TV and will run through the song while you play, acting as a aide memoire when you find yourself drawing a blank or as a learning tool for new or unfamiliar songs.”
Gizmag
750 Words Clears Your Mind, Gets Ideas Flowing
“The concept of 750 Words is simple: every day, you type 750 words—the equivalent of three pages—of stream of conscious, whatever you want, free writing. You earn points and badges for every day you type any number of words. Your entries, which are private by default (despite the somewhat alarming Facebook Connect login), can be exported at any point. Buster’s one of the kings of personal data visualization (just look at the guy’s homepage), so it makes sense that when you’re done writing, you get all these interesting analytics and charts about your piece, like how long it took you, what words you used the most, and what you talked about.”
Lifehacker
3D Motion-Tracked Adventure Game for Nintendo DS
“The game takes the form of paper-like 2D objects with a three-dimensional depth of perception. Players can navigate the game by tilting the DS game console, the 3D motion-tracking registering using the two 640×480 inbuilt, front-facing cameras. Nintendo has released a number of 3D games, however this one-player adventure game offers a new level of animation not yet seen on the DS.”
PSFK
Project Noah: Networked Organisms and Habitats
“Project Noah is a free mobile application that nature lovers can use to explore and document local wildlife and a common technology platform that research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. Noah stands for networked organisms and habitats.”
Make
Pelikon MorphPad Combines a Morphing QWERTY with a Touchpad
“Little more than a proof of concept at the moment, this demo shows us a QWERTY Bluetooth remote filled with dynamic, reconfigurable buttons. This idea alone is beyond most current QWERTY implementation, but then Pelikon takes innovation a step further by allowing a majority of their keys to go blank and serve as a touch-sensitive pad (for mousing, gestures, etc).”
Gizmodo
Insect Character Recognition: Computers See Bees Like We Can’t
“Let’s say some genetic change is made to the fruit flies and they chase one another around 20 percent more often than an unaltered specimen. If you’re the fly, that’s an important change, but how could a human researcher ever detect that 20 percent? It’s not like counting how many times a monkey mother nurses. “How do we say in a quantitative way how the behavior has changed?” Branson said. “You wouldn’t notice that if you were just watching.” To solve that problem, Branson and collaborators in Michael Dickinson’s lab at Caltech, where she was a postdoc, built the Caltech Multiple Fly Tracker. It’s a piece of software that converts infrared video of up to 50 flies inside a special arena into movement data. The flies become small triangles in space and their behavior is plotted and recorded. Another Dickinson lab postdoc, Andrew Straw, has even designed a 10-camera system he calls Flydra to track free moving, flying insects.”
Wired.com
The Emotiv EPOC: Meeting the Future Head On
“It has 14 electrodes (as opposed to NeuroSky’s single-electrode and OCZ’s three-electrode headsets) and it can also detect head movement using a built-in gyroscope. The EPOC uses its sensors to detect changes in electrical activity using EEG monitoring techniques that let it detect facial gestures and estimate roughly relative mood states. Emotiv’s intent with the EPOC is to add a whole new dimension to videogames and other software applications that is can’t be done with other PC input devices. Changes in your mental state and face can be used to control software applications by detecting and interpreting signals from the headset.”
ExtremeTech
New Monitors Will Be Energy Scoreboards for the Home
“The Picowatt, which plugs into an ordinary wall outlet, is small — slightly larger than a cellphone charger. But it can communicate with the Wi-Fi router on a home network just as laptops do, said Jennifer Indovina, chief executive of Tenrehte. Plug an audio system, for example, into the Picowatt, then plug the Picowatt into a wall outlet, and it will calculate information on energy use and beam it to the router, she said. Each Picowatt hosts its own Web page on the Internet. The page’s address is generated based on the serial number of the plug.”
NYTimes.com
App designed to keep motormouths in check
“After a brief calibration period to identify the voices in a dialogue, the app recognises who is speaking and keeps track of each person’s talk time. The results are displayed as red and blue bars indicating the balance. Speakers can then glance at the Talk-o-Meter as they converse, and—the designer hopes—make adjustments if they are monopolising the discussion.”
Springwise
Stamp-Sized Paper “Chip” Diagnoses Diseases For Just a Penny
“One Harvard University chemist has developed an ultraportable “paper” chip that can diagnose killer diseases like malaria, HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis for just a penny at a time. A finger prick’s worth of blood on one side of the paper, according to inventor George Whitesides, produces a colorful, tree-like pattern on the other that indicates what ails you. The surprisingly low-tech secret? Water-repellant comic-book ink.”
Inhabitat
MIT Team Makes Wireless Network in Afghanistan Out of Trash
“…members of MIT’s Bits and Atoms lab taught locals in Jalalabad, Afghanistan how to transform bits of trash into stuff they could use to create a high speed wireless network for the area. Called FabFi, the network uses reflectors made from discarded pieces of board, wire, plastic tubs and some cans! FabFi currently has 25 live nodes up in Jalalabad, and people are able to reap the benefits of having a stable connection throughout the city. Taking the knowledge that was imparted to them from the MIT crew, residents are still adding to the network by creating more reflectors and routers too.”
Inhabitat
EEG Sensors Used To Detect Matching Brainwaves
“Each helmet reads the concentration-level brain waves of the wearer, adjusting the position of a gradient polarized filter. If the brainwaves of the two participants match the filters align such that each participant can see the other’s face, but if the wavelengths are conflicted the other’s face is obscured.”
PSFK
Street Headphones by Brian Garret
“Street Headphones by Brian Garret is a graduate thesis on rapid manufactured designs that was picked up by Freedom of Creation for manufacture. What makes them so special is that owners of the headphones can customize the headband with the names of musical artists they enjoy listening to. What names would you want on your headphones?”
materialicious
Ceiling Painted By Light
“It’s not hard to imagine a ceiling covered in RGB LEDs, like Seo Dong-Hun’s Draw the Lights concept. Equipped with a few sensors, a laser (or IR) pen could “paint” an array of light, allowing you to customize your entire living space in a manner not unlike a Philips LivingColors lamp…only a lot more immersive.”
Gizmodo
Draw Abstract Wallpaper Using the Flame Drawing Tool
“Using Flame you can create a variety of shapes and patterns and the user interface is simple. You have a palette which is black by default, white is the only other option. You have an adjustable brush, customizable in size, softness, and other variables, and you can select your colors and the level of opacity and saturation. One of the best ways to create really soft and flowing lines is to move the mouse quickly. The faster you move the mouse the “wider” the brush stretches and the softer and more diffuse the lines are. If you move the mouse slowly you get a laser-focused beam of intense color, move it quickly and you get a wide swath of gossamer-like color.”
Lifehacker
The Latest in Wonka Vision: A Flexible Multitouch Surface
“With Displax, it is possible to make virtually any surface interactive to touch. Measuring only 100 microns thin an active area could be as small as 13 inches (35cm) and as large as 118”(3m). The technology currently can track up to 16 unique touchpoints when scaled to 50” and is not hindered by lighting or environmental conditions. Adhering the material to any existing monitor or projector turns the surface into an interactive touch screen.”
Johnny Holland
Lip reading mobile promises end to noisy phone calls
“The technology measures the tiny electrical signals produced by muscles used when someone speaks. The device can record these pulses even when a person does not audibly utter any words and use them to generate synthesised speech in another handset.”
BBC News
Ikonoskop A-Cam3D video camera brings 3D to HD
“So far Ikonoskop is not releasing many details about the 3D shooter, but they have released a few teaser specs including 1080p 3D video, RAW images in DNG format, choice of lens mounts, and an if-you-have-to-ask price tag.”
Gizmag
cheapfuturefashionfomatics
“This is the S2H replay; an activity monitor/pedometer thing that does a similar job to the fitbit. Except it feels way more like the future than the fitbit because it’s cheap, fashiony and simple. And they’ll actually deliver you one outside the US. There’s a simple watch unit that fits inside a rubber band/casing – which means you can get loads of different colours”
russell davies
Tiny ear listens to hidden worlds
“The micro-ear is based upon modifying an established technology that uses laser light to create so-called optical tweezers.These are already used to accurately measure tiny forces. They work by suspending very small glass or plastic beads in a beam of laser light. Measuring the movement of these beads as they are jostled by tiny objects allows measurements of tiny forces that operate at molecular scales. “We are now using the sensitivity afforded by the optical tweezer as a very sensitive microphone,” said Professor Jon Cooper from the University of Glasgow, who is heading the micro-ear project. “The optical tweezer can measure or manipulate at piconewton forces,” said Professor Cooper. A piconewton is a millionth of the force that a grain of salt exerts when resting on a tabletop. ”
BBC News
Kwizzcard: Welcome To The Card Of The Future
“Prelonic has introduced the Kwizzcard, which it says is “the first fully printed electronic game card”. Its initial plan is to market the cards as high-tech replacements for common low-tech materials: loyalty program cards, on-packaging promotions, and refrigerator magnets. “With the Kwizzcard we show our capabilities and proof that printed electronics technology is ready for mass production,” said the company’s CEO Friedrich Eibenstein. The ultra-thin piece of electronics has a printed battery, 10 printed “push buttons,” and two displays.”
i4u
North Face Campaign Sends Texts When Shoppers Near Stores
“It uses a practice called geo-fencing, which draws a virtual perimeter around a particular location. When someone steps into the geo-fenced area, a text message is sent, but only if consumers have opted in to receive messages. […] Placecast created 1,000 geo-fences in and around New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston, cities where the North Face has many stores and areas that get a lot of snow or rain, so the company can tailor its messages to the weather. In urban areas, the fences are up to half a mile around stores, and in suburban areas they are up to a mile around stores.”
NYTimes.com
Kodak Sponsored Studio project aka earphones that capture everything
“This is a concept design about a set of wireless headphones that also have a 10.1 megapixel digi-cam on one side and a digital image projector on the side. You can capture your world all the time and put that stuff on the internet right away. Instantly.”
Yanko Design
Flashlight Becomes Another Point For Technological Convergence
“The concept design proposes a flashlight that could project fully-featured maps on flat surfaces, as well as directional pointers that could be projected nearly anywhere.”
PSFK
Little World: Making Mobile Phones More People-Centric
“Determined to create a more people-centric phone, the team explored alternate ways of grouping, messaging and adding friends to your contacts. The resulting project “Little world” creates a more intuitive virtual world from which you can manage friends and contacts as opposed to the generic and alphabetically ordered lists we are used to today. “We don’t think of our friends alphabetically, so why should we try and manage them alphabetically? Little World allows you to group people in a natural, analog way, placing your work colleagues in a different area to your football mates, and using your phone in a more natural, subtle and playful way.” says Kevin Cannon, one of the designers behind Little World.”
PSFK
