Archive for August, 2010
These Vans Can See You Naked With Their Full-Body Scanners
“The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.”
Gizmodo
guuste hilte: tactile texting
“the design can be used by the visually impaired or by anyone looking to text without necessarily seeing the keypad or screen. the small device has a simple white case that is scored with small indentations that allow users to feel their way around, hitting the keys they need. the project is currently a sand alone device that would wirelessly communicate with a mobile, but hilte hopes to see the idea integrated into mobiles in the future.”
Design Boom
New Nanotech Display Has Pixels Eight Times Smaller Than iPhone 4′s
“Extremely tiny slits cut into very thin metal layers allow different parts of the light spectrum though, with the gaps between the cuts—ranging between 25 and 360 nanometers apart—displaying the red, blue and green light that makes our popular TV shows and internet content come to life. The new technology also does away with the need for the polarizer layer found in today’s screens, making this potentially cheaper to produce.”
Gizmodo
In-car computing for the luxury set
“That’s the interior of the iBusiness, a bespoke Mercedes S-Class by aftermarket company Brabus. As you can see it’s been tricked out with dual iPads, headrest monitors and a freaking fifth screen that folds out of the ceiling. The iPads control the car’s audio and telephone systems, in addition to the navigation, though that latter feature doesn’t make much sense. There’s a Magic Mouse on the armrest, Bluetooth headsets next to each monitor, and hidden away are a 64 GB iPod and a Mac Mini in the trunk connecting the whole operation.”
Core77
Harnessing Electricity From Air
“’Using small particles of aluminum phosphate and silica — two particles found commonly in the atmosphere — they showed that in the presence of water vapor silica particles become more negatively charged. Aluminum phosphate grows slightly more positively charged. This building of charges in humid air can accumulate and be transferred to other objects, explaining phenomena like the charge buildup where steam escapes from boilers that had baffled scientists for centuries.’ The team says their study would help in discovering ways to harness electricity right out of thin air to power buildings and to make panels that prevent lightning from striking.”
PSFK
Even a Non-Gamer Would Struggle to Resist the Mag Gun Controller
“The controller has a wide-angle camera in its tip, and to calibrate it, all you have to do it point it at the center of the TV. It then (if my analysis is correct) simply tracks the luminance image of the TV (it’s a distinctive rectangular shape, obviously) and uses that to determine where the gun is pointing. That’s very smart! It has all the same drawbacks and advantages of the Wiimote, which just uses IR instead of the TV’s visible spectrum.”
Gizmodo
Using Wi-Fi, Your Ford Could Soon be as Customizable as Your Phone
“Now, Wi-Fi is being used for a new application in their Oakville, Ontario plant: to install phone and entertainment features in the production line of select vehicles. Loading the software this way has resulted in a less than 1% failure rate so far, and it has reduced labor costs since it’s hands-free. But what’s most interesting about this method of transmitting software is its potential for customization. By wirelessly programming cars, drivers could set details like how quickly the transmission shifts gears, choose power-seat preferences, or a hundred other little personalizations that would make your vehicle unique. Currently, they have a common programmable electronic component that would provide over 90 such options.”
Gizmodo
Use This Snazzy Multitouch Interface to Control Your Robot Army
“Through simple, intuitive fingertip commands, Micire is able to select bots from the group, set waypoints, and coordinate their formation from above, effortlessly flicking around multiple commands at once. Users can also swoop down for a street-level view and manual control of each bot, providing a tactical edge and a throng of eyes on the ground.”
Gizmodo
Visualizing the Web’s Icons
“The data visualization above shows the “favicons” of nearly 300,000 Web sites on the Internet. Favicons are small images used to identify a Web site in the browser. The sizes of the icons are based on the amount of traffic each Web site receives, using data from Alexa.com, a traffic and Web metrics site.”
NYTimes.com
New record set for ferroelectric data storage
“For most of us, storing and accessing the vast majority of our computer data involves using either hard disk or solid state drives or perhaps a combination of both. Each method boasts its own advantages and while the battle for storage supremacy between the two rages in public, research at Japan’s Tohoku University has revealed another option. Using a pulse generator to alter the electrical state of tiny dots on a ferroelectric medium, Kenkou Tanaka and Yasuo Cho have successfully recorded data at around eight times the density of currently available hard disk drives.”
Gizmag
Yahoo’s Time Explorer lets users search the future
“It creates timelines based on search queries that not only provide a way to check the accuracy of past predictions, but also allows users to view predictions that are yet to occur. Time Explorer draws its information from a collection of 1.8 million New York Times (NYT) articles dating from 1987 to 2007. With its ability to recognize references to specific times in the future – “June 2012” for example – or use the article’s publication date to determine relative timings – “merger next year” – the search engine is able to show the coverage relevant to a search term over time. This is similar to Recorded Future’s “momentum,” indicating when the search term has attracted the most heat in terms of articles.”
Gizmag
Prototype Robot Swarm Could Clean Up Oil Spill in a Month
“Seaswarm, as they call it, basically works like a maxi pad. A patented hydrophobic nanofabric devours as much as 20 times its own weight in oil without collecting water. To capture the oil, the nanofabric’s draped over a conveyor belt that’s then dispatched on the surface of the ocean like “a rolling carpet,” to quote Assaf Biderman, associate director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab. The robot’s entirely autonomous; it swims along, powered by a pair of solar panels. [...] Unlike traditional skimmers, which are moored to larger vessels and have to return to shore frequently for tune-ups, Seaswarms can work 24/7 for weeks on end.”
Gizmodo
Reactive Cube, a 3D projector tank
“These liquid-filled tanks, designed by Graham Plumb, project light through a mixture of water and “a specially formulated emulsion” consisting of “micron-sized particles of oil formulated to stay suspended in water.”"
Make
In tourism areas, a fixed camera mount for group photos
“Australian fotopol sells two models of its camera mounts. The fotopol stand (USD 2,350) is a permanently fixed, freestanding camera mount that’s made from anodized aluminum with a galvanized steel base and stainless steel hardware; six colour options are available, as are etched and screen-printed designs. Local information and advertising can be displayed on the front panel as well. The fotopol balcony series, on the other hand, targets cruise ships and hotels with a permanent camera mount that gets attached either inside or outside the door frame of the balcony. Using the mount, passengers and guests can secure their camera, compose the shot, set the time delay and capture a memorable group photo.”
Springwise
Frito-Lay shows consumers where their chips came from
“Lay’s chips are made from potatoes grown by farmers across America,” the brand explains. More than 80 farms from 27 states across the country, in fact, grow the potatoes that become Lay’s potato chips. With that idea in mind, Frito-Lay last year launched a campaign featuring the farmers that grow them. The “Lay’s Mobile Farm” Tour — which wraps up this week — has been part of that effort, as is the Chip Tracker, which lets consumers trace where a particular bag of chips was made. All they need do is enter their ZIP code along with the first three digits of the bag’s product code; in return, the site gives them the specific location along with its annual output. An associated map, meanwhile, highlights both growing and production facilities.”
Springwise
Labels for kids’ gear use codes to track lost items online
“As an alternative to including personal information like phone numbers or addresses, however, Oliver’s gives its customers the free option of printing a 9-digit tracking system code on their labels that links them with the labeled item via the company’s “Found-it” system. For customers who choose to include it, the Found-it system allows finders of lost items to go to a special page on the Oliver’s website and enter the code printed on the label. Oliver’s then matches the code with the owner of the item and sends an email notification to that person, thereby acting as an intermediary between the owner and the finder so personal details need never be shared. A package of 60 Oliver’s iron-on clothing labels is priced at USD 19.99.”
Springwise
Meta Mapa: Hand Maps Drawn By Locals
“Yumi Roth, a professor of sculpture at the University of Colorado, has an interesting ongoing project called Meta Mapa in which she asks locals of any place she visits to draw maps on her hands, detailing the routes to interesting places in that city. She then photographs the maps and prints them to develop a series of informal, yet useful maps that helps her and her team to navigate the city.”
PSFK
Digital Urban: Walk Through Time: London 1890
“Walking Through Time is a SatNav for historical maps: A phone app that combines GPS technology with old maps to allow users to literally walk through time. It is one of the best apps we have used and the good news is it now covers the whole of London. The concept is great, rather than look at a Google maps you can pick London 1890 and see what London was like from your current location. Of course it could be that your in a field or a marsh and that’s the beauty of the application, it brings history to life.”
Digital Urban
Canon’s new 120-megapixel CMOS sensor
“There are many factors other than the megapixel count that affect the quality of images a digital camera will produce – sensor size, lens quality, organization of the pixels, etc. However, consumers often use the number of pixels each dollar buys as a basic measure of value for a digital camera and there has been a steady increase in the “pixels per dollar” for new cameras that roughly follows Moore’s Law. Depending on its cost and when it will hit the market, a new APS-H-size CMOS image sensor developed by Canon could put a bit of a dent in that line with its image resolution of approximately 120-megapixels. Canon’s current highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor of the same size (approx. 29.2 x 20.2mm) delivers approximately 16.1-megapixels, so with 13,280 x 9,184 pixels the newly developed sensor offers roughly 7.5 times more pixels.”
Gizmag
Leftronic Dashboards Optimize Your Data Displays
“YCombinator-funded company Leftronic launches today, offering up software that makes it easy for companies to aggregate data in their ambient displays, i.e. a displays mounted on a wall. […] While many companies will squander programming time and money building their own mediocre display software, Leftronic provides ready-made ways of visualizing various types of data aesthetically. In terms of future plans, Leftronic wants to be the leader in ambient displays, which have become more prevalent due to cheap monitors and more data streams and are valuable because they reduce complexity and aid people in understanding sometimes confusing data.”
TechCrunch
Replacing a Pile of Textbooks With an iPad
“One unique feature the service offers is the ability to discuss passages of a book with other students or professors. By selecting a piece of text you can leave a note for others to read and develop a conversation around the text. The application also breathes life into textbooks by giving publishers the tools to create interactive graphics within a book. In a demo version of the application, available for download in the iTunes store, “The Elements of Style” includes quizzes that help students learn by touching and interacting with the screen. There’s also a biology book that offers the ability to navigate 3-D molecules from any angle.”
NYTimes.com
Augmented Reality: OsiriX surgery
“We applied mixed reality (MR) consist of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology, in which electronically-generated dynamic 3D images are superimposed on the actual space in front of the surgeon, on the patient’s operative field or the surface of the abdomen, and evaluated such a system as a reference for surgical navigation and education.”
Beyond The Beyond
Augmented Metropolis
“he film “focuses on the deprogramming of architecture and the spontaneous creation of customised, aggregated spaces,” Matsuda writes. We see its central protagonist surrounded by pop-up menus and projected touchscreens, able to switch urban backgrounds—graffiti to gardens—in an instant.”
BLDGBLOG
gerg kaufman: multi touch light table
“records are represented as amoeba like shapes, whereby hand motions such as tapping, sliding and turning can result in these respective functions: changing the tempo of the song, activating volume levels and moving to a different mark of the track. kaufman’s multi-touch tap rythm technology also means that songs can be synced and their levels changed through a sliding bar. as each DJ has a different method of playing music, each graphic shape is unique to the user.”
Design Boom
WorldTV goes HD, looks to a future of apps overlaying trad TV
“On WorldTV the idea is that you create you own channel of preferred web videos, eventually coming up with something that feels more like linear TV. So far there have been 225,000 channels created on WorldTV from users in 200 countries. Interestingly the site is biggest in Brazil. WorldTV users use the site’s chanel editing tools to incorporate clips from YouTube, live video, and 25 other sites, like an iPhoto of videos. Every playlist creates a channel which is then embeddable. The end game will be a WorldTV app which turns your TV into Internet video TV.”
TechCrunch
mappiness, the happiness mapping app
“We’re particularly interested in how people’s happiness is affected by their local environment — air pollution, noise, green spaces, and so on — which the data from mappiness will be absolutely great for investigating”
London School of Economics
Sony’s Single Wire Interface Will Allow For Crazier Handset Designs
“Sony figured out how to replace the 22-wire ribbon inside their mobile devices-the one that carries control signals, video, and audio data-with a single copper cable, capable of 940Mbps transmission. That could make for the best cup-and-string phone ever. The new single wire cable will be most useful in mobile devices with movable parts, allowing for more flexible and durable designs. In addition to carrying control, audio, and video data, the same copper cable can also supply DC power.”
Gizmodo
Marmota mobile AR identifies landscape features
“a prototype mobile AR device is being tested, that concentrates more on topography than urban exploration. The Marmota mobile AR can tell you things like what the names of those mountain peaks over there are, what their elevation is, and how far away they are. The Marmota was designed by Michele Zanin, Claudio Andreatta and Paul Chippendale, researchers at the Technologies of Vision Unit (TeV) in the Information Technology Centre of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento, Italy. “The system integrates technologies and findings from different disciplines, spanning cartography to computer graphics, and sophisticated machine vision algorithms,” said Zanin. “Each pixel of the image is associated with information such as altitude, latitude, longitude and distance from the observer”.”
Gizmag
A music video controlled by the weather
“Their latest project is for young singer/songwriter Lissie’s single Cuckoo. It’s an interactive music video which runs on her site and is ‘controlled’ by live weather data. The singer and her band were shot against five different types of weather. The viewer zooms in on a city or area of his/her choice and the backdrop changes according to the current local weather. If you move to a new location, the song continues but a ‘TV weatherman type’ provides a new forecast before the video changes to reflect the new location.”
Creative Review
imaGinyze augments your driving experience with AR iPhone app
“imaGinyze is a new app that brings augmented reality to your car via the iPhone. When mounted properly in the center of your dash, an iPhone with imaGinyze installed will detect the lane that you’re in, marking it with border lines that match up with the painted lines on the road, and filling the inside with a blue overlay. Once the app has established your lane, it can detect any vehicles that are in front of you within a given range. imaGinyze will also flash a “Vehicle Ahead” alert when you’re approaching a car from behind. Cars to the front are color-coded according to proximity – first green, next yellow as you approach, and then to red when you get close.”
Gizmag
The End of Privacy: Entire City to Track People With Public Eye Scanners
“There are different kinds of machines being installed across Leon, from large scanners—capable of identifying 50 people per minute in motion— to smaller ones—like the EyeSwipe in the video above—that range from 15 to 30 people per minute. These devices are being installed in public places, like train and bus stations, and connected to a database that will track people across the city. City officials and proponents of the system are hoping that public retinal scans will stop crime and fraud. According to Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers:If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. Certainly for others, boarding a plane will be impossible.”
Gizmodo
Meet Shuffler.fm, the music blogosphere’s newest aggregator
“Instead of presenting a remix-filled melting pot of popular tracks and recent uploads, the landing page presents a list of genres. Once a user chooses his or her own adventure (at present, anything from hip-hop to lo-fi to singer-songwriter), the site shifts to an appropriate blog post, with Shuffler.fm displayed as a toolbar streaming a randomly chosen track. Users can click forward and back, jumping from song to song and blog to blog, where the songs being streamed can generally be downloaded as MP3s. The songs are sorted into genres by filtering them through Last.fm, itself a dependably accurate, if broad, user-powered music-listening and statistics hub.”
Brand X
Hipmunk Is a Fantastic, Surprisingly Usable Flight Search Site
“Most popular flight search engines are cluttered, full of text, and difficult to understand at a glance. Hipmunk takes the most important flight information you’d get at any flight search engine—travel time, layovers, price—and organizes it into an actually useful visual (rather than all-text) interface. (It’s sort of like a Gantt chart for flights.) Click on any flight for a closer look at the full details.”
LifeHacker
A New Kind of Microchip
“A computer chip that performs calculations using probabilities, instead of binary logic, could accelerate everything from online banking systems to the flash memory in smart phones and other gadgets.”
Technology Review
How do you predict your local micro-climate?
“While the Met Office have supercomputers to predict the weather, residents of one small village in North Yorkshire are looking elsewhere for their forecast. Duggleby boasts its own weatherman, Simon Cansick, whose website predicts his village’s micro-climate.”
BBC News
Cult of less: Living out of a hard drive
“Mr Sutton is the founder of CultofLess.com, a website which has helped him sell or give away his possessions – apart from his laptop, an iPad, an Amazon Kindle, two external hard drives, a “few” articles of clothing and bed sheets for a mattress that was left in his newly rented apartment. This 21st-Century minimalist says he got rid of much of his clutter because he felt the ever-increasing number of available digital goods have provided adequate replacements for his former physical possessions. “I think cutting down on physical commodities in general might be a trend of my generation – cutting down on physical commodities that can be replaced by digital counterparts will be a fact,” said Mr Sutton.”
BBC News
SongFever
“Songfever aims to combine the comfort of a digital music library with the visual and tangible quality that we once had with physical media.”
New Ways of Interaction
Aggregat
“aggregat is a gesture-based digital audio workstation for sound production in ableton live 8. The interface allows up to three people to create music collaboratively in one single set – aggregat brings back the performative band-character into digital music: Instead of watching somebody”
New Ways of Interaction
Using Music To Reach The Memories of Alzheimer’s Patients
“The concept is built under the premise that those with Alzheimer’s don’t lose their memories, they just can’t access them. It takes advantage of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex—one of the last places affected by the illness—which is in charge of familiar memories, music, and emotion. The patient’s care partner chooses a song (stored in a metallic orb that acts as an RFID antenna) to connect himself with the Alzheimer’s patient, and when the song is played, the pathway to their memories of the care partner should open up.”
Gizmodo
New Wooden Radio Tags Could Reduce Illegal Logging
“Trees, like animals, get tagged with radio chips: the chips help timber companies keep track of their product and fight illegal logging. Unfortunately, metal RFID chips damage the goods — a problem the European research institute Fraunhofer has solved with a wood radio chip. The chip contains a tiny metal antenna that emits its signal; however the amount of metal is so small that it has a negligible effect on the lumber’s quality. The rest of the radio-frequency identification tag is made of lignin, which is derived from the cell walls of plants.”
Inhabitat
Tiny Probes Measure Signals Inside Cells
“Researchers at Harvard University have made biocompatible, nanometer-scaled transistors that can be used to take highly precise electrical and chemical readings inside cells. The bioprobes are much more sensitive than the passive electrodes that have been used to make intracellular measurements in the past. The Harvard group, led by chemistry professor Charles Lieber, is now developing more sophisticated bioelectronics that will take advantage of transistors’ ability to send as well as receive electrical signals. They’re also working with a tissue-engineering group to develop implantable bioelectronics that could make better connections between the body and neural prosthetics such as those that control some artificial limbs. The probes, which are based on silicon nanowires, can be grouped in large arrays, so the researchers also hope to use them to get a picture of biochemical and electrical networks in the large groups of cells that make up tissues. Such measurements are difficult to make today.”
Technology Review
Japanese Company Creates A Lifelike Robot Hand
“Japan-based Squse Company Ltd. has created an eerily life-like robotic hand called the Robot Hand H-Type. It is powered by a series of actuators and has multiple joints and movable polycarbonate bones. The robotic hand, which is covered with silicon rubber that gives it a skin-like look, can lift and move small objects. The company says that the hand will mostly find its use in industrial applications.”
PSFK
Meet Precious, the bike that tweets his “feelings”
“Precious is outfitted with an array of sensors and a microcontroller, and like AJ, the system correlates that data into moods and thoughts that are then tweeted. I’m not really sure if all the tweets are pre-canned or if somebody is reading the sensor data and interpreting it as the thoughts and feelings of the bike and composing some of the content.”
Make
Blogging Back In Time
“Swissmiss points our attention to the growing practice of “Paleoblogging.” Paleobloggers search for meaningful material from the analog era and re-post what they find online. It introduces “new” and undiscovered content and ideas into the digital media stream.”
PSFK
Sensor-Equipped Backpack Generates 3D Maps
“A research team from the University of California, Berkeley has developed a special device that can scan its surroundings, capture images, and create an instant 3D representation of the area. The backpack contains a set of laser scanners, sensors and cameras that enable it to generate a texture map of the area around it and snap pictures in all directions, without any human intervention.”
PSFK
Light frequency fingertips
“Light Frequency Fingertips” is composed of four fingercaps, each containing light sensitive phototransistors. The fingercaps (made of bicycle tubes) are especially customized for the thumb and forefinger of both hands, and transform light frequencies into acoustic signals.Light, emitted by the displays of activated mobile phones, functions as the origin of the sounds. As each mobile phone’s display generates a different light frequency, each results in an audio signal with a different pitch. In addition, other electronic devices, such as flashing bicycle lights, can be used to generate rhythmic tones.”
pling
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
“Create and control tiny sound-creatures in the shape of letters that react to gravity or each other and generate rhythms and soundscapes. Dive into a micro world of sounds, movement and touch. But beware! Using this app might change your daily reading and talking experience.”
jörg piringer
Total Recall: Sentimnt lets you search and retrieve information from your social feeds
“Our friends are suggesting places to go and things to do but not at the time we want to go somewhere or eat something”, he says. Using Sentimnt, however, it’s possible for a user to search their Twitter and Facebook streams to find those suggestions at a time when they are relevant. Since the service is currently in private beta, it’s still very much a work in progress although I really like the concept. Setting up an account is very quick and straight forward and the UI work that’s already been laid is solid. Its biggest limitation is that for new users, Twitter’s indexing doesn’t go back that far historically (a Twitter API restriction) but that isn’t an issue going forward as Sentimnt will index future tweets and any links/web pages that they point to. Relevancy should hopefully improve too as Sentimnt tweaks its search algorithms but it’s a good start.”
TechCrunch
Nanomovies: Ultrafast Electron Microscopy
“Over the past decade, researchers have developed an ultrafast technique called four-dimensional electron microscopy, which can produce movies of actions taking place over time intervals in the femtosecond range. (A femtosecond is 10^-15 second—a millionth of a billionth of a second.)
Here, for instance, is a movie of a cantilever oscillating, viewed from a variety of angles. The protruding nickel-titanium “diving board” is a mere 50 nanometers wide and was set in motion by a laser pulse. The individual movie frames come at 10 nanosecond intervals so the motion is slowed down by a factor of about 3 million—things happen quickly at the nanoscale.”
Scientific American
Social radio tool lets friends create shared stations
“Users simply give their station a name and choose 10 songs by at least six artists to begin with—the minimum diversity, presumably, to make it listenable. All stations on the site are public; listeners can both vote on songs to determine how often they get played, and they can request that new songs be added to the station. “We believe this makes for a far more social and relevant experience than radio based on ‘experts’ or algorithms analyzing tone and timbre,” Songza CEO Elias Roman explains. Now in beta, Songza is DMCA-compliant and ad-supported. There is no limit on the number of stations users can create.”
Springwise
Brand uses GPS to bring prizes to winners’ homes
“the company has hidden GPS devices in 50 detergent boxes throughout Brazil. Each device gets activated when the box is removed from the supermarket shelf, causing Bullet—Omo’s promotions agency—to send a team into action tracking the box all the way to the purchasing consumer’s home. Dedicated teams are in place in 35 Brazilian cities, equipped with the technology needed to zero in not just on houses but even on specific apartments. Winners receive a pocket video camera as well as an invitation for a day of outdoor fun at Unilever’s expense, according to AdAge.”
Springwise
A Sidewalk Disappearing Act
“Once a pedestrian has been identified and cut from an image, the hole left behind has to be filled in. Flores’s software does this by using photographs captured before and after the image in question by Google’s Street View vans. These images show a view of the background from slightly different angles–the algorithm can reorient the background and stitch it into the space left behind by the missing pedestrian.”
Technology Review
LG’s SmartDiagnosis technology lets washers and dryers chat to technicians over the phone
“Called SmartDiagnosis, the system would allow consumers to call the LG customer service center at which point they would be asked to press a series of buttons on the laundry unit suffering difficulties. This triggers a series of diagnostic tones with each tone corresponding to with a specific maintenance need that can be identified by a service technician over the phone. For those instances when the problem can’t be resolved over the phone, the system would allow the problem to be identified and the field technician would be able to come prepared with the correct parts so that the repair can be carried out in one visit.”
Gizmag
A Private, Anti-Foursquare To Geo-Fence Those Neer To You
“With Neer, you create a geo-fence around certain places like home, work, or school simply by marking them on your phone when you are there. Entering or leaving the location triggers an update message to your inner circle. Rather than seeing where you are on a map, all they see is the name you’ve given each place. Neer is designed to be private for people who are turned off by the over-sharing of Twitter and Foursquare. You can’t broadcast your location to the public, only to your contacts. And in order to be connected on Neer, both people must have each other’s contact information in their phone address books, and both must have the app installed. It is almost as if Neer wants to make it hard for you to find people to track.”
TechCrunch
What Will Replace 3D Printing?
“This technology would see Voxels be used as universal LEGO-like building blocks for manufacturing digital materials. The Voxels would be mass produced and tiny. The rapid assembler would select, pick up and deposit the right Voxels in the right place. They would build up the object and the shape of the Voxels and a binding material will glue it together. Different Voxels would have different characteristics, some could be magnetic, some luminescent etc. By combining different Voxels in different amounts you could develop entirely new material characteristics.”
PSFK
Touchscreens go mainstream for Tokyo vending machines
“We stumbled upon a growing crowd surrounding the newly installed contraption. It was causing quite a stir as, one-by-one, bashful salarymen plucked up the courage to go and put the machine through its paces for the benefit of the gawking crowds. Unfortunately, we weren’t afforded much time with the machine, what with frought station staff shooing us apologetically along—the rush hour torrent fast approaching—but we did manage to grab a few snaps.”
Core77
Token Multitouch Screen: A Sneak Peek At The Future Of DJing?
“Chilean designer Rodrigo’s Token Multitouch Screen is a glass sheet that takes touch inputs and displays video from a computer using a rear projector. The setup, which runs on a multitouch MIDI controller called the Emulator, is already being hailed as the future of DJing by experts.”
PSFK
Researchers demonstrate first plastic spintronic computer memory device
“At this point, the device is little more than a thin strip of dark blue organic-based magnet layered with a metallic ferromagnet (a magnet made of ferrous metal such as iron) and connected to two electrical leads. Still, the researchers successfully recorded data on it and retrieved the data by controlling the spins of the electrons with a magnetic field.”
Gizmag
Assistive Technology: Disabled Individuals Interact With The World Through Intuitive Natural Actions
“Anton Plotkin and Lee Sela at the Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a system that allows paralyzed individuals to control computer software using puffs of air from their nose. The technology makes use of small, pressure-sensitive machines that link the inside of a user’s nose with a standard computer interface via USB. The system has proven to be robust enough to capture a wide range of inputs from the user’s breath alone.”
PSFK
New prosthesis eases phantom limb pain
“Weiss’s team from the University of Jena has been working with trauma surgeons from the Jena University Hospital to develop the new prosthetic device designed to address this problem. Pressure sensors between the thumb and index finger as well as on the thumb of the hand prosthesis transmit sensory information from the hand to a stimulation unit connected to the upper arm via a cuff. The brain picks up the feedback from the prosthesis as if it was the patient’s own hand. The team believes that feedback between the artificial hand and the brain, provided by the Jena system may play a part in preventing or reversing the reorganization of the brain.”
Gizmag
Man-made bee’s eye could mean big things for flying robots
“The artificial bee’s eye consists of a light-weight acrylic glass mirror-lens combination, hooked up to a USB video camera. Although the scientists refer to it as a singular eye, because it incorporates a single camera, it actually approximates a honeybee’s full dual-eyed 280-degree field of vision. To achieve this, the underside of the lens surface is covered by a reflective upside down dome – that is, the convex outside of the dome, which faces towards the camera, is reflective. The center of the recorded image is obtained directly through the lens glass via a peep hole in the middle of the dome. The outsides of the image, however, come from the reflective dome surface surrounding that hole, which lets the camera “see” what’s off to either side (the device’s globe-shaped housing is transparent on the sides). Using a mapping routine, the two fields of view are digitally blended into one.”
Gizmag
Draw Your Itinerary On A Tripline Map
“Tripline allows you to create an interactive, embeddable map detailing a trip using your destinations. You essentially create a timeline of your stops within a country or city and tag each stop with descriptions of your activities and include images as well. You can connect with Facebook to add any of your friends who went on the trip with you. And you can create maps from just your Foursquare checkins and or geo-enables Tweets.”
TechCrunch
Dragontape Creates Continuous Playlists of Online Video
“A simple search, drag, and drop will get you started, or you can copy and paste links to your favorite YouTube videos in Dragontape’s search bar. Drag and drop your video choices into the time line, arrange them in the order you like, and begin watching instantly. You can save up to three hours of continuous play per “tape” and share links to your Dragontape playlist.”
LifeHacker
Interactive 3D Roller Coaster At Universal Studios Japan
“Developed by GestureTek, the ride is equipped with 3D cameras and projection systems. This lets visitors control the content on the screens around them by simple hand gestures, enabling them to collect “Stardust Clouds” from the LED displays in a 98-foot, in-ride tunnel.”
PSFK
MetaMirror Concept Unites Your Tablet and TV
“The concept, developed by the Irish studio Design By Notion, makes your tablet and TV complement each other, instead of letting them be adversaries for your attention. Basically, MetaMirror will rebroadcast the TV you’re watching on a device of your choice, overlaying it with contextual information to satisfy your Internet-age urge to dig just a little bit deeper. That means, for example, that you could look up and buy ingredients during a cooking show, or get track and artist info while watching a musical performance, with handy links to TicketMaster, AllMusic, and iTunes all within index-finger’s reach.”
Gizmodo
Hello Oakland
“The bottom three maps are (from left to right) the Fresh, Midnight Commander and Pale Dawn styles we designed for CloudMade. Map tiles”
Random Etc.
Flickr Fruits #35 [Mapping & Topography]
“Eric Fischer’s Geotaggers’ World Atlas set contains a serious of maps derived from photographers timestamps and geotags found on Flickr. The data has been used to calculate the speed at which the photographers were travelling and plotted on OpenStreetMap. In all there are 50 cities covered, each with density paths indicating the most navigated and photographed areas. Can the Geotaggers’ World Atlas be interpreted as map of tourism and sightseeing?”
dataisnature.com
Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game
“Here we describe Foldit, a multiplayer online game that engages non-scientists in solving hard prediction problems. Foldit players interact with protein structures using direct manipulation tools and user-friendly versions of algorithms from the Rosetta structure prediction methodology4, while they compete and collaborate to optimize the computed energy. We show that top-ranked Foldit players excel at solving challenging structure refinement problems in which substantial backbone rearrangements are necessary to achieve the burial of hydrophobic residues. Players working collaboratively develop a rich assortment of new strategies and algorithms; unlike computational approaches, they explore not only the conformational space but also the space of possible search strategies.”
Nature
Instant Cartridge Printer by Yuexun Chen & Chia-Chen Hsiao
“The plan is to buy a cartridge printer off the shelf, according to the paper size you plan on using. Related info like print speed, print resolution and color is provided on the packaging itself. The designers try and bring in an eco-angle by using recyclable paper for the milk-box packaging and recyclable parts. However the printer is powered by an internal battery & hooks to the device and comp via USB.”
Yanko Design
An LED display you can write on with a laser pointer
“Totally amazing find from SIGGRAPH 2010: a modular LED display that can be written on using a light source, like a laser pointer. Now, instead of programming scrolling LED displays, just write on them and be done with it.”
Core77
Solar Roads: The New Energy/Transport Convergence Device?
“Brusaw wants to create solar panels strong enough to support the weight of cars and trucks driving at 80 miles per hour. There is so much road surface in America, that the collected energy could replace other forms of fossil fuel energy, even with really inefficient solar panels. Even better, since roads go to each home and business, the roads themselves would not only collect the energy, but distribute it. The energy wouldn’t power cars themselves, except maybe electric vehicles juicing up at roadside charging stations. LEDs could be built into the roadways and used as signs.”
GeekBeat.TV
Orchestra Generates Music Based On Its Own Heartbeats
“Each musician is hooked up to an electrocardiogram sensor, which sends their heart rate to a computer that incorporates it into a visualization backdrop. This data is simultaneously used to create a unique musical score that’s displayed on a laptop before each player. The actual performing, of course, affects the heartbeat of each performer, which in turn affects the score, which in turn—you get the point. Unsurprisingly this leads to a dramatically strange and abstract composition, that is both influenced and influencing.”
Gizmodo
nPower PEG Kinetic Charger Juices Your Devices While You Move
“By placing the nine inch tall nPower PEG in your bag vertically, it will begin to charge its internal battery once you start moving, handing off that energy to your device(s) as needed by way of one of 100 interchangeable adapters. Tremont Electric, the PEG’s manufacturer, recommends fully charging it (via USB or AC adapter) before leaving home, and then using the kinetic harvesting to “top off” the battery on the go. This makes sense, as the electrical yield on your skipping and stomping isn’t exactly generous: about a minute of iPhone 3G talk time from 10 minutes of walking, or one minute of MP3 playback from one minute of walking.”
Gizmodo
Google Earth Health Codes
“Google Earth Outreach employs satellites to read simple graphic images drawn on the ground. Image recognition software to scans the pictures for the codes, detects the location, and extracts information from the image. The image code can contain vital information about a village, such as the number of births and deaths, or report urgent needs, like a person in a critical state of illness, or an epidemic.”
PSFK
Body Language: Wieden + Kennedy
“Imagine you’re a smoker, and you’ve just quit. Right around happy hour on Friday night, you get a message from your lungs saying, “Don’t even think about smoking. Look, I’m already getting pinker! Plus, you’ve increased your estimated life span by 3 days.” Here, the app knows that you’re trying to quit smoking, how long it’s been since you logged your last cigarette, and how much healthier you’ve grown since you stopped. The system could also respond to data from your social networks. For example, after observing several Foursquare check-ins the previous evening, you might get a text from your liver saying, “Dude, I looked at Foursquare… uhh, long night. Have a couple of bananas today and get lots of water.” Reply back with the number of drinks you had last night, and the system will log them accordingly, reminding you to go a little easier next weekend.”
PSFK
Black City Totem: Innovative Packaging For Digital Downloads
“Attempting to recreate the atmosphere of the album, Ghostly partnered with Boym Partners to create the Black City Totem. Part sculpture and part souvenir, consumers are sent the the object with a code for digital download or streaming when they purchase the album. Admittedly, this doesn’t offer the straight utility from direct downloading, but it does push labels to think about how value and aesthetic branding should go hand and hand.”
PSFK
New startup uses Internet to predict the future
“In addition to extracting event and entity references, Recorded Future also analyzes the “time and space dimension” of documents – references to when and where an event has taken place, or even when and where it will take place – since many documents actually refer to events expected to take place in the future. A company’s plans to open a production plant in a particular country in the next two years, for example. This time and space analysis by aggregating weighted opinions about the likely timing of future events is the first way in which Recorded Future says it makes predictions about the future. Additionally, the company says it can also use statistical models to predict future happenings based on historical records of chains of events of similar kinds.”
Gizmag
Secret knock-detecting mechanical iris project
“Over at the Submitterator, BFarn tells of his excellent maker-meld of “Chris Schaie’s beautiful Mechanical Iris, Steve Hoefer’s Secret Knock detecting Arduino code, and an engraving made with my scratch-built CNC-Router to make the entrance to my garage/workshop/lab a bit more special.”"
Boing Boing
Telenoid R1 minimalist humanoid robot
“The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers. The Telenoid R1 is endowed with only the most basic human features — just enough to recreate the physical presence of the remote user, according to robot’s creators. The robot’s androgynous and ageless look makes it suitable for a wide range of users, whether they are male, female, young or old. ”
Pink Tentacle
the virtual state of jefferson
“The Virtual State of Jefferson (collaboration with Ethan Miller) is a wireless router. Laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries can connect to the internet through the router and browse the web. Whenever a webpage displays the address of a town that is in the proposed borders of the State of Jefferson, the router changes the state name to be “Jefferson.” In this manner, the “City of Ashland, Oregon” website automatically becomes the “City of Ashland, Jefferson.” The Virtual State of Jefferson explores how the internet has become one of our primary windows for viewing the world and how the realities it presents can be authoritative, fictive, self-deluding, and enlightening.”
Ethan Ham
Haier Power Pad takes energy from shower water and returns it to hot water system
“The Haier PowerPad is a concept device shown at SinoCES which captures the energy contained within the water that runs off our bodies every morning in the shower, and returns said energy to the hot water tank. Haier claims the PowerPad is currently capturing and returning 15% of the energy coming out of the faucet and by the time it goes on sale six weeks from now, that figure will be 20-30%.”
Gizmag
DIY Wearable Computer Turns You Into a Cyborg
“Magnusson has hacked a pair of head-mounted display glasses and combined it with a homebrewed machine based on a open source Beagleboard single computer. Packed into a CD case and slung across the shoulder messenger-bag style, he is ready to roll. A computer is a window to the virtual world, says Magnusson. “But as soon as I get up and about, that window closes and I’m stuck within the limits of physical reality,” he says. “Wearable computers make it possible to keep the window open. All the time.”"
Gizmodo
