Children generally love to create art and are
fascinated by robots, so what if there was a way for them to turn their
art projects into robots? Well, there is. Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company BirdBrain Technologies
has introduced the Hummingbird kit, which contains everything kids (or
adults) need to add powered movement and interactivity to their dragons,
kitties or spaceships. Read More
A few years back Joby gave boring old camera tripods
a much-needed kick up the rear when stiff, straight,
dull-but-dependable legs were replaced with bendable knobbly goodness in
the shape of the Gorillapod. Versatility and adaptability are central to its success, attributes that make the tablift iPad stand from Santa Monica's C. Scott Blevins
a similarly attractive proposition. While there are vast numbers of
tablet stands already available, tablift can provide the hands-free
stability others may fail to offer when used on uneven or somewhat
changeable surfaces like a sofa, comfy chair or bed. Read More
While they were each once hailed as the lightest solid material ever made, metallic microlattice and aerogel have now been moved back to second and third
place (respectively), with aerographite taking the crown. Developed by a
team from the Technical University of Hamburg and Germany’s University
of Kiel, the material is composed of 99.99 percent air, along with a
three-dimensional network of porous carbon nanotubes that were grown
into each other. Read More
New research carried out at São Paulo
University’s School of Medicine in Brazil reveals that HDL
concentrations in the blood influence the synthesis and absorption of
cholesterol by the body, besides being linked to how insulin impacts on
the metabolism of glucose. HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, is also
commonly referred to as "good cholesterol." Read More
At noon today, the very last BBC World Service broadcast was aired from London's Bush House, ending a residency lasting over 70 years. The whole of the Corporation's famous international service
has now moved to new state-of-the-art offices at Broadcasting House in
Portland Place, near Oxford Circus. All of the equipment, furniture,
fixtures and fittings, however, have been left behind and are being sold
off to the highest online bidder. The first of two sales is already
open for bidding and includes complete mono and stereo mixing studios, a
TV studio, a mind-boggling catalog of studio equipment, BBC
memorabilia, office furniture and a Steinway grand piano. Read More
Described by its designer Joscha Weiand as "the
world's first tent house," Hangout is a semi-permanent shelter aimed at
travelers and festival-goers. In attempting to fuse stay-at-home comfort
with the practicality of a tent, Weiand has his sites firmly set on the
"glamping" (glamor plus camping) dollar. Read More
The skies over Hampshire, England, may have been
resolutely overcast, but there has been nothing dull about the spectacle
of the biennial Farnborough International Airshow taking place in them
this week. Crowds composed mostly of media, military and millionaires
endured airport-style security checks to observe aerial displays from
ear-piercing fighter jet fighters, enormous airliners and aeronautic
display teams of dubious sanity. Read More
Google has just announced an update for its
popular Maps service, extending support for walking directions to an
impressive 44 African countries. Following the mandatory safety warnings
that come with the beta tag (routes may be missing pedestrian crossings
etc.), Google is encouraging residents to try out the service,
available today on both web and mobile. A separate update will no doubt
be appreciated by cyclists in Europe and Australia. Read More
Phones obviously already know where we are and where we have been, thanks to GPS and other clever positioning technologies.
Now, thanks to an algorithm developed by researchers at the University
of Birmingham, your smartphone may soon be able to make accurate
educated guesses as to where you’re going to be in 24 hours time. And
here’s the dirty trick responsible for the algorithm’s future-telling
powers: it spies on your friends and connects the dots where necessary.
Read More
Garmin signals its entrance into the outdoors GPS
watch segment with the fēnix. Despite its annoying punctuation and
emphasis baggage, the watch appears to be a fully featured and
functional wrist top for the outdoors set. More than just a watch with a
GPS chip, Garmin sees the fēnix as a hands-free navigation solution.
Unlike its existing GPS sports watches, the Fenix (we've humored Garmin
long enough) offers a more robust feature set that will navigate you
into and out of the wild. Read More
Gizmag recently took the opportunity to ride the newest addition to London's public transport system, a kilometer-long (0.62-mile), 93-meter tall (305 ft) cable car system offering passengers commanding views of East London and beyond. Read More
Pelican Products, Inc. is an
established name in rugged, waterproof hard cases for electronics and
other gear. Recently, the company had an epiphany: "Why not offer our
hard cases in a more portable form." Thus, the ProGear Urban Backpack
line of hybrid case-packs was born. Read More
NeuroSky’s brain-computer interface
(BCI) technology has found its way into a variety of devices over the
last few years, from the MyndPlay media player and MindSet video game headset to the XWave and XWave Sport.
The latest product sporting the company’s brainwave-reading technology
features a slightly more fun form factor – fluffy, wearable cat ears.
Read More
The Yamaha Arp & Drum Pad app for iPad
is a music creation app that's not only capable of transmitting notes
to external MIDI instruments, but includes a built-in virtual keyboard,
allowing the user to trigger the arpeggiator and play numerous patterns
from a variety of instruments. Read More
A friend of mine
who works in television once told me how he was shooting a hockey game,
and was impressed with his uncanny ability to keep the puck centered in
the shot at all times ... it turns out that the “puck” he was following
was actually a speck of dirt on his viewfinder. A new system from the
University of Tokyo, however, can automatically follow moving objects
such as pucks with amazing accuracy. Read More
Serbian luxury yacht producer Art of
Kinetik has recently launched its latest pleasure boat for the summer
season. Named Antagonist, the vessel is a sleek wooden model that
features clean elegant lines that are reminiscent of the 60s and 70s.
With its deep wooden hull and a top speed of 42 knots, this speedboat is
not only fit for a Sean Connery-era James Bond, but it’s impressively
powerful. Read More
We're all encouraged to eat more fresh fruit
- whether by parents, partners, or physicians - but it isn't always the
easiest advice to follow. Fresh fruit doesn't stay fresh for long,
especially if it sits in a bowl with other types of fruit that are
closer to being past their best. It's also difficult to know what size
of bowl you need to own in order to accommodate the differing numbers
and types of fruit you are storing at any one time. Stretchy Bowl is an
effort to solve both these issues. Read More
If you’re looking to complement your air-conditioned shirt
with a pair of pants to help keep your bottom half cool in the summer
heat then Japanese company Kuchofuku has you covered. The Kuchofuku
Air-Conditioned Cooling pants feature two battery-powered fans to direct a refreshing flow of air onto your legs and nether regions. Read More
Well, it only makes sense ... they’ve come up with an electronic replacement for the door lock key, so why not the combination padlock, too? That’s what Master Lock
has done, with its new dialSpeed lock. Although the retro grouch in
some of us may find it a bit overdone, it does offer a couple of useful
features. Read More
Nissan has unveiled the second-generation of its Note Mini MPV. The original Note
was launched in 2004 in Japan, with the European model going on sale in
2006. The redesigned hatchback sports a new “Squash Line” exterior
character line and more aerodynamic body shape and also includes
Nissan’s Around View Monitor (AVM) system. Read More
Owning and riding a bike can be very rewarding;
it gives you the freedom to explore your surroundings, is cheaper than
public transport in the longterm, and healthier than driving a car.
Unfortunately being a bike owner means dealing with the possibility of
having your favored mode of transport stolen, especially in urban areas
where the incidence of bike theft
is high. This means the majority of bike owners need to own and use a
lock every time they park their bike up. Two Taiwanese designers have
concocted a new way of preventing bike theft: one that sees the pedals
used to both clamp the wheel of, and (if necessary) incapacitate, the
bicycle. Read More
Gizmag recently took the opportunity to ride the newest addition to London's public transport system, a kilometer-long (0.62-mile), 93-meter tall (305 ft) cable car system offering passengers commanding views of East London and beyond. Read More
Advertising is the bread and butter
of most content-based websites these days, but many readers still view
them as just a necessary drawback for the sites to continue running.
Even widely popular sites like Penny Arcade rely on advertising for most
of their profits ... but maybe not for much longer. The folks behind
the video game culture webcomic recently started a Kickstarter campaign
asking fans to donate money in exchange for removing advertising from
the website and producing more comics and other content. Read More
Reaction Engines has announced that is has
successfully tested the key pre-cooler component of its revolutionary
SABRE engine crucial to the development of its SKYLON spaceplane. The company claims
that craft equipped with SABRE engines will be able to fly to any
destination on Earth in under 4 hours, or travel directly into space.
Read More
The existence of two different types of fat – or adipose tissue
– in mammals has long been known: white fat, which stores calories and
in excess results in obesity, and brown fat, which burns calories to
generate energy and heat. Now scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
have confirmed the existence of a third, genetically distinct type of
fat called “beige fat,” which they say is a potential therapeutic target
for treating obesity. Read More
Pelican Products, Inc. is an
established name in rugged, waterproof hard cases for electronics and
other gear. Recently, the company had an epiphany: "Why not offer our
hard cases in a more portable form." Thus, the ProGear Urban Backpack
line of hybrid case-packs was born. Read More
NeuroSky’s brain-computer interface
(BCI) technology has found its way into a variety of devices over the
last few years, from the MyndPlay media player and MindSet video game headset to the XWave and XWave Sport.
The latest product sporting the company’s brainwave-reading technology
features a slightly more fun form factor – fluffy, wearable cat ears.
Read More
Though 3D movies have been around for a while,
the experience of visiting a cinema to catch the latest blockbuster is
dampened by unwieldy glasses and the limitation of only one fixed
perspective being offered to all. The illusion of depth is present, but
this is far removed from the hologram-like, multiple-perspective
experience which would truly wow movie-goers. MIT's Media Lab’s Camera
Culture group proposes a new approach to 3D images that promises
glasses-free multiple-perspective 3D. Perhaps best of all though, MIT's
technique uses inexpensive existing LCD technology, clearing the way for
the tech to be implemented into TV's. Read More
Several years ago, every inch of the New York
City Subway system – along with other public transportation systems
around the world, was covered in graffiti. Now there's fewer tags, but
more ways to express yourself. The virtual world is one new venue for
graffiti and the art of tagging. Augmented reality app LZRTAG is hoping
to advance those tags to images and even animations, but you need a
smartphone to make that happen. Read More
Thanks to advances in stem cell therapy, it is
now possible to use engineered white blood cells to fight diseases such as HIV
within the human body. When such treatments are being developed,
however, it can be difficult to track where the introduced cells travel
within a patient’s system, and how many of them make it to their target.
Now, thanks to research being carried out at the University of
Edinburgh's Centre for Cardiovascular Science, those cells can be
magnetically labeled. Read More
One of the big enemies of electric vehicle
batteries is heat. Batteries already warm up under normal use, but when
hot summer temperatures or high workloads are thrown in, overheating
becomes a real possibility. According to the Fraunhofer Institute for
Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology, running a battery at ten
degrees over its maximum “comfort level” of about 35ºC (95ºF) can
deplete its service life by half. That’s why researchers there have
developed a battery coolant known as CryoSolplus, which is said to offer
three times the cooling capacity of plain water. Read More
The Yamaha Arp & Drum Pad app for iPad
is a music creation app that's not only capable of transmitting notes
to external MIDI instruments, but includes a built-in virtual keyboard,
allowing the user to trigger the arpeggiator and play numerous patterns
from a variety of instruments. Read More
A friend of mine
who works in television once told me how he was shooting a hockey game,
and was impressed with his uncanny ability to keep the puck centered in
the shot at all times ... it turns out that the “puck” he was following
was actually a speck of dirt on his viewfinder. A new system from the
University of Tokyo, however, can automatically follow moving objects
such as pucks with amazing accuracy. Read More
BenQ might not be the first manufacturer you think of when it comes to digital cameras
... or even the second, third, fourth or fifth. But the new G1 is an
intriguing proposition, featuring as it does a fast F1.8 lens, a
swivel-screen, and thumb wheel for manual settings, while still coming
in at a modest price of €239 (that's around US$291). Read More
Portugal's Polícia de Segurança Pública (that'll be PSP from here on out) has put the world's first Nissan Leaf police car fleet on the streets. The eight-car fleet will help PSP in its goal to reduce its carbon footprint. Read More
Ben Katz has spent the last few months ripping
apart and reassembling an old kick scooter to build what he describes as
an all-terrain electric scooter. He's mixed in bits and pieces from
robotics projects and mountain bikes, supersized the wheels, created
custom shocks, built a novel disc brake, and added lots of aluminum to
make a pretty sweet ride. He still has a few finishing touches to add
but it's ready to roll, as you can see in the video after the jump. Read More
The GoPro HD Hero 2 comes with its own waterproof
case, but that case wasn't tough enough for Marc Ellis. So, he built
his own Hero housing made out of aluminum and stainless steel. We can't
verify that it's more rugged in the field, but it definitely gives the
GoPro a tougher, no-nonsense look. Read More
Earlier this year, a team led by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Yong Zhu reported success in creating elastic conductors made from carbon nanotubes. Such conductors could be used in stretchable electronics, which could in turn find use in things like bendable displays, smart fabrics, or even touch-sensitive robot skin.
Now, he has made some more elastic conductors, but this time using
silver nanowires – according to Zhu, they offer some big advantages over
carbon nanotubes. Read More
Introduced by Japan’s Masahiro Mori, the “Uncanny
Valley” principle states that the more a humanoid robot strives and
fails to mimic human appearance, the less appealing it is to humans. In
yet another attempt to cross the valley, an interdisciplinary team of
researchers at the University of Pisa, Italy, endowed a female-form
humanoid called FACE with a set of complex facial expression features.
They did so in the hope of finding the answer to one fundamental
question: can a robot express emotions? Read More
Serbian luxury yacht producer Art of
Kinetik has recently launched its latest pleasure boat for the summer
season. Named Antagonist, the vessel is a sleek wooden model that
features clean elegant lines that are reminiscent of the 60s and 70s.
With its deep wooden hull and a top speed of 42 knots, this speedboat is
not only fit for a Sean Connery-era James Bond, but it’s impressively
powerful. Read More Spy Hawk RC-plane lets you snoop from the skies
July 16, 2012
If you’ve ever found yourself bemoaning the
relative dearth of viable personal UAV (or "drone") options but still
find the idea of an eye in the sky alluring, then you may well be in
luck, because UK-based gadget purveyor RED5 has unveiled the Spy Hawk: a
remote-controlled plane which runs from a rechargeable battery and features a video camera to facilitate easy snooping from up above. Read More
We're all encouraged to eat more fresh fruit
- whether by parents, partners, or physicians - but it isn't always the
easiest advice to follow. Fresh fruit doesn't stay fresh for long,
especially if it sits in a bowl with other types of fruit that are
closer to being past their best. It's also difficult to know what size
of bowl you need to own in order to accommodate the differing numbers
and types of fruit you are storing at any one time. Stretchy Bowl is an
effort to solve both these issues. Read More
Sadly, the funding campaign for the Unlimited travel guitar
with built-in speaker that we covered late last month was unsuccessful,
but fear not because VOX Amplification has come to the rescue in
impressive retro style. The company has dipped into the past to bring
back two of its most iconic guitar shapes as modern travel/practice
instruments. The beautiful VOX Teardrop and Phantom have been reborn as
the Apache Series, each featuring two speakers, built-in effects and
rhythm patterns, and the ability to jam along to favorite tunes via
direct input from an external MP3 or CD player. Read More
Scientists have long suspected that metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity,
could be linked to our circadian rhythm or biological clock. For
example, laboratory mice with altered biological clocks often become
obese and develop diabetes. Now biologists at UC San Diego have
discovered that a chemical, which affects the activity of a key protein
that regulates our biological clock, can repress the production of
glucose by the liver, offering a promising new direction for the
development of a new class of drugs to treat diabetes. Read More
We’ve seen a number of next-generation display technologies emerge in recent years, such as Sony’s “Crystal LED,” Uni-Pixel’s time-multiplexed optical shutter (TMOS) technology, and quantum dot LED
(QLED) display technology from LG and QD Vision, and now there’s
another one to add to the mix. While displays based on the new
“spintronic” OLED technology invented by physicists at the University of
Utah are still some years off, the researchers say they should be
brighter, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the LEDs found
in the current crop of TVs, computer displays, traffic lights and other
electronic devices. Read More
Muti-touch functionality was added to Wacom's
Intuos5 graphics tablets earlier this year and, after winning much
praise from users, it's no surprise to see it arrive on the company's
Cintiq range of interactive pen displays. The Cintiq range was first introduced in 2005
and the addition of the Cintiq 24HD touch now allows users to use their
fingers to pan, zoom and rotate the canvas at the same time as using
the pressure and tilt sensitive pen. Read More
For the first time, a team of astronomers has
"observed" a filament of dark matter connecting two neighboring galaxy
clusters. Dark matter is a type of matter that interacts only very
weakly with light and itself. Its very nature is mysterious. Mapping the
dark matter filament's gravity was the key observation. The result is
considered a crucial first step by scientists - it provides the first
direct evidence that the universe is filled by a lacework of dark matter
filaments, upon which the visible matter in the universe is distributed
like small beads. This groundbreaking observation is consistent with
modern cosmological models, but the story of dark matter actually starts
some 80 years ago. Read More
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's
National Ignition Facility (NIF) have achieved a laser shot which
boggles the mind: 192 beams delivered an excess of 500 trillion-watts
(TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light
to a target of just two millimeters in diameter. To put those numbers
into perspective, 500 TW is more than one thousand times the power that
the entire United States uses at any instant in time. Pew-Pew indeed ... Read More
Most lamps are strictly functional. Save for the
light they add to a dark room, they essentially disappear quietly amidst
louder, larger, more noticeable home accessories. The Andromeda Lamp is
a different kind of lamp. The military-inspired lamp is a functional
and fashionable (if military-spec-style lighting is to your taste)
design that promises to stand out in any room. Read More
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) have
identified an inexpensive nanorod catalyst with efficiencies rivalling
that of platinum. Composed of nitrogen-enriched iron-carbon nanorods,
the new catalyst holds the promise of cheaper, more efficient microbial
fuel cells (MFCs) that generate their own hydrogen from waste water Read More
There was a time not so long ago that my inkjet printer
saw a lot of action. Nowadays, however, it can sit idle for weeks or
even months before being called into service. But when it is called
upon, the long break between print jobs means the print heads are
usually clogged and an ink-wasting head clean needs to be performed.
Taking inspiration from the human eye, researchers at the University of Missouri (MU) have developed a print nozzle that prevents the ink inside from drying out when not in use. Read More
The recent discovery at the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) of a
massive particle "consistent with" the predicted properties of the Higgs
boson hit the news with the force of a hurricane. But the phrase
"consistent with" suggests that the CERN observation may also be
"consistent with" other types of particle. Is it or isn't it? We're
going to attempt to clarify the situation for you. Read More
If you’re looking to complement your air-conditioned shirt
with a pair of pants to help keep your bottom half cool in the summer
heat then Japanese company Kuchofuku has you covered. The Kuchofuku
Air-Conditioned Cooling pants feature two battery-powered fans to direct a refreshing flow of air onto your legs and nether regions. Read More
Well, it only makes sense ... they’ve come up with an electronic replacement for the door lock key, so why not the combination padlock, too? That’s what Master Lock
has done, with its new dialSpeed lock. Although the retro grouch in
some of us may find it a bit overdone, it does offer a couple of useful
features. Read More
Nissan has unveiled the second-generation of its Note Mini MPV. The original Note
was launched in 2004 in Japan, with the European model going on sale in
2006. The redesigned hatchback sports a new “Squash Line” exterior
character line and more aerodynamic body shape and also includes
Nissan’s Around View Monitor (AVM) system. Read More
For the past 14 years, teams of engineering students from around the world have pitted their custom-built race cars
against one another, at the Formula Student competition in the UK. This
year’s event, which took place once again at the Silverstone Racing
Circuit, saw a milestone in the event’s history – it was the first time
that a hydrogen-powered car raced against petrol-burning competitors.
The car was the Forze V, from The Netherlands’ Delft University of
Technology, and it actually did pretty well ... out of a total of over
100 vehicles, it ended up tied for 29th place last Saturday. Read More
Liquid crystal video projectors could be getting
smaller, more energy-efficient, and less expensive. Currently, such
devices require polarized light for the projection of images.
Unfortunately, conventional LEDs only produce unpolarized
light. While an optical filter is typically used to polarize it, the
polarization process wastes over 50 percent of the original light,
converting it into heat instead of allowing it to pass through. That
heat, in turn, must be dissipated using a noisy, power-consuming fan.
Now, however, researchers have created a new polarizing system that
allows almost 90 percent of the LED light to be converted to usable,
polarized light. Read More
We all like to think we're in control ... never
more so than when we're behind the wheel of a car, but there are
occasions when errors in judgement can lead to a gentle bump, or
something far worse. MIT researchers have developed a semiautonomous
collision avoidance system where the human driver has full control of
the vehicle until the system detects that the car is headed for a
collision or is too close to an obstacle for safety. When such a hazard
is detected, the system will take control of the vehicle, bring it back
within a calculated safe zone, and then hand control back over to the
driver. Read More
Aston University's entry into this year's Shell Eco-Marathon may look
a little low-tech, but that didn't stop the hydrogen-fueled cardboard
and plywood flat-pack car from scooping the Eco-Design award at the
European event, held in Rotterdam in May. Read More
Southern Stars Group LLC, the company responsible
for the popular SkySafari apps for iOS, Android and Mac OS X, is
thinking a little bigger with its next project. The publicly funded
SkyCube is a miniature CubeSat satellite that will orbit the planet,
transmitting low-resolution images of the Earth while broadcasting short
messages from sponsors in the form of data pings. In short, it's the
world's first social space mission. Read More
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