Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Design
Fibre Optic Clothing is Just as Horrid as You’d Expect
11:45PM Mark Wilson | Remember those green LED suits that were part of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies? They were a bit alien, but boy did the outfits create a remarkable artistic effect. Who knows? Maybe this fibre optic and LED clothing by Lumigram would be equally wondrous if worn by 2008 club-going ladies. But on its own accord, our inner fashion designer voice is whispering “pass” ever so gently. Besides, US$250 is too much to pay for any piece of clothing that exposes our navel before we lose some weight. [LumiGram via InventorSpot] More »
Design
Motherboard Walls Add That Special Something To Your Next Remodelling Project
11:30PM John Mahoney | These are the walls of a Human-Computer Interaction Institute lab at Carnegie Mellon, and as you can see, they provide plenty of opportunities to create such interactions on the fly when you snag your sweater on some spiky solder leads or that ZIF socket handle. Chris Harrison, a PhD student, bought old motherboards on eBay by the pound to completely adorn the lab in mo-bos. And while this is great for the computer science lab and maybe OK for the garage (maybe), don’t even think about doing this in your bedroom if you ever want to have sex again. It does look pretty sweet, though. More »
Gadgets
Foliage Penetrating Radar Detects Baddies In the Jungle, Bin Laden to Cancel Brazil Vacation
11:13PM Jesus Diaz | The latest version of Lockheed Martin’s FOPEN system–Foliage Penetrating Synthetic Aperture Radar–will make Predators happy, both the Unmanned Air Vehicles and the human alien hunters. The imaging system, which is part of the US Army’s TRACER–Tactical Reconnaissance and Counter-Concealment Enabled Radar–program gives high-resolution, near-real-time video of any target areas through very dense vegetation, following people and vehicles in the jungle and woods with 10-metre accuracy. Its precision, even from a very high altitude, is impressive: More »
Design
KitRadio Teaches Electronics By Turning Components into Diorama
10:50PM Kit Eaton | From Samuel Rhoads-Clarke, KitRadio is part DIY radio, part mini-artwork diorama. It’s designed to teach you about the inner workings of a gizmo that we take for granted as a “black box” item nowadays, or “become familiar with the technology behind the product” as Samuel puts it. To that end, the wooden box and components with brass images attached are self-assembly, and create a tiny urban- or farm-scene diorama when they’re completed. Sounds totally bizarre, and slightly cute at the same time… just the right thing to get techy kids interested. No word on whether it’ll become a product rather than a prototype. [Dezeen] More »
Gadgets
LED Floor Captures Digital Footprints
10:24PM Mark Wilson | As part of the 2008 World Expo, interactive floor designer Sensacell has built a 23 square metre installation from 1000 of their LED panels. Covered in strong, architectural glass, the floor responds to pressure by lighting up. And while that alone doesn’t sound all that exciting, the system tracks the pressure over time, allowing users to create a transient series of footprints that, I dunno, looks all futuristic…like the Sahara in the year 2832 when man has used all the sand to make those bottled sculptures you see at the mall. Check out the clip: More »
Design
Oasis Table Starts & Ends Fishy Life With Sand
10:00PM Gizmodo US Edition | Here’s something that you might miss among all the crazy junk at SIGGRAPH. It’s an interactive aquatic life table called Oasis, by designer Yunsil Heo, that is completely covered by fancy black sand. Why is it covered, you ask? Well, that’s what makes it interactive. By moving the sand so it will show the LCD screen below you begin to grow aquatic life. At first only little guppies appear, but over time the guppies start to grow into fish and other crazy aquatic creatures. Make the sand-less hole bigger and it starts to populate with more life. Then once your little fishies are all grown up, just cover them up with sand and they’ll be dead. [Oasis] More »
Toys
New Micro-Helicopter First With Proper Cyclic Controls, Says Japanese Maker
9:47PM Kit Eaton | Though Pico Z toy helicopters and their ilk are fun, they’re bloody difficult to control (even the Tandem Z version) since they lack the control sophistication of bigger models. But Kyosho is trying to sort that out with its upcoming “Minium AD Calibre 120 Readyset” micro-helicopter model, which has a proper cyclic control—the world’s first in a micro-copter, Kyosho says. It’s similar to that used to steer the blades of a real helicopter, and means you should be able to accurately hover, reverse and do banking turns. And crash. The 30-gram, 12cm model is a US$240 kit though, so you won’t really want to do that often. Out in September, in Japan. [CrunchGear] More »
Science
Hubble Completes 100,000th Orbit, Takes Yet Another Breathtaking Photo
9:35PM Jesus Diaz | Hubble, without a doubt the most spectacular digital camera in the solar system, has completed its 100,000th orbit. To celebrate, scientists pointed the telescope to NGC 2074, a spectacular star birthplace 170,000 light-years away, right next to the Tarantula nebula, where Ming of Mongo is probably building a weapon of mass destruction. Like always, the image–taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2–is breathtaking, especially the high resolution version: More »
Design
Bed Made of DC-9 Fins Lets You Join Mile High Club at Sea Level
9:10PM Kit Eaton | A chair made of torpedo-launcher parts just wouldn’t say “come hither” to techy ladies in the same way as this bed from Motoart. Dubbed Mile High, you can tell it’s aimed at the sexier end of the geek furniture market, partly as it’s marketed with a “a wonderful playground for you and your co-pilot” slogan, and especially when you notice the line of glowing red LEDs that pimp the frame’s lower edge. The 3.4 by 2.3 metre bed is made of two DC-9 stabiliser fins and a C-130 inner flap. And if there’s a particular aviator you want to attract between the sheets, you’ll likely have to save up: it’s price on application only, which generally means lots of dollars. [MotoArt via TFTS] More »
Robots
