miniature
Gadgets
Back In The Day, Patents Actually Meant Something
11:30AM Dan Nosowitz | From 1790 until 1870, patent applications had to also include a miniature model, less than 12 square inches in size, along with the idea. We wish the policy were still around, at least to weed out the more ridiculous ideas. More »
Random Stuff
“Snack-Size” Cigarettes Offer Super-Size Nicotine
5:00AM Mark Wilson | In an era when smokers are subjected to the hostile smoking environment of…fresh air…our friends at Philip Morris are ready to accommodate those looking to expedite the process stepping outside. They’ve packed the same amount of nicotine goodness into a smaller package—think of it as the iPod Nano of the lifespan cigarette world. More »
Music
Tok Tak MP3 Player Looks Like Audio Jack, Comes with Base Station
9:38PM Addy Dugdale | Ah, holidays. Spend a couple of weeks on a faraway island, where the words “internet” and “connection” are met with baffled stares, and it’s easy to forget what one’s purpose in life actually is. And then you come across a concept gizmo like the Tok Tak and it all comes flooding back: The Giz! Her readers! Hot Verdommer and Eek-a-poos, I’d better get back to work before the editor realises that I didn’t just nip out to get a packet of fags from the store. Designed by Tae-won Kim, the Tok Tak looks like an audio jack but is actually a basic MP3 player concept that comes with a base station — which, judging by the photo below, looks a bit like Tae-won got his inspiration from gazing at a smoke detector. More »
Hardware
MIT Researchers Develop Tractor Beam For Microchip Manufacturing
4:50AM Adrian Covert | Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a method of arranging cells on a microchip using what they call “optical tweezers.” These optical tweezers consist of a fine tuned beam of laser light, which moves cells around on the chip. Scientists say this could have may beneficial applications in the fields of biomedical and materials research. In the picture shown, they used said tweezers to arrange the letters “MIT” on the surface of the chip. Now if they could do that with Harvard’s marching band at a football game, I’d really be impressed. [AP via Science Daily] More »
Hardware
Hitachi Mocks Your Manhood, Makes World’s Smallest RFID Chip
10:50AM Haroon Malik | Hitachi has just rolled out a worryingly small RFID chip, measuring an impressively tiny 0.15 mm x 0.15 mm x 0.0075 mm. The chip packs in a 128-bit ROM, which is able to store a 38-digit number. Hitachi previously held the title for world’s smallest RFID, but the now second place tag was comparatively large at 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm. More »World’s Smallest Radio Is Just Atoms Wide, Still Needs AAA Battery
6:24AM Wilson Rothman | University of California researcher Chris Rutherglen shows off a radio made of carbon nanotubes, measuring “a few atoms across,” that’s 1,000 times smaller than today’s radio technology. As you see in the video, the bummer is that the teeny weeny radio still needs what looks like a AAA battery to power up. This doesn’t have Rutherglen and his prof, Peter Burke, too upset. It’s a breakthrough that will spread, as they explain in their research paper: More »
Phone Projector Concept Allows Impromptu Sales Meetings
7:40AM Jason Chen | This cellphone projector may not be completely original—weve seen the real thing before—but it does look quite cool. The concept has a Windows Mobile phone projecting your computer’s desktop onto a wall so you can make presentations or show off a cool YouTube video. It’s 10 shades of impractical right now, but an interesting concept nonetheless. Why that Windows Mobile phone is projecting an OS X desktop is beyond us though. [Yanko Design] More »Micro Camera Shows the Workings of a Combustion Engine
12:33AM Addy Dugdale | Someone had the great idea of putting a high-pressure, heat-resistant camera inside the cylinder of a four-stroke engine. Shooting at 1000 fps, the camera recorded just exactly what happens to make engines run. Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow! [LiveLeak] More »
Remarkable Nikon Small World Microscope Photography Winners
3:59AM Mark Wilson | It’s been an amazing week for microscopic photography buffs (and those of us who just like to look at neat pictures with significance we can barely comprehend). Just the other day we featured this gallery of electron microscope photos from the Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest. Now, Nikon has just announced their winners in their Small World contest, comprised solely of photographs from beefy light microscopes (Ed: NOT like the ones you probably used in science class). The gallery is worth a click through, if only to remember that natural phenomenon are even crazier than Hollwood cgi. That top shot is the winner, a red and green fluorescence image of a double transgenic mouse embryo. [nikon via medgadget] More »
