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Talking flowers and flaming Gameboys
Feb. 7th, 2007 07:24 amSource: Coolest Gadgets  When your battery-powered devices run out, the USB port can come to the rescue again. Exactly like a conventional recharger, except you can't plug it into those things called "wall sockets". You know, over there, where the computer is plugged in. |
Source: Gizmodo  The little pixie apparently is able to tell you what your plant is thinking. The mind boggles. |
Source: Gizmodo  Winnie the Pooh speakers, although the grin combined with the location of the speaker wires makes me wonder about the Bear of Little Brain. |
Source: Gizmodo  This pen doesn't use any ink; rather, the nib is a metal alloy that sheds bits of itself when rubbed across a surface. Kind of like a high-tech crayon. |
Source: Gizmodo  Apparently, a Gameboy was tough enough to survive a firefight in the first Gulf War. It stilled worked when retrieved from the wreckage. |
For the paranoid among you, here is a little pocket-sized device that lets you check whether the paper currency you have in your hand is real or fake. It reads the magnetic code on the bill that, apparently, is "universally" applied to paper currencies across the world.
Homeland Security has proposed that they have Lockheed-Martin build a huge airship to park itself 12 miles up to monitor... what? The system is intended to be solar-powered so able to stay aloft for up to a year, and comes equipped with high resolution cameras. The blimp is expected to be 17 times larger than the Goodyear blimp, and is being proposed for border surveillance. All for a paltry $40 million(US).
So, what do you do when you have a Wiimote and access to an industrial robot? You use the robot to play games. Two engineers have adapted the Wiimote's position-sensing capabilities to translate the player's motion into robot motion. Follow the link to the original article to see them adapt the system to play tennis and wield a sword.
A professor at the University of Tokyo has developed a deformable surface that responds to graphics displayed on a screen, extending visual art into textural art. In other words, the art can be appreciated both visually and tactilely.
An inventor claims to have developed an ultra-capacitor that can outperform contemporary Li-ion batteries. Specifically, they claim 10 times the energy capacity, meaning a range of 500 miles between recharges. Moreover, the materials used are supposed to be environmentally friendly. There is, understandably, some skepticism toward the claims, so we will have to wait and see what happens if and when a prototype actually emerges.
