(Video NSFW due to swearing) Some very clever hackers at Harco Laboratories have created a device that gives you a little electric shock – wait for it – for thinking. By hooking up a device that monitors brainwave activity to a little electric shock kit (which, I guess you just pick up at Walmart?) they have been able to create something that punishes you for using your brain. (It’s like a metaphor for the internet or something!)…
For you youngsters out there, Weird Science was a movie from the 1980s in which 2 young boys used a computer to literally create the woman of their dreams.Well, we aren’t there yet, but with a development out of the University of Missouri, we’re one step closer. Researchers at the school have developed a working 3D printer that uses something called ‘bio-ink’ – a mushy, gooey substance made from human cells – that binds to a bio-paper template, which then dissolves to leave something that looks like a human body part….
If China and Google were listed as a couple on Facebook, right now they’d have to change their status to ‘It’s Complicated’, as China’s state-run Xinhua news agency expressed an angry and pointed criticism of Google’s behavior. For weeks now, rumors have been swirling that Google is about to pull out of China after it became unhappy with the conduct of the Chinese government, who Google have suggested may have been connected to a hacker attack that temporarily took down the search engine in China….
Conventional wisdom states that successful companies succeed when they make a good product for a reasonable price aimed at the average Jane or Joe. Right? But what if, instead of that, companies succeeded by either focusing on the high end or the low end, ignoring ‘the average consumer’ altogether? That might sound a surefire way for a company to self-destruct. But finding success through bypassing the middle is exactly what is being suggested by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker. Looking at companies like Apple on one end, and H&M and Ikea on the other, Surowiecki argues that the high- and…
Alright coffee drinkers, the jig is up. You say how much you “like the taste” or that “it’s a relaxing ritual”, but we know the truth: you only drink coffee for the caffeine! Or at least, that seems to be the mentality behind a coffee inhaler called ‘Le Whif’ invented by Harvard Professor David Edwards. By using a technology that reduces the drop size of liquids until they’re small enough to become airborne, the biodegradable inhaler can inject up to 8 puffs of caffeine-filled coffee goodness into a waiting user’s mouth. …
Skeptics who don’t believe people will use Apple’s iPad to read books may have to rethink their position today, after Amazon showed off a pretty impressive Kindle app for the iPad and other tablet computers. Kindle for tablets is both a reading app and a bookstore, allowing you to instantly purchase books as well providing a fancy-shmancy touch-screen interface for reading them….
Didn’t we all just buy HDTV’s? Wasn’t HD supposed to be the next holy grail, and after we’d all plonked down our cash, we wouldn’t have to worry about new technology coming along for years? Nope. Partly thanks to Avatar, manufacturers are pushing 3-D in a big way, and those who want to stay on the cutting edge will have to invest in another massive set to hang on the wall. But computer graphics company Nvidia are looking to make a bit easier to adopt 3-D by allowing you to use the video card you already own to display 3-D movie. The new product is called 3DTV Play, and is a software solution that allows for any…
When the iPad was initially announced, you could sum up a lot of the reaction with that common internet expression ‘meh’. Though the Apple hype train was in full effect, many people didn’t see what all the fuss was about, and it literally was only a few minutes after the keynote that the phrase ‘it’s just a big iPod Touch’ to be bandied about. But that started to change when people started to demo what magazines might look like on the iPad. Most prominent was the demo from tech taste-makers WIRED, whose vision of what an iPad magazine might look like was slick and promising. It featured an easy ‘swipe to…
Blackberries – you gotta’ love ‘em. But lets be honest: if you have one, you peer over at your friend’s iPhone or Motorola Droid with more than a little envy. Sure, that Crackberry may be practical. But even the latest version aren’t exactly pretty. That all looks set to change, if a couple of leaked screenshots are anything to go by. …
When you think baby monitors, you think clunky, crackling technology from the 80s, right? Well, in this new concept Sikker, there is none of that. Quite to the contrary, this concept of two high-tech wristbands is state of the art tech for keeping tabs on your wee one. Rather than just transmitting sound, the small device wraps around the wrists of baby and mom or dad, and sends biometric information like temperature or pulse. On top of that, it is also an alarm clock and watch, and can even play music to soothe baby to sleep. The device uses a very cool-looking base to transfer all that information,…
You gotta’ hand it to the Swedish team behind this World of Light concept video. While other people think about cool new designs for suitcases, these folks are thinking about light travel, man. Okay fine, no-one really knows that means, but the vision of the future presented in the video sure looks cool. But beyond the far-out visions of what travel might be like in the future, the video puts forward some really interesting ideas. Rather than heading to the airport, you just go to a ‘hotel’ that happens to have a state-of-the-art tech that will launch you into space….
For as long as humankind has existed, we have wanted to become invisible – mainly so we can inappropriately spy on people. Well, the creepier among us are one step closer to realizing that goal, as some certified scienticians say they’re one step closer to creating an invisibility cloak.. The German team working on the project claim that a new material made up of microscopic polymer rods actually change the speed and direction of light that hits it, making the thing behind the material less visible to the human eye. …
