Do you exist? Do you like music? If you answered yes to both questions, you’ll likely find this pretty neat. Bluebrain, a band based out of Washington DC, have just released a new album – but not as a disc, or even as an iTunes download. The album is a location-aware app that tracks you via GPS and causes the music to evolve as you move around. Sadly, the area you must move around in order for the ‘album’ to work is ‘The Mall’ park area in Washington – although, if you’re lucky enough to live around there, you might want to check this out. I haven’t been this excited about music in ages. For the rest of us across…

Not content to robotically emulate any and all members of the animal kingdom, humanity has turned to another branch of the Tree of Life for inspiration: that of plants. Japanese artist Akira Nakayasu has developed plant (no, really, it’s just called ‘plant’), an interactive robotic installation that does little but look beautiful. Then again, what else would a plant-bot do? The installation is designed to resemble grass blowing in the wind, and reacts to nearby objects – for instance, a human hand. 169 shape memory alloy actuators control 169 artificial leaves, which bend and sway independently,…

Waterloo Labs, a team of engineers at National Instruments Corp in Oregon, have unveiled the source code for their pet project ‘EyeMario’, which is more or less what you may guess on your second or third try – Mario Bros, as controlled by your eyes. It’s a really cool concept: electrodes hooked up to the user’s face measure the polarity of his or her freaking eyes and the relative position of them within their sockets to deduce what the user is looking at in-game. The result looks… well, suffice it to say that the on-screen action looks about as adept as my mother’s Mario skill. But that doesn’t stop…

Better wash up your loins, guys, ‘cuz they ’bout to get blown. For all the readers out there who work in 3D, you may or may not love the crap out of this: the world’s first (as far as I’m aware, anyway) spherical mouse. Though it’s probably bullspit for anything other than 3D design, the Axsotic Spheric Mouse is a much-needed relief for those designers sick of holding three keys just to rotate the camera. The device pans and rotates along three of your favourite axes, and apparently can zoom, although that might require the holding of keys anyway. Guess you can’t win ‘em all. Whether this makes a real difference…

One of the deciding factors that made me go Blackberry instead of picking up an iPhone 4 was the tactile keyboard. I’m sorry, but there’s just no replacement for real buttons. I don’t care how swiftly you tapdance around that onscreen keyboard – the fact remains that it’s a f***ing screen. But maybe if I’d held out just a little longer, I could have gotten the tall glass of water in the iPhone desert that is this wicked rad flip out keyboard from ThinkGeek. The TK-421 (catchy name, guys) needs no explanation, so I won’t insult you by giving you one. Just bask in its rad, maybe put on a little music. It’s Bluetooth…

Oh, Japan. You’ll never cease coming up with the best stuff. Why, just last night I was regaling a friend about ‘head bath’, which is a bathtub. For the top of your head. It’s a hat, that– no, really, this exists. Don’t give me that lip. I’m not taking any guff today. Not from you. Guff-free Thursdays up in here. Anyway, I guess I was talking about something. We’ll get back to head bath later; right now, let’s rap about Smell-O-Vision. You may remember Smell-O-Vision – a technology from the 1960′s, Smell-O-Vision was a fad that was designed to release smells in sync with on-screen action. Of course,…

Check this. Seriously, check it. I can see your cursor on the scroll bar, there. Stop for a second and freaking check this, alright? Alright, cool. Here at Techi, as with most other tech blogs you can name, we frequently look at emerging technologies. Sometimes they rock, and this is most certainly one of those times. Engineers at the University of Washington have developed a prototype smartphone dubbed the ‘SqueezeBlock’ that… well, it kinda does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a phone. That you can squeeze. Alright, so it’s more than that. Really, it’s a shapeshifting phone, that can use…

When I dare put ‘rad’ in the headline itself, you know something must be goddamn rad as all hell. And this is, so you knew correctly. Fist bump. I refuse to give you any additional context for these pictures, because they say everything you need to know. It’s a(n official) Lego Wiimote. Or, rather: it’s a regular Wiimote, with Lego pegs built into the top and underside. Is that not the raddest goddamn thing in the universe? It’s not? Well, (s)he-so-tragically-born-without-an-imagination, consider the following: This + Mindstorms. Yeah, that’s sounding a little more badass now, isn’t it? Ya damn…

Twitterphiles hither and yon, gather and bear witness to the new Twitter.com. At a special event yesterday, Twitter unveiled a new iteration of its website, one with a focus on providing a more robust Twitter experience, among other things. The first thing you’ll notice, in this screenshot provided by TheNextWeb, is the absolutely-goddamned-monstrous side pane, which… by the looks of it, doesn’t immediately provide any info that wasn’t already largely useless. I still still still don’t understand Trending Topics, and I’m a complete whore for Twitter. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. But either…

Man, there is just some really neat tech flying around today. Seriously, it’s a Wednesday to remember. Not many Wednesdays are worth remembering, so be thankful. Yeah, so the whole ‘throwing a projector onto a surface to interact with a physical object’ card has been totally played, but I’ve never seen it as mesmerizing as this. Dubbed ‘vinyl+’, artist Jonas Bohatsch has taken a regular turntable and jazzed it up with visual interactivity, allowing for a uniquely synaesthetic experience. “The behaviour of the visuals projected will change depending on various variables,” Bohatsch explains….