Never mind strapping a flashlight to your head like an old miner, or around your ear like a Borg — this fiber optic light glove brings the light literally to your fingertips. Powered by a battery pack embedded in its wristband, the light source is also in the wrist band, directed by fiber optic pipes to either shine a shadow-free spotlight directly on your work, light up the entire glove in a diffuse floodlight, or both.
Besides being super-handy while working in tight/dark spaces, this could be a boon for night-side traffic cops or ravers of all stripes. We especially like the strategically-located controls, right there on your thumb within easy reach of your index finger. The tech used by this clever design concept might not be quite ready to be cost-effective just yet, but when it is, we’ll wear one of these on each hand.
Design Boom, via Gizmo Watch
As we say goodbye to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, let's take a look back at the glories of Olympic architecture from the past, and look forward to even more innovation to come. The competition for the honor of hosting the Olympic Games is an intense, worldwide fight, but with that prize comes the tremendous responsibility of building a complex of structures to support the games.
Every Olympic city has risen to the challenge, putting its best design and creative minds into the limelight for all the world to see. Some of the efforts have been more successful than others, and a few of the host countries have spent decades paying off the debt incurred by such architectural ambition. Hit continue to see our picks for the Top 10 best Olympic buildings in history.
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The delicate aircraft you see here just broke a world record for the longest-lasting unmanned flight. It stayed aloft for 83 hours, 37 minutes, charging up its lithium-sulfur batteries with its solar panels during the day, allowing it to cruising 24/7 at an altitude of 60,000 feet.
This 66-pound plane was hand-launched by the guys you see here, and was controlled by an autopilot guided by GPS for the 3.5-day flight. You won’t be booking any tickets on such an aircraft anytime soon — the military hopes to use these things as surveillance platforms, powered by the sun and flying indefinitely.
Via Associated Press
It may seem a bit odd to wrap something as 21st century as an iPod dock in a nostalgic 1940s style package, but we've seen plenty of retro style iPod tech before. The difference with the Xi Classic Jukebox is that despite the 1946 Wurlitzer inspired styling, it incorporates some pretty fancy modern technology for playing your tunes. A 150 watt per channel stereo amp drives a pair of three-way speakers, while the cover art or video info is displayed on the built in LCD screen. This thing is so huge, that your iPod almost gets lost on the front panel. Completing the experience, there's a multi-color LED lighting system that changes its pattern and color to fit the mood of the music.
The Xi Classic Jukebox is currently available in the UK, the main catch being its $11,000+ price tag.
Drinkstuff, via Born Rich
Without a wife or girlfriend around to keep me in line, my laundry pile tends to build to frightening proportions before it receives the attention it deserves. So perhaps I need a washing machine that can work without needing my input.
A finalist in Electrolux's 2008 Design Lab competition, the iBasket doubles as a big laundry hamper, that will start cleaning automatically once the weight of the clothing reaches a predetermined point. Designed by Guopeng Liang at China's Tongji University, the iBasket has a WiFi link that lets you control the machine from your computer, and sends you a message when the cleaning is complete. That all sounds pretty good, although it looks like the iBasket would take up plenty of precious space in my Manhattan apartment. Perhaps Liang should think about an under sink version.
Electrolux Design lab, via Born Rich
They look like everyday objects, but each one highlights a cutting-edge technology. Clothes that won't stain. Pizza cut by a laser. A light bulb that gets power from the air. And a woman who can speak and move but isn't real. Each one a familiar situation, each one turned on its head by technology. This is where our civilization's cleverness is most visible — at the barrier between what we're just able to do and what we do every day, where our ordinary lives meet extraordinary ideas, the moment when our expectations aren't just changed, but expanded and inspired across to entire kingdoms of possibility — a little place we like to call… DVICE.
The top tech stories from the week:
Lunocet Monofin lets you swim faster than Phelps, jump like a dolphin
You won't win any medals, but you'll be going so fast you won't care.
Sonance Kayak speaker rocks like a stereo pair, looks sexy doing it
It does the work of stereo speakers, but you'll want two anyway.
Wind-powered Greenbird ready to break land speed record
A triumph for wind power.
The 11 hottest tube amps you can buy
This list goes to eleven!
Pneumatic Cybertek Wings fly straight out of a cyberpunk wet dream
Personal wings that expand at the flick of a switch.
$1.69 million personal submarine is a real bargain
Most important: it's lightweight enough for you to keep it on the back of your yacht.
SHIFT: Obama's secret weapon — the cellphone
Senator, young voters are calling. And not getting polled.
AirKick human catapult slam-dunks brave riders
Never mind that this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
What do you get when you bring together a pizza oven, some nail polish and inkjet printers? Solar cells. You and I may be scratching our heads, but the woman behind the process known as iJet, Nicole Kuepper, won two Australian Museum Eureka Prizes — Australia's top science awards. The real beauty of Ms. Kuepper's accomplishment — beyond the simple recipe — is that a low-heat process like this is both cost effective and easily replicated, meaning that developing countries could get everything they need for cheap, renewable energy using junk you could find at a garage sale.
How does it work? We don't know, and probably won't be able to find out as it has just been recently patented, but it feels like a better world already.
The Australian, via Treehugger
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Samsung gave Olympic fans an alternative way to see the games in Beijing: with their very own monitor, enclosed in a periscope-like apparatus. Details are scarce, but the picture says enough. If you saw one of these weird fixtures, wouldn't you tell your friends about it? Whether they'd go out and buy a Samsung phone or even have a higher opinion of the company is debatable, but to the corporation's mind at least you're still talking about it.
Mini Cooper also had an idea for alternative advertising. Check it out by clicking Continue.
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You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to get a classy, beautiful light fixture. Sure, you could drop a lot of coin on a crystal chandelier, but come on. Who are you, Louis VI? You can save money and get something that's much more with the times than that at the same time.
Just look at this ReGlow lamp. Beautiful, isn't it? Now look closer. Yes, it's comprised of a bunch of empty soda bottles. It's a lamp the classiest hobos in existence would own. The lamp itself is a ball of light that has holes for you to screw the bottles in, which you supply yourself. It's a clever and surprisingly nice-looking lamp, one that I wouldn't mind hanging in my own apartment. And I'm not even a hobo!
Via Yanko Design
The final frontier of wireless tech is upon us, with Intel showing off its electricity flying through the air with better efficiency than ever. While it’s not the first wireless power transmitting device we’ve seen, this one uses resonance rather than induction, and boasts 75% efficiency. Hey, that means if you send 100 watts across the room, 75 of those watts will actually make it to the other side.
For now, the prototype is in the form of two copper rings that resonate together at a certain frequency, magically transmitting electricity from one to the other. Of course the tinfoil hat-wearing cranks will want to know where that extra 25% of the obviously deadly radiation goes on its way from here to there, but Intel says never mind that; it’s safe for us, it’s just that the gadgets will get fried with the current tech.
As soon as this is perfected, we’ll be in for a techno treat. Imagine wirelessly charging up your cell phone, or quickly installing some truly wireless speakers, or placing a wireless toaster on your kitchen table. The possibilities are endless. But in this era of energy price hikes, do we really want to throw away 25% of the power just for the sake of convenience?
Via Wired Gadget Lab
When superdesigner Philippe Starck creates a household object like a lamp, he doesn’t mess around. His Miss K table lamp, designed for fancy-schmancy Italian lighting company Flos, plays peekaboo with the diffuser that only shows up when the light is on.
Available in red, blue, green, clear/silver and black, we especially like that pinstriped look of the lampshade. If we had a spare $288 in our lighting budget, we’d be snapping up this sexy chrome and glass bauble in a Milan minute. Just makes us glad Starck decided to come out of retirement.
Imagine talking to your computer and having it transcribe everything you say without even touching the keyboard. That's the promise of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 ($99.99 for the Standard Edition, up to $1,599 for specialized medical and legal editions), the latest in a long line of voice-recognition software packages that have steadily gotten better with each iteration. I've been using NaturallySpeaking since version 7, so I eagerly anticipated the release of this latest version.
The developer of the software, Nuance, called us and boasted about the most significant advance of the software: accuracy. We found it odd that the company's hype for version 9.5 claimed accuracy of “up to 99%,” and now this allegedly more accurate version 10 touts accuracy of “up to 98%.” Although we've learned not to take those quotes too seriously, Nuance also says this version is faster. Because I use NaturallySpeaking every day, the prospect of better accuracy and faster processing was enticing.
Could Star Trek-like voice recognition finally be here? Click Continue and watch us load up this version of NaturallySpeaking 10, putting it to the acid test.
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So this is what they do at parties in Germany? Plunk down a sizable sum of Deutschmarks, and you’ve rented yourself an AirKick, a catapult that spews out a jet of water that can sling a brave rider 26 feet into the wild blue. Let’s just hope there’s a foam pit or forgiving body of water nearby.
Never mind that this is a lawsuit waiting to happen — this has got to be an extraordinary thrill ride. Yeah, 26 feet doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re the one riding atop that streaming jet of water, it might seem like you’re on your way to the moon.
Jochen Schweitzer, via Baller House
Being in a foreign city can be an intimidating experience. You don't know your way around, you don't know the language, you don't know where the good restaurants are. You need a little help. This portable search engine concept device by Jukka Roitto provides said help, using GPS and the internet to help you figure out where you are and what you're doing.
Wrapping around your wrist, this touch-screen enabled device would provide you with maps and info on where you were. It also acts as a portable music player. Hmmm… this all sounds pretty familiar. I'm wondering why anyone would use this when they could just keep an iPhone or similar smartphone in their pocket. It provides all of these features plus, you know, a phone. But hey, maybe you're too lazy to reach into your pocket. Fair enough.
Via Tuvie
One of the most annoying things about carrying around a portable music player like an iPod everywhere you go is that when you're finished listening to music, you need to find a place to put your headphones. Do you bunch them up into a ball and shove them in your pocket? Carefully wrap them around your player and put them in your bag? Either way, it's a pain and not great for your headphones.
The Holeder Earphone is a brilliant headphone design that lets you link up your headphones behind your neck, turning them into some sort of strange necklace. They stay untangled and uncrimped, always at hand and ready to be popped back into your ears whenever you want. They're pretty nice looking, too. As long as they sound good, I'm sold.
Via Yanko Design
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