3D-Printed Table Lamps Bloom Like Flowers Filled with Light

Designer Patrick Jouin uses 3D-printing digital technology—rapid prototyping and 3D printing—to create his Bloom Table Lamp.

The award-winning lamp design transforms from initial bud-like position—its petal/shade drawn in—into a full bloom that releases maximum light. The single-piece print can be expanded or contracted by hand, depending on the amount of light desired. More here.

Paper-Thin, Distortion-Free Lenses Could Make Pint-Sized Pro Cameras Possible

Using an ultrathin wafer of silicon and gold to focus lightwaves, researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have created a revolutionary new kind of camera lens that completely eliminates the image distortion created by traditional glass lenses. It could not only pave the way for lighter cameras that are still as capable as today's swappable lens models, but even cameraphones that snap images as impressive as a DSLR.

The lens measures in at a mere 60 nanometers thick, so for all intents and purposes it's almost just a 2D object. (But not quite.) It's made by plating a thin wafer of silicon with a layer of gold that's then etched away to create a series of V-shaped structures across its surface. When light hits these structures it's slowed ever so slightly which changes its direction—like the glass in a traditional lens does. And by carefully tuning the angle, size, and spacing of these V-shaped structures across the surface of the lens, it can capture wide-angle or telephoto images without the distortion that's seen from something like a traditional fish-eye lens.

Mirrorless swappable lens cameras have already taken a bite out of the DSLR's market share, but if and when this technology hits the market it could serve as a death blow to the heavy bulky cameras preferred by professional photographers. More here.

LG Announces 27-inch Personal Smart TV

No room in your apartment for LG's upcoming 84-inch monster? Don't worry, the Korean outfit has something in your size, as well. The company's TM2792 promises the same Cinema 3D passive glasses technology as its big brother in a more compact 27-inch frame. 

The tube also promises to play nice with your other devices, featuring a MHL and WiDi for screen and content sharing. No word on pricing yet, but LG says the Personal Smart TV should land in European markets this September. More here.

NASA to Launch Mini lab, Test for Disease in Space

It's hard to find a good specialist on earth, let alone when you're floating 240 miles above it. That's whyNASA will test the Microflow, a breadbox-sized device that instantly detects cancer and infectious diseases, and can even sense the presence of rotten food. The Canadian-made device is a "flow cytometer," which works by analyzing microparticles in blood or other fluids and replaces hospital versions weighing hundreds of pounds.

Here on Earth, the device could let people in remote communities be tested more quickly for disease, or permit on-site testing of food quality, for instance. It will be particularly advantageous in space, however, where Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield will test it during his six-month ISS mission, allowing crew to monitor, diagnose and treat themselves without outside help. More here.

iPad Mini to get its own Event in October After new iPhone Reveal

After refreshing its computer range, Apple's gearing up for two events for its new phone and tablet hardware, according to sources at AllThingsD. Given the excitement welling up behind its next iPhone, many have noted (including Daring Fireball's John Gruber) that it would make a whole lot of sense to furnish both the phone and the heavily rumored smaller tablet with individual events -- and that is, apparently, what's going to happen. 

Unfortunately, the anonymous sources weren't revealing anything further -- Apple's yet to confirm that posited September 12th event date, let alone any secondary event. More here.

RIP Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon

Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and the first man to ever set foot on the moon, died to today at age 82 due to complications from his heart surgery three weeks prior.

From NASA:

Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. He began his NASA career in Ohio.

After serving as a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1955. His first assignment was with the NACA Lewis Research Center (now NASA Glenn) in Cleveland. Over the next 17 years, he was an engineer, test pilot, astronaut and administrator for NACA and its successor agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

As a research pilot at NASA's Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., he was a project pilot on many pioneering high speed aircraft, including the well known, 4000-mph X-15. He has flown over 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters and gliders.

Armstrong transferred to astronaut status in 1962. He was assigned as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission. Gemini 8 was launched on March 16, 1966, and Armstrong performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space.

As spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission, Armstrong gained the distinction of being the first man to land a craft on the moon and first to step on its surface.

As always, it is a terrible tragedy to lose a national hero, especially one whose accomplishments were as legendary and far-reaching as those of Neil Armstrong. With but a one historic step, he showed the world what kind of feats humanity is capable of achieving.

Evernote Introduces Evernote Business, Updates iOS Application to Version 4.4

Having already conquered the general consumer market on multiple platforms, Evernote's now taking its handy software tools to a more biz-oriented audience. Earlier today, the company proudly introduced Evernote Business, which, according to CEO Phil Libin, is "the same Evernote that's great for individuals, except now it's optimized so that you can use it in your small and medium-sized business environment." The newfangled Evernote Business will be launching later this December, with the note-taking outfit accepting early applicants on its website as we speak.

That's not all the news, however, since Evernote'salso updated its iOS application for the second time during August; bringing page and multi-shot camera features to the mix, while faster download times and improved PDF support on iPads can also be found inside the fresh 4.4 version. More here.

Kodak Is Selling Off Its Legendary Film Business

Kodak is really closing out its era as a photographic monolith, opting to sell off its film business entirely. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Kodak will not only sell its print film production, but also its digital imaging kiosks, and the printers and scanners that go with them.

Following its bankruptcy claim, Kodak had initially hoped to pay back the banks it owed by selling off part of its patent portfolio. But amid delays, Kodak realized they weren't going to make enough to cover the costs. The company hopes that by selling off it's personal imaging division and moving towards becoming a printer business, it can regain some of its mojo. More here.

Yes It’s Still Summer, but This Burton Jacket Will Make You Wish For Snow

Summer has been great, but as the weather is starting to change, you've got something to look forward too—snow. When you hit the slopes later this year, you have to look good and stay warm. It's no surprise that Burton's 2012-2013 collection fulfills both of those requirements, and this space-age Embark Snowboard jacket ($475) is whimsical and cool.

Fortunately, it has a Gore-Tex shell, so it's not the kind of cool that's going to have you hitting the jacuzzi after two runs. The coat is also equipped with plenty of pockets for all the things you inevitably need on the mountain, as well as layers you can shed and layers you can open, depending how cold the day is. While your mind might still be on the beach, it's fun to take a break and think about what you've got to look forward to once the seasons change. More here.

Scientists Clear Path to the Fountain of Eternal Youth

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered an efficient and totally safe method to turn adult blood cells "all the way back to the way [they were] when that person was a 6-day-old embryo." The discovery could be the key to cure the incurable—from heart attacks to severed spinal cord to cancer—and open the door, some day, to eternal youth.

Scientists believe that stem cell therapy could change medicine forever. However, these therapies are impossible to implement on a large scale because you can't acquire embryonic stem cells without having to use actual human embryos—an extremely controversial undertaking. The alternative has always been to use the stem cells found in umbilical cords—which is why rich people use umbilical cord storage facilities to guarantee future treatments for their kids—or use viruses to reprogram adult cells. These viruses can successfully return adult cells to their stem cell state, but the procedure opens the door to numerous complications as a result of potential DNA mutations. And those mutations could lead to cancer.

But this new method changes everything. To start with, it uses normal adult blood cells from the patient, so there's not need to keep umbilical cords in storage. It also doesn't use any virus reprogramming, so it's completely safe. It's also very efficient: researchers successfully transformed about 50 to 60 percent of adult blood cells into embryonic stem cells that can then be turn into any type of cell—a heart muscle cell, a bone cell, a nerve cell, anything. More here.

Compact Folding Scale For Compact Kitchens

Not all recipes call for precise measurements, or require you to painstakingly weigh out every single ingredient. So Joseph Joseph's new TriScale is the perfect tool for measuring ingredients without gobbling up a big chunk of countertop real estate when it's not in use.

A set of swivelling support arms fold away and protect a simple LCD display when the scale is buried in a drawer. But its minimal design doesn't mean the TriScale has limited functionality. Touch-sensitive controls ensure that physical buttons won't get clogged with spilled ingredients, and an "add and weigh" function allows you to do just that—weigh multiple ingredients as they're all being added to the same bowl. And when it hits stores this fall, you'll be able to grab one for an equally minimal $30. More here.

A Washable Keyboard That’s Worth Keeping Clean

Because even germaphobes deserve nice things, today Logitech unveiled its new K310 washable keyboard with a snazzy waterproof design that can be scrubbed and submerged in up to 11 inches of water. So it's perfect for the next time a sneezy co-worker uses your computer.

A set of drainage holes in the back helps the keyboard dry quickly after a bath, and the keys are laser printed with a UV coating so it's nigh impossible to accidentally scrub off the letters. The $40 keyboard even comes with various function key shortcuts for launching email, browsers, a calculator, or your media player of choice. And it will be available for sometime this month for just $40, a reasonable investment for any office if it helps prevent the spread of colds. More here.

A Heavy-Duty iPhone Case That Isn’t a Complete Eyesore

It's almost inevitable you'll drop your iPhone, and if it's caseless, it'll break both your device and your heart. But with Systm's cases, you might ensure that your phone will have a soft, safe landing.

Now if there's any chance you might upgrade when the new iPhone comes out (which is probably soon!), you maybe shouldn't buy a case now. But if you're sticking with the 4S, these rugged sleeves ($25-$50) will protect your Apple gadget with reinforced bumpers, cushy, corners, and Poron XRD foam in the pricier versions. But better to spend a little money on a case than a lot of money on a new phone, more here.

Lenovo's Seven-Inch Android 4.0 Tablet Passes Federal Testing, on Course for September Release

While pricing hasn't revealed whether it'll spar with the Nexus 7 for the hearts of bargain tablet shoppers, Lenovo's smaller Android 4.0 slab, the A2107, has called in at the FCC. Again, there's not all that much to glean from a tablet that's prone and turned off, but it does give the product another nudge towards launching next month.  More here.

Quick Release Handlebar Camera Mount

Most camera mounts seem targeted at extreme athletes wanting to record their over-the-top exploits with a GoPro strapped to their bike's handlebars. But Minoura's new quick release mount looks like it would appeal to the hipster community instead, letting them strap their plastic Lomos to their retro fixie bikes.

Its quarter-inch threaded bolt attaches to a camera's standard tripod mount, while a quick release spring lock makes it easy to then temporarily secure everything to a bike's handlebars. A cork ring at the base of the bolt prevents a camera from coming loose while the bike is jostling about, and the whole setup pops off in mere seconds for quickly snagging a candid shot. And for $18 it's a relatively cheap way to shoot bicycle POV shots without emptying an entire roll of duct tape. More here.

Secret Drawer Bookshelf Hides Your Most Embarrassing Collectibles

This brilliant shelf is perfect for anyone who loves to show off the tchotchkes they've amassed, but also keep the more embarrassing items out of sight. On top you can proudly display your collection of antique tea cups, while the secret drawer will easily hide all of your Pokemon trading cards

When closed, the 1.3-inch thick shelf won't draw any attention to itself thanks to a wraparound wood veneer that hides the drawer's seams. And in lieu of handles that would be a dead giveaway of its alter-ego, the shelf is opened using a set of magnetic 'keys' that easily detach when it's closed. Besides hiding the trashy tomes you enjoy curling up with at night, the shelf also makes for a great place to stash valuables—at least it would if Torafu Architects were to actually put it into production. More here.

Sony’s New HDR Video Capable Sensors Could Make Your Next iPhone Picture Perfect

Sony just announced its new line of next-gen Exmor RS, stacked CMOS image censors, and they look good.There are three different units in the new line, two of which are eight megapixels, along with a top-of-the-line one that packs 13 megapixels. Sony's also bringing out new f/2.2 lenses and revamped auto-focus modules. To top it all off, each one of these puppies is capable of HDR video recording.

These upcoming sensors are expected to come out sometime in October, so we probably won't actually see these start showing up in mobile devices for a little while. Still, it bodes well for the future of mobile photography and video, after all, Sony's Xperia cameras were already pretty good before this. These new modules should help spread the high-quality love around. More here.

The Full Resolution Video of Curiosity Touching Down on Mars

One of the biggest bummers about Mars Rover Curiosity's epic landing is that there was no news crew on the surface to catch footage of the descent. This full resolution video of Curiosity touching down from its own point of view is the next best thing.

This isn't the first video of touchdown, but it's the best. It's the result of stringing together all the high resolution shots the rover took on its way to the surface, high resolution shots that took a lot longer to get back to Earth than the initial thumbnails. If it seems a bit choppy, that's because Curiosity only took about four pictures per second. It might not be movie quality, but this is the best video out there of what it's like to land on Mars.

Fujitsu Making Laptops From Unwanted CDs and DVDs

Back in our day, we used to listen to music on shiny plastic discs with lasers, not any of your new-fangled Zunes and what not. That was back when bands had sensible names. These days, however, CDs and DVDs are remnants of a simpler time. 

Fujitsu will be putting those outdated media formats to work again, with are cycling program that uses the material to build shiny new notebooks, starting with the Lifebook P772/E enterprise laptop, with more models to follow. According to the company, the new program is set to reduce the use of new plastic by 10 tons a year and slice C02 emissions by around 15 percent.

Facebook to Backup its Servers With Low-Power Storage Devices at 'Sub-Zero' Data Center

Data backups come in all shapes and sizes. For some, they take the form of external hard drives or a slice of the amorphous cloud. As for Facebook, its upcoming solution is low-power deep-storage hardware contained within a 62,000 square-foot building in Prineville, Oregon near its existing Beaver State data center. Unofficially referred to as "Sub-Zero," the facility will store a copy of the social network's data in case its primary servers need to be restored in an emergency. Rather than continuously power HDDs that are only occasionally used, the new setup can conserve energy by lighting-up drives just when they're needed. 

One of the company's existing server racks eats up around 4.5 kilowatts, while those at Sub-Zero are each expected to consume approximately 1.5 kilowatts once they're up and running. Tom Furlong, Facebook's vice president of site operations, told Wired that there are hopes to create a similar structure alongside the firm's North Carolina data center. Since the Prineville project is still being planned, Zuckerberg & Co. have roughly six to nine months to suss out all the details before your photos are backed up at the new digs. More here.

Sony Reader Gets a new Design, Evernote Integration and a Free Harry Potter Book for $129

In the market for a new e-reader? One could certainly do worse than Sony's Reader line. The company's been packing features onto its devices, and the already leaked latest entry is no different, with upgrades over its predecessor, packed into a newly redesigned body with bigger, better looking buttons. Sony's promised more intuitive touch with the Reader PRS-T2, smoother zooming and improved page turning, this time out. On the sharing side of things, Evernote functionality joins the fray here, letting users save their favorite passages to the service. 

 Users can also post passages from books, along with corresponding covers and other identifying information to Facebook, if you're the sort who loves to share such literary info. On the store side of things, Sony's offering up browser-based account access now, so when users buy books on their desktop, they'll get pushed to the reader.

The PRS-T2 offers up 2GB of storage, two English and four translation dictionaries (though, contrary to its name, doesn't do so in an Austrian accent), two months of battery life (WiFi off) and the customary six-inch Pearl E-Ink display for $129. Oh, and Sony's also throwing in a free copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, for good measure.  More here.

How Tall Can a Skyscraper Really Get?

The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is a whopping 828 meters tall, and in 2018, the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia aims to top it by going to 1,000 meters. Is there a practical limit to this architectural oneupsmanship?

Apart from the wrath of a vengeful god, who will smite the hubristic constructions of man united, there are some factors which limit the size of our towers. Most of them are boringly practical, Atlantic Cities points out. Elevators, for instance, become problematic when your building starts coming up on near a mile in height. Likewise, building ridiculously high towers is expensive, and their bases tend to require tons of real estate.

If you could secure the money and land, however, and find people to stomach the painfully long elevator rides, it wouldn't be out of the question to build skyscrapers miles high. Chairman at the Council on Tall Buildings Tim Johnson told Atlantic Cities he'd worked on designing a building that could have been scaled to roughly two miles (about 3,000 meters) if it had ever been built:

"We proved that it is physically and even programmatically possible to build a building a mile-and-a-half tall. If somebody would have said 'Do it two miles,' we probably could have done that, too."

So long as you make your foundation sufficiently large, there's no reason that man-made buildings should be limited to any height less than that of the tallest natural mountain. It's the logistics of getting such a mammoth, phallic symbol actual built that proves to be the hardest part. More here.

Here’s Your Next Oversized Galaxy Note 2 Phone for Giants

If you love the big screen of the Galaxy Note, you're going to love the (rumored) larger 5.5-inch screen of the Galaxy Note 2 even more. Here's a leaked photo of it. It's really big. That about does it.

KnowYourMobile says the phone—very close to becoming a small tablet, roughly the size of a young guinea pig—"will feature a quad-core processor, presumably Samsung's Exynos 4 Quad, as well as 2GB of RAM and Samsung's next-generation S-Pen technology." None of that really matters, because people just want a big phone. A phone that's big. Start warming up your fingers before it arrives on and possibly damages store shelves at the end of the year. More here.

Instagram 3.0 Adds Photo Maps, Infinite Scrolling and Speed Improvements

Wondering if that Facebook acquisition would slow down the pace of innovation at Instagram? Perhaps v3.0 will answer that. The famed photo sharing network -- now some 80 million users deep -- is detailing its latest user interface overhaul today, and geolocation is at the heart of it. The benefits of geotagging and the usefulness of tagged photos from an archive / diary perspective, the newest edition of the app introduces a Photo Maps view. As the name implies, it overlays photos with a map underneath, giving people a far more visual look at what they were seeing at a given point on Earth (or Mars, assuming Curiosity hasn't reached its data limit this month).

Beyond that, the app includes "multi-line caption editing, more streamlined photo uploading, speed improvements and infinite scroll,". Interestingly, the Twitter "Find Friends" feature has been yanked in the latest build due to Twitter shutting off its API to the company last month. If you're wondering about a master plan for Photo Maps, it's pretty simple; just as you'd tune into #nbcfail on Twitter to read the latest musings about the Summer Olympics, hovering over London in Instagram could give you a highly filtered look at what kind of photos are emerging from an event in real time. And really, who wouldn't want to see 807 sepia-infused 1:1 shots of Usain Bolt? More here.

Carbonized Li-On Batteries Can Charge 100 Times Quicker

While lithium-ion batteries are the best we have, they often take an awful long time to charge. Now, though, a team of researchers has developed a new battery manufacturing technique which can cut charge time from hours to minutes.

The way current li-on batteries are made, they have conductors feeding the charge-holding particles held within the cell. The problem is that the charge is deposited from the outside in, as the charge-holding section in the middle isn't directly exposed to any current.

The new technique, though, developed by researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, makes batteries that are densely interwoven with conductors, so the entire battery can start charging at the same time.

To do that, the team place the cell material in a solution containing graphite, which causes carbon to permeate the materials. When carbonized, the result is "a dense network of conductors throughout the electrodes of the battery".

In tests, the team has shown that running conductors through the battery in this way produces cells which can can be recharged between 30 and 120 times faster than normal li-on batteries. The results are published in Angewandte Chemie.

Of course, pumping extra content inside the battery either reduces capacity or increases size slightly—but then, that's probably worth it if you can shave hours off your charge time. Now please, someone, hurry up and commercialize it. More here.