When you ride your bike to and from work every single day, you're going to want to make sure it's as comfy as possible. And that's exactly what Alter Cycles is promising commuters with its unorthodox take on shock absorbers. Instead of integrating them into the front forks, the company's replaced the down tube on its bikes with a flexible bow that promises varying degrees of comfort.
By swapping in interchangeable down tubes of varying flexibility, a biker can fine tune their cycle's ride—from soft to stiff—depending on the terrain they face on their commute. When eventually available to the public, the Alter Cycles bike should sell for around $800, while the various down tube options should run anywhere from $75 to $100, with off-road versions also enroute.
So what do you think? Could this actually be a better alternative to front fork suspension systems? Or is this just another novel design that doesn't quite offer enough innovation to take the biking world by storm? More here.
The allure of a shiny new gadget is easy to overcome when it costs hundreds of dollars and comes with a multi-year contract. But cheaper contraptions, like the stuff you'll find in a kitchen store, are almost impossible to resist. Does anyone really need a salad spinner with a turbo button that promises 50 percent faster rotation speeds? No. But anything with a turbo option is just too tempting. Whether it's cars, computers, or EMSA's new Turboline salad spinner.
You can't go wrong with a stylish stainless steel bowl, but it's the pull string spinning mechanism—complete with that turbo mode which switches up the gearing on the fly—that suddenly has gadget fiends interested in drying produce. And at $45 without a contract—except maybe a personal contract to eat more healthy—salads suddenly seem a lot more appealing. More here.
Strenuous activity wears you out. No news there. But it turns out that exercising your biceps will make your legs just as tired as working out your quads. And for the first time, researchers seem to know why.
Researchers at Britain's Nottingham Trent University tested subjects on two different exercise setups: one group did two rounds of intense leg exercises, the other did arms followed by legs. Each group's second set of exercises showed about a 33% decline in performance — despite half of the subjects starting with fresh legs. Physiologically, this is puzzling: each muscle contains its own fuel (glycogen, ATP and phosphocreatine, for you science types), and your arms can't steal energy stored away in your legs. So what gives?
The hypothesis is that, while fuel use is contained to the muscle being exercised, the buildup of metabolites in the blood affects the whole body. In other words, the lactate, hydrogen and potassium your arms spit out while you're blasting curls will slow down your "fresh" legs almost as much as if you were grinding out squats, despite your quads having a full tank of fuel. So while exercise enthusiasts tend to work on each muscle group as its own ecosystem, it turns out the human body operates more like one integrated machine. More here.
SSDs are wonderful things that take up next to no space and are incredibly fast to boot. But while most people understand the basics data security on HDDs, the same isn't necessarily true of solid state storage.
Deleting files may not mean they're gone, overwriting them isn't safe, and a thorough scrub is at the whim of a micro controller, not the user. In this video, Professor Derek McAuley explains just how secure the data on your SSD is.
iOS is out. Provided you made it through updating purgatory, your iPhone is up and running on the new software. How do you like it so far?
iOS 7 is beautiful and colorful, and everything looks different—like your apps. But a new operating system takes some getting used to. There are going to be things you notice right off the bat that you really like, and others that you just don't, and there might be some bugginess you have to deal with. More here.
Not just one, but two of the guns were purchased by London's V&A Museum for an unknown price. It could have just printed out its own and called it a day, but instead it opted to purchase a pair actually fired by Texan law student Cody Wilson. You know, the real deal.
The V&A described the purchase this way in a statement about the gun:
The invention of this so called ‘wiki weapon’ sparked intense debate and upended discussions about the benefits of new manufacturing technologies and the unregulated sharing of designs online. The V&A has acquired two Liberator prototypes, one disassembled gun and a number of archive items to enhance its collection of 3D printed objects and represent a turning point in debates around digital manufacturing.
True enough. But it also goes to show that a 3D-printed replication isn't quite as good as the real thing. But you can't 3D-print history. Yet. More here.
Some people are all about candles. Dinner, baths, soy-based, scented. It's a whole thing. But candles can seem like more trouble than they're worth. These charcoal candlesticks from Japanese designer Eisuke Tachikawa have gravitas, though. There's something calming about them.
Tachikawa runs the design firm Nosigner and is currently showing home decor pieces in the French trade show Maison et Objet. No word on pricing or availability yet. The candles blend wax and charcoal to get the right look and warm glowing burn. Tachikawa likes to comment on memory in his pieces, and the candles reference materials used in heating and lighting rooms. And before they're burned the candles look even more like chunks of charcoal. They're pretty great looking. More here.
The Intel Developer Forum is coming to an end, meaning its execs get to go wild and show some of the oddball concepts under way at the tech giant. These include a processor so efficient it can pull all the energy it needs to run from a glass of red wine.
Intel’s Dr Genevieve Bell plonked two electrodes into a glass of wine, that then reacted with the acetic acid in the booze to create a tiny current enough to power an incredibly low power chipset. Intel believes these ultra low power chips are the future, especially when it comes to connecting people in less developed countries. There are billions of people out there who are yet to be effectively monetised through mobile advertisements, after all.
Another clever little Intel innovation involved a sensitive accelerometer configured to recognise the walking style of the person holding it. If your phone knows it’s being held by you, it’ll unlock things quicker as it knows it’s you and there’s a reason you want to hurriedly page through the photo gallery and SMS history. More here.
iPhone 5C pre-orders just went live and if you want to brighten up your life with some colorful plastic and if you want to avoid waiting in a silly line, you can head over to Apple.com to get your new iPhone.
The carriers are all taking pre-orders too (along with others), so hopefully you have an easy time landing the exact color you want.
Usually in times like this the Apple website gets hammered to oblivion and spurts out nothing. If history has taught us a few tricks in handling these iPhone pre-orders, it'd be to maybe give the Apple Store App a try if Apple.com fails you. More here.
The humble cassette tape, beloved of 80s music lovers, may now be defunct—but it's hardly surprising given that the once-revolutionary medium turns 50 today.
The natural descendant of the 8-track—which used similar magnetic tape but housed it in a much bigger, bulkier frame—the audio cassette was the brainchild of engineers at Philips. It's precise birthday is open to some debate, but Philips is insistent that the format was officially launched at its Amsterdam HQ on September 13th, 1963. Containing a length of audio tape 3.15 millimeters wide that ran at 1-7/8 inches per second, it was originally designed to replace reel-to-reel tape for dictation—but became far more popular than that.
While the tape is now an object that would confuse teenagers worldwide—superseded initially by CDs and all manner of new technologies since—for many of us it's both an iconic object and a source of misty-eyed nostalgia. Whether it be compiling a mix tape with expert precision, queueing at the music store to pick up that copy of Nevermind, or cruising a highway while popping one into your car's dash, there's surely no shortage of fond memories to recall.
Remember how your cassette player used to chew tapes up with seemingly now warning? How they slowly deteriorated in quality when you listened to them over and over? The way you had to time songs in order to make them fit on your mix tape? Or that horrible noise they used to make on rewinding? Ah, those were the days. Long live the cassette tape. More here.
After months of back and forth, scientists now agree that NASA's Voyager 1 has become the first manmade object to leave the solar system. And it only took 36 years to make the 12 billion mile-long journey.
It's obviously a major milestone for space exploration which is probably why scientists have been arguing for months over whether or not Voyager 1 had crossed the threshold into interstellar space. In the end, it all came down to the plasma surrounding the spacecraft. After a burst of solar wind and magnetic fields caused the plasma around the spacecraft to oscillate in April, researchers realized plasma was also 40 times denser at that point than it was in the heliosphere. This was a sign that the Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space, and the team ultimately determined that the spacecraft crossed the line in August 12 of last year. (Listen to the sound of interstellar space below.)
"Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and adding a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors," said NASA’s associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld. "Perhaps some future deep space explorers will catch up with Voyager, our first interstellar envoy, and reflect on how this intrepid spacecraft helped enable their journey."
In the meantime, all eyes are on Voyager 2, which is nipping at its sibling's heels, speeding fast into interstellar space. (That is, if 2 billion miles can be considered nipping at its heels.) Either way, Voyager is now on its way to another star. At it's current speed of 100,000 miles per hour, it'll only take her 40,000 years. More here.
The Evasion jailbreak for iPhones running iOS 6.x was patched up real well by Apple in iOS 6.1.3—but now, a dev has managed to finally crack version 6.1.4 on the iPhone 5.
iOS 6.1.4 rolled out in May for iPhone 5 users, offering bug fixes and stymying jailbreaks. But developer Winocm now has iOS 6.1.4 running Cydia on an iPhone 5. Details are prettythin on the ground, but Winocm has at least uploaded some of the code required to make the jailbreak work for iOS 6.1.4, and forums seem to suggest that some people have successfully managed to use it.
Sadly, though, it's quite an involved process: you'll need to wrangle with your own kernel exploits, as well as using Wincom's code, to jailbreak your iPhone 5 with iOS 6.1.4. One for the more technically minded, then. More here.
There's rarely a time when your smartphone couldn't use a bit of a charge. And to save you from always having to carry a cable in your back pocket, South Korea's LAB.C has cooked up an iPhone 5 case with a short, flexible Lightning adapter on the back.
It assumes you'll always have access to a computer or some kind of powered USB port, and that you don't expect your iPhone to wander far from said port with its two-inch cable. But these are small compromises to make—including an estimated price of around $20 to $30—when your phone's battery is on death's door. More here.
While it seems pretty certain that the next iPhone will come with a fingerprint scanner, what it will look like remains an open question. A "silver ring" around the home button (see below) is the prevailing theory.
Sure, these are just renders. But they're an excellent hint at what the Eye of Sauron Siri will look like in practice. And it's likely to be just about the only difference you'll notice between the iPhone 5S and the one that came before it. More here.
Star Wars droid R2-D2 made a cameo in the 2009 Star Trek movie, which left some fans wondering if the little guy made it into Star Trek Into Darkness. Now that the film is out on home media, R2-D2 has been spotted. Hi there!
Reader Rafael Oca passed along this screen shot, from somewhere around the one hour, 17-minute mark. After the Vengeance fires on the Enterprise while the ships are in warp, poor R2 gets sucked out of the ship with other members of the crew. I'm sure this plucky fellow will find a way back into the next film, though. More here.
The power of 1,000 suns? Pfft. That ain't nuthin'. A recent breakthrough in solar panel connections has allowed scientists to create arrays of solar cells that can stand strong under the blazing glare of 70,000 suns. Not that they'd ever have to, but still.
Stacked solar cells—which are exactly what they sound like—are some of the most efficient solar-sucking power generators on the market today. In general, they can turn just less than half of the sunlight they absorb into pure power. But stacked cell is only as strong as its weakest part; you have to connect the stacked cells in such a way that the energy doesn't get wasted in the connections. That gets especially hard under a lot of light.
Scientists at North Carolina State University recently discovered that a thin film of gallium arsenide in the solar cell junctions can stop virtually all voltage loss, and let the cells work efficiently under the power of 70,000 suns. Yeah, we only have one sun, but thanks to lenses we can beef that up to at least a few thousand in concentrated power.
Dr. Salah Bedair, a senior author of the study, described the accomplishment to PhysOrgthis way:[It] is more than sufficient for practical purposes, since concentrating lenses are unlikely to create more than 4,000 or 5,000 suns worth of energy. ...This should reduce overall costs for the energy industry because, rather than creating large, expensive solar cells, you can use much smaller cells that produce just as much electricity by absorbing intensified solar energy from concentrating lenses. More here.
Well, that's different. The next major iteration of Android will be called Kit Kat, it seems. We know this because Android boss Sundar Pichai just tweeted a photo of a gigantic Android robot made of Kit Kats.
Apparently that's going to come along with a promo campaign in Kit Kats to win a free Nexus 7 or Google Play credit, which is a strange and probably unnecessary bit of advertising, but fine. Your operating system is a supermarket aisle ad now is all.
For the uninitiated, major releases of Android get dessert names, and they've been progressing in alphabetical order. So Ice Cream Sandwich was succeeded by Jelly Bean, and now Kit Kat. Our dumb but prescient guess in 2010 was Krispy Kreme.
Beyond the goofy name, this does have actual bearing on Android. The new name implies a major refresh to the operating system. Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) was released back in 2011 with a major redesign, and since then we've had three versions of Jelly Bean (now on 4.3). Kit Kat will be version 4.4, so we probably won't need to wait too long for it, but the advancement to a new name should mean we get some substantial updates. Or it could be the groundskeeper at Google got bored. Anyone's guess, really.
It wasn't that long ago that the radio was kind of a big deal. Even a young'un like me is old enough to remember inexpertly dodging commercials for local car dealerships while recording embarrassing mix-tapes. But the times have changed. A lot. Do you ever listen to the radio anymore? Is there any reason to, at all? More here.
With its new Freshness Center refrigerator, Siemens wants you to get rid of that freezer bag sealing contraption on your counter. In addition to the standard fridge and freezer compartments, the KG38QAL30 has a third drawer with a section that vacuum seals itself, preserving fresh foods like vegetables and meats up to five times longer.
With the drawer closed, a simple button push sucks the oxygen out, reducing the air pressure by 300 millibars. So we're not talking the vacuum of space here, or enough to implode the fridge, but more than enough to discourage bacteria and other parasite growth. The Freshness Center is destined for a release in the Netherlands and Germany first, and if consumers are cool with the $2,000 price tag, Siemens might roll it out in other parts of the world later on. More here.
Optical illusions are fun because you literally can't believe your eyes. But isn't it a little troubling that your eyes can get fooled like that? Why don't they show you the visual truth? How can you ever trust them if they don't?
Well that's not their job. You can't handle the truth. As ASAP Science explains, your peepers have painstakingly evolved to show you what you need to know in a way you can understand it. If you saw everything, you'd drown in the noise. Optical illusions are just a window into exactly how your eyes and brain team up to try and show you the world in context, in a way that makes immediate sense.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the latest round of touchscreen timepieces like the Galaxy Gear, not the least of which being the fact that you'll apparently even be able to get a faux-leather stitched case for it. Guh.
So that's how Samsung plans to finally endear these devices to us? By embracing a side effect of the iPhone's popularity? That's obviously why Apple was able to make such a dent in the cellphone market; thousands and thousands of cheap-looking case options. At least the pleather industry has something to look forward to. More here.
The biggest volcano ever found on Earth—one of the biggest we know of in the solar system—has been hidden for ages. But now scientists have found it, just chillin' beneath the sea. It's a monster.
Tamu Massif sits on the floor of the Pacific off the east coast of Japan and occupies 119,000 square miles at its base, just slightly smaller than the entire state of New Mexico. And even though it doesn't come close to the breaching the ocean's surface, its peak is 2.2 miles high.
While Tamu Massif is a bit more squat than the the 12 mile-high Martian mammoth Olympus Mons—the largest known volcano in our solar system—its overall volume is only 25 percent less.
It's hard for something that gargantuan to go unnoticed, and scientists had an idea that something was down there. But they assumed it was a giant system of multiple volcanoes until a research team at Texas A&M University discovered that it's actually just one and had their findings published in Nature Geoscience. Oh and the name Tamu? That's no mythic Kaiju; it's just short for Texas A&M University.
Fortunately, Tamu Massif is probably long dead. The eruptions that helped it grow to its massive size happened 114 million years ago, and things have been quiet ever since. Hopefully things stay that way.
There could be other sleeping giants lurking out there too; the ocean is a big place. But until we find some other ancient colossus lurking in the depths, Tamu Massif is a pretty impressive reigning king. More here.
We heard rumors about a mysterious "Xperia i1" a while back, but now it showed up for real. Sony's new Xperia z1 is the biggest Xperia yet at 5 inches, but more importantly, it's got a killer 20.7 MP camera on it too.
The Z1 packs its blazing 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 brain, 1080p display (exactresolution unknown), 3,000mAh battery, and 20.7 megapixel camera all into a slim waterproof (up to 5 feet!) body, made out of one piece of aluminum. The Xperia Z1 will launch with Android 4.2.2, complete with Sony's typical UI slathered on top.
The camera boasts a 1/2.3-inch sensor, roughly on par with the one in the Galaxy S4 Zoom. It's no Nokia 1020, but then that's a high bar to jump. Still, it's one of the beefiest cameras we've even seen on an Android phone. And it's got some fun features too, including a burst option which lets you fire off 30 shots with a single press of a button. More here.
Now that it's September, you probably want to soak up as much of the summer as possible. And nothing says summer like watermelon. YouTube's favorite hacker Mark Rober just posted a video showing you how to make a watermelon smoothie in under two minutes. Get it while you can.
As is often the case, Apple has infused its invite with a not so subtle clue about what we can expect. The colorful dots are likely the palette that the iPhone 5C will come in, and they should "brighten everyone's day" because they are, er, colorful. Or it's a reference to the glittering gold champagne iPhone 5S that's coming down the pike. Or there's some sort of iFlashlight that's going to revolutionize the... flashlight... industry?
The event will be held at Apple's Cupertino headquarters instead of its usual Yerba Buena Center fête; that's not entirely out of the blue, though, as Apple last played a home game for the similarly iterative iPhone 4S. You can expect preorders to come soon after, with shipments arriving on Sept 20th.
Otherwise, the details of what we're expecting haven't changed much since AllThingsD first reported that Sept 10th would be the day of the big reveal. The only thing that's certain? There won't be many surprises. More here.
Good news if you're tired of your personal fitness trainer's constant nagging you about eating healthy and staying active. You can just replace them with this bathroom scale that not only tells you how much you weigh, but also what kind of activities you can do to maintain your current physique.
For starters it's just $100, way cheaper than any personal trainer, and on those days when you feel like being lazy, you can just stash it under the sink and ignore. Try that with a human and, well, you remember how that trial went. Using your personal information and the Harris-Benedict Equation—which determines a person's ideal calorie intake—the scale suggests one of 157 different activities to stay in shape, and how much of each you need to do. More here.
If the thought of drifting off in a sleeping bag, only to wake up in the middle of the night all twisted and constricted, leaves you feeling anxious and claustrophobic, Sierra Designs wants to help. With its new Backcountry Bed 800 sleeping bag it's banished constricting zippers, instead opting for a double layered design that feels more like sleeping in your comfy bed.
The bag's outer layer is packed with 800-fill down that's been treated with a water-resistant chemical called DriDown so the feathers don't clump together if they get damp. In other words, it will keep you plenty warm. But instead of completely sealing you inside with a zipper, the bag's inner layer works more like a duvet, letting you pull it up to keep warm, or kick it off in the middle of the night to cool off. Brilliant.
At $400 for a 15 degrees version, and $350 for a 30 degrees one, it's not considerably expensive, at least compared to other ultralight but ultrawarm sleeping bag options. But for those of us who cringe at the thought of crawling into a sleeping bag, it's worth every penny. More here.
According to VentureBeat, the Gear is a beefy machine. The screen is a relatively large (for a wrist) 3-inch OLED display but the clunky exterior packs a whole lot of features that would make it useful even without being paired to a smartphone. With Wi-Fi, the watch is apparently able to function on its own for email, social media, and whathaveyou. And there's a camera and speakers in there. It's practically one data connection short of being an actual phone.
It's not clear what kind of operating system the watch runs, but VentureBeat claims it comes pre-loaded with actual Android apps of some sort. Presumably they are massively modified ones, for both CPU and UI reasons. Don't expect to get everything on your wrist (like you would even want to). As for other specs, VentureBeat is detailing a 10+ hour battery life and the ability to be used as a hands-free device on calls.
The Gear is intended to work best with other Samsung devices (of course) but will be able to connect to any Android device. There aren't any details on whether or not there's an accelerometer or other fitness-tracking-type hardware inside, but it looks like Samsung is going whole-hog with features, so it seems likely there is. Why skimp there? And if that's the case, the Gear won't only be making a play as a phone-companion, but also a fitness-tracker replacement.
This is a leak, of course, so nothing is certain. While VentureBeat claims to have had hands-on time with an actual unit, the photos come from a internal video which show a prototype version. Things may have changed on the way to the actual announcement, especially the outward appearance. It'd be pretty incredible if they hadn't.
We'll have to wait until the (almost certain) September 4th reveal to get an official look at the finished product, but we wouldn't be surprised if this is a pretty accurate feature run-down. More here.
This beautifully bright, light-year-long heap of gas and dust particles was caught by the Hubble telescope hurtling through space on its way to becoming a star some 4,500-odd light years away. And this little cosmic caterpillar-that-could is all the more incredible when you know what it's fighting against.
Located in what's called the Cygnus OB2 association, the pummeling streak of celestial goodness (named IRAS 20324+4057—catchy) is still very much in the process of collection the debris and gas around so that, one day, it can grow up to be a big, strong star—a star potentially 10 times the size of our own sun, at that. Unfortunately for our fetal friend, the other residents of Cygnus OB2 include 65 radiation-blasting, dust-corroding O-type stars, the hottest and brightest stars known to man, in addition to 500 smaller, though also highly luminous B-type stars. These bright stars send out massive amounts of radiation that erodes protostars like the one above and sculpt it into that long, lovely shape.
So once good ol' IRAS 20324+4057 actually does finish forming, there's a decent chance we'll have a light-weight star on our hands. As of now, though, this particular flaming space monster is still very young and could go either way. More here.
According to GigaOM, Google bought WIMM Labs last year to help develop its upcoming Android smartwatch. WIMM Labs was the maker of the WIMM One, a smart watch released a few years ago that ran a modified version of Android.
Makes sense for the company behind Android to snatch up an Android smart watch maker for its own Android smart watch, right? The WIMM One, which was released in late 2011, also had its own micro app store with apps like a calculator, compass, photo gallery and an app that could act as a remote control of sorts for your Android phone. More here.
To watch collectors and aficionados, mechanical movements are particularly desirable since they best represent the fine craftsmanship and precise engineering that has gone into watch and clock making for centuries. But ironically, even with today's technology, mechanical movements don't keep perfect time. They gain and lose seconds as they lose power, soUrwerk has created a watch that's smart enough to know when it's not accurate, letting you make adjustments as needed.
The titanium and steel EMC is a sight to behold, but as usual it's what's inside that will appeal to most collectors. Watchmakers use a tool known as a Witschi that listens to a mechanical watch's internal movements and calculates how much time it gains or loses in 24 hours. And the EMC—or Electro Mechanical Control—has a Witschi built in so at any point the wearer can determine how accurate the piece keeps time.
What's unique about the design is that the EMC's Witschi runs on power that's produced by a tiny hand-cranked generator that folds out from the side of the watch. A few slow cranks generates enough juice for a three-second reading of how the watch's internals are performing, and the results are displayed by a series of gauges on the EMC's face.
If the timing is found to be off, there's a tiny screw on the back of the watch that can be used to adjust its rate so the EMC stays as accurate as possible. At this point Urwerk hasn't disclosed pricing or availability, but the watch is expected to eventually makes its way into the hands of lucky—and presumably very wealthy—collectors in the coming months. More here.
They're a cheap and easy way to add some extra sleeping space to your apartment, but futons are a sure sign that you're either in college, just graduated from college, or can't stop reliving college. If you're looking for a slightly more sophisticated way to accommodate guests, like an adult, this incredibly comfy-looking Figo lounger transforms into a bed for one—in style.
You don't even need to sacrifice one of the pillows from your bed, because the Figo has one built-in that doubles as a headrest when it's not prepped for sleeping. At $550 it's nowhere near as cheap as an air mattress, but buying nicer things is all part of that whole growing up thing. More here.
How far away is your nearest grocery store? If you live out west, probably much further than the rest of the country, as shown by this visualization of America's "food deserts," where the closest grocery is miles away.
Flowing Data put together this look at the kind of access Americans have to food, using data from Google Maps. When you look at the map, you see a series of red lines of varying lengths. They start at towns and end at the nearest grocery stores. In places like the population-dense metropolitan area stretching from Washington, D.C. to New York City, where there are grocery stores every couple of blocks, the lines are just about undetectable. However in rural West Texas, where stores are few and far between, the lines resemble miniature explosions.
And long distances to Kroger or Publix seem to be pretty normal for a huge chunk of Americans. Flowing Data shows that for 36 percent of the country, the closest store is more than ten miles away, and the median distance is seven miles. The map looks about like what you'd expect—in rural areas there are fewer stores, whereas in urban areas there are a lot of choices. Of course, easy access to food is an important thing to have. So next time you complain about how hard it is for you to drive five minutes or walk a few blocks to get some milk, think about how the other half lives. More here.
For decades, we've been waiting for oh-so-futuristic hologram technology to make the leap from Star Wars movies to our living rooms, and it hasn't. It sounds like it's right around the corner, though, after Skype announced that it had developed 3D video chat technology in the lab.
The Microsoft executive responsible for Skype recently disclosed the milestone in an interview with the BBC, but he did so with a healthy dose of realism. Indeed, Skype is making progress in its stated mission to project a "realistic physical 'body double'" during a Skype call. Despite the fact that many top-of-the-line displays now offer 3D capabilities, however, it will take a few years before Skype can offer the feature to the mass market due to limitations in widely available capturing tools.
"The capture devices are not yet there," Microsoft's corporate vice president for Skype Mark Gillett told the BBC. "As we work with that kind of technology you have to add multiple cameras to your computer, precisely calibrate them and point them at the right angle." He added, "We have it in the lab, we know how to make it work and we're looking at the ecosystem of devices and their capability to support it in order to make a decision when we might think about bringing something like that to market."
Skype isn't the only one working on making holographic video chats a reality. Earlier this year, holographic technology startup Provision 3D Media launched a Kickstarter projectaimed at making the Princess Leia effect a reality for the average consumer. However, after Provision's Kickstarter page got taken down over a copyright dispute, it's become increasingly clear that this might be a job for the pros—more specifically, their deep corporate coffers.
Speed bumps and skepticism aside, all signs point to progress in the realm of futuristic video chats. Researchers recently developed a way to reorient faces in Skype calls so that you're always looking at the camera, and an IBM survey found that most researchers believed the capability for full-on 3D video chats would arrive by 2015. Well, it's already here. The only question now is when Skype will let us have it. More here.
The end of summer usually means the end of grilling and scorched steaks for dinner. But T-fal has come up with a solution to both those problems. Its new OptiGrill can not only be used indoors, all year round, it's also smart enough to let you know when a steak is perfectly done—whether rare, medium, or charred.
So how is the OptiGrill the perfect grillmaster right out of the box when you've been unsuccessfully honing your BBQ skills for years? Well first of all it lets you specify what exact you're grilling, with settings for steak, hamburger, fish, sausages, and more. And that info, combined with a built-in sensor that detects how thick a cut of meat is, allows the grill to report back the level of doneness via a glowing color-changing indicator.
And if you don't feel like standing there and waiting for the grill to do its thing, an audible alarm sounds at each level so you can pull the meat off when it's cooked to your liking. So for $180 when it's available in October, you never need to worry about propane, charcoal, or lumps of black carbon that started life as a juicy steak. More here.
If you've ever had a migraine, you've probably experienced photophobia, the painful sensitivity to light that sends you scurrying, eyes closed, to the darkest dungeon you can find. In that moment, you're probably wishing for a way to (temporarily) unplug your eyeballs and put an end to the agony. Researchers at The Salk Institute could have a potential answer: A compound that switches off light sensitivity without affecting vision.
Scientists have known for a century that the ability to sense light is separate from vision. Blind humans still tend to wake in daylight and sleep at night, and newborn mice scurry away from bright light before their eyes are developed enough to see. This light-sensing mechanism uses melanopsin receptors in the eye, which also control how the pupil reacts to different light levels. Research biologist Dr. Satchin Panda and his team discovered that chemicals called opsinamides could knock out melanopsin's activity, removing the pupil's reaction to bright light, without disturbing vision in mice.
While clinical use is still far off, these light sensitivity blocking compounds could be a boon for migraine sufferers dealing with light sensitivity, as well as night shift workers who have difficulty sleeping when the sun's out. Then again, since we're all messing up our sleep cycles by staring at glowing screens all night and day, maybe this stuff will have a much broader impact. More here.
Most cars have wipers on the front and back windshields, and some even on the the headlights. But you'll be hard pressed to find a vehicle with wiper blades on the side mirrors which get just as wet and obscured when it's raining. So instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping you're not cutting someone off when switching lanes, try a set of these cheap $9side mirror visors to keep them dry.
They're flexible enough to conform to the shape and contours of most mirrors, and they attach with a simple strip of 3M adhesive so you can easily apply them in a parking lot, even from the inside of your vehicle. There's no tools or custom installation required, just a basic level of hand-eye coordination. More here.
Good news Star Wars fans. The automatic sliding doors at the grocery store are no longer your only opportunity to experience what life as a Jedi must be like. Dresden, Germany-based design shop Dreiplus has a new under-the-cabinet lamp called the AREA that lets you selectively illuminate and extinguish its LEDs with just a wave of your fingers. Who's living in a fantasy world now?
The long strip of LEDs can be individually activated depending on how much illumination you need, or you can just easily wave your hand along its length to activate them all. Their warm white glow is energy efficient, and for those times when you want a secret midnight snack without waking anyone up, you can just turn on a single dot of light. After all, your make-believe Jedi powers only work on lamps, not memories. More here.
Fossils are three-dimensional objects, but you aren't really supposed to touch them, and you can't see their depth and detail very easily over the internet. But a new database of fossilsfrom the British Geological Survey actually has the necessary files for you to 3D print fossils yourself.
The searchable database has thousands of images of fossils you can zoom in on, rotate, and interact with on your screen. And you can bring these old bones and artifacts into the physical realm too, thanks to downloadable .ply and .obj files you can use to 3D print them. You can search by period of time, type of fossil, species, genus, etc. to find all kinds of fossils. For example, here's a Pectinatites (a type of mollusk). And here's an interactive trilobite.
The British Geological Survey has an estimated three million specimens in its collection, so they haven't all made it online yet. But the group is adding more images every day, so if you don't see what you're looking for, be patient. This is great for anyone who's ever had trouble in the self-control department when it comes to touching things in a museum. Besides, it's not like they're ever going to get around putting all three million fossils on display. At least, though, you can 3D print the ones you want to know more about from your own computer and 3D printer. More here.
The sun just rose in Antarctica. And that's kind of a big deal since it set back in May. It's beautiful, sure, but it must also be a huge relief.
The photo comes by way of the European Space Agency, and features the Antarctic base Concordia. During that long, –112°F winter, its inhabitants are totally isolated. There are no supplies delivered, and there's no way to leave. It's like a alien planet but on Earth, which is why scientists from France and Italy are using it to test the stresses of interplanetary travel.
Now, with the sun up, it's just a little bit more like being back on the good old blue planet. And sunrise is like that is sure to warm your heart, even if everything else is still pretty cold. More here.
A group of researchers from the ecology department at the U.K.'s University of Exeter have been spending time studying how snails transmit a parasite called lungworm to dogs in Great Britain. Ah, my god, how boring. But they made something beautiful out of the project when they attached LEDs to the slow-moving slugs to track their movements at night.
Watching snails crawling around a British garden at night sounds like the most mind numbing take on a rave ever. Until you throw in a little neon and some video editing.
The research is actually pretty important because lungworm is potentially fatal to dogs. It's not very clear how dogs contract lungworm in the first place, but it is certain they catch it from snails. So we we know a little bit more about what snails are up to (how hard can it be? They're slow ass snails!), we could save our pup pals from an awful ailment, and see something really lovely. More here.
It might not just be your ears that are stuffed with wax for long—because researchers from the University of Michigan want to pack your phone full of the stuff, too.
In the process of trying to make processors more efficient, they've hit on an intriguing idea:cover the chip in a mesh of wax which, when the processor is pushed, can melt and absorb some of that excess heat. It may sounds kinda bonkers, but the researchers believe it should allow chip manufacturers to run mobile processors faster, for longer.
Currently mobile chips tend to use a sub-set of their transistors most of the time to avoid overheating, just using a small central CPU most of the time and farming out other tasks to more specific processing units when they need to. The wax idea could provide a way of using more transistors, more of the time—and hopefully provide a massive speed bump, too.
The idea of "computational sprinting"—making use of all those transistors at once—has been floated for a few years, and the wax idea could make it a reality in mobile situations. In fact, the researchers believe they could run a chip at upto 100 watts for a short period, as long as their wax cooling system was their to absorb the heat.
Of course, it only buys short snatches of high performance: once the wax melts, its cooling efficiency is lost, and it needs to solidify again before the next sprint. But, hey, maybe that's enough. More here.
If everyone in your home is constantly jockeying for position at the bathroom mirror as they get ready for the day, you might want to consider an upgrade to this clever alternative dubbed the mirror #180 by its creators at halb/halb. What makes it special is a split down the middle with each side angled slightly away from each other, giving two people standing next to each other private views of their own reflections.
The mirror's as clever as it is simple, which is great because it also comes with a hefty $280price tag. So find yourself a glass cutter, a strip of wood for mounting at the proper angle, and perform the same upgrade on the mirror you've already got in your bathroom. More here.
With this USB-powered desktop sniper rifle you'll never miss another deadline again because of idle chit-chat and other distractions from your co-workers. Ideal for cubicle-type setups where you're protected on three sides, this tiny gun fires plastic BBs perfect for annoying, harassing, or intimidating your office neighbors.
The sniper rifle is powered and aimed via a USB connection to your computer, and it comes equipped with a small camera above the barrel letting you see your targets on-screen instead of having to get up and expose yourself to retaliation. And despite what appears to be a fairly awkward on-screen UI and minimal power, at $100 it's worth every last penny if it ensures your co-workers are too scared to come by and sing Happy Birthday every year. More here.
With all this talk of a golden iPhone you may have been expecting something terribly bling. But this leaked image, published by Japanese website Weekly Ascii, claims to show off the new "champagne" iPhone and it... it doesn’t look that bad.
As ever, the usual rumour disclaimer applies: take with a massive pinch of salt until Tim Cook pulls this one out of his pocket. But in its favor, the claimed leak comes from a Japanese site via serial iPhone leaker Sonny Dickson, and it looks kinda legit. The images certainly tally with previous iPhone 5S leaks. Maybe a golden iPhone 5S does make sense after all. More here.
No one wants to be told what they can and cannot do in their home, even when it comes to lamps. So someone has finally found a way to stick it to 'big lighting' with a lamp that you can install almost anywhere. Our deliverer of illumination freedom is an artist named Simon Frambach who created the Soft Light from squishy polyurethane foam, allowing you to cram and squeeze it into any spot.
It's sadly not for sale, at least yet, and that's either because Frambach created it as a one-off piece of art, or because the giants of the lighting industry—GE, Sylvania, etc.—have stymied his commercial dreams. Either way, it's a humorous take on the bedside lamp since you can use it as both an actual pillow and the ultimate night time reading lamp. More here.
The traditional handlebar bike basket can only carry so much, and while panniers over each tire can boost your bicycle's cargo capacity, they're useless for toting larger packages. What you really need to turn your bike into a capable hauler is the Spanish-designed Noomad which replaces your front wheel and fork with a pair of tilting wheels supporting a carrying platform.
Installation is fairly straightforward if you're already familiar with tinkering on your bike, and since removing the front fork also means you're down one set of brakes, the Noomad comes with its own including a lever that easily attaches to your handlebars. And since both wheels tilt as you lean into corners, it shouldn't take too long to get comfortable riding with the Noomad attached.
You're also not limited to just carrying boxes or suitcases. The Noomad kit—which starts at around $600—includes several mounting options meaning you could even toss a child seat on the front as well. Or just don't bother with cargo at all. The pair of wheels up front makes it easier for someone who never really learned to balance to enjoy a bike ride. More here.
