A Tiny Flexible Tripod For Perching Your Smartphone Anywhere

No one makes a more flexible, more adaptable, more articulated camera tripod than Joby with its Gorillapod line. But the latest addition, the incredibly compact MPod Mini, is actually specifically designed to hold your smartphone for hands-free skyping, movie watching, reading, or other prolonged activities.

The MPod Mini's stubbier legs means you can't quite wrap them around everything, but it still shines on uneven surfaces where it lets you position your device perfectly level at the optimal viewing angle. And what's particularly great about the MPod Mini is the rubber jaws and flexible elastic strap it uses to hold almost any phone securely in place. It's also just $15, which is loads cheaper than hiring a small child to hold your phone for hours on end.  More here.

A Beautiful Analog Clock for Dummies Who Are Bad at Telling Time

I have a confession to make, and I'm sure I'm not alone: I'm really bad at reading analog clocks. I learned how to when I was a kid, but some 15 years of digital crutches in between has made reading old-school clocks kind of a drag. You too? Well here's a clock for the both of us.

Created by industrial designer Sabrina Fossi, the "FreakishCLOCK" conveniently has but one hand. And while that traditional red stick traces progress through any given hour, a slotted cover turns behind it, blocking everything but the current hour. Who can't handle one hand and one number, right? Yeah, maybe you can't read the exact minutes but who cares. Quarter-hours are close enough.

Aside from the comparative ease of use—which you may or may not need—the FreakishCLOCK is also prettily simple. It's almost like one of those fancy minimalist clocks with no numbers on it, except it lends a helping hand. The clock is available for about $100on Fossi's website and comes in six different flavors. More here.

Your Smartphone Can Now Be Your Eye Doctor

It was only a matter of time before smartphones made the transition from communication device to full blown Star Trek tricorder. And with the development of Peek (an acronym for Portable Eye Examination Kit), that transition is nearly complete.

Peek is a project spearheaded by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in partnership with several other medical organizations that hopes to bring better medical care to the third world. It's currently being tested on 5,o00 people in Kenya who might not otherwise have access to an eye doctor, and it's damn close to providing all of the same service. The app uses the smartphone's camera to scan the eye for cataracts and activates the camera flash to scan the back of the eye for disease. It also employs a shrinking letter on the screen to conduct eye exams in the field. Examiners keep track of the patients by storing their records on the phone, where the GPS chip also logs their location.

The product is still in the trial stages, but things look promising. The research team says that results of an on-going study on the efficacy of Peek's eye test have been encouraging, and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness calls the app "a huge game changer." You can try it yourself by contacting the Peek team directly. Or if you're really interested you could probably join the small army they hope to deploy around the developing world.

The smartphone-driven medicine doesn't stop with the eyes, though. In recent years, we've seen apps come out that can do everything from scan your body for skin cancer to monitor your heart rate to check your ears for infections. Don't get carried away. Even though your phone now does a lot of things that your doctor does, your phone is not your doctor. But in many parts of the world, it's the next-best thing. More here.

This Could Be a Yellow iPhone 5c Next to an iPhone 5

The video is further pushing the rumors that the next-gen iPhone might come in all colors of the rainbow, showing a yellow back. Compared with earlier iPhones, the housing of the new device is a little bit taller and very slightly thicker. It looks to have the same lightning connector, but for the most part it has a similar design to the iPhone 5. More here.

An Amazingly Simple Way To Test If a Battery Is Dead

It turns out that when the alkaline in a battery wears down, it produces a gas that fills the inside. So if you've got a box of random batteries you want to test, and don't have access to a voltmeter or any other device, you can simply drop them vertically a short distance onto a hard surface. A charged battery will make a solid thump sound and often remain standing, while a dead battery makes a muffled sound, bounces repeatedly, and then topples over.

What could be easier? (That doesn't involve your tongue or mild electric shocks.)

These 3D-Printed Titanium Watches Will Probably Outlive You

Titanium is one of those rare wonder materials that sounds like it could only exist in the movies as a fanciful plot device. It's real, though, and stronger and lighter than steel, which makes it a little tricky to work with. That is, unless you grind it into a powder and recombobulate it into any shape you want with a 3D laser printer—like the folks at rvnDSGN did for this lovely collection of titanium wristpieces.

Using a 3D printing process called laser sintering where the layers of titanium dust are burned into place and built up into a detailed shape over time, the tick marks indicating the minutes and seconds on these pieces are built into the actual case. Elsewhere you'll find a Swiss ETA 980.106 movement keeping time behind the scenes, a similarly durable sapphire crystal lens, and a one piece leather strap keeping it tethered to your wrist.

Not surprisingly, the watches will set you back just shy of $600, but if titanium is really as strong and durable as it's claimed to be, this might be passed down in your family for years to come. More here.

There are almost as many external battery pack options for your smartphone as there are cases, and given the multitude of options there are probably two important factors to seriously consider: capacity and design. And a leading contender for both these considerations is the new Jackery Air. The battery measures in at just slightly thicker than the iPhone 5, but its contoured housing and similary-sized dimensions means it can slip in your pocket as easily as your phone. And while the Jackery Air's 5600mAh isn't the largest you can buy, it's certainly capacious enough given the back battery's slim form factor. Charging it from dead takes about six hours, but it promises to then boost the battery life of your iPhone or smartphone up to 200 percent and it can be used with larger devices like iPads and other tablets. It's on sale now for $80 for a limited time, making it a pretty reasonable way to never have to deal with a low battery warning ever again.

There are almost as many external battery pack options for your smartphone as there are cases, and given the multitude of options there are probably two important factors to seriously consider: capacity and design. And a leading contender for both these considerations is the new Jackery Air.

The battery measures in at just slightly thicker than the iPhone 5, but its contoured housing and similary-sized dimensions means it can slip in your pocket as easily as your phone. And while the Jackery Air's 5600mAh isn't the largest you can buy, it's certainly capacious enough given the back battery's slim form factor.

Charging it from dead takes about six hours, but it promises to then boost the battery life of your iPhone or smartphone up to 200 percent and it can be used with larger devices like iPads and other tablets. It's on sale now for $80 for a limited time, making it a pretty reasonable way to never have to deal with a low battery warning ever again. More here.

Optically Levitated, Glowing Diamond Particles

See that tiny green pinprick of light? That's a speck of diamond dust trapped in the grip of a laser beam. And with its help, researchers hope to better understand the border-world between macro and quantum physics.

The team, led by University of Rochester assistant professor of optics, Nick Vamivakas, has submitted a paper for publication to the journal Optics Letters describing how they were able to successfully capture, levitate, and hold diamond nanoparticles as small as 100 nm indefinitely as well as incite the crystals to emit photons at varying wavelengths.

Researchers used laser trapping techniques wherein a highly concentrated laser beam exerts an attractive or repulsive force against a dielectric nanoparticle. And while science has been using so-called optical tweezers for some time, this is the first experiment to successfully pick up diamonds. And according to the U of Rochester press release:

The light emitted by the nanodiamonds is due to photoluminescence. The defects inside the nanodiamonds absorb photons from the second laser – not the one that is trapping the diamonds – which excites the system and changes the spin. The system then relaxes and other photons are emitted. This process is also known as optical pumping.

Getting the diamonds into position was no easy feat. The team had to spray an aerosolized nanodiamond dust solution into a 10-inch cubic box housing the lasers. Some of the nanodiamonds are attracted to the beam and will eventually become trapped though as graduate student Levi Neukirch explains: "it takes a couple of squirts and in a few minutes we have a trapped nanodiamond; other times I can be here for half an hour before any diamond gets caught. Once a diamond wanders into the trap we can hold it for hours."

Building upon this success, Vamivakas' team hopes to apply the technology towards nano sensory equipment that may help science explain some of physic's most fundamental conundrums. More here.

Kim Dotcom Is Creating a 'Cutting Edge' Encrypted Email Service

According to RT, the man behind Mega plans to start running a "highly-secure email service to run on a non-US-based server." In a blog post, Mega’s Chief Executive Vikram Kumar explained the thinking behind the new initiative:

“These [recent closures] are acts of ‘Privacy Seppuku’ – honorably and publicly shutting down (“suicide”) rather than being forced to comply with laws and courts intent on violating people’s privacy.”

So, apparently Mega is working on an email system with an "exceptional level of encryption," a project which is “exciting” but “very hard.” He explains:

“The biggest tech hurdle is providing email functionality that people expect, such as searching emails, that are trivial to provide if emails are stored in plain text (or available in plain text) on the server side. If all the server can see is encrypted text, as is the case with true end-to-end encryption, then all the functionality has to be built client side... On this and other fronts, Mega is doing some hugely cutting-edge stuff. There is probably no one in the world who takes the Mega approach of making true crypto work for the masses, our core proposition."

For his part, Dotcom insists that Mega never holds any decryption keys so customer email can never be read, even if someone wants it to be. Looks like secure email might not be dead just yet. More here.

45 Seconds Is All This Kettle Needs To Boil Water

When the craving for Ramen noodles hits, no one wants to have to wait for minutes on end before they can enjoy a bowl of salty goodness. So Tiger, maker of some of the most advanced rice cookers on the planet, has used its expertise in heating things up to create a steam-free kettle that can boil a cup of water in just 45 seconds. That's even faster than a microwave.

The secret to the kettle's high-speed boiling capabilities is a re-designed heating element inside, as well as a steamless design that traps water vapor before it can escape, condensing it back into droplets of hot water to further the heating process. And since the kettle produces piping hot water in less than a minute, it also means it's more energy efficient than other models using about 22 percent less power to boil a cup of water.

The only downside? A $130 price tag when the kettle's available starting in December. Like with most things in life, if you want it fast you'll have to pay a premium, but in this instance it may be worth it for a pot that actually does boil when you watch it. More here.

Brain Teaser Table Is More Complicated Than Ikea, But Also More Fun

Do you like a challenge when it comes to assembling flat-pack furniture? And we're not talking about deciphering the illustrations and hieroglyphs in an Ikea manual. We mean real Mensa-level stuff. If blank crossword puzzles and unsolved Sudoku grids get you really excited, you'll love the incredibly complicated furniture from Bulgaria's Praktrik.

One of its most challenging pieces is this coffee table/stool simply called the 4x6. Inspired by what's known as a Burr Puzzle, it comes as a collection of 24 pieces that requires a very specific methodology to assemble. Do it wrong, and you'll be spending hours on end trying to figure it out. But that's all part of the fun, right? More here.

This Stunning Spiral Galaxy Is Out There Right Now

M74 is an Sc galaxy, meaning that it has "loosely wound spiral arms, clearly resolved into individual stellar clusters and nebulae." This image was created with data recorded in 2003 and 2005 by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, and depicts the galaxy in all its 30,000 light-years-across glory. A major component of the data is hydrogen emissions, which create the patches of red glow. It's kind of hard to contextualize or grasp, but M74 is really out in the universe right now, just chillin'. More here.

The Pirate Bay Celebrates 10 Years With a New Blockade-Busting Browser

File sharing site The Pirate Bay set sail ten years ago. While the site and its founders have had plenty of legal trouble along the way, like Keith Richards, they refuse to abandon ship. They're marking a decade of file plundering with a typically typo-laden decree and a new way to circumnavigate torrent blockades.

On their blog, TPB marked the occasion by reassuring fans that they aren't going anywhere:

Oh look, we made it.

A decade of agression, repression and lulz.

We really didn't think we'd make it this far. Not because of cops, mafiaa or corrupt politicians. But because we thought that we'd eventually be to old for this shit. But hey, running this ship makes us feel young.

And we're gonna stay young til we die.

They also unveiled a new browser (well, a souped-up version of Firefox for Windows) that promises to bust any torrent-blocking shenanigans your ISP might attempt. While PirateBrowser utilizes some Tor functions, it doesn't make browsing anonymous the way Tor does. Still, if you were looking for a fitting way to celebrate ten years of information freedom, opening up PirateBrowser and torrenting a few files would seem appropriate. More here.

This Is What an Undersea Data Cable Actually Looks Like

When they're not being tapped by the NSA or severed by criminals, undersea cables have to cope with some pretty traumatic conditions. High pressure salt water isn't the friend of any communication link, and that's before you even think about geological shifts and other undersea activity.

So the deep-sea lines that let you watch cat videos from the other side of the world are heavily reinforced to ensure that internet outages are the exception rather than the rule. Essentially that means a lot of steel reinforcing, a whole heap of polymer shrouding, and a dash of copper shielding. Get through all of that and lurking there, just in the middle, are a few precious glass fibers that carry your data.

It might seem like overkill, but it really is worth it: When one was damaged in Myanmar earlier this year, the country's bandwidth instantly plummeted. More here.

Scientists Have Created a Malaria Vaccine That's 100% Effective

For the first time in history, scientists have completed successful human trials of a malaria vaccine that provides 100% protection against the often fatal disease.

Currently, we have no truly effective method of protecting against malaria. Even the World Health Organization had only set their sights on a vaccine with an 80% efficacy rate—and they weren't planning to have that until 2025. Because before today, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, "we have not even gotten anywhere near that level of efficacy." But this newest incarnation has surpassed everything we thought possible.

Called PfSPZ, the vaccine is made from weakened sporozoites (SPZ), the form of the malarial parasitePlasmodium falciparum (Pf) when it's in its initial infectious state. Even though the parasite is weakened, it's in its whole form, thus invoking an immune response. The six human subjects that were given five intravenous doses of PfSPZ were 100% protected when they were later bitten by infectious mosquitoes—five of the six unvaccinated control participants and three of the nine people only given four doses went on to develop malaria.

Previously, most of the malaria vaccines being experimented with only used a few of the parasite's proteins. Stephen Hoffman, head of the Maryland developing firm Sanaria, decided to test a vaccine using the whole sporozoite after researching past experiments going back to the 1970s in which strong, long-lived protection from malaria resulted from volunteers being exposed to thousands of bites from irradiated infected mosquitoes. Stefan Kappe, a malaria researcher at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in Washington, tells Nature:

The trial results constitute the most important advance in malaria vaccine development since the first demonstration of protection with radiation attenuated sporozoite immunization by mosquito bite in the 70s. This is a pivotal success.

But part of the reason it's taken so long to get to this point is that the process of actually making the vaccine is incredibly difficult and complex. First Sanaria had to raise mosquitoes in sterile conditions "on an industrial scale." He would feed them blood that had been infected with the malaria parasite and then exposed to radiation to so that the parasite would weaken. That way, the body would recognize its presence without being infected with the actual disease.

Next, billions of these parasites were harvested from the mosquitoes' salivary glands, purified, and cryopreserved. And while all this was happening, most researchers in the field were expecting him to fail. They didn't think it would be possible to mass-produce this parasite in a way that passed the highly strict quality and safety standards that human medicine must undergo. And now, as Fauci mentioned to Nature,"To my amazement, Hoffman did it."

Now, the trial is going to need to be repeated and over a much wider range of participants in the regions where malaria is most rampant. This way, scientists will be able to determine if it's actually effective against strains different from that used in the vaccine, as well as how its effects might vary according to age, gender, etc. From what we've seen so far, though, we have every reason to hope that we may be on our way to making malaria a thing of the past. More here.

The Kindle Fire HD Is Cheaper Than It's Ever Been

In case you haven't noticed yet, Amazon's been hitting its Kindle Fire HD 7-inch with sale after sale, and right now, you can pick one up for the lowest price ever in its relatively short history—a cool $160 compared to the usual $200.

The sale's being offered for a limited time only, so if you've been making plans to get one for yourself, now's the time. Especially since all these sales would seem to hint at a good ol' fashioned inventory exodus. Amazon's inevitably going to unveil a new line of Kindles in a few months, so it's going to need to clear out the last of the Kindle Fire HDs one way or another.

Of course, you could always wait and hope that they're going to go even lower, but with how cheap these things are now, if you're serious, might not want to risk it. More here.

Groundbreaking New Particle Could Make Hard Drives 20 Times Smaller

There are many reasons why we still have size limitations on technology, but when it comes to data storage, one thing really stands out. You can only squeeze particles so close together before they start bumping into each other and screwing up the data. That's all about to change.

Scientists have finally created a long-theorized particle called the skyrmion. The best way to imagine a skyrmion is to think of a magnetic field that resembles a twisted vortex of atoms. In a normal particle, the charges of the atoms all line up in the same direction, but in a skyrmion, they're arranged in these little twister shapes that also happen to be quite stable. You can move them around and shake them up, but they won't come untwisted.

This is where they come in handy for data storage. Information is burned onto a hard disk by turning the magnetic north poles of normal clusters of atoms up or down to denote a "one" or a "zero," a digital bit. But if you push these particles too closely together, the magnetic fields begin to interfere with each other and scramble the data. This doesn't happen with skyrmions. Because of that unique vortex shape, you can squeeze the particles super close together, and the magnetic state of each bit will remain stable.

The really exciting news is that scientists think that they can make devices like optical hard drives up to 20 percent smaller using this technique. The bad news is that we're a ways away from making such devices. The idea of skyrmions has been around since the 1960s, but only in this latest study have scientists proven that they were able to actually use them to write data. Even then, they were only able to do it about 60 percent of the time.

But you know what? We used to burn data onto CDs that used to skip, like, 80 percent of the time, and look at us now. You probably can't even remember the last time you heard something skip. More here.

Facebook Is Getting Trending Topics

Want some Twitter in your Facebook? No? Too bad. According to a report by All Things D, Facebook is getting trending topics and they're rolling out today. Oh, and yes, they are literally going to be called "Trending Topics."

The new feature will take the form of a banner on the mobile site that displays across the top of a user's newsfeed, displaying information that the unwashed Facebook-masses are keen to chat about, whether or not they are friends of the user. If they click it, they'll see how their own personal friends are reacting to the trend, but they'll see content from a bunch of total strangers too.  More here.

Latest Trailer for Jobs Is Eminently Watchable

Why read the Steve Jobs biography when you can just watch Ashton Kutcher play the part in the new trailer for Jobs?

From that memorable moment when the founder himself switches on the very first Apple I to that sort of creepy bit towards the end when he's bearded and grey, you pretty much get the man's whole life story in 90 seconds. And 90 completely captivating seconds, they are.

The First 3D Printed Rifle Now Fires Multiple Rounds Without Breaking

The Canadian sucessor to the Liberator's attempt at bringing plastic firearms to the masses has apparently just gotten one step closer to his goal. After firing one semi-successful, barrel-cracking shot from his newly designed 3D-printed rifle, the Grizzly, a YouTube user going only by "Matthew" was able to fire a full 14 shots before the gun gave way. More here.