Wind Workout

An near-ideal solution. Instead of heavy weights use... "nothing", er... eh... WIND!!! Great!

Wind Workout: "Yenra: Windjector from Dosho Design uses air resistance to provide a cardio workout, stretching, and strengthening of the core muscles. The twenty-nine core muscles are crucial for improving athletic performance as well as for performing everyday activities. Windjector use of air resistance allows each individual to work out at his own pace. The faster you move, the more resistance you encounter, and the harder you work out. Windjector provides training for the cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular endurance, and muscular strength systems. This workout helps improve flexibility, agility, and mobility. Windjector [Yenra]"

Digismart turns handhelds into projectors

Mobile projectors have definately something...!

Digismart turns handhelds into projectors: "Filed under: Portable Video While companies like Toshiba and Viewsonic are hitting us with portable LED-based projectors, Australia's Digislide has an entirely new concept: incorporating the projector into handheld devices, including cellphones, GPS units and PMPs. At the Demo conference this week, the company showed off its Digismart technology, which uses a miniature wide-angle lens to project images as large as 11x17-inches from a distance of about 3 feet. The company hopes to incorporate the technology into devices and add-on components by the end of the year. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

A New Twist (Sip?) On The Mobile Lifestyle

Virtual drinking buddys... how far have we come? ;-)

A New Twist (Sip?) On The Mobile Lifestyle: "Ok, here's a new twist on the Mobile Lifestyle. Two MIT students have designed wireless glasses. No, not the seeing kind, the sipping kind. If you and your drinking partner are not together the two glasses will allow you to feel like you're drinking together when you are miles apart. When either person picks up a glass, red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow brightly, so you can tell when your other half takes a sip. Following tests in separate labs, Lee says the wireless glasses really do 'help people feel as if they are sharing a drinking experience together' Adds a new twist to the old 'clink, clink' Via BoingBoing."

A New Twist (Sip?) On The Mobile Lifestyle

Virtual drinking buddys... how far have we come? ;-)

A New Twist (Sip?) On The Mobile Lifestyle: "Ok, here's a new twist on the Mobile Lifestyle. Two MIT students have designed wireless glasses. No, not the seeing kind, the sipping kind. If you and your drinking partner are not together the two glasses will allow you to feel like you're drinking together when you are miles apart. When either person picks up a glass, red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow brightly, so you can tell when your other half takes a sip. Following tests in separate labs, Lee says the wireless glasses really do 'help people feel as if they are sharing a drinking experience together' Adds a new twist to the old 'clink, clink' Via BoingBoing."

Easy Page Scanning

A scanner that turns your book's pages. A solid invention.

Easy Page Scanning: "Atiz Innovation: What if you could digitize any book you want with just the push of a button and without having to go through the tedious process of turning the pages manually? BookDrive® -- the world’ s first and only desktop-sized, automatic page-turning scanner featuring a patent-pending technology that eliminates manually copying and scanning documents. It is just like any traditional flatbed scanners that you are familiar with, but BookDrive is unique in that it has an automatic page-turning mechanism inside. Simply entering the number of pages you want to scan, BookDrive then automatically outputs the entire content of the scanned book in a digital format without requiring constant supervision and interference. Unlike traditional flatbed scanners, BookDrive enables businesses to digitize content with an automatic page-turning mechanism. BookDrive includes an integrated, easy-to-use software function that performs essential tasks such as auto cropping and image clean-up. Outside is a simple interface. Under the hood it embodies advanced software algorithms to automatically detect edge and crop the results so that what you have resembles the actual scanned page. Atiz Innovation's BookDrive"

Digital Wine Cellar

From the Gadget-Category...

Digital Wine Cellar: "Yanko Design: These days, more and more people are enjoying the habit of drinking wine because they find this habit healthy. In the future, life will be rich so that common people will enjoy wine. Since how one keeps wine determines the taste and the smell, preserving wine will become more important. Coming from this point of view, we designed a digital wine cellar which keeps wine and also act as a decoration in the house. Function-wise, this machine adjusts temperature according to different kinds of wine, indicates quantity of wine bottles, and controls air circulating up, down and sideways within the wine cellar. Also, interior lighting function is added, so that this conceptual preservation machine can not only keep wine fresh but also act as a decoration. Digital Wine Cellar by Kyoung Min Sung [Yanko Design]"

More than Banking

Think about improving your services! Sometimes it's just the atmosphere!

More than Banking: "TrendBlog: Banks of the Future create a stylish and user-friendly atmosphere. Target group are people of any income level who want to associate their finances with fun rather than with a strict official approach. Free seminars and events make it easy for first-timers to start dealing with their finances and get involved with the money market. The banks of the Future make banking simple, easy and offer a variety of services which allow the customer to deal with his money independently and flexibly. And it is about more than just money: Banks of the Future present themselves as meeting-places; open spaces for art, culture and discussion. Trend: Future Banking [TrendBlog]"

New Zenview offers six 24-inch displays as one

Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation on your desk...

New Zenview offers six 24-inch displays as one: "Filed under: Displays What you do with it is your business, but the new Zenview Command Center Elite from Digital Tigers -- a monster array of six 24-inch Samsung displays -- is plenty to love. Each display sports a 1920x1200 resolution, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and 6ms response times, all of which, when added up, equals a whole lot of awesome. Now we just have to find our stash of dual DVI graphics cards, we know it was around here somewhere.[Via BornRich] Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

GE develops non-stick plastic

Non stick plastics! New materials with added benefits is always great to know!

GE develops non-stick plastic: "Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy to know that some of the best minds on this watery blue ellipsoid are working hard to crack the secret of Fermat's Last Theorem and uh, how to efficiently dislodge ketchup onto fries. See, the good folks at GE have modified the inexpensive plastic 'Lexan' to make it more slippery than a 'freshly waxed car.' While GE has not set out to make consumables yet, it's easy to imagine practical uses in sticky sweet food containers, ever-clean building materials, and in medical applications where tiny volumes of bodily fluids must be whisked away through micrometer-scale channels. Yeah, we know what you're thinking -- it's been done. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

Enzyme computers could live inside us, dispense drugs

Transition to the micro-level. Think nano-robots and so on...

Enzyme computers could live inside us, dispense drugs: "Filed under: Misc. Gadgets Israeli researchers have just announced the successful completion of a molecular computer, which uses enzymatic chemical reactions to perform the necessary logic computations. Itamar Willner and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem built the computer using glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzymes, with hydrogen peroxide and glucose molecules representing input values. The presence or absence of these two chemicals correspond to binary 1s and 0s, allowing the computer to perform AND and XOR operations which are determined optically by a camera. Although enzyme computers will always be inherently slower than parallel processing DNA computers, Willner envisions his invention being used one day to precisely calculate and distribute doses of medicine from inside a patient's body.[Via TG Daily] Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

Asus shows modular concept PC

A great example of what you can do with the segmentation prinicple...

Asus shows modular concept PC: "Filed under: Desktops, Laptops We always thought that when it came to designing new computers, Asus believed that slapping a Lamborghini logo on a laptop was about as cutting edge as it got. But it turns out that the company is full of surprises, since Asus has unveiled a concept PC that looks nothing like anything currently on the market (though it does look a bit like the bookshelf PC from the Microsoft/ISDA design contest). Instead of a beige box, the PC is an open shelf; its innards consist of a series of modules that can be connected to the PC simply by being stacked on the shelf, where they get their power via induction and communicate with other modules wirelessly. Want to upgrade your processor? Swap modules. Need a new hard drive or graphics engine? Same thing. Right now, this is strictly on the drawing board, but props to Asus for showing us that there's more to the company than racecar-inspired notebooks. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

Thomas Pink iPod tie keeps your nano on your neck

A key to success for engineering systems: Get integrated with the supersystem! Go, ipod!!

Thomas Pink iPod tie keeps your nano on your neck: "Filed under: Portable Audio, Wearables Finally, for the man who has everything -- except a job where he can dress casually -- it's the Commuter Tie from Thomas Pink. The bright pink silk tie has a hidden pocket on the back that's the perfect size for an iPod nano, and includes an extra loop to keep headphone wires from getting tangled (though from Pink's promo pic, right, it looks like the wires will get a bit jammed anyhow, since the headphone jack on the nano is on the bottom). We can't help but worry that using this with anything heavier than a nano would result in a curious tightening around the throat -- not to mention a rather unattractive stretching of our neckwear. And if you're going to spend $95 on a tie, we'd like to think you can also come up with a few bucks for a dedicated carrying case for your audio player. Of course, all of this is irrelevant to us, since we're not in the market for a pink tie -- it would clash horribly with our pajamas. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

Hermann: another round of pulling the perfect pint

Just for fun and the bacarian friends :-)

Hermann: another round of pulling the perfect pint: "Filed under: Household, Robots Pulling the perfect pint -- manually or otherwise -- seems to be something of a long standing obsession across the pond, and more than one beer-pouring robot and device has been whipped up in occasion of this grand pursuit. The latest, Hermann, is the fruit of the efforts of one Professor Thomas Weber and his 23 scients students at the German Technical University of Darmstadt, whom set out to design a robot that would cost under $90 US that could pull the perfect pint. Can Hermann really do it? Weber says so -- but he's not sharing sharing much in the way of the secret of their success. (The device pictured is David Stevenson's homer, from 2004.) Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

Robot Retail

Trend towards decreased human involvement. Not yet the end of the line!

Robot Retail: "Ubercool: Global retail sales totaled approximately US$8 trillion in 2004. In the U.S. alone, retailers rang up sales of US$4.1 trillion, up 8% over 2003. While both figures are impressive, one can only imagine what would happen if retailing’s often archaic processes were perfected and streamlined. Below are three new “user interfaces” that show just how stores will evolve into uber-efficient robot retailers. McDonald’s RedBox subsidiary has 1,000 DVD rental vending machines, mostly in McDonald’s. Each RedBox holds 500 DVDs with about 40 of the latest movies. San Francisco-based Zoom Systems has created a retail automat that dispenses Apple iPods, Bose headphones, digital cameras and DVDs at more than 185 locations in the U.S., with plans to add 100 more. Robot Retail [Ubercool]"

New prosthetic foot gives user a natural gait

Something mechanical, without electronics, motors or other bells and whistles. Keep it simple and functional!

New prosthetic foot gives user a natural gait: "Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables With 7% percent of the U.S. population suffering from diabetes, and 82,000 non-traumatic lower limb amputations of diabetics in 2002 alone, the need for natural-looking and -feeling prostheses has never been higher. One of the trickiest prosthetic devices to design, in terms of correlation to an actual human body part, has been the foot, which traditionally has relied on a three-axis system that allows for movement on rough terrain but gives the wearer an unnatural gait. Well researchers at Stuttgart, Germany's Fraunhofer Technology Development Group claim to have overcome this drawback with a prosthetic foot that mimics the minute inward rolling of a real foot from heel-to-ball that occurs mostly unconsciously during each step we take. Even more impressively, unlike the computerized C-Leg, the foot designed by Dr. Urs Schneider and his team is completely mechanical and devoid of expensive electronics. Users who have tested the foot in clinical trials report less pain in other body parts as a result of its corrective properties, and Dr. Schneider says that 'hardly anyone notices that the person is wearing an artificial limb.' Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

KFC leverages DVR time-shifting to its advantage

Again: KFC advertising on a new track...!

KFC leverages DVR time-shifting to its advantage: "Filed under: Home Entertainment We assumed that the TiVo revolution would eventually convince the entire advertising industry to just close up shop and find a new outlet for its scary powers of persuasion, yet time-shifted TV has actually caused the wily advertisers to evolve and adapt like some strain of superbacteria, and they continue to surprise us with innovative ways to subject us to their messages. Take a new ad from the restaurant formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken that premiers this week, in which a 'secret' message is encoded such that it is only visible while the commercial is being viewed in slo-mo. Now the concept of hidden ads in-and-of itself seems quite effective--even the most die-hard commercial skipper still has to watch the screen to avoid missing the beginning of the next segment, so a fast-forward-viewable message is a likely evolution--but KFC is stepping it up a notch and actually providing an incentive for people to seek out the ad, offering a free sandwich to those who can regurgitate the hidden phrase. Imagine that: there may soon be a day when we record shows not because we enjoy them, but because advertisers have told us that they'll give us free swag if we comply.[Via PVR Wire] Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

KFC ads

Now THIS is cool (I love marketing gags!): An ad that counteracts the trend to fast-forward TV-commercials! Good idea!

KFC ads: "FutureWire: Users of digital video recorders are notorious for skipping over ads when replaying recorded TV programs -- a practice that deeply concerns advertisers. In response, fried chicken purveyor KFC is producing ads that are specifically designed for viewers who watch them on recording devices. When viewers play back the ad slowly, they can view a 'secret code' that they can then enter at the KFC website to get a coupon for a free sandwich. The ads debuted during NBC's broadcast of the Winter Olympics and will run until the end of March. The advertising industry is applauding KFC's if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em approach, though the actual impact of the campaign is not yet known. “Any strategy that gets a message to rise above the clutter is terrific from the advertiser’s perspective,” says Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. KFC Develops Ads for DVR Users [FutureWire]"

Fido luggage is traveler's best friend

Development of new suitcases is not necessarily a dumb thing...

Fido luggage is traveler's best friend: "Filed under: Household, Robots Sure, wheeled suitcases and ergonomically correct bags make traveling easier, but face it, what you really want is a robotic suitcase that follows you around on its own without you having to pick it up even once. That's the idea behind Fido Luggage, a product concept from architect Peter Yeadon. Once the bag's owner slips on a watch-like controller, the suitcase is under his control, able to follow both passively over a wireless link, and to obey voice commands. The bag's wheels are each independently controlled for smooth travel in any direction, and laser sensors help it navigate rough terrain and avoid running over small children. Needless to say, we don't expect to ever see this for sale in our corner luggage shop (and we suspect that even if it was somehow produced, the TSA would instantly ban it from US airports), but we can't help but want it anyhow. After all, it's everything we ever wanted in a pet: quiet, obedient and willing to bring us our slippers, newspaper and just about everything else.[Via Inhabitat] Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

NEC's "KotoHana" LED flower knows how you feel

Electronics sense how you feel :-) This might be nice if away from the loved ones and you'd like to let them knoe that you are having a bad / good time!

NEC's "KotoHana" LED flower knows how you feel: "Filed under: Misc. Gadgets We were just saying to ourselves the other day, 'man, if we just had an LED flower that could sense our emotions... then we'd have it all.' Well dreams do come true, because NEC is going to be presenting their KotoHana (the talking flower) at CeBit this year. It's pretty hard to tell what's going on here, but there seems to be a 'Sensibility Technology' that recognizes the user's feelings, and then tells the flower over a wireless connection. The system works over the Internet, so even from far away the flower's LEDs can light up to reflect your true feelings to that special someone. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

Seiko CPC TR-006 Bluetooth watch puts your phone on your wrist

The obvious trend to make things smaller. When will this be combined with the "audio tooth" :-) ?

Seiko CPC TR-006 Bluetooth watch puts your phone on your wrist: "Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Wearables, Wireless Forget those fossilized SPOT watches. If you want to go all Dick Tracy, check out Seiko's CPC TR-006, a Bluetooth watch that communicates with your cellphone. Currently just a prototype, the watch can receive text messages from your phone, capture Caller ID data so you know who's calling, and adjust ringtones. Pair it with a Bluetooth headset, stick your phone in your bag, and you've got a complete hands-free interface that still gives you access to your phone's main functions. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "