If you're out and away from an outlet, chances are that you won't be able to use an electric razor. You know, when you're camping or whatever. But what if your delicate skin doesn't want to touch the cold steel of a blade? What's a babyface to do?
Well, the Wind N Go Freedom Shaver doesn't need to be plugged in. Instead, it gets its charge from a hand crank, meaning you can charge it up anywhere. It's great for camping, but you know what? It's great for anytime, because it's completely environmentally friendly. Cranking it up won't create any greenhouse gasses, after all. And for only $46, it seems pretty reasonably priced as well. Who needs power cords?
Athena Brands, via Oh Gizmo!
If the innovators at the California High-Speed Rail Authority have their way, you might be able to hop on a bullet train that can zip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just under 2.5 hours by 2030. The 220mph speedster just got the thumbs up from the state’s tough environmental impact assessors, and now the challenge is getting a hold of the $9.95 billion to build it. That huge wad of cash will be voted on by Californians with a bond issue on the ballot for this November’s election.
Too bad it’s going to take until 2030 to get this monster built. And that 220mph speed is nowhere near the world's fastest, much slower than the existing 357.2mph French high-speed trains, and even-faster Japanese bullet trains have already achieved.
But the plan is still ambitious, albeit belated. The trains will connect northern and southern California, from the state capitol in Sacramento, skimming the San Francisco Bay area, and speeding through the central part of the state down to L.A., and then roaring down to San Diego and back. The plan is to carry 117 million passengers a year by 2030. That ought to relieve highway congestion, at least a little. Next, let's build one coast-to-coast!
California High-Speed Rail Authority, via Gas 2.0
Here’s a body mod that might do you some good: A doctor implants this gizmo from EnteroMedics just under the skin, and hooks up its two electrodes that can electrically block the nerve that makes you hungry. The result? A slimmer you. This could be a sane alternative to the barbaric and permanent gastric bypass surgery.
That sweet spot is the vagus nerve, a 4mm-wide pipe that connects directly to your brain, with no spinal cord involved. The vagus is the traffic cop for food. It controls the characteristics of hunger, such as those gnawing hunger pangs, and also the expansion of the stomach and the satisfying feeling of fullness. So if the stomach doesn’t expand while you’re eating, you start feeling full after taking a just a few bites.
The result? This thing can hold you to 500 calories a day without you feeling like you’re starving to death. This vagal blocking therapy, called VBLOC, has seen success in European trials, with nine patients losing 30 percent of their body weight over nine months. The device, which can be implanted (without cutting you wide open) by using laparoscopic techniques, will soon be tested in the U.S. and Australia on 300 more patients. Could be a breakthrough.
EnteroMedics, via Technology Review
We see our share of crazy ideas 'round these parts. How about a toilet made of meat? Or a lamp fashioned from a duck? This helmet may not be made from poultry, but what it does is still rather foul.
Part of an art installation by Marc Owens called "A Long Time Standing," the helmet appears to be a good way to lose your eyesight fast. It's got two bright lights inside — just plug it in, put it on and kiss all those pretty colors you used to see goodbye.
Why, you ask, would you ever put this on? You wouldn't. Someone puts it on you. Owens bills the helmet as a "modern interrogation device" and we're inclined to agree it invokes the proper horror. Sure, it may not be as fun for interrogators who enjoy a swinging light overhead, but we wager this helmet would get some answers fast — if the person wearing it can even be heard.
Check out the gallery below while you've still got your vision.
What's not to love about a BristleBot, the motor-run toothbrush head recently invented by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories? The tiny invention was such a big hit that the design has caught on all over the world. The latest addition to BristleBot mania is the BrushBot, a project designed by Christian Cerrito.
The BrushBot uses two toothbrush heads instead of one, and a larger, rechargeable battery. It's meant to be used for painting projects, and from what we saw when we checked these 'bots out, kids love them. But they're not just for children. Cerrito notes that lots of people are intimidated about picking up a paintbrush or pen to make art. His hope is that the BrushBot will "help people get over their inhibitions about art-making." As you can see from some of the results below, using BrushBots as a first foray into painting may not be a bad idea.
Outside of cool lamps, the idea of light-up furniture sounds pretty lame on paper. But then we saw Stardust, a product from Italian furniture company Meritalia, and got convinced. The glow of the low-voltage LEDs built into these sofas, pillows, armchairs and footstools is subtle enough so it doesn't overpower you, yet unusual enough to guarantee the room a unique look. The overall effect probably gives you the feeling the furniture is alive. If you can get past that slight creep factor, designer Mario Bellini's creation would undoubtedly raise your living room's cool factor.
Extra bonus: The furniture is extremely lightweight thanks to the materials, said to be based on packing material (though presumably more comfortable). The Meritalia site says most people can lift the armchair with one hand.
Extra extra bonus: It's also waterproof. Since the covering is airtight, Stardust will float on water. Perfect for that evening pool party.
We think that Daniel Rozen's Wooden Mirror should be classified as Steampunk, but frankly, we're not cool enough to be sure. Rozen is an adjunct professor at NYU, so his creation was on display earlier this week at the school's Interactive Telecommunications Program show. The "mirror" is made from 830 small wooden panels that are controlled by a computer connected to a small camera communicating with hundreds of tiny motors. The result is that the camera's image is "reflected" on a large scale by the wooden pieces in the frame. It's impractical, but quite cool in person— the wood pieces make delightful noises as they shift position.
Click Continue to see a video of the mirror in action.
How do you get Minority Report-style invasive biometric security ingrained in society? Tie the technology to something millions can't do without—like cigarettes—and you're on your Orwellian way! Japanese company Fujitaka is planning to roll out face recognition cigarette vending machines designed to prevent smokers under the legal age of 20 from purchasing the products.
The system will compare the facial characteristics of the would-be customer such as wrinkles, bone structure and skin sags to a database of over 100,000 faces in order to determine if the person is of legal smoking age. The idea sounds a bit ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that smoking is known to prematurely age the skin, thus an underage heavy smoker might actually have enough facial wrinkles and sags to beat the machine at its own game. But as ridiculous as this might sound, don't be surprised is this is a look at the future of identity/legal age checks.
Via Reuters
Rui Pereira, another NYU ITP student, doesn't think that Guitar Hero gets you close enough to feeling like a rock star. That's why he invented the TUIST (short for Transformable Uber Interface for Stardom), an electronic instrument that you can hold like a guitar, upright base, or drum set. The noise that comes from the machine varies based on the way you hold it— you don't have to press any buttons to change its settings.
According to the artist (pictured here), the TUIST is for anyone from "8 to 80 years old… passionate for music but incapable of playing musical instruments (though always desired to be a super star)." Pereira counts himself as part of that group. The samples that play when you press buttons or the touch panel on the instrument sound a lot like the noises that come from this laser harp. The music is accompanied by feedback in the form of a digital visualization— if you let the bright, crazy patterns play behind you, they'll help you to feel like a rock star. If you face them for too long, on the other hand, you could end up having a seizure.
Click Continue for a short video of the instrument in action.
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Oh, I love me some peanut butter. It's nature's candy, making all foods taste better. Heck, it's even a great snack on its own. A couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter is better than any energy bar you could throw at me. But what about when your jar is almost empty? It's next to impossible to really clean it out.
That's not true if your peanut butter is in one of these brilliant double-ended jars. You can open it on either end, allowing you to get at the protein-packed globules of deliciousness no matter what. You'll finally be able to eek that last sandwich worth of peanut butter out of the jar before moving on to a new one, and all will be right with the world.
Sherwood Forlee, via Yanko Design
As goofy concepts from Japan go, this solar-powered bra is a pretty good contender for most ridiculous we've seen. Since it means well, though — promoting eco-friendly initiatives — we won't point out how weird it is, as it'll probably never be seen … outside of blog posts, anyway. The solar panel on the waist powers a scrolling LED display mounted above it (presumably outside your clothing), so you can tell everyone how sexy you feel being green. It can also power other devices.
There are reusable liquid containers in the cups, which are meant to discourage the use of aluminum cans, though I suspect their secondary objective will be more popular: increasing bust size. At least until the wearer get thirsty.
Triumph, the company behind the solar bra hopes to promote green initiatives with the solar undergarment. While it's nuts, we can't deny it got our attention. See another pic of it after the Continue jump.
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This minuscule hot-shot box from GSSI/Toptronics might make pulling in digital TV signals over the air even easier. The DA-001 is an indoor antenna whose makers say can receive those digital TV broadcasts from 50 miles away. Imagine what it can do if those transmitters are closer than that. Measuring about a foot square, this nondescript $65 cable killer looks unobtrusive while it’s sucking in those distant signals.
Take a look at this week’s Video Rebel, and you’ll see why getting your HDTV over the air might be a whole lot easier than you think. If that cheap $22 antenna we pointed out in our report isn’t cutting it for you, this amplified box probably can. Besides saving big bucks on cable bills, the best part of getting your TV over the air? The HDTV quality is a whole lot better than the over-compressed mess fed to you by Big Cable.
PR Web, via Engadget HD
Don Grice is a confident man. The chief engineer on IBM's Roadrunner project told Computer World: "We will break the petascale barrier. The only unknown for me will be what day it is."
Right now, the petaflop is to the supercomputing race what the moon was to the Space Race. Current supercomputers measure performance in teraflops, and IBM along with Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Cray and Silicon Graphics are all competing to be the first to bust through to the petascale.
Roadrunner will go online soon at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, and will crunch all kinds of data such as nuclear weapons systems, climate changes and human genetics. It takes up 6,000 square feet, weighs 500,000 pounds total, uses 57 miles of cable and requires 3.9 megawatts of power.
Check out the gallery below for more images of the IBM Roadrunner.
Houseplants not your thing? You still might want to take a look at the work of Ryan Wolfe, which merges technology and plants in ways that are both thought-provoking and… well, pretty cool-looking. One project, called "Study for Lit from Within" (above left) surgically implants LEDs inside wall-hanging plants so they can survive in total darkness by photosynthesizing the artificial light. The LEDs are even programmed to dim and brighten to simulate sunrise and sunset. One gets the feeling that if the Cylons made plants, they'd look like this.
"Study" is featured at the Dam, Stuhltrager gallery in Brooklyn, New York, along with another piece of Wolfe's work, "Branching System" (above right), which mixes leaves, butterfly movements and chaos theory. Sounds fierce.
Ryan Wolfe, via Cool Hunting
As Amazon finally makes more Kindle e-book readers available to those eager to plunk down $400 to toss away old-timey paper-n-cardboard books, competitors are coming out of the woodwork. One of the two choices from Astek is the cheapest one yet, the $200 Astak Mentor. You get a lot for your two bills, including an MP3 player to distract you, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support to connect you, and a plethora of text formats to fulfill you.
Too bad you’ll need a stylus to select items on that puny 5-inch screen. If that limited expanse of E Ink is enough, Astak also offers a 9.7-inch model (pictured above) that creeps up into Kindle/Sony Reader price territory, around $350. Both have pretty basic design, but we like the whole E Ink idea, looking forward to the day it can display in color and roll up into a tiny scroll. Until then, telling you to pick up one of these Mentors might be good advice.
Astak, via Uber Review
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