Always falling asleep behind the wheel? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that there are over 56,000 sleep-related accidents each year, resulting in 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths annually in the United States. Don't want to be a statistic? Then you may want to try out ASP Technology's mobile application which aims to keep you awake when you're fatigued on the road.
Blizzard Entertainment is considered one of the most successful game developers in the world. Ever since the release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (their debut Warcraft game) in 1994, they've set sales records and created genre-defining games with remarkable consistency. But the company wasn't founded in 1994—it all started back in 1991 when they were called Silicon & Synapse.
Wheels of Steel is a virtual browser-based turntable emulator created by Scott Schiller, a Canadian developer who works on Flickr at Yahoo. This project will appeal to those who A) dig turntablism and B) are knowledgeable in web development. I know nothing of the latter, but from what I can tell, Wheels of Steel appears to be significant because unlike its predecessors, it employs CSS3 instead of flash. Since I'm not familiar with the topic, here's Scott on the history and technical details o...
You're in a new city and you want to explore—what mobile app is best? If you want to know what club is hopping that night, use SceneTap. If you want to know if any friends are at a nearby get-together, use Foursquare. If you want to know what restaurant is best, try Yelp. But if you're looking to get a real feel for the city, skip the more touristy destinations and take to the streets—discover where some great graffiti is located or where the best view of the city is with the Trover iPhone ap...
This summer, I am looking forward to eating light. Lately I've been eating a lot of cold noodles, whether it be pasta salads or cold soba noodles with vegetables. I took inspiration for classic Japanese soba tsuyu dishes to compose this dish. Mine includes four different vegetables and delicious crisp fried tofu. This version is really a 'Kitsune Soba'—in Japan, Kitsune Soba just means there are fried tofu slices added on top. This recipe is also vegan friendly.
Fujitsu Limited has developed what they call the world's smallest Windows 7 PC, which will become available shortly on NTT DoCoMo, Japan's predominant mobile phone operator. The dual-boot device acts as both a smartphone and a portable personal computer that runs the Windows 7 operating system.
As of right now, Guinness World Records claims that the highest human flight with a rocket belt is 152 feet, accomplished by Eric Scott in 2004. But they may need to update their records soon thanks to Martin Aircraft Company in New Zealand, whose Martin Jetpack finally showed the world it can fly—really fly.
Can you really make an explosive from salt, sugar and weed killer? Does glycerol and water actually recover text from burnt paper? Is it possible to develop film with a first aid kit and some orange juice? MacGyver says yes.
In recent years, communication has become more intimate with the advent of applications like Skype and FaceTime, but what about the longing for actual physical contact? What if you could feel a loved one's hand, or even exchange a kiss? Impossible, right?
Being a Southern Californian, I typically miss out on the incredible springtime bloom of flowering trees in the East. But not this year. By some stroke of luck, I was in Boston early last week, and witnessed the most spectacular trees and foliage at their prime—lilac, magnolias, crabapples, dogwood, and many more.
The Telegraph reports that a team of researchers lead by Dr. Sang-Woo Kim of the Institute of Nanotechnology at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul have developed a method for converting the energy from sound into electricity. They've applied the research to the charging of mobile phones, and while you don't have to yell with all the emotion and fear exhibited above by Drew Barrymore in Scream, it sounds like the more energy the better. Dr. Sang-Woo Kim says:
Apple's iPhone is considered one of the best smartphones in the world. Many cell phone makers have tried to take down the juggernaut, with some Android-based devices coming close, but in order to become an actual iPhone killer, something revolutionary needs to happen in the mobile world. And Human Media Lab (HML) may be the ones to make it happen.
Over years of almost-daily orange eating, I have developed a 90% effective workflow for removing the peel from an orange in one piece. While this might not seem important, people who see me do it generally ask about it, so I thought it would be cool if you would illustrate the process for the world. Having a nice hand-drawn set of instructions to frame on my wall would save me time explaining it to people as well.
Our hacked Kinect series has demonstrated amply how the Kinect is changing the worlds of business, art, medicine and robotics. But where does it go from here? That will be determined by the thousands of dedicated DIYers out there doing work like you've seen here over the last week.
It's remarkable that a gaming device (from Microsoft, no less) designed for geeky gamers has incited broad innovation in medicine and robotics. But that Kinect has captured the imagination of hackers-with-MBAs-in-mind is downright amazing.
Have you ever felt the desire to reach out and touch a galaxy? Or "feel" those stunning nebulas and planets you see in Hubble photos? As alluring as it sounds, it's safe to say the odds of your whim coming true are nonexistent. You'd have to travel about 6 earth years and spend millions of dollars building your own personal spacecraft to get close enough to actually wave your hand through one of Saturn's rings. But in an attempt to help the blind "see" what they're missing, some semblance of ...
The da Vinci robot has proven to be an endless source of amusement to surgeons everywhere; in Japan, it folds origami cranes, at the state of Washington's Swedish Medical Center, it flies paper airplanes and gives manicures. It's a battle of the hospitals—who can make their pricey pony perform the greatest trick?
As a kid, my favorite thing to do at the Natural History museum was a midday stop, when my family strolled past an antiquated looking vending machine in the museum's musty basement. The Mold-A-Rama machine was oddly shaped, George Jetson-esque, and spewed out made-to-order, brightly colored plastic dinosaurs. There was such joy in watching the liquid wax pour into the mold, and then eject a warm, custom toy—well worth the dollar or two demanded. A version of this tradition was recently elevat...
What would it be like to have a super-realistic humanoid modeled after you...and then come face-to-face with the moving, life-like version of yourself... Creepy? To say the least.
The Android Megaminxer is mind-bogglingly elaborate, impressively combining multiple geeky mediums to solve an incredibly complex puzzle. ARM, the genius behind the stunt, uses LEGOs (a Mindstorms NXT kit to be exact) to build a robot responsible for the mechanics; they then employ an Android app as the brain, which solves a Rubik's Cube—oh wait, not a simple Rubik's (that would be too easy), but a Megaminx, which is a dodecahedron with 12 faces, each face containing 5 edges. Like the classic...
It's tough to figure out what a mummy would have looked like when he was alive; soft tissue of a human body decays, even in ice. But, Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfons Kennis took the challenge. Using techniques that belong to both science and art, they managed to reconstruct the face and body of Otzi the Iceman, a mummy who was found in the Italian Alps in 1991.
Tired of getting calluses from incessantly strumming along to 'No Woman No Cry'? Just hook up to the brain-music system and use your brain power to play a tune instead. I'm not talking—humming along in your head. The machine, created by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, is composed of electrodes taped directly onto your skull that pick up tiny electrical impulses from neurons in your brain and translates them into musical rhythms on a co...
Watch out Angry Birds, there's a new bird-flinging game in town and its zen flavor is converting addicted Angry Bird players far and wide. Within the first week of its release, Tiny Wings—a $0.99 mobile phone game developed by Andreas Illinger—soared to the top ten most popular paid apps in the US. Then, unthinkably, it dethroned Angry Birds at the number one spot, where it continues to reign.
Holy… Lord, help us all—this isn't CG, it's for real. Meet Geminoid DK, the latest spawn from Osaka University Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro's legion of ultra-realistic Androids.
Find a PDF You need a PDF file on your computer to convert, so keep the file path in mind.
According to PlayStation Network @ Home, a new app may allow hackers to ban or unban anyone they please from PSN.
I would like to quote a paragraph from The Power of Art by Susan Anderson, Nancy Walch, and Kate Becker. You will find the link to the PDF online booklet for more information at the bottom.
Well, maybe not a real invisibility cloak—sorry Harry Potter fans—but a team of scientists at MIT's SMART Centre are on their way to producing materials that mimic actual invisibility.
Feature documentary about female orgasms. Below is the trailer for the feature Film Orgasm Inc. Orgasm Inc. (2009) is the first feature documentary by award-winning director Liz Canner. It premiered at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. In the shocking and hilarious documentary, filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic videos for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to tr...
The niches are the foundation of a successful marketing strategy. You need to focus on the niches in a market and develop a strategy for each niche. You'll attract more targeted traffic that way, which will result in more sales.
The New Yorker profiles Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of modern video games, whose spawn includes world-changing classics such as Mario and Legend of Zelda:
Love this Rubik's Cube stamp with movable type Chinese characters by Shaun Chung. Chung laser-etched the characters from wood, and then adhered them to a regular Rubik's Cube to create verses from a traditional Chinese text.
What is a CSA? CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.
Remember Willy Wonka's magical gum? Wonka promised the flavors of tomato soup, roast beef, baked potato, blueberry pie and ice cream. As the avid gum lover Violet Beauregarde tested it out, she exclaimed: “It’s hot and creamy, I can actually feel? it running down my throat!” Um, yum... I think. Good news. Wonka's three course chewing gum is finally a reality-in-the-works. Scientists at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) have been developing recent advances in nanotechnology, which could pot...
Boss's Day is on October 16th, and this year it falls on a Saturday— what better of a day to celebrate Boss's Day? More than likely, you won't be working in the office this weekend, and if you are, you probably don't feel like celebrating and thanking your boss for being so kind and fair. So, forget the cake and ice cream and instead, take the chance to develop a good relationship with your boss, because hating or kissing up to your boss just isn't the way to go.
Android-enabled mobile devices are taking the world by storm, giving Apple's iPhone a run for their money. And if you're holding an Android cell phone in your hand, getting accustomed to all the flashy features can be daunting, especially if you're new to multimedia smartphones.
Designed by a computer, milled by machines and assembled by a team of robots, Federico Díaz's Geometric Death Frequency 141 isn't necessarily the warmest work of art you'll see this year. But it is, nevertheless, quite a lot of fun to behold:
Wired posts a gallery of the original models of now iconic devices, with some fun tech-fetish facts. Did you know the first cell phone weighed a whopping 4.4 pounds? Or that the world's first super soaker was invented completely by accident? Examples below; click through for Wired's complete gallery.
Fashion designer Manel Torres has teamed up with scientists at Imperial College London and designers at the Royal College of Art to invent spray-on clothing, an instant, sprayable, non-woven fabric-in-a-can.
Shot with a Nokia N8 cell phone equipped with a 50x CellScope microscope, Dot is the world’s smallest stop motion animated film. Created by the makers of the Wallace & Gromit series, the figures were made with a 3D printer, each hand-painted with the aid of a microscope. Watch as the heroine hops from scene to scene, Mario style: Via PopSci: