Cell phone have, for better or worse, become an important part of our daily lives. Which is why it really sucks when you get somewhere, only to realize your phone is sitting at home, miles away. I’ve found my own way around that, as I use mine to play all of the music in my car, so I notice right away if I’ve left it in the house. However, if you prefer to listen to the radio, that’s not a viable solution. Instead, you might consider this rather simple device.
Bringrr is a small Bluetooth accessory that detects when your phone is nearby. If you start your car and the phone isn’t present, it will emit a sound to let you know. It’s small, rather cheap ($35) and helps to ensure that you never leave home (or anywhere else, for that matter) without your phone.
So how do you convince people to keep buying wall clocks when nearly every single gadget they carry can show them the time? Well one way is to turn it into a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture like the Continue Time clock created by Sander Mulder. The inspiration for the design actually came after an office clock fell to the floor, dislodging the minute and second hands, which is kind of how the Continue Time works. The hour hand remains connected to the ‘center’ of the clock face, but the minute hand extends from the end of the hour hand while the second hand extends from the end of the minute hand. So in the product shot above the clock is actually showing the time as 3:54:32. The video below kind of helps you to understand the movements, but more importantly it shows the clock in motion.
And while it has ‘one-off concept’ written all over it, the Continue Time clock is actually being produced in a limited run of 40 pieces. But since you have to contact the studio for a quote if you’re interested, you can safely assume that affordability is not at the top of its feature list.
I haven’t gotten an AOL CD-ROM in the mail for a few years now, but I know there’s a couple of binders full of plastic discs sitting on my shelf that could be put to better use. And what better use is there than using a ShopBot CNC router to turn them into spirograph discs? That’s exactly what Ari Krupnik is doing, and he sells the sets on his site, for whatever you feel they’re worth.
I want you to tell me how much a recycled CD set is worth to you. You may enter any price in the text box above, and I agree to mail you a set at this price. I add $5.50 to this price for S&H.
While I’d like to say that you’ll be helping the environment by ordering a set of the recycled discs, I think it’s more a case of ‘re-using’ instead of ‘recycling’ since I’m sure the milling process results in a small bit of scrap plastic that gets discarded. But 1 out of 3 R’s isn’t too shabby. And if you’ve got kids, a set of these will also end up being an easy way to redecorate your fridge, whether you want to or not.
If you’ve ever had your eyes tested at an Optometrist, you’ll understand why it’s difficult to get the equipment they use (namely a lens-based Phoropter or a laser-based Aberrometer) into remote, developing nations, where vision problems aren’t dealt with and often lead to blindness. But a team from MIT’s Media Lab, led by Professor Ramesh Raskar, has developed a low-cost alternative for testing vision using a small plastic device they’ve developed that clips onto a cellphone and takes advantage of today’s high resolution LCD displays.
The patient looks into a small lens and uses the phone’s buttons to adjust the position of sets of parallel green and red lines until they just overlap. This ‘test’ is done eight times for each eye, with the lines at different angles, and once completed an app on the phone analyzes the results and provides a prescription, all in about 2 minutes. Here’s Professor Raskar’s explanation of how and why the system works.
The prototype system Raskar and his students developed as a result of that insight has an array of tiny lenses and a grid of pinholes that, combined with the software on the phone, “forces the user to focus at different depths” so the eye’s focusing ability can be measured. Essentially, Raskar explains, the test works by transforming any blurriness produced by aberrations in the eye into an array of separate lines or dots instead of a fuzzy blob, which makes it easier for the user to identify the discrepancy clearly.
Rather than estimating which of two views looks sharper, as in conventional eye tests, the user adjusts the display to make the separate lines or dots come together and overlap, which corresponds to bringing the view into sharp focus. The underlying principle is similar to that used by new “adaptive optics” systems that have recently allowed ground-based telescopes to exceed the performance of the Hubble Space Telescope; these sometimes use the same kind of Shack-Hartmann sensors used in eye testing aberrometers
Even more impressive is that the snap-on plastic device needed to conduct the tests only costs about $1-2 to produce in minimal quantities, and large scale production could easily bring the cost down to just a few cents, which is exactly what they plan to do. The system will begin field-testing in Boston this Summer, then later in developing countries, and they’ve applied for a patent for the technology and plan to eventually mass produce the device under a for-profit company called PerfectSight.
And if you want a more detailed, and more visual, explanation of how the system works, make sure to check out the video I’ve included after the jump.
I’ll just come out and say it, you can’t buy them, so don’t get too attached to these faux-origami mounted animal head lamps created by Chilean industrial designer Verónica Posada. For some reason I have a soft spot for fake mounted animal heads, probably due to being creeped out by a real deer mounted in my grandmother’s basement as a kid. These lamps are far less intimidating though, and in case you couldn’t figure out, include a ram, a deer and a rhinoceros.
Tired of either having to untangle a wad of headphones or carefully wrap them in a holder before and after you’ve used them? Someone certainly was, and it led to the creation of the HoodieBuddie (I’m not your HoodieBuddie, HoodieGuy! I’m not your HoodieGuy, HoodieFriend! etc.) which incorporates a pair of earbuds into the hood’s drawstrings. They’re not removable but are completely machine washable (the first question on everyone’s mind) which means you don’t have to thread your own pair in, but on the downside it also means you can’t use your own earbuds with it. And the headphone’s jack is hidden in a small front pocket where you can also store your MP3 player.
It’s not the perfect solution, where I live the humidity’s been around 180% for the past week, and wearing a hoodie just so you can avoid headphone tangles would result in a heat stroke about 25 feet from your front door. But weather permitting, it’s a clever enough solution. And according to CrunchGear they’ll be available in a variety of colors for just $44 starting on July 1.
If you live in a dorm, or just happen to do all of your computing and gaming in the same room, you might not have room for your monitors and a TV. As long as you’ve got a monitor with an HDMI input, you don’t have to worry about the extra display. But what if you’ve got a nice new 27-inch iMac sitting on your desk? Wouldn’t it be great if you could use that to play your PS3 or 360 games on? So far your only option has been to try using a TV tuner card, which generally causes lag. Belkin, however, has a new solution.
The new AV360 Mini DisplayPort Converter takes any HDMI signal, and converts it for use with at miniDisplayPort connector. This would then be inserted into your iMac (27-inch only) so that you can use it as a monitor. You will also need a free USB port on your iMac, as the device needs it for power.
We’ve brought you a few homebrew versions of the Tumbler Batmobile seen in the most recent Batman films, but for some reason this golf-cart version, which was spotted parked on the Warner Bros. lot in LA, was thought to be used by Christopher Nolan. Now I loved the last two Batman films, but driving something like this just doesn’t seem to be Christopher Nolan’s style. Or even Tim Burton’s. Joel Schumacher? Sure, why not? Anyways it turns out the golf cart was actually created by a Batman fanboy who just so happens to work at Warner Bros. as well. Though whether or not they masquerade as a vigilante crimefighter at night on the back 9 is unknown.
If you’re a racing game fanatic, the kind who wept aloud when the release date for GT5 was finally announced, you probably already have an impressive steering wheel/pedals rig in front of your TV. But if you’re a casual racing gamer who’s entertained the thought of picking up a wheel, but don’t want yet another peripheral crowding up your living room, or just don’t want to spend the money, here’s a clever alternative.
Revealed at E3 last week, the HKS Racing Controller for the PS3, from a company called Eagle3, replaces the buttons on the left side of the controller with a steering wheel dial, for lack of a better description. And on the right side, the square and X buttons have been replaced with a set of miniature, fully analog, gas and brake pedals. The center of the controller also has an LED display showing an exact numerical value of how hard you’re braking or accelerating, as well as a visual graph to assist in steering. Specific pricing or availability wasn’t announced, but according to MotorworldHype it will sell for less than a standard PS3 controller which retails for $54.99. And while there’s only a PS3 version at the moment, controllers for the Xbox and PC might be created if this model sells well enough.
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