In a new and never-to-be-continued column I like to call ‘totally ripping off nature’, industrial designer Anthony Reale has designed a new kind of water turbine called the ‘Strait Power’ which was inspired by our planet’s laziest predator, the Basking Shark. The shark basically spends a good 18 hours a day drifting through the waters with its mouth wide open, filter feeding on zooplankton. But it turns out that thanks to a clever design the Basking Shark creates a pressure differential as it moves through the water which helps to automatically draw water through its gills, instead of actively having to pump water through its system.
Observing this phenomenon Anthony designed the Strait Power turbine which uses a double opening that draws water in and then compresses it to create a “low-pressure zone” which draws it past the turbine blades with more efficiency, generating more energy. In fact after undergoing a rigorous 200 hour test at the University of Michigan’s Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory (Go Blue!) the Strait Power turbine was found to improve the power output of a regular turbine by about 40%, and that was just the original prototype. Anthony intends to improve and advance the design and has already come up with several possible applications ranging from industrial uses to the military.
Well Canon, I’m afraid your GPS monopoly on P&S cameras is now over because today Pentax announced their new Optio WG-1 which also includes GPS geo-tagging. Now I don’t think it can double as a GPS logger like Canon’s new SC230 HS does, but the Optio WG-1 brings its own unique feature set to the table. Namely the fact that it’s built Tonka-tough.
On the technical side you get a 14MP sensor, 2.7-inch 16:9 widescreen LCD display, 720P video capture with HDMI out, a 5X internal optical zoom lens (28-140mm) and a fun ‘Enhanced Digital Microscope’ mode which uses a set of 5 LEDs around the lens to ensure smooth and even lighting when shooting in macro mode. And on the ‘that’s one tough SOB side’ the WG-1 GPS not only looks like it can take a licking, but the housing is waterproof to 33 feet (usable when submerged), shockproof up to 5 foot drops, crushproof up to 220 pounds of force and can withstand temps as low as 14°F. Available in April the Optio WG-1 GPS will sell for $399.95 while a non-GPS version is a bit cheaper at $349.95.
Over the top DVD and Blu-ray packaging are not uncommon these days, but you don’t see much being done for new vinyl releases. It might be because the format has been supplanted 3 or 4 times over by now, or it could be the fact that bands who still do produce vinyl pressings just don’t care about their fans. Clearly that’s not the case with the hardcore group Graf Orlock though.
Their latest release, Doombox, comes on a very cool, clear 10-inch piece of vinyl in a box set that also includes CDs of not only their current release, but their last 3 trilogy records as well. Giving you 42 tracks of Graf Orlock goodness. (With ‘goodness’ being a relative term.) But as you can see in the photo, who cares about the music when the vinyl’s packaging includes instructions for turning it into a fairly convincing cardboard (non-functioning) boombox. All for just $15! (I’m fairly certain that’s not just the pre-order price.) Goodbye reference texts, I’ve suddenly got the need for more shelf space.
They’re not as instantly repulsive as cockroaches, but a bed bug infestation can be far worse. Besides feeding on your blood and leaving you with nasty, itchy hives, they’re one of the hardest infestations to detect and one of the most difficult to get rid of. So if you think you’re at risk or have been exposed, finding and getting ridding of them early, before they have a chance to really get themselves entrenched, is kind of important. And thanks to a Cocker Spaniel named Nina, that might be a lot easier in the near future.
Nina belongs to an inventor and mechanical engineer named Chris Goggin, who already has a dozen patents to his name. But his latest creation, the Bed Bug Detective, will appeal to anyone at a particularly high risk for getting bed bugs, like say travelers. The detector ‘sniffs’ the air for a couple of very specific pheromones released by bed bugs, and is sensitive enough to detect concentrations as small as 200 parts per million. Dogs are good at this too, and have also been trained to detect bed bugs, but they’re not as travel friendly, and have unique demands of their own.
Chris Goggin’s Bed Bug Detective on the other hand will only cost you a one-time payment of ~$200, and can be used to detect the presence of the little buggers even if they’re hiding inside cushions, sheets or wall sockets. And besides some extremely custom software and a special sensor unit, the Bed Bug Detective is constructed from mostly off-the-shelf parts so Goggin is hoping to have it on the market in a very optimistic six weeks or so. The sooner the better.
Like I mentioned yesterday, besides serving as easy last minute gifts or nerdy ways to cool your drinks, Fred & Friend’s catalog also has plenty for those who just can’t pay attention to anything longer than a minute or two. So for them this new Maze Café cup and saucer set will provide a few moments of distraction while they’re forced to endure coffee and conversation after a meal. The saucer features a raised maze detail allowing you to guide a drop of coffee or tea from the outer rim to the goal in the middle. It’s not terribly complicated, but let’s face it, anything more intricate and the target consumer would probably lose interest half-way to the goal. Available sometime this Spring, pricing TBA.
The battle between Verizon and AT&T has heated up since the former managed to land the iPhone on their network. Both sides have their pros and cons, most of which boil down to which carrier has better coverage in your area. Well if you’re on the AT&T side of the fence, Target wants to help you out. How? By giving you some cash towards a shiny new iPhone 4.
Until this Saturday, February 12, you can get up to a $200 credit towards an iPhone 4 by trading in your old 3GS ($100 by trading in a 3G). Essentially, that means if you have a 3GS, you could land yourself the latest hardware for free. You’ll of course need to sign a new 2-year plan to get in on the deal.
Even if your kids have shown absolutely no aptitude towards playing a musical instrument, thanks to Tomy they’ll still be able to create ‘beautiful’ music by probably doing what they already do best; touching, tapping or poking each other. Their Nikken Gakki features 4 electrodes, and whenever 2 of them are connected, it creates a unique tone or triggers a sound effect. So if 2 people were each holding an electrode, a sound can be triggered by simply touching the other person, which completes the circuit.
The Nikken Gakki can even detect where on the body someone has been touched, presumably by measuring the resistance or level of current, and produces different sounds accordingly. It also has 3 play modes including performance, transform and drum mode, with the latter allowing you to rock out on your friends like they were a virtual drum kit. Available sometime in June, presumably only in Japan, for ~$40. (¥3,200)
Canon unveiled a huge pile of new toys today including 4 new PowerShot models, with the SX230 HS being the most drool-worthy. All of the models include Canon’s proven HS SYSTEM which uses their DIGIC 4 image processor and a high-sensitivity 12.1MP CMOS sensor to reduce noise in photos taken in dark situations, so you don’t necessarily have to always resort to washing everything out with the built-in flash. It’s also got a 28mm equivalent lens with 14X optical zoom and optical image stabilization to keep blurs to a minimum when zoomed all the way in.
It’s also one of Canon’s first P&S cameras to come with a built-in GPS receiver that continually tracks the user’s location and records the latitude, longitude and altitude of where a pic was taken in its EXIF data. The receiver will even keep working when the camera is off, so the camera then doubles as a GPS logger, tracking the user’s adventures wherever they may roam. And since sometimes 1,000 words isn’t enough to capture a moment, the SX230 HS also captures full 1080P video at 24fps, or 720P at 30fps. Or drop the resolution to 320×240 where you can then capture high-speed footage at up to 240fps.
The Canon PowerShot SX230 HS will be available near the end of March with an expected MSRP of $349.99.
Despite the fact that everyone’s carrying around sophisticated smartphones these days, Moleskines, Field Notes and other paper-based note taking solutions remain very popular. Tapping away at an on-screen keyboard is still no where near as efficient as pen and paper, so King Jim has created a somewhat low-tech approach to bridge the gap between the iPhone and hand-written notes.
Their SHOT NOTE notepads come in various sizes, and can be used with a regular pen, pencil or whatever you happen to prefer to write with. When a page is complete, it can be archived via the SHOT NOTE iPhone app by simply snapping a photo of it. Each page features markers in the corner which lets the app automatically correct for perspective distortion and ensures it fits perfectly on the iPhone’s screen. In the upper right corner there’s even a sort-of DIY segmented LCD that lets you fill in the number and date of the note, which will be OCR’d by the SHOT NOTE app and used to automagically name and store the page.
The app can then be used to search your notes, in a limited fashion of course since the whole page isn’t OCR’d, or you can simply keep them in the iPhone’s native Photo app or even export them to Evernote. Available starting today the notepads are available in small, medium and large sizes and range in price from about ~$4 (¥320) to ~$7 (¥600).
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