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Monthly Archives: March 2013

Clear Paint Makes Any Surface Into Dry-Erase Board

By David Ponce on 05/28/12 • 1 Comment

By David Ponce

Dry erase boards are pretty useful, especially in business settings. But they always involve one thing: a board. The CLEAR paint from company IdeaPaint is a special formula that can turn pretty much any surface into a writeable, and perhaps more importantly, erasable one. This means you can coat a wooden door with it, and use that at your next meeting. Or the backs of the office chairs, though we’re not sure what that’ll accomplish. It’s a supposedly almost doorless application, requires just one coat and no primer. It is pretty darn expensive however: a 50 sq. ft. “kit” will cost you $225. The kit comes with the paint, recommended roller, stir stick, can opener and wet paint sign.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Geekologie ]

Future In-Game Advertising Could Use Interrupting Adverts

By David Ponce on 05/28/12 • 1 Comment

By David Ponce

We’re all more or less getting used to the idea that product placement in video games is not going anywhere soon, but how would we react if the method outlined in the above patent from Sony is ever implemented? Recently unearthed by an intrepid user of the NeoGaf forum, the patent filed on Jul 22, 2011 would have the game actually be interrupted (stopped) by an advertisement, and then resume. Gameplay would slow down in anticipation of the ad being shown, and then rewind slightly after the ad is presented. There’s no word on whether this will ever actually make it into a game, although it’s not unlikely, at the very least for free-to-play titles. Paid titles on the other hand should steer clear of this… At least, we hope so.

[ Patent Page ] VIA [ G4TV ]

Japanese Man Makes Self-Stirring Pot That Uses No Mechanical Parts

By David Ponce on 05/28/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

Making some recipes requires fairly frequent stirring. We don’t really know why, but then again we wouldn’t be able to cook ourselves out of a paper bag. We can see however how annoying it could be to have to stay in front of a pot of food, stirring continually. Maybe Hideki Watanabe felt the same way when he designed the above pot which creates a vortex in the liquid without using any mechanical parts. It’s called Kuru-Kuru Nabe (aka the ‘Pot Round and Round’) and uses thermodynamics to create the stirring motion. Heating water rises but since the walls of the pot are specially shaped, it is simultaneously propelled forward. The result is a pot of liquid that not only stirs itself but tends to channel food and more importantly foam to the middle, compacting it in the process and reducing the chances of a boilover. Chances are it might not work as well with thicker concoctions, but would be fine for simple stews, soups and pasta.

The Kuru-Kuru Nabe is not a commercially available product just yet, but Watanabe is looking for investors.

[ Product Page (In Japanese) ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Mondrian PC Case Mod

By David Ponce on 05/28/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

Sometimes all you really need to attract some attention is a little bit of pretty. The above PC enclosure is a project from one Jeffrey Stephenson and is made from wood and hand-cut acrylic tiles. It looks like a painting from Piet Mondrian, a turn of the last century Dutch painter who also inspired a famous Yves Saint-Laurent dress, the Partridge Family bus from the 1970s TV show, and was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group. The Mini-ITX design has “an Intel Core i3-2105 CPU, Intel HD3000 Graphics, Crucial 256GB M4 SSD, 8GB Crucial DDR3 system memory, a 120W mini-box.com PicoPSU, Scythe Kozuti CPU, Heatsink/Fan, Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview.” It doesn’t appear to be for sale but the links below will lead to a pretty detailed build page.

[ The Mondrian PC ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

Optical Illusion Friday: There Are Four Circles On The Screen

By David Ponce on 05/25/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

After an absence of a few weeks, here’s the optical illusion column again. That picture above? Four circles. No spiral.

Yeah.

In other news, we’re thinking of starting another column altogether to replace this one and we’re taking requests. Anyone?

Cookoo Smart Watch Says Me Too

By David Ponce on 05/25/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

Perhaps fuelled by the phenomenal success of the Pebble Smartwatch (which went on to raise $10,266,845 on Kickstarter after seeking only $100,000), we have news of yet another watch that works with the iPhone and Android devices. It’s got much of the same features the Pebble did, albeit a little more low-key. It’s got Bluetooth 4.0 so will have very little impact on your phone’s battery life, and its job is simply to alert you. Whether it’s an email, a Tweet, a text, or a missed call, the watch can be setup any way you want. Aside from alerts, other uses include being a remote trigger for your phone’s camera, one button check-in device, even lost phone finder. Perhaps even more importantly, it won’t require a regular charge, like the Pebble did; the Cookoo goes over a year without needing to change the batteries.

It’s currently on Kickstarter and a pledge will set you back $80. The post funding MSRP is around $100, so there’s some savings to be made by order now.

[ Project Page ] VIA [ GearHungry ]

Pizza Slicer Also Serves

By David Ponce on 05/25/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

If the success of Victorinox and their Swiss Army knives has proven anything is that multi-funtion tools can be popular. The above pizza slicer also incorporates a server so you can go straight from the cutting to the serving.

And that, dear folks, is it. It’s $6. We could go on about the tool and try to make funnies, but it seems frankly rude to make jokes about a topic as serious as pizza.

Pizza deserves respect.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Deal Of The Day: $10 Of Free Tracks On eMusic

By David Ponce on 05/25/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

Well this is interesting for a change. Today’s deal is no piece of hardware; no phone, TV, laptop or desktop. Instead it’s a $10 voucher for tunes on eMusic, with a 7 day trial. Granted, you do usually get $5 with the trial, so today’s deal just doubles that. Still, you can keep the music after the trial, even if you don’t sign up.

[ $10 Of Free Tracks On eMusic ] VIA [ LogicBuy ]

Laser Spoke Project Measures Cyclists Power Output

By David Ponce on 05/24/12 • 1 Comment

By David Ponce

Things have gotten to the point where you’re able to track a multitude of quantitative points when you go out cycling: your position, speed, and elevation for example. But one metric you don’t see is power output. Yet this is very useful for athletes who can use it to set a pace and to keep track of their overall fitness levels. Well, a project currently in the funding phase at IndieGoGo called The Laser Spoke Project is able to measure just that. Every bicycle wheel exhibits a certain amount of normal torsional flex when power is applied through the pedals. This device measures the flexion by shining a laser from the center hub of the wheel onto a fixed spot on the rim; any deviation from center indicates power in proportion to the amount of deviation, the reading of which is saved onto an SD card. Of course calibration is important since not all wheels are the same, but the company is not divulging how this is done. The do say that the device should work on all bikes and not weigh more than 150g when completed. If you want to be part of the Beta-tester group, you can score one now for $550. If you prefer to wait for the final version to be released then you’ll have to pre-order it now for $750. Of course that’s assuming the project reaches its $85,000 funding goal.

[ Project Page ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

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