For behind the scenes pictures, stories and special contests, follow us on Facebook!
Subscribe:

Tag Archives: Innovation

The Swedes Design An Invisible Helmet. No, Really.

By David Ponce on 08/16/12 • Leave a comment!

Some will tell you that wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle isn’t cool. It’s like turning your head into a giant mushroom, they’ll say. And it’s true. It’s also true that wearing your brain on your outside is bad: this kills the human. What if we told you that you could have your cake and eat it too? Well, two Swedish ladies have spent the last 7 years, and gone through several million dollars in funding developing Hövding, an invisible helmet. Ok, invisible is a bit of a stretch. What it really is, is an airbag that you wear in a collar around your neck. Carefully calibrated sensors detect when you’re in the middle of a crash, and in under 0.1 seconds a canister of Helium pierces and inflates a strong nylon hood that completely wraps around your noggin. This should keep the brains on the inside. What’s best is that when this happens, sensor data is stored in the device’s memory for the 10 seconds before and after impact, providing you with a “ride data recorder” of sorts. This could help authorities figure out what happened in case the helmet isn’t enough to keep you alive.

Sounds wonderful, but of course there are drawbacks. The same fold who think regular helmets are uncomfortable will likely balk at a thick collar around their necks. And then, there’s cost: $600 or so for this admittedly cool tech is a lot of dollars to spend when you can just buy a regular helmet for $30. Still, early adopters with lots of disposable income could dig it.

Hit the jump for a video and links.

… Continue Reading

PLY90 Brackets: For The “That’s About Right” Carpenter

By David Ponce on 08/16/12 • 2 Comments

Making your own furniture can be considered an art, we suppose. Heck, we sometimes wonder how good Jesus was… But that’s a question for another day. The point is, making tables and chairs and things is fairly hard, yo. You have to measure right, angle cuts precisely, and do a number of fairly complex things so that your final product doesn’t crumble into a big pile of plywood on first use. Or… you can use the PLY90 bracket. It’s a 90-degree-angle piece of metal that attaches to plywood of varying sizes and angles the pieces perpendicular to each other. This way you can just cut your boards with more relaxed tolerances, and assemble all manner of furniture with ease. Chairs, desks, shelves, benches… all of it becomes a matter of cutting some board, and connecting the pieces with the PLY90. Tightening of this connector is done through a central lug nut, using a simple 3/16 Allen key; the PLY90 does’t even require drilling.

We like it a lot! It’s a smart, elegant way to make your own things, and the final product has an industrial chic that we really dig. It’s not super cheap though: 4 connectors are $45, 8 for $80, 16 for $139, and 50 for $375. It’s a pre-order on Kickstarter, with shipping in November if fully funded.

Hit the jump for a bunch more pictures of things you can make with it, and links.

… Continue Reading

Tape With Rip Cord Makes Scissors Obsolete

By David Ponce on 06/27/12 • 3 Comments

By David Ponce

Packing stuff up with tape means that at some point that tape will have to be removed. Most of the time we take our keys out here in the office, and we try to cut through the bunched up tape with the equivalent of a blunt saw. Sometimes one of us will reach for the scissors, but that’s more effort than can usually be mustered. If only things had been packaged with the above Rip Cord, our life would be immeasurably improved. It’s Quirky’s take on the classic tape, featuring, well, a rip cord down the middle. Simply pull on that when you want to open your package and it splits in two, just like that.

There’s no word on when or even if it’s going to go into production, but Quirky projects that if it does, a roll would sell for $4.

[ Product Page ]

This Vacuum Backpack With Suction Gloves Lets You Scale Any Wall

By David Ponce on 06/13/12 • 1 Comment

By David Ponce

Getting over walls can be done in a variety of ways. Aside from being bitten by a radioactive spider and turning into Spiderman, these include grappling hooks, trebuchets (might be hard on the landing), and suction cups, to name a few. All have their drawbacks, but the above solution is interesting. “Utah State University “Ascending Aggies” team recently won first prize out of 33 teams in the Air Force’s contest to get four soldiers over a very tall wall.” They developed what they call a PVAC, or Personal Vacuum Assisted Climber and it works just as you’d imagine: a loud-as-hell vacuum strapped to your back connects to two suction cups and lets you climb pretty much anything, even if the surface wouldn’t have been so good for regular suctions cups. It’s loud, and heavy, and it’s still in the development stages, but the work they’ve done so far is impressive enough that the Air Force coughed up $100,000 to let them keep working on it. You sort of do have to watch the above video to get a sense of just why this is cool.

[ Business Insider Article ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Mathematician Gets Patent For Wide Angle Mirror That Eliminates Blind Spots Without Causing Distortions

By David Ponce on 06/11/12 • 3 Comments

By David Ponce

In driving school they always teach you to check your blind spot. Once you start driving however, particularly if it’s a German car, you’re required to stop doing this. Signaling is also a thing of the past for most. But those of us who cling to our early teachings know that it’s important because regular mirrors suck. Turns out that Dr. Andrew Hicks of Drexel University has made them better. He’s created a specially curved mirror that gives a much wider angle of view without the typical distortion normally associated with these. Blind spots are gone.

… Continue Reading

Tactus Display Has Physical Buttons That Appear And Disappear At Will

By David Ponce on 06/08/12 • 3 Comments

By David Ponce

There’s a dying breed of mobile device user that still swears by the tactile keyboards. Yes, we’re mostly looking at you Blackberry, with your $1billion in unsold inventory… There will come a time, sadly, when the Blackberry’s are no more; the writing is on the wall. But what will happen to all these discombobulated users that will have to switch to touchscreens? If Tactus manages to get some traction, they may have some respite yet. The company has developed a special kind of display that can create physical buttons directly on the touch surface, on command, depending on the application. One minute it could be digits for dialling a number, the next it could be the alphabet for all your texting needs. If you watch the demo video below, you’ll see the technology is quite responsive and seems pretty much ready for prime time. You should also watch the video to see an example on how not to make videos. That dramatic voice is better suited in a movie preview than here.

But whatever, we digress. The company appears to be pretty serious and their technology could end up in our devices within the next couple of years, hopefully without too much of a price bump.

[ Product Page ]

ZeroN: We Have Seen The Future And There’s An Anti-Gravity Metal Ball In It

By David Ponce on 06/04/12 • Leave a comment!

By David Ponce

Right at the very edge of the work being done on human-machine interaction is one congenial looking Jinha Lee, from the Tangible Media Group of the MIT Media Lab. In collaboration with Rehmi Post and Hiroshi Ishii, Jinha has created the ZeroN, a device that lets computers and people interact through the use of a fascinating floating metal ball. Yeah, the ball just floats, it levitates, and it looks pretty awesome in the process. But it’s not just about the looks. The ZeroN serves as both an input and output device. As an input, you just touch the ball and move it. Cameras located all around track its position, which then is recorded in digital 3D space within the program. One application for this would be to reposition “the sun” above physical objects to cast digital shadows in a specially constructed program.

As an output, the ZeroN is able to move the ball by itself, either reproducing the path you initially created or some other pre-programmed itinerary. One example application of this would be to demonstrate the orbit of a planet around some mass.

The magic is created with the use of a robotic arm tipped with a sophisticated magnet. This is housed away from view in a container above the ball, and every time you move it, the arm repositions and re-calibrates itself, keeping the ball afloat. And granted, the applications listed above don’t sound ground breaking. But keep in mind that should this tech take off, you’re really just looking at an early prototype that has the potential to evolve into something far more useful. We’re not sure what just yet, but if watching the video doesn’t convince you of this, you’re just not made from the same geek molecules we are.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ FastCoDesign ]

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 ]

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 ]

Copyright © 2013 OhGizmo!