According to Japan Trends, the country currently has the highest number of vending machines per capita in the entire world. About one for every 23 citizens. So the Japanese Red Cross has teamed up with Coca-Cola to create a special vending machine that makes it very easy to donate towards the disaster relief efforts still underway there.
In addition to purchasing a beverage, there are two extra option buttons allowing users to donate either ¥10 or ¥100 (very small amounts) as part of their purchase. The machines are branded with the organization’s iconic red cross so they stand out among the sea of other vending machines, and until September 100% of the donations will go directly towards the earthquake relief efforts there. After that, all the donations will still go to the Japanese Red Cross, but will be used for other purposes as well.
As if parents of infants don’t already have enough to carry around, from diaper bags to playmats to whatever, an Australian company called QuickSmart has now created a collapsible stroller that fits into a backpack. The whole package weighs less than 9lbs, so it’s not like strapping on a pack designed for a 3-week wilderness expedition. But it’s good to know that if Sherpas aren’t able to find work on Everest, they can always provide much needed support for new parents.
The stroller itself doesn’t seem to cut too many corners either. It includes a 5-point harness and canopy, padded seat and footrest, a built-in shopping basket and is suitable for wee ones aged 6 months and up. In backpack mode it even has mesh side storage pockets for holding diapers, water or whatever else your little one can’t leave home without. Available from Amazon UK for ~$160 to $194. (£99.99 to £119.99)
If you’ve ever had to clean gum out of your hair, scrape it off from under a desk or remove it from a carpet, you quickly realize why its hydrophobic (repels water) nature makes it the bane of cleaners everywhere. In fact I was once told that many casinos don’t even sell the stuff because it’s so difficult to clean off their gaudy carpets. But Rev7 is a different story.
Its new gum base was developed, based on research conducted at England’s Bristol University, so that it’s amphiphilic. Which means it’s both hydrophobic and hydrophilic at the same time. Its hydrophobic properties allow it to still be chewable and not just dissolve in your mouth immediately. While it’s hydrophilic properties allows water and liquids to penetrate the gum, making it far less sticky to many surfaces and materials, and far easier to clean.
When you’re lacking long fingernails, getting a key onto a keyring can be one of the most difficult tasks life throws at you. But thanks to Scott Amron, we no longer have to settle for a pocket full of loose keys. His new Carabiner Key design features a pivoting latch, not unlike the one used on real carabiners, that makes it ridiculously easy to clip a key anywhere. Particularly a keyring. When it’s available this Fall it will be sold as a standard key-shaped blank, meaning any locksmith or machine can easily cut it with their existing equipment. And given Scott’s previous key invention, the Keybrid, sells for about $9 these days, you can probably expect a similar price tag for the Carabiner model.
Sometimes when you travel you like to bring as many of the amenities of home as you can, but trying to get that satellite dish on the roof to squeeze into airline-approved luggage can be a real challenge. You can put away that hacksaw and acetylene torch though, thanks to a company called GATR who makes inflatable satellite antenna solutions that are far easier to transport. They look like giant beachballs, with the actual ‘dish’ being hidden inside and protected from the elements. But the ball design is also crucial to how the system works. By increasing the air pressure on one side of the sphere you can force the dish, which divides the sphere in half, into the necessary parabolic shape.
The full-sized version, pictured at the top of this post, actually requires a few rolling cases to store and transport since besides the antenna you also have to deal with mounting plates, blowers and other hardware to make the system functional. But the company is working on a far more compact version (1.2 meters in diameter), available this Fall, which looks a lot more like a beachball. When deflated and broken down all of the components will easily fit into a backpack weighing less than 50lbs., and while it’s probably not as robust or capable as the full-sized version, sometimes portability is far more important.
At the 3D & Virtual Reality Exhibition, which was recently held in Tokyo, a Japanese company called Topcon revealed a new scanning system that could one day bring road condition data to GPS devices. The system, known as IP-S2 Lite, uses a 360° camera combined with a laser scanner, an inclinometer and GPS positional data to generate a 3D representation of where it’s being driven through. The data allows accurate measurements to be made of everything captured in the video, including distance height and surface.
Most recently the new system was used to evaluate the damage and condition of roads in Japan in areas that were damaged by the recent earthquake. But it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to assume that it could also be used to generate accurate map data for GPS devices that better reflected the 3D nature of roadways like hills, dips and maybe even particularly egregious potholes.
Lets get this out of the way first and foremost. Polara’s self correcting golf balls, which promise to correct slices and hooks by up to 75%, are not approved for professional competition play. So if you think you’ve found a way to sneak into the PGA or LPGA, it isn’t going to happen. However, if you’re completely unable to play through a round of golf at your local course without constantly landing your ball off the fairway, and have very understanding friends, you might want to give them a shot.
I don’t completely understand the science of what keeps them on the straight and narrow, but it’s a combination of a deep, shallow and tiny dimple pattern on the outside of the ball. And what looks to be a specialized layer core which optimizes spin and increases distance. A set of 12 Polara balls will cost you $39.95, which I assume is more expensive than a regular set of balls. But since Polara’s balls will also reduce the number of snickers and laughter from your fellow players, I’m pretty sure it’s more than worth it for a lot of golfers.
At CES earlier this year we were reluctantly dragged into a demo of Memjet’s high-speed inkjet printer technology. And while it’s hard to get excited about consumer-level printer technology, we ended up being rather impressed by their hardware which spat out full-color, 1600 dpi prints at a rate of about 12 inches per second. Which equates to 60 x A4 pages every minute. At the show we were told that Lenovo was one of the first companies to license the technology, but it looks like LG is about to beat them to the market with their appropriately named Machjet color printer.
Like the prototypes we saw at CES, the Machjet LPP6010N uses Memjet’s proprietary PSA (page straight array) printhead technology which crams more than 70,000 nozzles onto a single head, allowing it to produce 60 full-color, 1600×800 dpi outputs per minute. And while consuming less power, 32W compared to a color laser printer which uses 600W, and less ink. The Machjet is expected to be available from LG dealers starting this month, but the last real question when it comes to whether or not this technology will catch on, the price, hasn’t been specified yet.
Beyblades came along well after my trips to the store started with a stroll down the toy aisles. But I get the idea. You spin them up real good like, launch them into a plastic bowl and let physics and gravity do their thing until a ‘last top standing’ winner is declared. But now, Takara Tomy has found a way to take some of the randomness out of who wins a Beyblade battle. Their new Super Control Beyblades can actually be controlled via an IR remote, letting combatants accelerate, reverse and even stop their Beyblades in the middle of the arena. It’s all accomplished by an electric motor inside the top which increases, decreases or even cancels out their spin, making them move and react more like they do in the anime TV series.
Related Tags: Innovation
Permalink
