In one of the stranger uses of a new technology, Pioneer is offering a 3D hologram printing service to transform ultrasound data into a one-of-a-kind image of your unborn child. Now you can see a 3D image of what your child looks like, even before they’ve popped out into the world! Yes it’s highly unusual, but judging by the high number of ultrasound photos floating around Facebook, this is going to be a hit. [Read more...]
Grab some popcorn, because you are about to see the World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film (Guinness World Records approved)! Created by IBM researchers, the movie stars 5,000 carbon monoxide atoms magnified over 100 million times on a scanning tunneling microscope. The team moved actual atoms frame by frame to tell the story of a boy named Adam and his atom! To keep the atoms still, the conditions were -260 degrees centigrade. Moving atoms, not only makes a fascinating little movie, but the implications for atomic memory in computers that will come from this research will allow devices to get even smaller. [Read more...]
In the land of South Korea resides an artist by the name of Wang Zi Won – a man who is busy constructing mechanical figures of the Buddha. Interested in the relationship between man, science and technology, Wang hopes that the future holds a positive harmony between humans and technology… something he tries to bring forth in his Buddhas. [Read more...]
In less than three months, Internet Explorer’s nostalgia-heavy “Child of the 90s” video has been viewed a whopping 28 million times and along the way was nominated for a Webby Award (voting underway now). [Read more...]
So, you think your car is efficient. Maybe you have a Toyota Prius or a Volkswagen Golf diesel, two cars known for stretching a tank of fuel and going the distance… but they’ve got nothing on the weird looking cars of the Shell Eco-Marathon. These cars, no matter how good or downright ugly they might look, are designed to squeeze every bit of energy out of their small fuel tanks. The winner of the Gas Powered Prototype devision crushed the competition this year in the Americas, turning in a result of 1524.7 kilometers on just one liter of gasoline. In conventional figures that’s 0.066 l/100km or 3586 miles per gallon! [Read more...]
By now you’re familiar with seeing fantastic videos filmed while people use Google Glass. From sharing sunset moments on top of skyscrapers to skydiving while streaming live video, the glasses-like device looks poised to revolutionize the way we both experience and interact with the world. But, among so many other questions about the system that we don’t know yet, how does Glass work? Although we’re treated to video based mockups of the clever looking UI seen on the tiny glass block the devices sport, there isn’t much mentioned about how you actually see the picture. Artist Martin Missfeldt recently pulled together documents on Glass’ design – including the patent itself – and has made a revealing infographic explaining how it focuses the picture on your eye. [Read more...]
It would be hard to get any more retro-nerd-cool than this. If you can identify any of these wiring schematics (without reading further) you score 200,000 points, with a 16x multiplier for every extra ID. You’re looking at the inner workings of some of the most revered personal computing and gaming consoles from the rise of the electronics era – from the Apple I and Commodore 64, to the Atari 2600 and Nintendo. Each two-tone print from City Prints celebrates the inner workings of the devices that have come to enhance and even dominate our society – and they do it with style. [Read more...]
Without a doubt, one of the challenges facing our world population is the need for sustainable energy sources. With the converging issues of pollution, dwindling fossil fuel supplies and a rising population, it’s high time we work on smart solutions. Now Nautical Torque Technologies is proposing a way of generating electricity that eliminates many of the problems with previous technologies and does it using a readily available energy source: docked ships and tides. [Read more...]
HD television has gotten so crisp that sometimes it’s easy to forget that we are just looking at pixelated light. When we are watching NatGeo it really feels like we are looking at a real animal in nature. Shawn Smith uses this fine line between reality and the digital world as the primary investigation for his art work. By cutting sheets of plywood or particle board into 1/2″ wide strips of varying lengths, then dying them different colors with hand-mixed dyes of ink and acrylic paint, he transforms an image into a 3-dimensional pixelated sculpture. Smith states, “Through the process of pixelation, color is distilled, some bits of information are lost, and the form is abstracted. Making the intangible tangible, I view my building process as an experiment in alchemy, using man-made composite and recycled materials to represent natural forms.” [Read more...]
A rich space tourist who earlier payed $20 million to visit the International Space Station, is now working to promote an even more ambitious project – a manned flyby around the planet Mars in 2018. Much like the Apollo 10 mission which proceeded the famous Apollo landing, this mission would be only intended to make a quick flyby of the red planet, in fact only spending about 10 hours at its closest point 100,000km above the planets surface. [Read more...]
