New advances in 3D printing are making it not only possible but also viable to manufacture cheap, print-on-demand, disposable drones designed simply to soar off over the horizon and never come back. Some British engineers did just that, and this is only the beginning.
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It’s our 10th birthday, and to celebrate we’ll be revisiting some of the key devices of the last decade. So please be kind, rewind.
A company called Sling Media burst onto the scene in 2005 with a relatively new idea: give customers the ability to…
Last year Facebook debuted a nice redesign that featured big, beautiful pictures, seen above. But Facebook never rolled it out. Why? Because most people have crappy old computers.
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Love music and LEGO? Then you’ll wish you did what LEGO-building extraordinaire Adly Syairi Ramly did with his set of blocks and twenty famous bands that you probably know by name and face: immortalize them using nothing but LEGO bricks.
You can check out the rest of them in the gallery below. Adly’s work includes well-known musical acts from the Beastie Boys to the Beatles. Personally, the one he did for The Smiths is my favorite. Which is yours?
[via LikeCool]
3D modeling software is often used to visualize and develop concepts – anything from a piece of furniture to a video game. Those programs make it easy to transition from idea to prototype and to refine or duplicate sketches, but they require a lot of practice and training to master. A new company called Gravity thinks it can make sketching in 3D almost as easy as doodling with pen and paper.
Gravity uses an infrared pen, a control pad with sensors and a pair of augmented reality glasses. You use the pen to sketch in midair, just above the control pad. You won’t need to be M.C. Escher to start creating 3D models though, because Gravity only allows for sketching in one plane at a time. A switch on the pad lets you switch planes, rotating your virtual object to the side where you want to draw. Your sketch will then be visible to anyone wearing the glasses – it could just be you, or a roomful of people.
The founders of Gravity believe that “CAD [computer-aided design] generates perfect shapes that don’t leave room for the imperfection of your early modeling to allow imagination to keep influencing the idea. CAD requires thinking in terms of functions and variables. This is where imagination is defeated. There is much lost in the process of moving from 2D to 3D.” I’m not sure I buy that. Sure, making complex technology user-friendly can help drive innovation and speed up the development of concepts. On the other hand, professionals need the precision and the shortcuts that CAD and other 3D modeling software provide. For example, will Gravity users be able to cut, copy and paste an exact part of a sketch, and will the commands for those features still be intuitive without being tedious?
Sketching in 3D looks cool, but I’m going to let the pros decide if this is just a high-tech whiteboard or a legitimate alternative to 3D modeling software.
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
It’s been a big week for architecture — especially the futuristic kind. First, winners were announced…
Understandably, there is some point in life where getting paid to stuff your face with french fries might sound like a desirable thing. For most people, this point quickly passes. A former professional frozen food taster tells all in a gross and engrossing interview at The Billfold.
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It was lunch time on a muggy late September day in 2013 when an explosion shook downtown Orlando, Florida. A warehouse on west Jefferson street was the casualty. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks were already on their way by the time Tim Roth, a good Samaritan, was on the scene. As he searched through the rubble and debris for injured humans, what he found was something else entirely.
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Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we’re using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.
I love low-cost smartphones that punch above their…
The convenience of 3D printing has moved away from industrial design and products to architecture. We are not talking about scale models to showcase the blueprints or interiors, but in … Continue reading
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