For the first five minutes, we imagine getting paid to watch adult material would be rather interesting. After that point, however, we’d probably spend the bulk of our day quietly updating our resume. If we didn’t, then we’d probably wind up as…
A dumping ground for nuclear waste located near the British coast is "virtually certain" to be washed away by rising sea levels, a new report warns. The UK Environment Agency has admitted that constructing the Drigg Low-Level Waste Repository so near the coast was a mistake, and that one million cubic meters of nuclear waste will begin leaking into the ocean "a few hundred to a few thousand years from now."
Graphene may be the supermaterial to rule them all—but it turns out you can make it at home. In your kitchen blender. Here’s how.
Microcontrollers and other electronics components have been getting smaller and cheaper. A company called Ynvisible proves that these parts can be made much thinner as well. The company recently launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for Printoo, a set of modular electronics that are paper-thin and flexible.
Ynvisible partnered with other electronics manufacturers to create an open source Arduino-compatible platform. The company has skinny versions of everything from a microcontroller board to a battery.
Aside from finalizing the design of its flexible boards and lining up suppliers, it looks like the company has finished much of the work even before they set up the fundraiser.
Pledge at least $45 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Printoo kit as a reward; higher pledges have more robust kits as rewards.
[via Gigaom]
Watching a master at work is a great way to acquire motor skills. But it’s not that easy to keep an eye on someone else while looking at your own movements to see if you’re doing it right. A proof of concept system called Ghostman helps you do both simultaneously, thanks to augmented reality glasses.
Ghostman was designed by researchers from the University of Tasmania and the University of Washington, led by Dr. Winyu Chinthammit. Using two pairs of Vuzix Wrap 920AR glasses, Ghostman overlays a teacher’s hand over the student’s own vision. The student can then see the demonstration from his teacher’s point of view while his own hand is also in full view.
In their limited tests, Dr. Chinthammit and his colleagues found out that teaching a new motor skill through Ghostman is as effective as going about it with an instructor sitting by your side. This means it could one day be possible for instructors to effectively teach motor skills through a remote session. Although I think it would also be beneficial if the teacher could see from his student’s perspective as well to help him provide feedback.
Come on doc, we all know a pottery lesson would’ve been more appropriate. Head to Hindawi to read the researchers’ paper on Ghostman.
All images by Dr. Chinthammit et al.
[via New Scientist via PSFK]
id America did introduce a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month that targeted the LED light-equipped portable charger of theirs, which has been called as the L.E.D. Nearly half of the goal amount has already been raised in the first week of the campaign alone, which is definitely an encouraging sign – hopefully it will be able to meet the funding goal in the coming week. The L.E.D portable charger is best described as a combination portable charger for personal electronic devices, while doubling up as an adjustable LED lamp to boot.
Running with a 5,200mAh lithium-ion battery located underneath the hood, the L.E.D. is capable of charging a multitude of personal electronic devices all the way to full capacity at their highest charging rate. This particular charger would be equipped with 5V1A microUSB input that it makes use of to juice itself up, and you will be able to plug in a gamut of personal electronic devices including the likes of smartphones, digital cameras, GPS devices and MP3 players if you so desire, allowing all of these to juice up thanks to a separate 5V2A USB output port. The 2A port would also let the L.E.D to charge even full-size tablets such at the iPad at their maximum charging rate.
Apart from being able to charge up mobile devices, the L.E.D would also deliver a different aspect that is essential to everyday life: and that would be light. The charger boasts of a trio of separate LED bulbs, which is more than what some of the other competing products in the market do come with, allowing you to make use of the L.E.D. in a wide range of projects or situations.
The LED lights are touted to be able to last for over 100 hours on a single charge, and it boasts of touch-sensitive control that enables the user to effortlessly switch between a trio of different brightness levels, depending on the situation that you are in at the moment. There will also be a pair of charging docks per charger, letting users keep one at home and one at the office to charge L.E.D whenever you need it most.
Press Release
[ L.E.D portable charger functions as a lamp, too copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Prefab is a buzzy topic in architecture and design circles right now, but it’s hardly a new concept. The idea of building houses in factories and shipping them to their destinations is at least a century old. Now, Taschen has published the history of these homes in a lovely coffee table book.
They say that staring too long at a computer screen or television screen can make your eyesight worse, or at least that’s one of the favorite arguments that parents tend to make. That being said, it is a little ironic that there’s now an app available on the iPhone and Android devices that will supposedly help to improve your eyesight.
The app is called Ultimeyes and we’re sure that some of you guys have heard of it before. The app was originally released for computers before it was recently announced for mobile devices, thus allowing users to improve their eyesight while on the go. The app, developed by Carrot Neurotechnology, is basically an interactive game that will supposedly help improve the player’s eyesight.
The game involves the player trying to track down blobs on the screen which are constantly shifting around. According to a group of ballplayers from the University of California, they claim that this helped improve their eyesight by playing the game for 25-30 minute intervals. Their vision has extended by an average of 31%, with some claiming that their vision has also improved to 20/7.5.
The app is currently available on iTunes and Google Play so if you don’t mind checking it out, hit up the respective app stores for the download which will set you back $5.99. In the meantime you can check out how the game works in the video above.
Ultimeyes App Will Help Improve Your Vision , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, Medical, Apps,
The iPad is one of the products released by Apple that took the world by storm. Tablets have been around for a while but it’s safe to say that with the iPad, things really started to catch on and we’re starting to see a lot more tablets compared to before. However analysts seem to be a bit pessimistic about Apple’s upcoming Q2 2014 earnings and expects that the Cupertino company will announce that iPad sales have dropped.
Assuming that is indeed the case, why is this? After all the iPad mini with Retina display basically gave users what they wanted, not to mention the iPad Air is a pleasure to hold as it is both light and slim. Well according to former Apple executive, Jean-Louie Gassee, he believes it is because of the iPad’s ambiguity – the fact that it is not a smartphone, nor is it a computer. He was also quoted as saying that the tablet’s “meteoric debut raised expectations that it can’t currently meet.”
According to him, he states that while the iPad is easy enough to use, it’s not enough when it comes to productivity. This is because unlike computers, accessing files to put together a presentation or a document is not as easy due to the lack of a file manager. Essentially if Apple wants the iPad to survive, it will need to become more MacBook-like. This is actually interesting because that’s what Microsoft is doing with its Windows-based tablets.
Not only do they function as tablets, but because it runs on Windows, it provides a familiar interface, not to mention a file manager, that will allow for increased productivity. The Surface tablets are a good example of that, especially when used with the keyboard cover. Then again Windows-based tablet sales haven’t really been that great, but what do you guys think? Should Apple consider ways to make the iPad a “serious” productivity tool?
Former Apple Exec Thinks The iPad Needs To Be More MacBook-like , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Apple, Tablets, iPad,
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