Hasta La Gadget!

In the heat of summer, either you shut the windows and crank up the AC, or pull down the blinds and stumble around in the gloom. At least, that was the case. A team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed a new smart window that lets people choose what they want to let into their home, filtering out visible light, near-infra-red light, or both. Using a thin layer of nanocrystals that change state when electricity is passed through, will enable people to save on home energy bills by keeping the bulk of the Sun’s heat out of the home without sacrificing the natural light. Now all we have to do is hook this up with one of Samsung’s touchscreen windows and we’ll never have to leave home again.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: PhysOrg

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Drive-in theaters outlasted VHS tapes, but they may not survive the transition to digital-only movies — many drive-ins can’t afford the professional digital projectors they need to stay in business. Honda wants to give those outdoor venues a second chance through its new Project Drive-In rescue effort. At a minimum, the endeavor will donate digital projectors to five theaters based on web voting; further donations will depend on the results of an Indiegogo fundraising campaign. While there’s no guarantee that Honda can save a drive-in near you, it may be worth chipping in to preserve some classic Americana through modern technology.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Alt

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Via: Autoblog

Source: Project Drive-In, Indiegogo

The HTC One Google Play edition was one of our most popular giveaways so far, so we’ve taken things up a notch by offering the Samsung Galaxy S4 GPe (16GB white) — and not just one, but two! We owe this opportunity to Spigen SGP, a connoisseur of screen protectors and protective cases for a large variety of the best smartphones and tablets you can get these days. In fact, the company wants to give each winner their own set of Slim Armor View cases: one white and one black. Not too shabby for a weekly contest, so head below and enter using the Rafflecopter widget!

Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile, Alt, Samsung, Google

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Even in prime locations, vacant stores can go tenantless for months or years, costing landlords quite a bit in uncollected rent. One real estate owner in Sherbrooke, Quebec is hoping to move a property a bit more quickly, though, using a creative hack to attract attention to an otherwise ordinary “for rent” (à louer, in this case) sign. A standard red placard is mounted to a motorized horizontal track, with a camera keeping tabs on passersby. As pedestrians walk down the sidewalk, the sign slides to match their position. It’s a clever trick for sure, but with “many abandoned shop fronts” in the area, according to Niklas Roy, the project’s lead, it may be entertaining tourists for some time to come.

Filed under: Household, Peripherals, Alt

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Via: PSFK

Source: Niklas Roy

We imagine the Air Force is none too pleased that Space Fence might shutter as soon as September 1st due to budget constraints, according to leaked memos obtained by Space News. Space Fence, a powerful system of radars that track satellites and space junk orbiting the Earth, performs 40 percent of the Air Force Space Surveillance Network’s observations. It can detect objects as small as a basketball up to 24,000 kilometers away and can constantly beam info back to the planet with no human input. It’s no surprise then that the airmen called it a “critical defense system” when they tried to save the project in July — an endeavor they failed if this info turns out to be true. Before anyone worries about unmonitored celestial debris hurtling toward Earth, know that a plan to build a more advanced Space Fence replacement exists. The only reason why it’s not in the works is because it has yet to secure funding, leading this editor to think that someone really needs to get started engineering a money tree.

[Image credit: NASA]

Filed under: Misc, Alt

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Source: SpaceNews