Dec 27
Sure, the larch-wood cladding gives Ufogel a kind of rustic charm, but I’ll be damned if this Austrian guest house doesn’t really look like it just beamed down from a quaint corner of outer space.
     |
Nov 15
It isn’t easy being a Roomba. It’s a tiring life of nothing but dust and filth. That’s why these household slaves have been known to kill themselves when they get the chance. Like this one did. You are looking at the remains of a Roomba from Austria that apparently turned itself on and ran onto a kitchen hotplate, where it burned to death.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, when you live the life of a Roomba, the sweet release of death is a must. Hats off gentlemen. Hold them to heart. Let us have a moment of silence and stare at the charred remains and ash tracks that is our fallen servant.
Then laugh at those ash tire tracks from where it was running around in circles on fire. Oops. Inappropriate? Too soon? Sorry.
[via Geekologie]
Jul 29
World’s lightest and thinnest circuits pave the way for ‘imperceptible electronics’
Posted in: Today's ChiliResearchers from Asia and Europe have developed the world’s lightest and thinnest organic circuits, which in the future could be used in a range of healthcare applications.
Lighter than a feather, these ultrathin film-like organic transistor integrated circuits are being developed by a research group led by Professor Takao Someya and Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Sekitani of the University of Tokyo, who run an Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) program sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), in collaboration with Siegfried Bauer’s group at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria.
The circuits are extremely lightweight, flexible, durable and thin, and conform to any surface. They are just 2 microns thick, just 1/5 that of kitchen wrap, and weighing only 3g/m^2, are 30 times lighter than office paper. They also feature a bend radius of 5 microns, meaning they can be scrunched up into a ball, without breaking. Due to these properties the researchers have dubbed them “imperceptible electronics”, which can be placed on any surface and even worn without restricting the users movement.
The integrated circuits are manufactured on rolls of one micron thick plastic film, making them easily scalable and cheap to produce. And if the circuit is placed on a rubber surface it becomes stretchable, able to withstand up to 233% tensile strain, while retaining full functionality.
“This is a very convenient way of making electronics stretchable because you can fabricate high performance devices in a flat state and then just transfer them over to a stretchable substrate and create something that is very compliant and stretchable just by a simple pick and place process.”
This prototype device is a touch sensor featuring a 12×12 array of sensors on a 4.8 cm x 4.8 cm circuit. It is made up of two layers, an integrated circuit layer and a tactile sensor layer.
With the development of these plastic electronics, the possibility for flexible, thin, large area electronics has been realized. In the future, the group would like to expand the capabilities of these circuits.
“The new flexible touch sensor is the world’s thinnest, lightest and people cannot feel the existence of this device. I believe this development will open up a wide range of new applications, from health monitoring systems, wearable medical instruments, and even robotic skins in the future.”
The results of this research were published in the July 25, 2013 issue of the journal Nature.
This content is provided by DigInfo.tv, AkihabaraNews Official Partner.
Via: University of Tokyo
Jul 23
The Raiding Project is a bold cross-cultural undertaking that involves several renowned Japanese architects designing ten multifunctional micro-houses in the Austrian countryside.
Raiding, a village of 850 residents, about a one-hour drive from Vienna is the birthplace of composer Franz Liszt and currently hosts a music festival in his name four times a year.
Stork House
Opened in October 2012, Stork House or Konotori-an was created by Japanese celebrity architect Terunobu Fujimori over a period of eight separate stays in Austria and is the first building of the Raiding Project. It is designed to accommodate people from all walks of life for overnight stays, and on occasion artists can stay for free as part of an artist-in-residence program. The structure was partially constructed from donated building materials and rental income will support future maintenance costs.
Stork House has two stories with a total living space of 34 square meters featuring a multi-functional living room on the ground equipped with kitchen, bathrooms and an open fireplace. The upper level, which covers one third of the ground floor, provides a sleeping space with Japanese futons.
The ceiling nips off in the center like the wings of a resting cicada and ascends seven meters high towards the northern building corner, which is marked by the trunk of an oak tree. Fujimori covered the white ceiling and the walls with a pattern of charcoal pieces that creates the illusion of black raindrops.
Above the sleeping area the oak trunk pierces through the roof where it supports a stork nest 13 meters high; migratory birds from Africa spent their first summer there in 2012.
The roof is made of reef – true to an old tradition shared by Japan and this part of Austria, known as Burgenland. The façade of Stork House consists of “yakisugi” – charcoaled wood planks which were burned by hand, based on a centuries old Japanese technique.
The Creators
Terunobu Fujimori, native of Nagano, architect and specialist in the History of Japanese Architecture is well known among architecture circles. His previous works featured in this book includes: Jinkochan Moriya Historical Museum, Tanpopo House in Tokyo and Takasugi-san in Nagano. In 2006 Fujimori represented Japan at the Venice Biennale.
Image via RMIT Architecture
In addition to Fujimori, the other architects to have already expressed ideas for the Raiding Project include Pritzker Prize winning team SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa), Hiroshi Hara (whose small experimental building and two sculptural info-resting spots will be the next constructed), Jun Aoki, Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, Yasuhiro Yamashita and Klein Dytham Architects.
Tokyo based writer and photographer Roland Hagenberg, originally from Vienna is the initiator and curator of the Raiding Project. His stories and photographs have featured in magazines such as Vogue and Architectural Digest. His books on japanese architects have been published in English, Japanese and Chinese. Together with Susanne Wegleitner he initiated the Raiding foundation in 2010 to further the cultural exchange between Austria and Japan. In the same year that Hagenberg conceived the Raiding Project his latest book “24 Architects in Japan” was released.
Woschitz Engineering is an innovative Austrian civil engineering company lead by Dr. Richard Woschitz who develops solutions for the Raiding project in collaboration with the Japanese architects and supervises the construction process.
It should also be noted that, since opening, the Stork House quickly managed to have its first guests in the form of a stork couple that nested on the roof. Fujimori consulted with bird experts on the design of the nest, and the results are breathtaking.
Recent Developments
Hiroshi Hara, the second Japanese-star architect to design a structure for the project visited Raiding on June 22nd, 2013 for the Franz list festival where eight Japanese musicians were also invited by the Raiding Foundation to perform at the Franz Liszt Concert Hall.
Austrian TV reported on these visits and the overall importance of the Raiding Project for local tourism. In addition, Stork house was also featured at ”Eastern Promises” an exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. More news and videos on the Raiding Project can be found at the project’s homepage or Roland Hagenberg’s youtube channel and homepage. So if you are in Austria go check out the Raiding Project!
Jul 11
In Amazon dispute, EU Court of Justice rules that levies on blank CDs can be collected ‘in some cases’
Posted in: Today's Chili
Amazon’s spent quite a bit of time in court as of late; in addition to a recently settled trademark dispute with Apple, a row with an Austrian copyright collection agency is keeping the e-tailer busy. Today, the European Court of Justice ruled that, in some cases, EU countries can collect a levy on blank recording media to ensure that musicians are compensated for their work.
The key phrase here is “in some cases,” since establishing whether CDs, memory cards, cassette tapes and other media have been used for public consumption isn’t exactly easy — and it’s not yet clear whether Amazon will have to pay the 1.9 million euros in question. The next step will be for the Austrian supreme court to decide whether it can even be determined whether Amazon customers used such blank media for anything other than home videos and mix tapes. After all, some would argue that burning a French-electro mix to torment your coworkers on a nine-hour drive is hardly a crime.
Via: Reuters
Jun 24
Ah, what better way to start off the week than by deciphering a cryptic message. Earlier today we received the above image from a mysterious company called Sugar, and that’s all there really is: some crystals in a candy wrapper, the tag line “The sweetest thing that you’ve never tasted before” (the Chinese counterpart implies “irresistible sweetness”), plus the words “July. Austria. Wattens. Unlock.” along the bottom.
As it turns out, Wattens is where the famed Swarovski is based, so we’re going to assume this has something to do with the Austrian crystal maker. As for the “unlock” part, perhaps Swarovski is going to launch its very own bejeweled smartphones or even tablets under the Sugar brand next month? Whatever they are, hopefully they won’t be as tacky as what we’ve seen in the past. The sweetness would be a bonus, too.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
May 27
Car-shaped House: I Call Shotgun
Posted in: Today's ChiliThis car has lots of trunk space, it’s own parking spot and it is roomy. It’s everything that you want in a car, except for actually moving.
Apr 09
Google Play Music spreads to Australia, New Zealand and five European nations
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Google has been on something of a tear spreading its Google Play media services around the world; don’t look now, but it’s picking up the pace. The search giant is expanding Google Play Music today to cover Australia, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Portugal. That small deluge of new countries can now shop for their favorite tunes as well as store up to 20,000 of them online for streaming, either on the web or on Android devices. Large swaths of the world remain uncovered by the service — ahem, Canada — but we’ll still welcome a big step toward cloud music for everyone.
[Thanks, Chris]
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Google
Source: Google Play (Google+)
Nov 04
Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Sure, you can always play catch with the dog, but what kind of game can you play with a caged rodent? Well, “find the poster,” apparently. A team of researchers from Universities in Spain, Germany, Austria, England and the US have put together a virtual reality system designed to let humans interact with rats at the rodent’s scale, challenging human participants to find and lead the rodent to a unmarked goal. According to a paper published in PLoS One participants were “beamed” into the rat’s environment by linking a head-mounted display and joystick to a rat-sized telepresence robot. Human players were then treated to a proportionally accurate representation of the game arena. The rat was there too, tracked with an overhead camera and represented by a human avatar.
Participants were tasked with coaxing their opponent in front one of three posters in attempt to sleuth out which one represents the “winning” position. When both players are in front of the correct mystery poster, a bell sounds and the game ends. The game was primarily created to test a scaled immersive virtual reality teleoperator system, but researchers are optimistic the technology could be used to observe animal behavior from a new perspective. Check out the setup in action after the break, or read on through to the source link below for a detailed description of how mankind and some of nature’s smaller creatures can get along in a virtual space.
Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
Verge | 
PLoS One | Email this | Comments
Sep 28
PSA: iPhone 5 available in 22 more countries, on Cricket and US regional carriers galore
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Disappointed that your country or favorite carrier missed the initial cut for the iPhone 5 launch? Odds are that you’re all good now. Worldwide, 22 more countries have joined the mix as of today, including wide swaths of Europe as well as New Zealand; you’ll find the full list in the release here. Americans also don’t have to turn to the big carriers, as they can now opt for prepaid carrier Cricket in addition to a slew of extra providers that include C Spire as well as regionals like GCI and nTelos. In some cases, you’ll even snag a discount by going with one of the smaller networks. If you bagged an iPhone in Barcelona, or caught one on Cellcom, let others know how it’s going in the comments.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
PSA: iPhone 5 available in 22 more countries, on Cricket and US regional carriers galore originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.