Hasta La Gadget!

It is just a matter of weeks before the Frankfurt Motor Show kicks off to much fanfare, and I am quite sure that motorheads would be looking forward to this particular event, seeing just what the automotive giants of our day have up their sleeves – or should we say, garages, to tempt us away from our hard earned money. Audi has jumped the gun, however, by unveiling the first details for its new Quattro Sport E-Tron. The Audi might be a hybrid concept car, but it is still a beast that packs 700 horsepower underneath the hood, now how about that?

The electric engine of the Quattro Sport E-Tron would serve a couple of purposes. Firstly, it is mean to send the car’s twin-turbo V8 up to it’s 200 mph top speed, and the other is to offer a zero-emission all-electric option. Whenever it runs on the electric motor alone, the E-Tron is capable of a safe range of 21.7 miles, which is a step in the right direction where electric sports cars are concerned. More exciting is the fact that this is just a concept, so who knows? Should it materialize as the real deal one day, it should, on paper, be a whole lot more impressive than what you read here today.

Audi Quattro Sport E-Tron Hybrid Concept Car original content from Ubergizmo.

One of the cool features of BlackBerry devices in general that we wish most phones would incorporate, would be a LED light that blinks when you have a notification, which makes it easier and provides a more subtle way of informing the user rather than having to activate the phone just to check. Unfortunately when placed into a case, the notification LED can sometimes be hidden, which is why this concept case by Steve Purvey, a design intern for BlackBerry, is a pretty clever idea.

As you can see in the image above, this “peek holster” covers most of the phone, except for a small portion at the side that shows you what sort of notifications you have, i.e. email, text, missed calls, and etc. It also comes with a tiny cutout at the top right where the LED light can blink through, just in case you did not want to activate your phone’s screen to see the notifications. We have to say that this is a pretty awesome idea and not only is the case functional, it looks pretty sleek as well! Unfortunately like we said, it is only a concept and there’s no telling if BlackBerry will ever turn it into an actual product, but what do you guys think?

Concept BlackBerry “Peek Holster” Looks Pretty Sleek original content from Ubergizmo.

Gamers and game developers alike are excited about the potential of the Oculus Rift headset and the Virtuix Omni walking surface. But these virtual reality devices have applications beyond gaming. The Human Interfaces Group of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used both devices to make simulations of space environments.

In an interview with Engadget, Human Interfaces Engineer Victor Luo said that they used a stereoscopic 360º panorama of Mars taken by Curiosity, satellite imagery of the red planet and development kits of the Rift and Omni to create an immersive virtual tour of Mars (or at least part of it). They also made a similar experiment for the interior of the International Space Station, but they used the Rift by itself to emphasize the feeling of floating in zero gravity.

While the experiment showed the potential of VR, Luo also said that they needed devices that had more sensors built-in before they can consider actually using them as tools. At the very least, I think their experiments can inspire a couple of VR games. Watch out for Curiosity Simulator and Dead Space: ISS. Oh wait, we already have the first one.

[via Engadget via Destructoid]

Forty years ago, America was still reeling from the astronomical success of the moon mission and high on the idea that space age innovations would keep happening at a breakneck pace. Well, we got the shuttle, and we got the Mars rover(s). What we did not get, however, were mind-bending super space stations capable of holding entire civilizations inside.

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Here at Gizmodo, we love us some transforming apartments. On top of being space-efficient, they are just so damn cool. And this partially prototyped concept by students at TU Delft is no exception.

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