Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve seen homeless people walking around with nothing more than the clothes on their back and a piece of cardboard that serves as their bed-slash-umbrella-slash-bathroom wall, depending on the situation.

There’s more than enough space for these people to get settled in, but unfortunately not enough resources to make it happen.

The Cube home design by Justin Chong might just be a concept for urban living, but there’s huge potential for this to be used for urban housing for the poor. Just imagine how many people you could get off the streets and into these relatively cushy, compact living quarters that wouldn’t require that much space in the first place.

The Cube fits an entire apartment into a 3×3 meter space. There’s even a bathroom with a water-saving shower and toilet, a kitchen with an induction stove and a small refrigerator, plus there’s a dining area that can seat up to four people.

There’s also a loft bed that fits two, which can be accessed by the ladder you see beside the dining area.

Pretty awesome, right? Of course, there’s not much room for all your other stuff, but this is the most efficient use of space I’ve seen in years!

[via Yanko Design]

Check out this newly launched Android 4.1 tablet from Cube, the U9GT4. Priced at just $129.99, the device is packed with a 7.0-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display, a 1.6GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core processor, a Mali-400 GPU, a 1GB DDR3 RAM, an 8GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot (up to 32GB), a 0.3MP front-facing camera, 1080p Full HD video playback support, Flash 11 support, 3G external support, WiFi, a built-in 3000mAh battery and runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS. [Product Page]

I’ve seen some impressive projection screens in the past, but I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve seen a screen that’s made up of thousands of moving styrofoam cubes.

The Hyper-Matrix Cube Wall was created by Korean interactive artist JônPaSang for an installation for the Hyundai Motor Group. It’s a massive grid of mechanised white 30cm x 30cm (appx. 1 foot x 1 foot) cubes which can move in and out to form images. Overall, the wrap-around display measures a whopping 45 meters (~148 feet) wide by 8 meters (~26 feet) high. According to my math, that means there’s about 3848 cubes.

As you can see from this video from the guys over at Mechatronics, it’s quite an incredible display:

Nifty. But where’s the projection, you ask? Well, since the Mechatronics guys were most interested in showing us the mechanical aspects of the rig, they cut off the presentation right before the projection portion. Here’s another clip which shows off the entire show:

Pretty cool, no? That part with an individual image on each cube is pretty sweet. Though there appears to be a single cube on the left wall of the screen that’s stuck in that second clip. It’s really bugging me, and if I have to know about it, so do you. If you want to know how this massive installation was built, here’s one more video clip for you to watch:

I’d love to see them do more projection mapping type effects on the screen. I can only imagine the cool pixel art shows one could do with all of those blocks. I’m up for a giant game of Super Mario Bros… or even Pong.

Whether you are always on the road, or spend a lot of time at your friends’ houses, Bluetooth speakers are a nice thing to have around. This little cubic speaker looks like a good way to go if you need to share your tunes on the go. The 1Q is a portable Bluetooth speaker that’s housed in wood, resulting in better quality sound than typical plastic enclosures.

1Q was designed by Vers Audio and launched through Kickstarter. This little 3-inch speaker is designed to work in tandem with another to deliver stereo sound. The output is 6.5W, so it won’t knock off your socks, but the designer says that it’s optimized for 1Q’s small size. The charge is supposed to last about 10 hours, which isn’t bad.

The project is already fully funded, and surpassed its humble $10,000 goal almost tenfold! You’ll have to wait until a retail version is released to get your own, which will sell for $120 before the holidays.

[via Kickstarter]