Hasta La Gadget!

Despite tremendous technological advancements over the last several decades, there are still numerous challenges which face the world every day. The Air Force has just launched a new website to encourage collaborative problem solving, and to create solutions which could someday be used in the field to help save troop and civilian lives or improve operational efficiency.

The newly launched website is called The Air Force Collaboratory, and it presents different projects which could use your help. The site introduces participants to situations which could use innovative technological solutions, ranging from search and rescue operations, to using quadrotor technology to autonomously navigate its surroundings, to helping to launch its newest GPS satellites.

Participating in The Air Force Collaboratory is open to anyone. You start out by watching a briefing video before joining a specific project, and then have access to research on the subject to help provide a foundation for your contributions. Of course, you’re encouraged to bring your own perspective and experiences as well.

The site then poses brainstorming challenges to stimulate ideas and encourages discussion among participants which may drive further research and development.

There are already some fascinating ideas that have been posted to this particular thread, including one submission that suggests that a set of quadrotors could be used to generate X-ray and thermal imaging to help locate trapped survivors and determine their medical condition.

Individuals on the site are rewarded with achievement badges for their participation, and the site offers real-time leaderboards so you can see how well you’re doing compared to your peers. There are even special achievements handed out by the Air Force project lead for those with truly outstanding contributions to the program.

The site is definitely a great idea, taking a cue from the popularity of crowdsourcing, and applying it to real-world challenges the military faces. But it goes beyond simple crowdsourcing and provides a truly collaborative experience where you work with real Airmen to solve problems. The Air Force just isn’t asking for ideas and implementing the best ones, they are working with the students step by step to bring these ideas to fruition. It’s also a great interactive experience for students and an opportunity for them to both contribute and learn from their peers.

If you’d like to check out the site for yourself and start participating, head on over to The Air Force Collaboratory now.

Thank you The Air Force Collaboratory and Technorati for being sponsors of this article. All opinions expressed here are my own.

As cities are plagued with more and more traffic congestion, it will become harder to drive as well as park your typical car. The Armadillo-T will help alleviate the problem. The electric-powered vehicle was developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and it has some unusual features.

It was designed to reduce the amount of space used when a car is parked and not in use. This way you can fit more cars in an area or just claim more of your garage for other things. It uses a 13.6 kWh battery and can travel up to 37 miles per hour with about a 60 mile range per charge.

In order to have it fold just right, they ditched the concept traditional rear view mirrors and instead installed surround-view cameras. When closed its size goes down to just 1.65 meters-long. The rear end slides forward, folding up vertically. It can also rotate 360 degrees when folded, so that it can be moved about. Pretty awesome idea.

[via Dvice]

Rechargeable batteries are pretty eco-friendly in the sense that you can recharge them and use them, again and again and again, until they stop holding a charge. However, most battery chargers are bulky and are a pain to carry around, especially if you’re traveling or need to use it on the go.

A neat solution comes in the form of the rechargeable AA battery USB drive. Now, there’s already a product on the market called the USBCell that can be recharged via USB. However this concept design not only does it have the capacity to power up your gadgets that require AA batteries, but can also store video, audio, documents, and other files. All you have to do is plug it into your computer to recharge it or transfer files.

The AA battery USB drive was designed by Wonchul Hwang.

[via In Stash]

I love burgers and I love steaks. I love vegetables (some of them) and I love the environment. Unfortunately, you can’t really love all of them at once (with the exception of veggies) because raising cattle is extremely taxing on the environment.

With the goal of producing beef that doesn’t entirely come from cows (yes, perplexing, isn’t it?), Professor Mark Post and his colleagues of Maastricht University set to work.

The results of their research has resulted in the first public tasting of a lab-grown burger that cost $330,000(USD) to make.

Post explains: “That we are trying today is important because I hope it will show cultured beef has the answers to major problems that the world faces. Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven’t altered them in any way. For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing.”

So how the meat cultured? Muscle tissues were first taken from cows on an organic farm. These were then cultured in a nutrient solution, where they multiplied to form strands. Over 20,000 of these strands were collected to make a 5-oz burger.

The cultured burger was prepared by chef Richard McGeown. Among the tasters were Chicago-based author Josh Schonwald and Austrian food researcher Hanni Rützle.

On the burger, Schonwald commented: “The burger had a very bland, neutral flavor. The thing that made it most similar to real beef was the texture. When I bit into it, I was impressed with the bite and how it had a kind of density that was familiar.”

Post explains that it might take ten more years or so before cultured meat makes its way onto consumer’s plates.

What do you think? Would you take a bite of cultured meat or will you only eat the real thing?

[via Gizmag]

We’ve yet to see how helpful – or harmful – Google Glass can be to people with sight, but you might be surprised to know that it can be used to help blind people too. A two-man company called Dapper Vision is working on OpenGlass, a system of tools and services that can help identify objects as well as provide additional information via Google Glass.

In the video below, you’ll see two of OpenGlass’ services that can help the visually impaired – or anyone for that matter – identify objects. The first is Question-Answer, wherein the Glass user takes a picture of an object and uses voice commands to send the picture to Twitter or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to be identified. The Glass user receives the answer via voice as well. The second is Memento, which is like a real-time version of Question-Answer, but it requires someone to build a database of images and annotations for it to draw data upon.

That was awesome, but I hope as wearable technology improves that OpenGlass will be less reliant on online sources of data. Maybe someday Dapper Vision can cram in a visual dictionary of sorts in Glass. As I said, the video only shows a small part of OpenGlass. Head to its official website to see more information and videos.

[via Engadget]