Hasta La Gadget!

Doctor Evil always had modest dreams, all he really wanted were sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads. But not ones to settle for something so lame, a group of researchers at the National Ignition Facility inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has set a record by creating the most powerful laser beam ever.

The scientists are trying to create a laser powerful enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. They fired 192 individual laser beams at the same time delivering a total power of 1.85 megajoules of ultraviolet laser light. That powerful laser light was aimed at a target 2 mm in diameter. 1.85 megajoules doesn’t mean a lot to most of us, but when you break it down to watts that amount of power is staggering.

The single laser shot produced over 500 trillion watts of power. To put that in perspective, the beam was 12,500 times more powerful than the demand for electricity in all of Britain in 2006.

[via Wired]

A team of young engineers have invented a wearable keyboard. They’re calling it the G.A.U.N.T.L.E.T. – the Generally Accessible Universal Nomadic Tactile Low-power Electronic Typist. I can’t decide which is more awkward, the acronym or the G.A.U.N.T.L.E.T. itself.

The glove was conceptualized by Jiake Liu, who was inspired by sci-fi movies Children of Men and Minority Report. The glove pairs with devices via Bluetooth, which makes it convenient. What doesn’t make it convenient is the position of the letters, which are scattered all over the glove.

It appears that Liu and his peers invented G.A.U.N.T.L.E.T. as part of a school project, so even though the device itself isn’t that practical I am still thoroughly impressed. Liu imagines a future where the glove can be used to operate almost any device: “Need to microwave something? Touch the microwave oven with GAUNTLET (version 10), and through NFC (near field communication) you are paired with the oven, whose interface will pop up on your glasses, and you can use GAUNTLET to set the cook time.  Need to print something? Touch the printer, and now you can control the printer. Etc.” But if you need to type something? Stick with your phone’s keyboard.

[Gauntlet via Ubergizmo]

I think electric vehicles are interesting enough, but they have a lot of practical limitations that keep most drivers from considering them. Probably the biggest issues are driving range and the time it takes to charge the batteries. Faster battery charging and higher capacity batteries are one way to get around this particular limitation. However, what may be the best way to get people buying an EV is to develop a system that charges the vehicle as it drives down the road.

A group of Japanese researchers are showing off a system that has the potential to do just that. The researchers have invented a wireless charging system that is able to transmit electricity from a charging plate under 4 inches of concrete directly through the tires of the car and into the vehicle batteries.

In the demonstration, the researchers are transmitting enough power through concrete blocks and into the car’s tires to make a light bulb glow. Naturally, we would need an infrastructure that had charging plates under the nation’s roadways to make this work, but not having to stop to charge your car would certainly make owning and driving an EV a more appealing proposition.

[via Phys.org]

Silence is golden. That’s something I learned after working a few months in an always-busy office environment where some people can be extremely loud. Now talking might be unavoidable sometimes, and in the din of all that noise, you might miss the occasional notification or so from your smartphone or email client.

So for that, you need the L8 SmartLight. It serves up notifications using a unique lighting system, so you don’t need to hear anything to get the message. All you need is to see it.

The device is made up of a grid 64 LED lights on one side and a super bright LED light on the other. It connects with your computer or smartphone via Bluetooth to deliver stuff you want to know through light codes, like tweets, Facebook messages, e-mails, game results, temperature, and more. And it doesn’t just light up in blue – the L8 is works in full color, and can be programmed to work as an ambient light or even turn on when somebody approaches it.

The people behind the project need to raise $90,000 to make the L8 SmartLight into a reality. To find out more about it and maybe even support it, head on over to Kickstarter. A minimum pledge of $69(USD) will get you your very own L8, and $80 will get you the developer edition, complete with early access to the SDK.

The software behind Google’s augmented reality future may not be here yet, but if this wearable display from Olympus is any indication, the hardware part of the Project Glass equation may be easier to solve. The MEG4.0 connects to smartphones via Bluetooth to serve as a secondary display, among other functions.

Note that the MEG4.0 is separate from the glasses, so you don’t have to worry about it not being cool enough for you. The display itself is just QVGA (320×240) resolution, though. Aside from functioning as a display, MEG4.0 also has a direction sensor and may be used in conjunction with GPS software. According to Olympus, the idea is to enable users to check their phone in short bursts. If it’s turned on for only 15 seconds every 3 minutes, then its battery will last about 8 hours. I think the short battery life is a good thing, unless you want to be run over because you’re busy tweeting while walking down the street. And because the person who ran you over was also tweeting while driving.

It’s significantly less useful than the concept device for Project Glass, but then again, everything’s worse than a concept. Olympus hasn’t mentioned if they’re going to release it as a consumer device, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just a prototype either. Perhaps MEG9000 will be good enough for daily use.

[Olympus via Akihabara News]