Hasta La Gadget!

There is nothing quite like the tender touch of a loved one, especially when you are feeling particularly lonely and low at that point in your life. Well, perhaps the same kind of treatment can be extended to your clothes, and this was made possible thanks to the Tender touch sensitive garment which lights up whenever you touch it (but of course). Needless to say, all it takes is a tender touch to have this interactive illuminated garment light up, hence resulting in its name. What makes this particular garment pleasing to the eye? Well, the conductive surfaces were said to be beautifully knit and integrated into the garment, making it all look seamless.

The Tender is a project that saw shared development by the Textielmuseum Tilburg and designers Kristi Kuusk, Martijn ten Bhömer, and Paula Kassenaar. Needless to say, sending this to the laundry could prove far more tricky than your usual load of soiled clothes. You might want to warn your regular launderette owner beforehand though.

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Concrete jungles need to be maintained every few years with a fresh coat of paint, otherwise the scene would look like something out of a zombie apocalypse. Well, science had always drawn inspiration from nature, and this time around, it is a pair of butterfly wings that proved to be the impetus for a new material that not only repels water, but gleams with brilliant color (hmmm, qualities of Edward the vampire, perhaps?) Similar to iridescent butterflies, this particular material relies on tiny structures on its surface in order to achieve both qualities. Such a material could eventually be advanced to a stage where it sees action in sensors that regulate the interior temperature of “smart buildings. ” Taking into account minuscule bumps on butterfly wings that cause any water that hits the wing to form beads and roll away, such a concept also means there is no chance of dirt sticking to the wings – and in this case, a building.

The ultimate goal? An entire city of energy-efficient buildings, which is something bustling metropolises need these days. Of course, this material could also be used on the outside of buildings in order to deliver colorful designs which are more durable compared to conventional paint, resisting dirt and mildew in the process.

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If you have a bad habit of biting or chewing on your nails so much so that there is not enough nail surface left for you to remove a sticker from an apple or even scratch a ticket, you might have the impetus to change with the introduction of an “acoustic barcode”. Basically, a team of computer scientists developed a system which enables folks to scratch at specially notched patterns in order to glean information, or perhaps flip over to the next slide during a presentation, perform functions during a phone call, or indulge in other actions. The scratch pattern system is said to be extremely simple to set up and ready for use.

The implementation of “acoustic barcodes” really depends on just how one wants to get about it. A good example would be a working prototype of a talking store window that you see above, in addition to a talking wooden toy, several smartphone apps as well as magnetic shapes that an educator can stick to a whiteboard to control an in-classroom projector. The acoustic barcodes do not look too far removed from the printed variety, being made out of etched lines of varying thicknesses, and all you need to do to activate it would be to drag a fingernail or another tool over the lines. There will be a microphone that picks up the scratch’s sound, relaying it to a computer where the program figures out just what the original etched pattern was based on the sound. It can compensate for different swiping speeds to a certain extent, and is smart enough to ignore accidental taps.

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When Foursquare debuted, it was a novel idea to glean valuable check-in data from users in exchange for virtual badges. But now every social network has at least some check-in feature. What’s Foursquare to do? Leverage all that data and make it useful to people who don’t care if they’re the Mayor of a coffeehouse.  (more…)

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If one were to take the headline above in a more literal manner, you can say that a high school student had a say in how your iPhone or iPad was assembled, as Foxconn has confessed that they did employ underaged interns – especially those aged between 14 and 16. Foxconn’s statement mentioned, “An internal investigation carried out by our company has confirmed media reports in China that some participants in the short-term student internship program that is administered at our campus in Yantai, Shandong Province are under the legal working age of 16 years. This is not only a violation of China’s labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions.”

Foxconn intends to carry out a full investigation, although we do wonder why not let a third party perform the investigation instead of doing an internal one, as the first option would definitely sound to be far less partial and more biased. It seems as though a lack in monitoring the IDs of the interns and running on assumption were the main causes of this oversight, although something of this oversight should not have happened in the first place, even if it is in China we are talking about. We do hope that things get sorted out as soon as possible though, it is for everyone’s good, and customers of Foxconn-assembled products can also sleep better at night knowing that the product they hold in their hands was ethically put together.

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