On the day the National Snow And Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced the
dreary news that the level of ice in the Arctic Sea is the lowest it has
been since such information was recorded, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) presented some positive news regarding
its goal to reduce the global warming potential (GWP) of the
refrigerants used in our homes and cars.
A few months ago we saw a concept for a camera-based device that is meant to recognize sign language and translate it into spoken words. A Ukrainian-based team has something better: a working prototype of a smart glove with the exact same capability.
The quadSquad team won the 2012 Imagine Cup – Microsoft’s technology competition for students – for their invention, which they call EnableTalk. The glove has 15 flex sensors, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a compass, all manned by an onboard microcontroller. The glove sends input via Bluetooth to a custom app made for Windows smartphones, which will then interpret the data and output spoken language.
The brief demo below show the tester spelling “hello” letter by letter, which the app is able to translate after just a brief delay:
Head to EnableTalk’s official website for more information on the product. I tip my hat off to quadSquad; I hope the team succeeds in releasing a commercial version of their device.
He’s done it before. Back in 2010 when the Tea Party Republcans helped overtake the majority in the House of Representatives, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart jumped into the debate ring with
his co-faux newscaster collaborator, Stephen Colbert. Touted as the "Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear,"
the event was well attended in DC. This go-around Stewart has targeted
Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News talk-show host to help iron out some of the
pressing issues of this year’s presidential election campaign.
Kickstarter has spawned thousands upon thousands of product ideas, some good, some bad, and way too many iPhone cases and iPad stands. So when something truly different comes along, I’m kind of surprised that they’d reject the idea from being posted. I guess they thought that LovePalz was just too racy for their site, but that didn’t stop its makers from launching their own website that looks suspiciously like a Kickstarter page.
The device lets partners in remote locations get each other off using the latest in teledildonic technology. The two-part system allows consenting adults to remotely control the moving sex toy on the other end of the connection. I think you can get the picture from the image below.
The toys are named “Hera” and “Zeus” – one for a man and the other for a woman. They each have a motion sensor built in, which can detect the movements of the other party, and transmit that data wirelessly via Bluetooth and then through an iPhone app, which includes a video chat capability. The device on the other end of the line then moves in concert with the remote one, using a moving piston on the Hera, and an air pump on the Zeus.
Of course, if the LovePalz is too racy for the generally liberal Kickstarter, I can’t imagine how they’ll convince the notoriously conservative Apple to allow the app in the App Store. Maybe since it doesn’t have any explicit content in the app itself, they’ll be able to pull it off. Pun intended.
If you’re interested in getting in on the ground floor, you can pre-order the LovePalz over on their website. Despite what the video clip states about pricing, the toys will sell for $49.95(USD) each, or $94.95 for a pair – at least during the fundraising stage. And if you’re a really big spender, you can splurge for a 24K gold edition for $10,000.
Pretty much anyone who has an iPhone knows that it uses up quite a bit of power. If I’m away from home for most of the day, I absolutely need a juice up. These days, I’ve got a cheap iPhone battery case that does the trick. Everpurse is a more stylish option, with more power but it’s still an external battery.
Everpurse is a small case that has a special pocket into which your iPhone automatically “slides” and hooks itself up to a dock connector. There’s a patent involved, so I’m guessing that this is a pretty unique docking process. Once you’ve done this, your phone starts juicing up. Apparently the battery is enough to charge your iPhone from 0% to 100% twice in one day, so probably something like 3,000 to 5,000 mAh.
Once you get home, you just have to place your Everpurse onto a charging mat. The clutch itself will charge inductively, but it won’t charge your iPhone inductively. It was launched as a Kickstarter campaign and you’ll have to pledge $129 (USD) to get yours. At the time of writing, the project had amassed $127,000, blowing past its $100,000 goal with 25 days left, so it will definitely be produced.
[via Swiss Miss]
Typically, when a game console is nearing the end of its life, prices start to go down. It isn’t working out that way with a new PS3 that was unveiled this week at the Tokyo Game Show. The new version of the PS3 has a different design and is slimmer overall, but the cheapest of the new models will retail for $20 more than the current low-end model.
In the US, the new slimmed-down PS3 with 250 GB hard drive will sell for $270 (USD), while a version of the console with a 500 GB hard drive will cost $300. However, in Japan, prices are expected to remain the same as the current models. That said, the updated console does now include a bundled copy of Uncharted 3: Game of the Year Edition, and the base model’s hard drive is bigger than the current $250 model.
Sony says that the new console is 50% lighter and smaller than the original PS3 that landed in 2006. It also states that it’s about 25% smaller than the “slim” version unveiled in 2009. The 250GB version hits stores on September 25, while the 500 GB version of the console will go on sale on October 30 and will be available in Charcoal Black or Classic White, which is kind of an odd name, since there’s nothing classic about a white PS3.
[via Wired]
Social media has continued to evolve over the course of the last decade.
From social networking to social gaming to social commerce, the common
belief is that social will continue to bleed into other categories.
Social Finance is SM’s latest iteration and there are a number of
exciting start-ups trying to attack the trillion-dollar student debt
problem in the U.S.
As far as competitive videogames go, you can’t get any simpler than Pong. But times have changed, and so have our tastes and need for mayhem. We can’t just have birds, they need to be angry birds. So if Pong is to be played by today’s gamers – bored adults and foul-mouthed adolescents alike – it can’t just have two paddles and a ball. There needs to be chaos.
Invented by Stacy Dudley and Brad Slattery, the RetroBall is a bat-and-ball game system – let’s just call a Pong a Pong and call it Pong. It has a 32×32 pixel LED screen, an acrylic enclosure and 1-bit sound effects. It’s clearly more powerful than the Wii U. The RetroBall has four paddle controllers so you can engage in four-player Pong deathmatches, and you can even increase the number of balls onscreen to five. It’s actually kind of reminiscent of Atari’s arcade classic Warlords.
But don’t let the cutting edge graphics and complicated gameplay fool you: you can’t just button mash your way to victory here like in your other modern games, primarily because there’s no button to mash, but also because skilled RetroBall players – probably named Stacy and Brad – are aware that you can change the spin and speed of a ball depending on how you hit it.
Pledge at least $149 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve a RetroBall game system. Launch titles include 2-player Pong with 1 ball, 3-player Pong with 1 ball, 4-player Pong with 1 ball, 2-player Pong with 2 balls…
[via Ubergizmo]
This is the most awesome bit of science news I’ve heard in a long time. Scientists have determined that a warp drive similar to what the Enterprise used to get around the universe is actually more plausible than previously thought. Back in 1994, a Mexican physicist named Miguel Alcubierre proposed a spacecraft that had a ring around a football-shaped craft.
The idea was that the ring, constructed from exotic matter, would warp space-time around ship creating contracted space in front and expanded space behind, pushing the craft at faster-than-light speeds without breaking the cosmic speed limit, about ten times the speed of light. The problem was that further research concluded that the spacecraft would need a minimum amount of energy equal to the mass-energy of Jupiter.
Further investigation by scientist Harold White from the NASA Johnson Space Center has determined that the needed amount of energy is actually much less than previously believed – with a few tweaks to the design of the ship. Rather than using a flat ring, White proposed a ring shaped like a rounded doughnut and determined that using that shape the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of the spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe. White also said that by oscillating the intensity of the space warps the energy could be reduced even more. As a result of White’s recent findings, further research will be conducted on the possibility of warp travel.
[via Space.com]
Here’s a clever upgrade to the everyday toaster – a kitchen appliance that can burn the current weather forecast onto the face of your toast each morning. Designed by Nathan Brunstein, the Jamy is a conceptual design for a “smart toaster” that has a built-in weather application which could scorch the forecast into bread.
As an added bonus, the single-slice toaster looks kind of like a video game console. While it’s not clear exactly how the printing mechanism would work, it seems like a really clever idea – one that every hotel and bed & breakfast in the world should use when they serve up toast for breakfast. Also, it needs to support more than one slice at a time, or else I won’t be able to get my proper morning carb fix.
[via Lost at E Minor]
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