Darren Quick

Just over six years ago, we reported that Nissan had developed a "Scratch Guard Coat" paint designed to repair scratches on not only cars, but on painted surfaces in general. The company has already applied its paint technology to a number of Nissan and Infiniti models, and in 2009 it announced that it would license it for use on mobile phones. It appears there weren't many takers as Nissan has now announced that it has produced the world's first self-healing iPhone case that makes use of the Scratch Shield paint. Read More

Researchers claim a newly discovered molecule found in the Earth’s atmosphere holds the potential to help offset global warming by actually cooling the planet. The molecule is a Criegee biradical or Criegee intermediate, which are chemical intermediaries that are powerful oxidizers of pollutants produced by combustion, such as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. They have the ability to naturally clean up the atmosphere by helping break down nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide to form sulfate and nitrate, which ultimately leads to cloud formation that could help cool the planet. Read More

Be it on increasingly powerful dedicated camcorders or via a smartphone, capturing hours (and hours and hours …) of video has never been easier or cheaper. That’s both a blessing and a curse, as even though you’re more likely to capture something worthwhile at some point, at the editing stage you’ll also have to wade through more crap to get to the good stuff. This can be time consuming to say the least and many just don’t bother, preferring to upload the whole kit and caboodle to their video-sharing site of choice. Now there’s an iPhone app called Magisto that is designed to take care of the editing for you and increase the chances of someone actually sitting through the video of Aunt Maude’s birthday dinner. Read More

We all know that water and mobile electronic devices aren’t a good mix. But living on a world whose surface is around 70 percent water can sometimes make it hard to keep the two separate. While wrapping your device in a waterproof case will provide protection, they add bulk and can sometimes affect usability. California-based company Liquipel claims to have developed a hydrophobic nanocoating one thousand times thinner than a human hair that can be applied to a smartphone to protect it from accidental spills without affecting its functionality. Read More

Toyota's NS4 advanced plug-in hybrid concept that was unveiled this week at the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit is the brainchild of Toyota engineers who were given the task of designing a new mid-size concept for potential launch in markets worldwide by 2015. While the NS4 concept is a dedicated plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), Toyota says it isn’t part of its Prius family, with a next-generation Hybrid Synergy Drive plug-in system that is not only smaller and lighter, but is also more fuel efficient, boasts better acceleration and a longer all-electric range than the current system. Read More

With most people happy to make do with camera phones for their digital image snapping needs in the majority of situations and the quality of such devices improving markedly in recent years, makers of dedicated consumer-level cameras face an increasingly tough row to hoe. At CES 2012, Polaroid has announced its SC1630 Smart Camera that attempts to blur the lines between a camera phone and dedicated camera with its smartphone-like form factor and being one of the first dedicated cameras to run on Android. Read More

When Microsoft asked gamers to get off the couch and get moving with the release of the Kinect motion controller in 2010, it’s doubtful that zooming around the streets at speeds of up to 32 mph (51 km/h) was the kind of movement they had in mind. But as we’ve seen ever since unofficial open source drivers hit the Internet in 2010 and Microsoft came to the party with its official Kinect for Windows SDK last year, the Kinect has proven to be a remarkably flexible device. That flexibility now extends to a motion control interface for a motorized electric skateboard modestly dubbed by its creators, the “Board of Awesomeness.” Read More

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants, such as the Gemsolar and PS10 plants in Spain, use arrays of mirrors (or heliostats) to focus a large area of the Sun's rays onto a small area, where the concentrated light is converted to heat that is used to generate electricity. While CSP has gained popularity in recent years with numerous plants being built around the world, they require a large area to generate the amounts of electricity needed to make them economically viable. Taking inspiration from the sunflower, researchers have devised a more efficient design that would allow such plants to be constructed on a much smaller area. Read More

Thanks to their simplicity, the home theater in a box (HTIB) has become a popular addition to the TV cabinet in many households. Looking to simplify things even further, California-based company in2technologies has unveiled its aptly named Unity Home Theater System at CES 2012 that unifies a HTIB with a TV stand. So instead of a tangle of cables snaking their way from the back of a TV stand to the TV, the Unity cleans things up with a single HDMI 1.4a cable. Read More