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James Holloway

James Holloway
James is a graduate of the Open University, with a B.Sc. in Technology and a Diploma in Design and Innovation. After a decade in building design engineering, he side-stepped into writing about green tech and the environment. When not clattering about the web, he listens to early 90s hip hop, writes bad haiku and ponders the merits of an English three-man seam attack.
Top Articles by James Holloway
Tetra-Shed putting in a welcome appearance at this year's Clerkenwell Design Week (Photo: ...

A patch of central London is festooned with pink this week, which can only mean Clerkenwell Design Week is in session once more. Lovely old buildings such as the Farmiloe Building, House of Detention and the Museum of the Order of St. John have opened their doors to designers and design enthusiasts on the lookout for inspiration. Armed with a camera, Gizmag went exploring, and was pleased to see one or two favorites among the novelties.  Read More

An item from Ying Chang's Sketch Objects (Photo: Ying Chang)

Clerkenwell Design Week kicked off in London on Tuesday. Though primarily catering to fans of light shades and soft office furnishings, there are some interesting and innovative gems lurking among the event's 60-odd showrooms. Among them was Ying Chang's Sketch Objects, a series of paper plates, bowls and vases waterproofed on the inside with resin.  Read More

The robot matches the type of hand-off with the most appropriate response in its database

They may not make for the showiest videos, but some of the most interesting problems in robotics are to do with the subtleties of human interaction. Even something as apparently simple as receiving an object poses great difficulty, but it's a problem that will need to be solved before multipurpose robots are ready for the home. By building a database of captured human motion, Disney Research and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are making strides towards building a robot that can take an object handed to it by a human.  Read More

By exploiting pressure at the seabed, researchers hope to create stores of energy at the o...

"Imagine opening a hatch in a submarine under water. The water will flow into the submarine with enormous force. It is precisely this energy potential we want to utilize." This is how German engineer Rainer Schramm describes his idea for storing energy under the sea. By using surplus energy to pump water out of a tank at the seabed, the water is simply let back in again when there's an energy shortfall, driving turbines as it rushes in. The deeper the tank, the more power is generated.  Read More

The dashboard of the Ghost prototype

With eight days of his already successful Kickstarter campaign still remaining, John O'Nolan has cited the uncertainty surrounding Yahoo's newly-announced US$1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr as a reason to back his open source, non-profit blogging platform, Ghost.  Read More

The engine on its 4-hour journey Eighty Danish Lego devotees got together on May 10 and 11 to help one Henrik Ludvigsen with his plan to build the world's longest plastic toy train track.  Read More

A film still of a bouncing bomb trial (Photo: BAE Systems/SSPL)

It's seventy years to the day since No. 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force returned from Operation Chastise, in which specially designed bouncing bombs were dropped in an attack on the Möhne, Sorpe and Eder Dams in Germany during World War II. Though the bouncing bomb is without doubt the invention for which Barnes Wallis is most renowned (thanks in no small part to its depiction in the film Dambusters) Wallis' other work before, during, and after World War II was of great importance, and in some cases, far ahead of its time. Gizmag spoke to Dr. Andrew Nahum, Principal Curator of Technology at the Science Museum where many of Wallis' papers are archived, about swing-wing aircraft, earthquake bombs, improbable mathematics lessons, and the geodetic Wellington Bomber.  Read More

Lo Monaco House by Tom Wiscombe Design (Image: Tom Wiscombe Design)

The architectural designs of Tom Wiscombe are overtly futuristic, to the point that were you to drop his concepts into the depictions of the London and San Francisco of the year 2259 in Star Trek Into Darkness, they wouldn't look out of place. His Lo Monaco House almost resembles a futuristic shuttle on a launchpad, yet the influences for this design are entirely removed from the realm of space fantasy – according to Wiscombe himself, that is.  Read More

The update of the Hue app opens up the possibilities for automating home lighting

The app for Philips' smartphone-controlled color-changing LED light bulb, Hue, has been updated with a number of well-thought out additions which multiply the possibilities for automating its behavior in all sorts of interesting and useful ways.  Read More

Nir Meiri's Marine Light (Photo: Nir Meiri) At last, those agonizing about what to do with all that spare seaweed they have lying around the place can take a leaf (or perhaps frond) out of Nir Meiri's book. The Tel Aviv-based designer's Marine Light amply demonstrates that dried seaweed can make rather a natty lampshade.  Read More

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