Electronics

Have you ever wondered what happens to obsolete electronics once they are discarded? How far do they travel and what are the "second lives" of donated computers? MIT's backtalk project aims to answer those questions simply by tracing discarded devices with location trackers applied to a number of e-waste items. The tracking data will be available to the public in the form of real-time visualizations, exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York from July 24. Read More

If you’re over a certain age and still have a stack of vinyl LPs, you may have witnessed the fascination expressed by younger people when you play those records on your turntable – as far as they’re concerned, you might just as well be cranking up a Model T Ford. Well, if you really want to freak them out, you could always tell them that ION’s Vertical Vinyl Wall Mountable Turntable lets you play records vertically. How crazy is that? Read More

Hydroelectricity is the most widely used form of renewable energy, supplying around 20 percent of the world’s electricity in 2006, which accounted for about 88 percent of electricity from renewable sources. Now researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method to harvest energy from flowing water using a nanoengineered graphene coating. The new technology only produces small amounts of electricity so isn’t aimed at large scale electricity production, but rather at self-powered microsensors to be used in oil exploration. Read More

A quality Swiss Army multi-tool with a knife used to be in every boy's wishlist in the past, but with the modern day road warrior's kit now taking a decidedly digital bent Victorinox Swiss Army is now offering tools that don't feature any kind of blade at all. Some tools offer just a USB flash drive instead. Victorinox has recently announced the availability of Victorinox Slim and Slim Duo USB Flash devices in a variety of color and storage capacity options. Having no blades results in being totally flight-friendly. Read More

The United States’ copper-based electric grid is estimated to leak electricity at an estimated five percent per 100 miles (161 km) of transmission. With power plants usually located far from where the electricity they produce will actually be consumed, this can add up to a lot of wasted power. A weave of metallic nanotubes known as armchair quantum wire (AQW) is seen as an ideal solution as it can carry electricity over long distances with negligible loss, but manufacturing the massive amounts of metallic single walled carbon nanotubes required for the development of this “miracle cable” has proven difficult. Now researchers have made a pivotal breakthrough that could make the development of such a cable possible. Read More

Usually, the last things that most people want to do with a digital memory device are to drop it on a hard surface, bend it, or put it underwater. A new prototype developed by researchers at North Carolina State University, however, is made to stand up to all of those things and more. Instead of the brittle, unyielding materials that are at the heart of most electronics, the NCSU memory device is soft and squishy, and is not affected by wet environments ... “similar to the human brain,” according to one of its designers. Read More

Glasses-free 3D displays are getting larger with the 20-inch LG Cinema 3D DX2000 computer display being the latest addition to the glasses-free 3D line of devices. The newest LG Cinema 3D display utilizes similar webcam-based eye-tracking technology as the latest glasses-free 3D gaming laptop Toshiba Qosmio F750, aimed at dealing with the common "sweet spot" 3D technology issue. Read More

We've seen a number of unusual speakers before, such as the Whamodyne glass speakers or Solid Acoustics' dodecahedron speakers, but concrete speakers are definitely something new. It's definitely not a very popular material for audio systems, but Israeli designer Shmuel Linski would like to change that with his "Exposed" concrete speakers, each of which weighs 123 pounds (56 kg). They're just one part of his line of unusual creations, that include a concrete coffee maker and a concrete canoe. Read More

As you sit there reading this story you’re surrounded by electromagnetic energy transmitted from sources such as radio and television transmitters, mobile phone networks and satellite communications systems. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a device that is able to scavenge this ambient energy so it can be used to power small electronic devices such as networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors and communications chips. Read More