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
Despite numerous attempts throughout the years, smell-o-vision has failed to take off on the big or small screens. Japanese company Chaku Perfume Co. Ltd. is hoping to have better luck on the even smaller screen with its Chat Perf attachment for iPhone that allows messages or email notifications to be accompanied by a signature smell. Read More
If you're in the market for a 3D printer, there are plenty of qualities to weigh. Price, ease of use, size, and print resolution are all factors that could influence the types of objects you're able to create. If you want a printer that fits on your desk and can print objects the size of a basketball though, you may want to consider the latest model from Aleph Objects, Inc. The LulzBot TAZ 3D printer boasts an open source hardware approach in design and claims to have the largest print volume for desktop printers in its price range. Read More
According to a joint World Health Organization/UNICEF report issued this week, an estimated 768 million people relied on unimproved drinking-water sources in 2011, with 185 million of these relying on surface water to meet their daily drinking-water needs. WHO and UNICEF have set a 2030 target for everyone to have access to a safe drinking-water supply and new water-purifying “nanoscavengers” developed by researchers at Stanford University could help achieve this goal. Read More
Robot bartenders aren’t new, but they tend to be more drink vending machine than cool mixologist. To inject a little panache, researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab in collaboration with Coca-Cola and Bacardi Rum have developed Makr Shakr – a robot drink-mixing system that made its debut at the Google I/O annual developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday as the world’s first crowd-controlled robotic bar. Read More
Gmail lets you send all kinds of files as attachments. And Google Wallet lets you pay for just about anything. Why not combine the two? That could have been the thinking by someone at Google, as the search giant is set to launch a payment system that’s the love child of Gmail and Google Wallet. Read More
Cats may love batting at tantilizingly-dangled kitty toys, but most of us can’t dangle those toys for our felines all day long – not even by remote control. The Solar Chaser was designed to pick up the slack, using an integrated solar panel to power its toy-bobbing arm. Read More
Gravitational lenses, which are massive galaxies or galaxy clusters that act as a magnifying glass by bending light passing them, are one of the Universe's golden gifts to astronomers. To help unlock the mysteries that might lie behind these untapped celestial resources, Zooniverse, a program of the Citizens Science Alliance, has begun the Space Warps project. It allows citizen scientists to put their skills at pattern/image recognition to use, toward finding these fugitive gravitational lenses. Read More
Apple isn’t Google’s biggest fan. Steve Jobs believed that Android was a stolen product, and Apple’s lawsuits against Samsung (and others) are an expression of that feeling of being wronged. So it shouldn’t be too big of a surprise that Apple chose today – the kickoff of Google I/O – to announce a major milestone. We’re talking 50 billion downloads of App Store apps. Read More
