I said at the time I would totally switch to Dish to get that feature, but I figured the future would be short-lived because television studios would sue. As expected, the Studios are now suing Dish over the feature. Fox, CBS, and NBC have all individually sued Dish Network for deleting their commercials. The only major network not suing Dish at this time is ABC.

Additionally, Dish Network has filed suit against all four major television studios seeking a declaration judgment by the courts of whether or not the feature is legal. I hope the courts say it’s legal, I would love to see this feature on all DVRs. Television studios need to understand that the vast majority of us no longer watch commercials and they’ll have to be more creative with their revenue streams. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of product placement and blatant advertising during the shows themselves these days anyway.

[via Hollywood Reporter]

The prototype injector uses an electromagnetic actuator to propel fluids at up to the speed of sound. I know that that actually sounds like more pain, but actually the injector’s nozzle is only about as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis, and mosquito bites are far lower in the pain scale compared to needle injections.

Another advantage of this device is that the velocity of the delivery of a drug can be adjusted by controlling the current applied to the actuator. Meaning it can be turned into a weapon be adjusted depending on a patient’s skin.

Head to MIT News to inject more data into your brain.

[via DVICE]

The Lit C-1 is a small, single-seat electric urban vehicle, combining the size of a motorcycle with the apparent safety of something bigger. The C-1 uses electronically-controlled gyroscopes to remain upright even in the case of an accident. However, you’d best be careful if you’re driving this, because the makers have dubbed it the “Rolling Smartphone” because of its extensive connectivity to mobile devices.

It can be charged up in six hours, has a top speed of 120mph, and the battery provides enough autonomy for 150 to 220 miles. It will be available in 2014 and will sell for $12,000 to $16,000 (USD).

[via designboom]

The Clothbot was designed by a team from the Chinese Academy of Science, and it uses a special set of gripper wheels to help it ascend textiles. The tiny robot weighs just under 5 ounces, but is incredibly adept at handling the challenging surface of fabric. In the demo video below, we see Clothbot climbing a shirt, and then pair of pants:

Why, you may ask, would you need a robot that can climb your pants? Its creators think that the Clothbot could be the foundation for small robotic pets that could climb on us, or the slightly more ridiculous idea of a robotic cellphone which could saddle itself on your shoulder to free your hands – guess they never heard of a Bluetooth headset. They also suggest the idea of robotic “body inspection.” Um, no thanks. On the other hand, tiny robot pets that climb on us sound kind of fun – at least until Skynet gets a hold of them.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

The brown patches in the image above are electrodes coated with genetically modified M13 bacteriophage, a virus that only attacks bacteria and is harmless to humans. When the electrodes are pressed, the viruses convert the force into electricity, as evidenced by the LCD display on top. The setup produces 6 nanoamperes of current and about 400 millivolts, about a quarter of the voltage of a triple-A battery. While there are already numerous piezoelectric technologies available, but Berkeley Labs states that those involve toxic materials and are “difficult to work with.” The modified M13 on the other hand is harmless, self-replicating and arrange themselves into organized films, making them quite promising.

I guess the video doesn’t really explain what’s going on in layman’s terms, but the full article at the Berkeley Lab News Center does have a more understandable breakdown of the research. The takeaway here is that if this virus-powered generators become fully developed, we’ll see more devices such as these that convert what would be otherwise wasted mechanical energy into electricity. Now where are the friendly worms and trojans?

[via Engadget]

The UNI-CUB’s control system uses a self-balancing, omni-directional driving wheel set up that allows the rider to lean and control the vehicle in any direction. The vehicle can also be controlled via a smart phone or other touchscreen device. This personal mobility vehicle is an evolution of the U3-X that Honda launched in 2009.

Top speed for the UNI-CUB is 6 km/h, and Honda promises the vehicle is agile enough and easy enough to control that it can be used around pedestrians without worry. It’s intended for indoor use and has 6 km range per charge of its lithium-ion battery.

If you or someone in your house is a fan of kung fu movies in the cheesy sound effects that go along with them, they need the Dragon Grip that’s on Kickstarter now.

This toy looks like the handle from a joystick and has a trigger and a D-pad on top. When someone does the kung fu moves while pressing the trigger the Dragon Grip makes sounds automatically.

The device goes along with a comic book called Legend City. If you want one of these toys, you’ll need to pledge $25(USD) or more. If you want to grip and the comic book, you’ll need to cough up $32 or more. The expected delivery on the Dragon Grip is December, assuming the project gets enough pledges to fund it.

DARPA is soliciting responses from corporations to build a very interesting satellite system called SeeMe. The system has a small launch vehicle sized like a missile that would hang under fighter jets wings. This particular missile could apparently be mounted under a civilian aircraft. The aircraft would then take off and fly to cruising altitude where it would launch the missile into space.

Once the missile was at its precise orbit, a small disposable satellite would launch with optics that can see exactly where the soldier who requested it is, and start providing coverage in as little as 90 minutes. The idea is that these small SeeMe satellites would be able to provide personalized space-based surveillance coverage on demand.

DARPA sees the system operating with a constellation of disposable satellites able to stay in orbit for 60 to 90 days before burning up on reentry. The launch system may be in the form of another DARPA project called Airport Launch Assist Space Access, designed for payloads around 100 pounds.

For more information on SeeMe, head over to the DARPA website.

The app is called Swÿp. I guess Swipr and Swipestagram were taken. It’s made for iOS devices and is as easy to use as most of Apple’s gestures. Simply swipe the icon of the file you want to transfer from the source to the target.

Both devices are not hacked or modified in any way save for the installation of the app. The trick is that the swipe is actually broken down to two parts: swiping out tells Swÿp that you want to send a file, and swiping in means that you want Swÿp to receive a file. What isn’t clear to me is if both devices already have to have Swÿp up and running or if Swÿp can autorun on the receiver’s end when it detects an incoming file transfer.

Linder and List have a guide and resources for developers here. If only it was this easy to transfer files to and from iOS devices to computers. For the love of convenience, please let this be the future of syncing.

[MIT Media Lab via Fast Co. Design]

The technology is called Touché, and is nothing short of revolutionary. Unlike the Microsoft, Corning and Samsung future, where every wall, window and surface is actually a touchscreen, the Disney future is one where objects still look a lot like the ones we have today, except they’re wired and can recognize different gestures, positions and even our presence. Touché has two main differences from capacitive conventional touchscreen technology. First of all, it doesn’t just have an on or off state (i.e. touch or no touch), and second, as I said, it works on a variety of materials, even on human skin and liquids.

That’s awesome. Pair this with Kinect and you can truly have a smart environment where the artificial surroundings – offices, houses, furniture and electronics – respond to us in more intuitive ways without us having to deal with buttons, switches, knobs or even touchscreen devices. Combine this with biomechatronics and paralyzed people will be able to “feel” again and be more independent. Mate this with life-size dolls and… No. Let’s not go there.

[via Disney Research via Hack A Day]

Eric Siu, from Hong Kong, has conceived a new kind of tactile camera and he’s named it TOUCHY. It was developed while he was a resident artist at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at the University of Tokyo in Japan. The TOUCHY camera sits on top of the user’s head, blocking out his sight with oversize shutters until another person activates it. Only while the wearer is touched will the camera capture images, once every ten seconds, leaving them blind when not touched by another human.

Think of TOUCHY more as a social experiment than an actual product concept. The device itself is quite bulky and rather ridiculous looking, but it definitely makes you think about how we broadcast our lives on the web, thanks to smartphones, at the same time being more and more self-absorbed in our gadgets while we walk around.

[via designboom]

Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in California received several of the ReWalk exoskeletons from a donor. The center is treating paraplegics using the ReWalk to enable the patients to walk around freely. Using the exoskeleton, a paraplegic woman was able to climb stairs, get out of the car, and go to the restroom without any assistance at a pace similar to that of your average person.

The downside to these exoskeletons at this point is that the FDA has only approved the exoskeleton to be used in a hospital setting. The developer of the ReWalk devices is hoping the FDA will approve the use of the systems in the home. One day, rather than being confined to a wheelchair, people who can’t use their legs will be able to devices like the ReWalk instead. The company who makes the exoskeletons also hopes to produce a version for quadriplegics in future.

[via KLTA]

Made by NHK and Panasonic, the display has a maximum resolution of 7,860 x 4,320, has almost 34 million pixels and other numbers bigger than the ones that your TV has. It also has “a new drive system to stabilize the picture throughout the panel, by scanning several pixels simultaneously in the vertical direction.”

I predict that in a hundred years, Sony will partner with ImprovEverywhere to bring us Liv3Theatr, an Ultra Hyper Mega 26-Hit Combo Finish High Definition Display that looks so real because it is real. Pick a channel and Sony will teleport improv actors behind your display to perform whatever show is on that channel or teleport you to where the show is being held. If you can find the remote.

[via Diginfo via Reddit]

The Croation-born EV is now up for pre-sale with production set to start next year. Only 88 will be produced at a whopping $980,000 each. The car has electric motor for each individual wheel for a combined 1088 hp and 2800 pound-feet of torque. The car required specially designed tires to handle the massive power output.

The maker claims the car that hit 60 mph in 2.8 seconds on its way to the top speed of 190 mph. As fast as the car is, Rimac claims it’s good for 372 miles on a single charge, thanks to a battery pack that stores 92 kWh of energy. For nearly a million dollars, the Concept One had better live up to its promises.

[via Fox News]

Most the UAVs we have take off and land like a normal airplanes. The Office of Naval Research has been sponsoring another UAV program called Flexrotor that is nothing like a conventional drone. The Flexrotor is a UAV that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter, but transitions to horizontal flight of a fixed wing aircraft for cruising distance and speed.

Development of the Flexrotor entered its second stage, in which participating companies are working on the ability for the aircraft take off, land, and transition to horizontal flight in strong winds. This stage of the program will also see work continue on the automated maintenance system. The system will be able to take care of the maintenance of the aircraft such as refueling without any input from maintenance personnel, and will act as launch and landing pad.

[via Phys.org]

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to any of those questions. But the company’s introductory video does vaguely indicate the steps that Planetary Resources is planning to take to achieve their plan and the benefits of mining asteroids. Not that we’ll understand if it explained everything in detail. I bet it’s a bit more complicated than pressing L2 to scan and then R2 to launch a probe.

It does seem to make sense to mine asteroids. Unless of course someone out there is using them. In which case… we’ll still mine them if we can get away with it. That’s what humans do! If we’re caught, let’s just say we’re increasing our galactic readiness. Watch Armageddon Check out Planetary Resources’ website for more information.

[via YouTube]

Inventor Matt Richardson simply calls it the Descriptive Camera (soon to be called Photo2Text). The technology behind it is not really as cutting edge as PhotoSketch, although the concept certainly is. When an image is taken using the Descriptive Camera, it sends the digital photo to a person, who will then describe what’s in the photo. Richardson uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to find people who will describe the photo. Finally, the camera’s built-in thermal printer will print out the description. I’m not sure where the digital image goes, so there could be a privacy issue there. All in all this “development” process takes 3 to 6 minutes.

The camera can also be switched to “accomplice mode”, which can be used to send an instant message to another person so they can describe the photo. So for example instead of asking a worker who doesn’t know a thing about you, you could ask your mom to describe a picture of you when you were a baby. Or you’d send yourself pictures taken while you’re drunk for your sober self to try to piece together later.

So why would anyone want a description of a picture instead of the picture itself? Richardson doesn’t actually want just the text. Rather, he envisions future digital cameras to add this kind of valuable information in the metadata of digital images, not just the camera that took the picture, its resolution, ISO and other technical stuff.

Not only will this make it possible to search for a picture by describing what’s in it, but it will also preserve the human element of the photo. Like how much your friends used to love hanging out at your house, or how really they only went there because you had a Famicom because man you were quite the weirdo in 5th grade, or that you absolutely suck at taking pictures in general. That kind of stuff gets lost in time you know. For good reason. What was I talking about again?

[Matt Richardson via Cnet]

Naturally as with anything from NASA, the system gets its own acronym. The system is called READI. Other than just being able locate the source and strength of an earthquake more quickly so emergency workers can be dispatched, NASA is also concerned about providing advance notice of tsunamis.

The tsunamis that destroyed parts of Japan and Indonesia were caused by massive offshore earthquakes. Any major earthquake that happens along the western United States has a potential of sending tsunami across the ocean where it could cause damage. As much advance notification of an incoming tsunami as possible is needed to protect lives. It’s interesting to see or GPS system used for things you might not think about such as earthquake preparedness.

A company based in Spain has a new product called iPavement that are little square tiles of pavement that can be placed into the ground. These tiles have hardware inside that allows them to offer Wi-Fi Internet and Bluetooth connectivity. The tiles even have their own operating system that provides users access to apps.

There are number of apps which will be available including a virtual library app, and app that shows maps of the city and public transportation, as well as an app that gives access to music. One of the apps provides emergency notifications, another allows the city to monitor usage of the hotspot and the street. I’d like to see these tiles hit the road in my area. iPavement will launch in July.

They have been developed by Pol Pla i Conesa of MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group. Each cube is assembled from a set of six 128×128 OLED displays powered by their own microcontroller, capable of showing video, images or other visualizations.

Conesa thinks that the cubes could be used in tasks where different sets of information about a large collection of objects need to be rapidly accessed. On a larger scale, the cubes could be assembled into larger ad hoc displays, each of them functioning as a pixel.

Here’s some video footage from the guys over at Engadget showing off the prototype and some potential applications:

[via Engadget via designboom]