Technabob » digital

Nooka App for iOS: The 99 Cent Nooka Watch

Range — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:00:09 +0000

Clock apps for iOS are nothing new, but the unique style of Nooka watches allows their new app to showcase how you can tell time on a number of different Nooka products. The Nooka app displays time in a variety of face designs, including Nooka’s zot, zenh or zirc face modes.

Swiping left and right transitions through the different displays. The app comes with world time, stopwatch, timer, and alarm clock functions, and you can even customize the color of the time display. The accompanying blurb says that the graphical time representation that Nooka uses for its watches “transcends the linguistics and math that make telling time difficult for a child to learn – creating a truly intuitive experience to tell time, set alarms, and visualize world-time/timezones.” While I’m not sure the displays entirely satisfy this lofty statement, the displays are still fun to check out and look really cool.

The Nooka app sells for $0.99 on the iTunes App Store. While you’re over there looking for cool watch apps, be sure to check out the free Ziiiro app,

[via MoCo Loco]

Students Grab 350,000 Digital Textbooks from Apple iBooks in First Three Days

Shane McGlaun — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:30:34 +0000

With iBooks 2, Apple recently launched its full-on assault on the print textbooks we all lugged around in school. So far, the war is off to a good start for Apple. According to AllThingsD, students have already downloaded 350,000 textbooks from iBooks in just three days. That is a huge number of downloads for something that doesn’t involve the words Angry, Zombies or Ninja in the title.

I certainly don’t blame students for jumping on and trying it out. If I could have used digital books rather than carry a bag stuffed with 60 pounds of textbooks in college I certainly would have.

We do have to take that download count with a grain of salt though. Apple has been offering a free download textbook called E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth, and there is no indication of how many times that free title was downloaded. There is a chance that the free textbook might make up a significant number of those downloads. Still, it shows an interest in the app’s updated interactive and note-taking features.

In the same three-day period, there were 90,000 downloads of the iBooks Author app that lets people make free textbooks themselves, so that’s a good sign for an increased volume of publications hitting the shelves.

[via AllThingsD]

Glitchr Turns Website Bugs into Art

Range — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:00:20 +0000

To be honest, I no longer use Facebook enough to see any bugs. I basically check in and check out, within 10 or 15 minutes or so each time and never leave an open tab. That being said, just like any website, Facebook has got some bugs. Glitchr is a project that turns common websites into digital art, filled with textual artifacts.

You’ve probably done something like this, whenever Windows used to freeze up, you could drag a window around and create these sort of patterns on your screen. Well, Lithuanian artist Laimonas Zakas‘ Glitchr uses unicode characters to exploit certain programming bugs in popular sites such as Facebook.

While these glitches might seem harmless, some companies have already taken measures to ensure that their sites won’t be “glitchred”. For the time being, you can check out Glitchr on its Facebook page or its Tumblr site. No guarantee that the bugs won’t be fixed by the time you visit, though.

[via designboom]

Ion Audio Vinyl Forever Looks Like a Tiny Turntable, Doesn’t Play Tiny Records

Shane McGlaun — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:00:42 +0000

Earlier in the week I mentioned that at CES 2012, Ion Audio had unveiled a turntable that connected to your PC via USB to convert your vinyl and cassette tapes. Ion has unveiled another conversion device for those who already have a nice record player or tape deck called Vinyl Forever. The little device looks like a tiny record player making it all cute and stuff.

It has ports for RCA cables on it, and you connect it to your existing audio gear with the to shoot the tunes out to your computer via USB. The device has recording level controls and volume controls on board, and it ships with software for digitizing tracks onto your PC or Mac. It also has a headphone port that will allow you to listen as you convert. The Vinyl Forever converter will ship sometime in 2012 for under $35 (USD).

iPad Used as Passport to Cross US Border

Range — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:00:33 +0000

While the TSA and INS aren’t supposed to let you into the US without a real passport, that didn’t stop a Canadian man from using his iPad as a substitute for his passport, which he had forgotten at home. Border crossings require passports these days, but thanks to a bit of holiday spirit, he managed to get himself into the US.

I doubt that this will become a common practice, but Martin Reisch managed to get into the US using his iPad. He had a scan of his passport on his iPad, and he had forgotten his real one at home, which was two hours away. He was delivering some gifts for the kids of a friend. After a few minutes of deliberation, the border officer gave him permission to enter the US. He was also allowed to leave the US with the same iPad passport.

I guess if the barcode is scannable, then it could be possible that this might become more a more frequent occurrence, but without the security measures built into a physical passport, it would be pretty easy to doctor a digital image of one. It makes you wonder what might happen if passports someday become entirely digital. Just swipe your phone or tablet, and go through.

[via Ubergizmo]

CODEX LED Watch Is About as Cryptic as They Come… or Is It?

Technabob — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:00:46 +0000

If you’re looking for a watch that looks cool, and is almost impossible for anyone but you to figure out, you might want to check out the CODEX watch concept, which tells time using a unique display that seems almost incomprehensible – until you understand the trick.

At first glance you’ll look at the LED display on the CODEX and say “WTF time is it?” But once you understand how it works, it’s actually not that hard to read, and you can actually tell time at a glance.

Initially, you’ll just see a bunch of diagonal lines, but look closer, and you’ll realize that each triangular section of the watch’s pyramid-shaped face simply represents a number. When wearing the watch, the top and bottom sections represent hours, and the left and right sections represent minutes. Each number is just shown in a funky angular typeface, which is adjusted to the appropriate angle to fit into each section of the watch face. Look again. Make sense now?

Here’s a chart that explains what each digit looks like in its various rotated states. They kind of look like some sort of weird characters you’d see on the controls of an alien spacecraft, but once you understand what they are, they actually are pretty straightforward.

The CODEX watch was a collaborative design by a guy going by the name of Firdaus in Malaysia, and Heather Sable here in the US, and is currently up for voting over on the TokyoFlash design blog. If you’d like to see it produced, head on over and show your support.

Marvel Digital Stylus Doubles as Pen

Range — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:00:49 +0000

There are basically two kinds of styluses available. The ones with a thin tip, that allow you to write, draw, and select stuff on a resistive screen, and the ones with a somewhat larger tip, that mimic the way that you use your finger, designed for capacitive touch screens. The benefit of styluses is that they keep your screen from getting covered with fingerprints, and (theoretically) give you more precision than your fat fingertips.

Marvel Digital’s Soft Rubber Tip Stylus Pocket Pen doubles as a both a capacitive stylus and a pen, which is handy because when you’re not using it with your tablet or smartphone, you can write stuff on paper with it.

The main problem I’ve had with styluses is that they don’t allow you to use multi-touch gestures, which can be annoying. The capacitive ones are also not that precise either. Still, if you have use for a one, the pen/stylus combo sells for $10(USD) from Marvel Digital.

Arcane Quad Orbit Watch Concept Spins its Wheels to Tell the Time

Technabob — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:30:14 +0000

Here’s another cool watch concept from designer Peter Fletcher I found floating around up on the Tokyoflash design blog. While it might look like a futuristic LCD timepiece, the Arcane Quad Orbit watch is actually fully mechanical.

Instead of telling time with LED or LCD segmented displays, the Arcade Quad Orbit would tell time using turning disks. Each disk would contain abstract looking symbols, which actually comprise the elements of a digital seven-segment display, and these would spin into place behind a mask in order to reveal the current hour and minutes.

It’s really quite striking, and what I rather like about it is that the design seems completely feasible. All they need to do is to work out a mechanism which would independently drive each turning disk, and the rest of it is just finding a quality manufacturer to build it.

Peter thinks that it’s possible that if a custom disk was used for the hours, the other three disks could be powered using an off-the-shelf analog movement.

As is always the case with watch concepts on the Tokyoflash design blog, there’s a chance this watch will actually be produced if there’s enough positive feedback. If you dig it, head on over and show your support. While you’re over there, be sure to poke around and look at some of the other innovative and unusual watch concepts being shown off.

Ventura Sparc MGS Mechanical/Digital Watch Needs No Battery

Shane McGlaun — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:00:31 +0000

I have seen a bunch of watches over the years that are mechanical action units where you don’t need to wind them and they don’t need batteries. These watches are the sort where the motion of your arms as you move around keeps the watch wound up. A new watch has surfaced that combines elements of that no-wind mechanism with a digital timepiece.

The watch is called the Sparc MGS by Ventura Watches. It has a LCD display on the face and above the watch face is another crystal that covers a little mechanical nano generator. The generator creates the power that is needed to run the watch when you move around.

It has a way to store the power that allows the watch to run for 45 days without moving. The face displays the time, date, and has dual time zone capability. It also has a LED backlight. The watch runs some sort of OS leaving the chance for upgrades open as well. The only bad part about his watch is that the black version you see here costs $5,500(USD).

[via WristWatchReview]

The Elusive Watch Lets You Read the Time off Your Wrist, Literally

Hazel Chua — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:00:04 +0000

I’ve been so lazy lately that I haven’t had the batteries of two of my wristwatches changed yet. So as things stand, they’re still lying on my dresser. I still wear them but they’re more like accessories now, since the batteries are already deader than dead.

So what’s an energy-saving alternative that will look hip, colorful, and futuristic on your wrist? It’s designer David Blanc’s Elusive watch that’s still quite elusive nowadays, considering that it’s not actually being manufactured yet.

Here’s another possible reason why the watch was named like so: the watch’s face is also elusive. That’s because it doesn’t have a face – just a hole where a face is supposed to be. This is where the battery-saving stuff comes in.

Instead of displaying the time on a LED or LCD 24/7 or having two hands running across it at any given moment, you have to insert your finger into the face to have it displayed: one finger for the time, and two for the date. After it’s triggered, the time would be projected onto your skin using a tiny, harmless laser beam. Pretty neat concept, eh?

[via Yanko Design]

Digital Bitcoins Become Real, Shiny

Conner Flynn — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:00:54 +0000

If like me, you’ve never heard of Bitcoins before, let me explain. Bitcoin is a digital currency that basically allows payments without needing centralized payment processors. You don’t need any stinkin’ banks and their greedy scandals and since you don’t need banks, the fees are super low. They are transferred from person-to-person over the Internet, worldwide.

These coins are generated all over the Internet with a free app called a Bitcoin miner. You mine your coins, store them in your wallet and then you can spend them. It was all digital, until now.

Now someone has created real silver Bitcoin coins in 1 gm silver rounds, stamped with the Bitcoin symbol, bringing them into the real world. That makes these the first digital currency to take a physical form. They look cooler than our currency. It’s not like you can use these at the corner shop, but at least they could be a good investment because they are pure silver. Silver, like gold, is going up, up, up.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Therichtimes]

Giant Digital Atomic Wall Clock and Thermometer: You Won’t Have Any Trouble Reading This

Range — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:30:45 +0000

Wall clocks are a dime a dozen, but there’s something quite appealing about this one. It’s the Giant Digital Atomic Wall Clock and Thermometer, and it’s basically one of the smaller ones that has been made a lot bigger so that you can read it from clear across your room.

The 4.5″ tall LCD numbers are visible from about 30 feet away. In addition to time in either 12 or 24 hour modes, it also displays the current day and date. Plus, you’ll get all of the benefits of knowing the exact (indoor) temperature, if you care about that. It’s made by a company that supplies these clocks for Canadian hospitals and government buildings. The clock will refresh the time each night so it’s completely accurate. It uses 3 “C” batteries to power it’s large display, and can easily be wall-mounted.

You can buy it on Amazon from American Science & Surplus for $79.95 (USD).

[via GeekAlerts]

Augmented Reality Mirror on the Wall, Can You Make Me the Fairest of Them All?

Hazel Chua — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:00:03 +0000

Sometimes, I wake up in the morning feeling like crap and the trip to the bathroom that follows gives rise to even more crappy feelings. A new zit forming at the tip of my nose! A new wrinkle on my forehead or near my eye (even though I’m still in my twenties)!

If you’re like me, then maybe you’ll find this electric mirror interesting, too.

This augmented reality mirror lets you edit out any imperfections and perform a few tweaks here and there on your face and mirror the results in real time as you face the mirror. Cool, right?

Maybe it’s for all the people in the world who are exceptionally grumpy in the morning or for those who are extremely critical of their own looks. Or maybe it’s for people who want to know what they might look like if they go for plastic surgery. See the face-morphin’ action in the video below…

Vlado Kitanovski and Ebroul Izquierdo of the Multimedia and Vision research group at Queen Mary, University of London, came up with this software-based mirror that takes virtual augmentation to a new level by mapping out a 3D version of your face and developing a video version where the resulting enhancements may be made, digitally.

The AR mirror will be one of the works presented at the International Conference on Image Processing in Belgium next month.

[New Scientist via Dvice]

Marvel Digital Mercury: Cheap Android Tablet, Still More Expensive than HP TouchPad

Range — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:12:02 +0000

HP might have had to have a fire sale to dump their now-discontinued WebOS TouchPad tablets, but Marvel Digital’s Mercury Pad Tablet is running Android, so you’ll be safe with it. As tablets go, the Mercury has solid specs, but is still more expensive that the discount-priced $99 TouchPad (if you can still find one).

The Mercury Pad Tablet has a 7-inch multi-touch screen with 800 × 400 resolution, and runs Android 2.3. It has two cameras: a front-facing 0.3MP and a rear-facing 2MP one. It comes with a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, expandable storage from 4GB to 16GB, and an HDMI output.

The device is sleek and unobtrusive, making it interesting for some uses, like reading books and quickly consulting your emails. As a matter of fact, it looks sort of like a giant iPhone 4.

Marvel Digital sells the Mercury Pad Tablet for $259(USD) at their online store.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Cadence Wants Your Vote on Next Watch Design

Shane McGlaun — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:01:07 +0000

Cadence makes some really cool watches, and we saw some early renderings for one of its designs way back in 2010. The watch that we saw then was an early design for a digital watch with an analog style face design. Cadence is getting ready to release a watch based on the concept, and the want you to vote on the final design.

The watch was designed Josh Chadwick, a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology graphic design program. There are two watch designs that the users can vote on now. One design has labeled buttons and a silver rim around the face and the other has a black rim and no labels for the buttons.

The watch shows the AM/PM, date, day, and minutes. The hours are the larger block outside the circle with the minutes being the blocks inside the circle. There is also a chance that the final version will have a second hand. You can vote for the design of your choice here. (And as a bonus, you’ll get a 40% discount on your pre-order if you vote.)

Personally, I like the “Design A” black version. What do you think?

PixelInvaders LED Panels: All Your Pixels Are Belong to Us

Range — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:20:22 +0000

PixelInvaders is a computer-controlled RGB LED matrix project by Michael Vogt. The goal is to use these panels, which can be interconnected, as effect lighting in clubs, bars, fairs, museums, on stage, in a lobby or in your living room.

Each panel measures about 31.5″ square, and has an 8×8 grid of “smart” RGB LEDs. PixelInvaders LED panels use software called PixelController to drive them. You can even control them using a MIDI device or using OSC compatible software. The hardware is open-sourced, and is targeted at geeks, artists, and DIY enthusiasts. The panels themselves are able to playback real-time generated video or simple color changes. The PixelController software was released as open-source software on GitHub.

To support the project and get your own PixelInvaders LED panels, you can visit the IndieGoGo PixelInvaders page. Minimum contribution is $25, but to get anything back, you’ll need to give at least $282, and that only includes the LED modules. You’ll need to spend as much as $626 for all the parts needed to assemble a full panel, or $1499 for a fully assembled and tested one.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Wall Projection Scale for People Who Aren’t Weight Conscious

Hazel Chua — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:40:34 +0000

Men, here’s a quick tip: ask women any question, just don’t ask her what her weight is. (Unless, of course, you want to be bombarded with a hundred and one follow-up questions as to why you’re asking her and why you’re so mean and insensitive and if you think she’s fat and all that..)

However, if you want to be all sneaky about it (and if you happen to be the fearless type), then you might want to position this scale in a corner of the room or something where a woman’s bound to step on it. Wait and few seconds, and shazam! Her weight will be displayed in bright, bold red LED against the wall, visible for anyone in the vicinity to take a gander.

She won’t be too happy about it, that’s for sure, so try to lay low about the whole thing for the next couple of days.

These Wall Projection Scales are available from Hammacher Schlemmer for $69.95 (USD). Dignity sold separately.

[via Coolest Gadgets]

JC/DC Gummy Me Watch: Wear an Extraterrestrial Rabbit on Your Wrist

Range — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:14:40 +0000

If you love (or loathe) Jean Charles de Castelbajac’s funky watch designs, then check out these unusual new watches from JC/DC that look like rabbits. Once you take them off your wrist, they look like they might hop away.

JC/DC collaborated with Hong-Kong-based watchmaker odm for this design. It’s called the Gummy Me watch, and is supposed to combine an E.T. with a rabbit. These toy/kitsch inspired watches look like something kids might wear, but JC/DC doesn’t design clothes for kids. The time can be told by staring into E.T. rabbit’s eyes. There’s also a backlight that’s activated when you press the side of the rabbit’s head.

These funky watches come in black, white, red and blue, and ship in a package that resembles a test tube (or some sort of alien transport chamber). They cost $85 (USD) each over at the ODM store.

[via The Trendy Girl]

Anpanman Camera Gives Kids a Head Start in Digital Photography

Hazel Chua — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:30:55 +0000

The things that kids do for entertainment these days is completely different from what we did as kids in my generation. We didn’t have a whole lot of handheld video games, although we had our imaginations and our Super NES and that was enough.

My dad would bring out this huge film camera and take photos of me and my siblings every year to put in the family album. Now everything’s gone digital and people take photos of anything and everything every single day.

Since you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. And while you’re at it, why not start out young? That’s what you can do for your kids by getting them one of these Anpanman digital cameras from Takara Tomy.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

These cameras are extremely colorful, and since they’re meant for kids, you can also expect them to be durable. The camera won’t win any awards for being able to take extremely detailed or high quality shots, but what it can do is take 3-megapixel shots and store 99 of them in its internal memory.

These will be available from Japan Trend Shop for $110 (USD) (and probably way less if you live in Japan).

[via Oh Gizmo]

Pose Camera Case for the Vain and the Beautiful

Hazel Chua — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:35:15 +0000

There have been moments in my life when all I wanted to do is take a photo of a wonderful scene – but with me in it. I normally don’t bring a tripod around with me, so the perfect photo opportunity goes bye-bye when the place I’m in also happens to be semi-deserted.

But that doesn’t have to be the case anymore with Quirky’s Pose Camera Case.

Pose is more than just a case, as it’s also a camera stand with an attachment mount on the inside. It’s compatible with most digital cameras, so to take your own picture, just slide it in the slot and set the timer and you’re done.

You can also wrap the case around a curved surface or object, like a bike handle or pipe or tree branch, if that’s the only thing you can find around you to hold it up.

When you’re done, just slide your camera off, reverse the case to its other side, and stow your camera away. Quick, easy, and more hassle-free compared to lugging around a tripod all day.

The Pose case is available for pre-sale from Quirky for $23.99 (USD). If they get enough pre-order commitments, they’ll be producing these soon.

[via Oh Gizmo]