Archive for October 2009

Ryan Harc says that his Pocket Light concept will let us share “the blissful moments with your beloved. Draw out a little light which can be the best conveyor of your feeling.” Wink wink. I wish this was a real product; it’s just so nice to look at.

Why, or why not, that is the question. Wait what? Yeah that’s right; Joe Bowers is a free man in a free land, so if he wants to build a robot that plays Rock Band on the iPhone, no one can stop him!

As we look for more ways to generate energy-efficient light, we’ve seen a gradual move away from the warm glow of incandescent light, to the ugly pinkish hues of CFL, to the strange blueish-white point-source light produced by LEDs.

Imagine someday walking up to the front door of your home of office, and instead of whipping out your keys or RFID keycard, you stare into a facial recognition device that decides whether or not you’re really you.

Sure, the Nintendo DSi is pretty nice (though apparently not big enough), but that camera just doesn’t have enough oomph for some people. You know the type: the folks who need giant thrusting accessories, be they useful or not.

As digital video cameras keep getting smaller and smaller, you never know where one might be hiding. Next time you walk into a room and there’s a Coke can sitting on the table, you might want to check that it’s not a spy cam.

Developed by researchers at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab in cooperation with Audi, AIDA (Affective Intelligent Driving Agent) is a drivers’ companion that offers useful information while interacting in a “socially appropriate and informative way.” AIDA will be mounted on a car’s dashboard, where it’s “face” will be visible to the driver.

Ah, software problems. We’ve all experienced them in varying degrees – sometimes it’s just a stupid online video that won’t load, and sometimes the operating system itself gives up. Now imagine a future where programs can still be compromised, or attacked, but will no longer crash or hang.

Tomotaka Takahashi, creator of the high endurance EVOLTA robot, recently showed off his new robot, ROPID. The name is supposedly a combination of rapid and robot, so it was either ROPID or RABOT. The cute robot is about 15 inches tall and can jump about 3 inches high.

The rumors were right – Nintendo officially unveiled the DSi LL, which is basically a Nintendo DSi but with much larger 4.2-inch screens, a 93% increase over the 3.2-inch screens on the DSi. The DSi LL also has 2 pens, a relatively jumbo sized 5-inch pen and a smaller pen that’s still slightly larger than the touch pen on the DSi.

Frenetic flaming fights get a lot more complicated when you’re carting one of Rapture’s creepy unchildren around, as the newly released BioShock 2 multiplayer trailer proves… but they still look a lot like regular ol’ Capture the Flag.

This unique art installation uses a canvas of 905 individual ping pong balls as a projection surface for interactive video imagery. For his work titled 905, artist maybites suspended 67 strings of ping pong balls in a cylindrical formation, with each ball acting as a sort of pixel for projecting digital images.

Here’s a couple of fun games for Star Wars fans to play on their TVs. The guys over a Jakks Pacific (makers of all of those great retro TV game systems) have recently released two new standalone TV games from the Star Wars universe.

The YikeBike is a new electric transport vehicle coming from New Zealand. The compact personal transporter features an innovative design that can speed you along through city streets and country roads without ever requiring you to stand up.

If you think that the Segway is too expensive, you’ll probably be disgusted with the Air Board, a $14,000 (USD) personal hovercraft. Then again, it’s a personal hovercraft! The product page clarifies for us peasants that “hovercrafts are not just very unique and unusual gifts, they are actually available.”

I can’t say whether or not this Proton Pack will actually trap ghosts, but from this brief glimpse, there is one thing I can say for certain: this badass project is sure to score the top prize at Halloween costume contests, and isn’t that worth more than a ghost in a box?