Thursday 25 December 2008

Pocket Light

It’s about the size of a credit card and powered by a small cell. Flip up the lightbulb shaped cut-out to switch on the soft, mellow, glow of bliss. What’s the point? Novel - next time you have a bright idea, you can have an actual lightbulb “bling!” on.

Designer: Hyun Jin Yoon & Eun Hak Lee













0-60 Seconds in 60 Seconds…

Albert Einstein once said “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Tell that to designer John Pszeniczny, he thinks time could use a turbo boost and has designed the fastest watch on Earth dubbed “F1/Carbon GMT”.





Inspired by the F1 race car world and constructed of carbon fiber, Swarovski crystal, rubber and metal, this timepiece has 18 identical rubies and tells the time in everyone of the 18 cities on the 2008 F1 circuit. With a built in lap timer function and a stopwatch, time will seem to stand still as it races by at relative speed…which is 42.

Designer: John Pszeniczny

Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/10/06/got-a-light & http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/04/24/0-60-seconds-in-60-seconds/

Vuzix Wrap 920AV Glasses

There's little doubt that as we inch closer to the technological singularity, video-enabled glasses will play a part. Unfortunately, manufacturers have yet to produce a pair that don't make you look like a complete idiot, and bionic eye camera implants still seem a ways off.






Luckily, the folks at Vuzix must have grown tired of all the Geordi La Forge jokes, as their latest pair of video glasses look astonishingly normal. While there's no guarantee that the Vuzix Wrap 920AV won't induce muffled laughter from everyone around you, they do promise to combine virtual reality capabilities and augmented reality features into one of the least obnoxious designs we've seen yet. The Wrap 920AV glasses will supposedly connect with almost any media player, and include built in headphones and individual focal adjustments.


Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10127213-1.html?tag=mncol;txt

Displays that yields to the touch...

Hewlett-Packard and the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University announced the purported first prototype of what they call affordable, unbreakable flexible electronic displays.


For the uninitiated, a flexible display is a paperlike computer display that's made almost entirely out of plastic. According to HP, these displays consume less power than traditional computer displays and of course are more easily portable. They are also said to use up to 90 percent fewer materials than traditional displays by volume.


The press release states that "mass production of such displays can enable production of notebook computers, smart phones and other electronic devices at much lower costs since the display is one of the more costly components," but we'll have to wait and see if costs on these devices are actually lowered because of this technology.

The displays were created via a process called self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL). SAIL purportedly enables thin film transistors to be fabricated on a flexible, plastic material in a roll-to-roll manufacturing process. According to HP, this allows for a more low-cost continuous production, rather than batch sheet-to-sheet production.

To create the display, FDC produces semiconductor materials and metals on flexible polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrates. Using the SAIL process HP then patterns the substrates and then integrates E Ink's Vizplex imaging film to produce the display on plastic.

Future of Internet Searching...

Mac Funamizu has a brilliant, forward-thinking concept of what of internet searching might look like on mobile devices in the future &
The device known as Looking Glass.