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Flexible PaperPhone: The Future Flexible Mobile Phone?

Posted: 10 May 2011 01:20 AM PDT

Mobile phones today are multitasking machines that we all know and love, but let’s take it to another, more flexible level. In this case, it’s literal with the Flexible PaperPhone, the world’s first of its kind.

Developed by a team of researchers from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, they believe that this new communication device will make the current smartphone obsolete within 5 to 10 years.

The prototype is supposedly able to do what iPhone is able to, including storing your books, playing music and making calls from it. What’s different about the PaperPhone is, like it’s name, it’s paper thin. It only consists of a thin film of flexible e-ink display. It definitely won’t stick out like a sore thumb when you stuff it into your jeans pocket.

One of the best features of this PaperPhone and technologies like it is that it is almost weightless. Goodbye are the days of lugging around heavy laptops and tablet devices. Holding this device when reading would feel more like holding a piece of paper, rather than glass or metal.

Check out a video of the PaperPhone and also a wristband computer version known as the Snaplet.

With the advent of larger versions of these light, flexible e-ink displays, we can even do away with the need of paper and printers within an office in the near future. Imagine that, an office with no paper or printers!

Personally I’m very interested to find out how such new technologies are going to build or way to the future. Not too hot on the bend gestures, but I do like that the Snaplet has a mounted wacom tablet integrated into it.

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Kongtechnology.com

World’s First Zombie-proof House

Posted: 01 May 2011 05:40 PM PDT

Time for a little architectual geekery this week, with the world’s first proper zombie-proof house.

Anyone who’s ever watched a decent zombie movie (28 Days Later, anyone?) or played one of those nightmare-inducing zombie games (say, Left 4 Dead), will want this zombie-proof house as their humble abode.

Designers KWK Promes has dubbed the design “The Safe House”, and true to its name, it does seem to be as impenetrable as it sounds. Both to the members of the undead who are out to eat you and also to the living, it seems.

"The most essential item for our clients was acquiring the feeling of maximum security," states the designers’ website as a summary of the structure. Judging by its design to be able to fold up into itself, by having huge slabs of concrete covering its windows and enterances, I think that the chances of evading a zombie outbreak to be quite high.

The structure has movable walls and its only entrance is located on the second floor. The only way to enter is through a drawbridge. Sounds like the perfect house for defending yourself and your family against the undead, while being able to lavish in this piece of architectural wonder.

Personally I probably wouldn’t be able to afford such a wonder myself, but the design of it does sound like it would work against an army of the undead. Hypothetically speaking, if the undead ever rise, of course.

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Kongtechnology.com

German Factory Manufacturing Human Skin Goes Online

Posted: 26 Apr 2011 07:36 AM PDT

Technology today is speeding along at a speed at which is almost incomprehensible. Yesterday’s science fiction may very well become today’s science fact. Though are some facts stranger than fiction? It certainly must be true as we are now able to mass-produce human skin at a low cost for clinical testing and other uses.

The great minds behind this skin producing factory is Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Stuttgart, Germany. The factory was just in its infancy merely two years ago, and now it has come online, producing 5,000 penny-sized discs of milky translucent tissue every month.

Each disk of skin will cost about US$72, which is actually slightly more than it was expected to cost when the project was in its infancy 2 years ago.

The skin making process is controlled by robots and computers and executed in a sterile, climate controlled setting. The goal of the project is to eventually be able to factory produce human tissue, complete with blood vessels, that could be used to treat injuries or various medical conditions.

Director of the facility, Heike Walles, believes that factories such as this one is essential to efficiently produce new tissue, including those of organs. Her team has successfully produced lab engineered tissue for human transplantation, but the process is very expensive and also labour-intensive. She believes that an automated manufacturing facility is able to cut costs and simplify processes.

The skin being manufactured now is still a long way from being transplanted, but at the moment it is being used in animal testing and could potentially be used in cosmetic products.

Factory manufactured human skin! What would they think of next? I think skin is the best organ to start with. I wonder how far can this kind of technology go?

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The Collector: Conceptual USB Device To Turn microSD Cards Into Refillable Thumb Drive

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:27 AM PDT

Ever wonder what you are going to do with all your microSD cards that are lying around? Most of them must only have a few of gigabytes in capacity, and they’re so small and easy to lose anyway, if they’re not sitting nice and snug in a device.

A lot of them must have come from the heyday of older smartphones that still used microSD cards, and you just don’t know what to do with them.

Here is a superb conceptual design that was envisioned by Yanko Design to solve the problem: The Collector.

The Collector combines both the technology of a USB flash drive and these tiny little microSD chips to create a flash drive that is ‘refillable’.

It wouldn’t have any storage of its own, but it utilises 3 microSD cards that you can swap out when they are full. It would also combine the smaller chunks of storage into a single one, for instance, if you had three 2GB cards, it would become a 6GB flash drive.

Although The Collector is currently an entirely conceptual design, I actually really want someone to build something like this. I’m curious as to why it hasn’t already been invented! It sounds like a superb idea, and I could really use it, as I have a bad habit of misplacing my SD cards.

What do you think of the concept? Would you use such a thing, or have you already done away with solid state data transfer and have gone the way of the future, with cloud storage?

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Kongtechnology.com

Tourists Model As Their Very Own 3D Souveneirs

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 09:05 PM PDT

This is a rather more interesting take as souvenirs go, because it isn’t every day you can strike a pose on the street, and instead of having it immortalised in your digital camera, you get to bring it home with you as your very own 3D-printed sculpture.

For two weekends in January 2011, on Barcelona’s La Ramba street, in a project aptly named Be Your Own Souvenir, the BlablabLAB used three Kinects and a RepRap 3D-printer to render any willing participant to model on the street as their very own little statue.

Check out the video of the project here.

The way the project worked was simple. The participant stood on a small platform and asked to pose. Then 3 Kinects were used to capture the participant’s likeness in 360-degrees and render the person into a 3D mesh in a computer. The 3D data is then fed to the 3D printer and voila! Out comes a little statue of the person.

The aim of the project was to link the street user with arts and science, breaking the boundaries of the the producer and the consumer, the artist and the tourist.

This is just as much street art, as it would be if a sculptor had sat and carved something right there. I think this is a very exciting project. I’ve always though that 3D printers were a very interesting innovation. Some people may argue that 3D-printed ‘sculptures’ have lost a certain human touch, but I think that it’s actually a great way to make a sculpture. What do you think?

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Young Engineer Wins Prize for Electronic Drum Trousers

Posted: 07 Apr 2011 12:57 AM PDT

I’ve always love the idea of incorporating musical instruments into our everyday clothing. There was one where a keyboard was built into a jacket. Now, a 17 year old student of Hymers College in England has created a pair of jeans that double as a drum kit.

Aseem Mishra won the senior age group title at the Young Engineer of Great Britain Competition for his invention.

Check out the BBC news story and scroll for a video of the inventor himself demonstrating his invention.

The pair of jeans allows its wearer to tap out a tune on their thighs by hitting the sensors that are woven into the fabric of the jeans.

The idea came about to Aseem when he tried to solve the problem of having to carry his drum kit around when playing at gigs with his band. It was heavy and cumbersome to have to lug his kit to every gig, so Aseem thought to fuse his two passions for drumming and electronics by trying to incorporate a drum kit into his trousers.

He will now be going to represent the UK at a science and engineering fair in Los Angeles in May.

I think it’s great that there are these science fairs for the younger generation. I love to see what these students come up with, and it just goes to show that with an innovative mind, even young ones can invent just about anything and they have the ideas to wow the crowds.

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360-Degree 3D Fog Display

Posted: 29 Mar 2011 02:00 AM PDT

By now, 3D displays are nothing new, with 3D being rampant everywhere from the cinemas, to your home theatre system and even to handheld gaming devices. Some of these systems have improved upon the idea, with the first step in removing the ever prevalent 3D glasses.

Now, the researchers at Osaka Universiti‘s Oshiro Lab have taken this 3D technology a step further, by inventing what they call a ‘true 3D display’. This display discards both the glasses and a monitor screen, opting instead to project their image onto a fog screen.

The so-called 360-Degree Observable Fog Display uses 3 projectors, at different angles, to project a different picture each onto a cylindrical fog screen.

View the video here to see how looks in action.

The team is now working to improve on the technology to make the fog screen more stable and with the addition of more projectors, the makers say that they could potentially build a much larger 360-degree screen.

Projecting images on fog screens is not a new technology, yet I wonder why people have not thought of using multiple projectors to make a 3D image before. The image projector does look a little shaky at the moment, but hopefully the team will be able to come up with a much more stable surface to project upon. Technology like this makes me think of holograms from those sci-fi movies we all know and love.

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