Transparent iron

Transparent Iron for better ironing

The new aesthetically designed iron by Dongseok, Lee and Jihyung, Jung shall ensure that there are minimum creases when you iron. This uniquely transparent iron model named as B-IRON 725, allows the user to keep an eye on the clothes as one uses the same. Its soleplate is made with tempered glass, whose heat resistance is comparatively better than ordinary glass which means that it can easily cope itself to the changing temperatures. The overall design has been added with the geometrical criss-cross pattern across the iron with the Nichrome made electro-thermal wire. If one needs to have better ironing, just twist the handle for better results. Truly a mind blowing concept!

Print @ 60 pages per minute!

Silverbrook Research''s prototype Memjet inkjet printer outputs 60 pages per minute:

Memjet printers will print at a blisteringly fast 60 ppm for documents and 30 ppm for photos and will start at about $200. They believe within five years (by 2013)they will have the capability to do color office documents at 120-150 ppm and full-page photos at 60-75ppm.

The 3D desktop printer takes up 25 x 20 x 20-inch space, and weighs about 90-pounds, while the maximum size of printed objects is 5 x 5 x 5-inches, and Desktop Factory says per-cubic-inch printing costs will hover somewhere around $1. The Desktop Factory 3D printer builds robust, composite plastic parts that can be sanded and painted when desired. Their goal by 2011 is to have their 3D printer below $1000.

While the dominant inkjet manufacturers — Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark — generally develop their own technology, Memjet will license its breakthrough design to a variety of partners.

Watch the amazing vieo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUTZRrQfy-E
Read the article: http://blog.databazaar.com/2007/03/memjet_inkjet_p.html

Recycling bins: how effective are these variations?

Recycling Bins From Around the World

Check out this slideshow: http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/03/recycling-bins-from-around-the-world.php?page=1

With recycling gaining momentum across the globe, the slideshow brings to us the efforts in 19 different places from Portugal, to Japan to Dubai.

How effective are each of these really? Find out for yourself..

Becoming invisible like Harry Potter? now possible!

Invisibility cloak now a reality!

Scientists at UC Berkeley have taken a major step toward making Harry Potter's disguise of choice a reality. They've engineered two new materials — one using a fishnet of metal layers, the other using tiny silver wires — that neither absorb nor reflect light, causing it instead to bend backward. The principle at work is refraction, which is what makes a straw appear bent in a glass of water.

Optical camouflage doesn't work by way of magic. It works by taking advantage of something called augmented-reality technology. Most augmented-reality systems require that users look through a special viewing apparatus to see a real-world scene enhanced with synthesized graphics. They also require a powerful computer. Optical camouflage requires these things, as well, but it also requires several other components. Here's everything needed to make a person appear invisible:

* A garment made from highly reflective material
* A video camera
* A computer
* A projector
* A special, half-silvered mirror called a combiner



To understand how it works click: http://science.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak1.htm

Sloka Telecom: Technology doesn't always have to be fantastic, it can be very basic

Meet the winner of the Nasscom Innovation Award 2008: Sloka Telecom

Founded in 2004, the Bangalore-based Sloka Telecom develops one of the most compact and cost-effective base stations for the telecom sector. After over 14 years of work experience, Sujai set out to solve real problems in India's telecom space with advanced, cost-effective solutions for broadband wireless, voice, and video applications, for rural and urban markets. There was an opportunity in the base station market where the future was for smaller and cheaper base stations that can save substantial savings to operators so that they can carpet blanket the network with many base stations to give excellent coverage and connectivity.

What are the features of the award winning compact base stations for WiMAX and 3G?
Our base stations are the smallest and also the cheapest. They are all-outdoor base stations and can be installed on towers, poles, rooftops, traffic posts, etc. They do not need expensive AC housing and can cool itself in different weather conditions. Our base station solutions help the operator decrease his capital expenditure by more than 50 per cent.

What was the idea behind this innovation?
The traditional designs for base station are suited for Macro base stations which are quite expensive almost 5 to 10 times more than Sloka's compact base stations. In order to make base stations smaller, their power consumption lower, and to make them cheaper, Sloka came up with a revolutionary and patent-pending architecture called SDBSA. This architecture allows Sloka to use readily available hardware while emphasizing on efficient software algorithms to make them smaller and compact.

Read the full story: http://specials.rediff.com/money/2009/mar/18slide1-innovation-woes-india-neglects-product-firms.htm

Go Green with Concert tickets

The O2 ticketing system is a wonderful little system for those with a green thumb (or for those who wish they had one) to remind themselves of all the little things nature does for us terrible human concertgoers. While a normal ticket to an event only stands to get lost, this one reminds the user of their upcoming joy every day! This living ticketing system saves the environment, one treehuggin’ concertgoer at a time!

Unique ticketing isn’t a field that’s been explored to a real giant degree, mostly because tickets are generally made in large quantities and past the point of purchase. But what if the ticket were enticing enough to buy on its own? Neat.
As the designer, Gil Cocker puts it: “This is a two part ticketing system - a couple of weeks before the festival, privileged ticket buyers receive a bag in the post with all the ingredients to grow grass, which in turn will replace the O2 exerted at the big event. Requiring attention on a daily basis, it helps to remind the individual that the big day is growing closer every day.”

Check this out: http://www.sansgil.com/Downloads/o2ticketgrowinfo.pdf

The Shadowless Skyscraper

Sustainable buildings bring great advantages especially to those who want to save from energy, gas, lessen carbon emission and more earth saving concerns. More and more people are now aiming for self-sustainable infrastructures just like the architects Herzog and de Meuron who have presented their design for a triangular building in the Porte de Versailles area of Paris, France. The purpose of the triangular design is to prevent structure from casting shadows on adjacent buildings and will eventually allow generating an optimum solar and winding power. This building is not simply just a modern building, but it will help neighbouring structures to have enough space for air and light as the building continues to get higher.

For the city of Paris, the skyscraper question is a question of community quality, but also of cultural identity. The city has long had a skyscraper ban, a building limit of 37 meters, and an officially sanctioned aim of retaining an historic low-rise or "human-scale" built environment. This was, in part, to privilege historic structures, like the Left Bank's Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame cathedral on Ile de la Cité, to ensure the resonance of these structures is not overshadowed in figurative terms by block-like modern behemoths. Aside from its central design feature, that of casting no shadow, or more precisely, of preserving the daylight-rights of the neighbors, the Paris Triangle will also be optimized for solar-voltaic and wind-power harvesting, making it a potential watershed moment in French green building design. If implemented with not merely current, but 2012-current —the date the building is slated to open for business— state of the art renewable energy technologies, the building could be self-powering and could help to generate clean energy for the Paris energy market, a further reinvention of the role of skyscrapers in a city wary of their social side-effects.

Lots more info about the project on: http://www.igreenspot.com/le-projet-triangle-sustainable-triangular-building-by-herzog-and-de-meuron/

New weed to make detection of land mines easy

Reality:
Earlier mines can be detected only by human or canine probing.
Some 110 million land mines are hidden in 45 countries. Many of them have been buried for years. It will cost $33 billion to remove them and take 1,100 years under present demining rates, according to the United Nations. It estimates that governments spend $200 million to $300 million on the removal and detection of 10,000 mines each year. In addition, the Red Cross estimates that 26,000 people are killed or injured each year by leftover mines. Large areas, as much as 40 percent of all land in Cambodia and 90 percent in Angola, go unused because of land mines.
Currently, explosives experts remove mines by putting a stick into the ground to locate them. They then excavate and detonate them. They also use dogs and metal detectors, but these approaches can be dangerous: For every 5,000 mines removed, one explosive expert is killed and two others are seriously injured, according to the Vietnam Veterans Foundation of America.

Potential Solution: A weed that turns red when it grows near land mines could help clear dangerous fields in war-torn countries such as Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The genetically modified Thales cress is sensitive to nitrogen dioxide, a by-product of mines, and changes from green to red when the gas is present in soil. Researchers hope the modified Thales cress will offer an easier and safer method of detection. Its seeds can be sprayed over fields from planes or via spray guns at a cost significantly less than conventional methods.
Three to six weeks after the plant is sowed over an area, its leaves turn red, its normal autumn color, to signal the approximate location of mines.

Some concerns:
• The weed is shallow-rooted, so it would not be able to detect deeply planted mines. But most mines are found closer to the surface, says Geir Bjoersvik of the mine action unit at Norwegian Peoples Aid in Oslo.
• Some mine casings are sealed to prevent the escape of nitrogen dioxide, which means not all explosives could be detected by the plant.
Read the full article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1565508,00.html

Air-Conditioning lessons from Termite Mounds

What termites can teach us about architecture

The termites keep a constant temperature of 30 ° C inside their mound while the outside temperature fluctuates between 2 ° C and 40 ° C, the difference between day and night. The termites achieve this remarkable feat by constantly opening and closing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout the mound over the course of the day. With a system of carefully adjusted convection currents, air is sucked in at the lower part of the mound, down into enclosures with muddy walls, and up through a channel to the peak of the termite mound. The industrious termites constantly dig new vents and plug up old ones in order to regulate the temperature.


In Harare, Zimbabwe, a business complex was built, Easgate, with large windows, which in principle is not very appropriate in that warm climate. But the architect Mick Pearce designed a passive system of ventilation and air-conditioning channels along the lines of termite mounds, resulting in a saving of 90% of energy. The construction, which was completed in 1996, consists of two towers which are separated by a ventilated patio. The air in the patio circulates inside the towers and provides cooling in the offices. There is no air conditioning but fans and virtually no heating.

Vertical gardens for farming Lettuce in the sky

The Problem
By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA).

A Potential Solution: Farm Vertically: Columbia professor Dr. Dickson Despommier is developing models for "vertical farms," swank-looking skyscrapers that produce agricultural products for urban locavores.
The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York.
When Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a "food farm" addition to the New York City skyline. "Obviously we don't have vast amounts of vacant land," he said in a phone interview. "But the sky is the limit in Manhattan." Stringer's office is "sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,"

http://www.verticalfarm.com/

6th SENSE in your fingertips!

See it to believe it: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/481

Sixth Sense is a mini-projector coupled with a camera and a cellphone—which acts as the computer and your connection to the Cloud, all the information stored on the web. Sixth Sense can also obey hand gestures, like in the infamous Minority Report.
The camera recognizes objects around you instantly, with the micro-projector overlaying the information on any surface, including the object itself or your hand. Then, you can access or manipulate the information using your fingers. Need to make a call? Extend your hand on front of the projector and numbers will appear for you to click. Need to know the time? Draw a circle on your wrist and a watch will appear. Want to take a photo? Just make a square with your fingers, highlighting what you want to frame, and the system will make the photo—which you can later organize with the others using your own hands over the air.
But those are just novelty applications. The true power of Sixth Sense lies on its potential to connect the real world with the Internet, and overlaying the information on the world itself. Imagine you are at the supermarket, thinking about what brand of soap is better. Or maybe what wine you should get for tonight's dinner. Just look at objects, hold them on your hands, and Sixth Sense will show you if it's good or bad, or if it fits your preferences or not.
Now take this to every aspect of your everyday life. You can be in a taxi going to the airport, and just by taking out your boarding pass, Sixth Sense will grab real time information about your flight and display it over the ticket. You won't need to do any action. Just hold it in front of your and it will work.
The key here is that Sixth Sense recognizes the objects around you, displaying information automatically and letting you access it in any way you want, in the simplest way possible.

Read full article: http://i.gizmodo.com/5167790/sixth-sense-technology-may-change-how-we-look-at-the-world-forever

AIR WASH: Washing machine which uses no water or detergents!

To all the green-minded consumers, here comes a washing machine from Electrolux which uses only air and no water to wash all kinds of stained fabrics. It consists of an air inlet, stainless steel cladding, electrostatic ionizing filter, intelligent air jets, clothing stand suction, automated swing- outdoor, touch sensitive interface, translucent polymer panel, HEPA filter and an air outlet.

The machine uses negative ions, compressed air and deodorants to clean clothes; the form was inspired by the waterfall, which just so happens to be nature's own negative ion factory. The air jet washing technology is inspired by the beating action of clothes against river rocks in days gone by. Negative ions aids this air jet action by clumping dust, inactivating bacteria and neutralising odours.
Air wash helps clothes last longer even with a frequent wash. An innovation from two students from Singapore named Gabriel Tan and Wendy Chau won it the Electrolux Design Award in the year 2005. A hunch back shaped eco-friendly machine, maintains the colours and cleans in a matter of minutes.
Air wash also stands to help save lots on energy costs and water consumption, and has lot of potential for places without ready access to clean water.


Read full article: http://living.oneindia.in/men/gadgets-gizmos/2008/air-wash-eco-friendly-washing-machine.html

NO more traffic lights

Traffic lights? Naaa! Projected Pedestrians Are Traffic Stoppers

South-Korean product designer Hanyoung Lee has come up with a safety device that could make traffic lights obsolete, or at least improve their effectiveness. His Virtual Wall is designed for busy city streets. Instead of showing a red light when it's time for pedestrians to cross the street, Lee's Wall projects a curtain-like, two-dimensional image of giant people crossing the street. The real pedestrians walk behind their virtual counterparts. Lee's design, works thanks to a stack of laser projectors installed in poles on opposites sides of the street

Besides halting traffic at intersections, the projected images could be used to direct crowds at large events or form temporary virtual fences to warn motorists that road construction crews are working nearby. And how about smart deer crossing walls, that can both detect and project oncoming deer?

Switch on the pumpset with your mobile

NANO GANESH

The device called as 'Nano Ganesh' helps a farmer to switch on/off the pump-set through a call made by a mobile or a land line phone or even a PCO phone from anywhere in the world.
It will be priced between Rs.560 and Rs.1700 was commercially launched on 23rd September 08 in Pune.

Santosh Hiralal Ostwal, established a research and development center to develop the product in Pune in 1996. He developed a mobile modem, which controls the starter of the pump set. The modem along with a mobile phone, which interfaces a 440 volt system, is attached to the starter panel of the pump-set. On the deployment of the system, a pre-set code is given to the farmer to switch on/off the pump-set. In order to switch on the set a farmer has to call up the number of the mobile phone attached in the starter panel. One can confirm the availability of the power in the pump-set by a long beep sound, which will be signalled from the receiving end during the call Followed by the confirmation of availability of the power, the caller has to dial a preset code provided for the user to switch on the pump set. Once the code is dialled the user has to confirm his function by a feedback tone and then cut the call. For switching off the pump-set, the same process has to be repeated and a different preset code is entered to switch off the pump-set.

To make the phones easily accessible to the farmer community, Santosh deployed basic phones like Nokia 1100. To ease the system of deployment, the company provides the buyer with a CD, an instruction manual and a wiring diagram along with the product explaining in a step by step way to fit and use 'Nano Ganesh'. The modem is also available with a theft proof inbuilt device called 'Nano Ganesh Hanuman', whereby its installation will also ensure alert in case of theft attempt near the pump area related to pump-set cable, panel or pump itself.


See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeZ4jzV8VVY

A tiny device that delivers drugs exactly where they're needed

Philips iPill
It's like a regular pill, but with a microprocessor
Electronic pills have been used for diagnostic applications such as imaging, but the iPill from Philips Research, designed to treat gastrointestinal disorders, goes a step further, dispensing medication at a location and rate programmed by a physician. The disposable capsule, which is about the same size as an ordinary pill, contains a tiny computer, a wireless transmitter, and a series of sensors; it passes naturally through the digestive system after being swallowed with food or water.
With a microprocessor, power supply, medicine reservoir and pump, and a radio so that it can remain in contact with external medical equipment, it should definitely do its job well.

To read more : http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21817/?a=f
Also read: http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/backgrounders/081111-ipill.html

Your 2 D pics can now be your 3 D image

What is Photosynth?
Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.
This remarkable software, which can be downloaded for free, analyzes dozens (or hundreds) of photos taken of a location or subject—the Eiffel Tower, say, or a room in a museum. It looks for overlapping points in the images, then arranges the snapshots into a browsable 3D model. The result is a fresh way to organize and share photography—opening up new possibilities for a 180-year-old art form.

How does it work?
Photosynth is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.
Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.

See what Photosynth is about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16frKJLVi0
Check the website: http://photosynth.net/Default.aspx
Read its history: http://livelabs.com/photosynth/history/