This $13,000 vacuum-powered brewer aims to make the perfect cup of tea | Engadget


Here at Engadget HQ, most of us are used to the concept of heating a kettle or catching water from the office cooler in order to make a cup of tea. For true leaf aficionados, a more elaborate setup may be required, and that’s where the Bkon Craft Brewer comes in. Using Reverse Atmospheric Infusion (RAIN) technology, the unit’s vacuum process extracts “the optimal flavor elements” of loose-leaf tea, though it can also be used for coffee and even infused cocktails. The machine is efficient too, cranking out a cup in less than a minute and over 60 per hour — all while storing up to 200 presets. You know, once you fine-tune those recipes and ratios. To keep things tidy at the end of each cycle, the brew chamber cleans itself so you won’t have to, however Sprudge reports that the price tag will tick around $13,000 when it arrives.

Read more: This $13,000 vacuum-powered brewer aims to make the perfect cup of tea | Engadget

Secure OS Tails Emerges From Beta | PCMag.com


If you want to give super-secure, relatively anonymous computing a shot, then the operating system used by famed NSA leaker Edward Snowden might be for you. The Amnesic Incognito Live System, otherwise known as Tails, has officially jumped out of beta and into version 1.0.

Read more: Secure OS Tails Emerges From Beta | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

F Scott Fitzgerald stories published uncensored for the first time | Books | The Guardian


Sexual innuendo, drug references and antisemitic slurs removed by newspaper editors restored in new edition of Taps at Reveille.

Read more: F Scott Fitzgerald stories published uncensored for the first time | Books | The Guardian.

Why the Smart Reading Device of the Future May Be … Paper | WIRED


Paper books were supposed to be dead by now. For years, information theorists, marketers, and early adopters have told us their demise was imminent. Ikea even redesigned a bookshelf to hold something other than books. Yet in a world of screen ubiquity, many people still prefer to do their serious reading on paper.

Count me among them. When I need to read deeply—when I want to lose myself in a story or an intellectual journey, when focus and comprehension are paramount—I still turn to paper. Something just feels fundamentally richer about reading on it. And researchers are starting to think there’s something to this feeling.

READ MORE: Why the Smart Reading Device of the Future May Be … Paper | Science | WIRED.

jim golden animates vintage devices for ‘relics of technology’ | designboom


portland-based photographer jim golden delivers a hearty dose of nostalgia in his series ‘relics of technology’, comprising animated gifs and still life images. geometrically placed in a palette of vintage tones, the documented objects are society’s ‘technological’ media devices from the past, brought to life in a collection of moving images

See all the images: jim golden animates vintage devices for relics of technology | designboom

Nod Bluetooth Ring Controls All Your Smart Devices | Mashable


As our primary computing environment gradually shifts from the desktop to mobile, so too will our interface needs. To that end, a group engineers in Mountain View, Calif. believe that they have the solution for the next phase of interfaces, and it comes in the form of a ring.

The Nod ring is a Bluetooth-enabled gesture controller that connects to your smartphone to accomplish a number of input and controller tasks all by using natural motions with your finger.

In addition extending the capabilities of your smartphone, the ring can also be connected to other smart devices, such as a smart television and other Internet-connected devices like the Nest. If a device doesn’t have Bluetooth capability, you can connect the ring to your smartphone, which will then connect to the device via Wi-Fi. Read more: Nod Bluetooth Ring Controls All Your Smart Devices | Mashable

Take a Tour of the New British Library Newspaper Reading Room | LJ INFOdocket


Read the article: Take a Tour of the New British Library Newspaper Reading Room | LJ INFOdocket

Find Your Passion With These 8 Thought-Provoking Questions | Co.Design


Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question, collected the provocative questions top designers, tech innovators, and entrepreneurs ask themselves to spark creativity. Read more: Find Your Passion With These 8 Thought-Provoking Questions | Co.Design

See also: Scared Of Failing? Ask Yourself These 6 Fear-Killing Questions | Co.Design

77,000 Images of Tapestries and Italian Monuments Join the Open Content Program | The Getty Iris


The Getty Research Institute has just added more than 77,000 high-resolution images to the Open Content Program from two of its most often-used collections.

The largest part of the new open content release—more than 72,000 photographs—comes from the collection Foto Arte Minore: Max Hutzel photographs of art and architecture in Italy. Foto Arte Minore represents the life’s work of photographer and scholar Max Hutzel (1911–1988), who photographed the art and architecture of Italy for 30 years. In recent years, the interdisciplinary use of these photographs has exposed their historiographic significance and their unrealized research potential.

Read more: 77,000 Images of Tapestries and Italian Monuments Join the Open Content Program | The Getty Iris.

This is How the Vatican Will Digitize Millions of its Documents | Mashable


Digitizing the Vatican’s 40 million pages of library archives will take 50 experts, five scanners and many, many years before the process comes to a close.

The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 and has around 82,000 manuscripts, some of which date back about 1,800 years. It will work in tandem with NTT Data, a Japanese IT firm, to convert the first batch of 3,000 manuscripts. It is expected to take four years to digitize the initial round, though some of those documents will be online toward the end of 2014.

via This is How the Vatican Will Digitize Millions of its Documents | Mashable