Tag Archives: innovation

Little wooden hexagons rewrite the tape player | CNET

Posted on by

Digitised content is more convenient in many ways, but there’s one thing that it can’t provide: the tactile pleasure of a physical collection. The world may have made a sharp turn away from CDs, but one company believes that physical media can make a return — if, perhaps, that physical media is also beautifully designed.

Qleek, created by Ozenge Studio in France, certainly fits the bill. It consists of the basic Qleek player, a sleek, beechwood-clad player, and wooden hexagons called Tapps — which can be customised with images of your choice — that can be placed on the player to play your content.

The content, however, is not stored on the Tapps. Rather, each Tapp has an NFC chip inside that links to media of your choice, such as a playlist or a season of TV, stored on your PC; or a YouTube channel, a Spotify playlist, an Instagram feed or a podcast. It connects to your devices via Bluetooth, then streams it to your Bluetooth-compatible television, stereo or speaker.

via Little wooden hexagons rewrite the tape player | CNET.

And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 Is… Vurb | TechCrunch

Posted on by

And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 Is… Vurb | TechCrunch

Vurb is a web and mobile contextual search engine. When you type a query in Vurb, you get everything you need without having to leave the search engine. The company is rolling out search for Places, Movies, and Media. It will soon launch search for add People, Startups, and others. For example, if you search for a film, you get a trailer, showtimes, reviews, a link to watch the movie on Netflix, the IMDb score and more.

Read More: And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 Is… Vurb | TechCrunch.

See also: Vurb’s Contextual Search Engine Blows Away Those Stupid Lists Of Links | TechCrunch

 

Artists Etch Comic Strip Into a Single Strand of Hair | Mashable

Posted on by

The eye-strain implications alone are staggering. To promote the upcoming Exceptional Hardware Software Meeting (EHSM) in Hamburg, Germany, a team of DIY artists and scientists has etched the world’s smallest comic strip on a single human hair.

READ MORE: Artists Etch Comic Strip Into a Single Strand of Hair | Mashable

10 New Breakthrough Technologies 2014 | MIT Technology Review

Posted on by

Technology news is full of incremental developments, but few of them are true milestones. Here we’re citing 10 that are. These advances from the past year all solve thorny problems or create powerful new ways of using technology. They are breakthroughs that will matter for years to come.

  1. Agricultural Drones
  2. Ultraprivate Smartphones
  3. Brain Mapping
  4. Neuromorphic Chips
  5. Genome Editing
  6. Microscale 3-D Printing
  7. Mobile Collaboration
  8. Oculus Rift
  9. Agile Robots
  10. Smart Wind and Solar Power

READ MORE ON EACH STORY: 10 New Breakthrough Technologies 2014 | MIT Technology Review

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

Posted on by

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

Nod Bluetooth Ring Controls All Your Smart Devices | Mashable

Posted on by

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

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

Posted on by

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

3D Printer Creates Magazine Cover Smaller Than A Grain of Salt | The Escapist

Posted on by

McGill University’s new 3D printer could produce 2000 copies of the same object before you’d finally spot them without a microscope.

If you thought the tech industry had a strange habit of miniaturizing everything, know that the print industry is now fully capable of catching up in that department. Canadian researchers at McGill University recently put a new microscopic 3D printer through its paces by producing a 0.011 by 0.014 millimeter National Geographic Kids cover, along with a map of Canada measured in micrometers. Obviously these images are impossible to view normally and could only be seen with the aid of a screen projecter. In fact, the magazine printout is so miniscule that if you made 2000 copies, you’d have just enough to cover a single grain of salt.

Read more: 3D Printer Creates Magazine Cover Smaller Than A Grain of Salt | The Escapist.

MIT’s FingerReader Helps The Blind Read With A Swipe Of A Digit | TechCrunch

Posted on by

At MIT’s Media Labs, researchers Roy Shilkrot, Jochen Huber and others are working on the “FingerReader,” a ring-like device that straps itself around your finger and reads printed text out loud with a synthesized voice, thanks to a mounted camera and heavily modified open source software. Read more: MIT’s FingerReader Helps The Blind Read With A Swipe Of A Digit | TechCrunch.

Handsome Paper Notebooks Come With Digital Backup | Co.Design

Posted on by

1 | Handsome Paper Notebooks Come With Digital Backup | Co.Design | business + design

“Sync” is a bit of a stretch to describe what Mod truly offers, which is a pre-paid, mail-in scanning service for its notebooks. For $25, you get a blank book (designed to be exactly the same size as an iPad Mini) and a Netflix-like pre-paid envelope. When you’ve filled up the notebook, you mail it back to Mod. They scan all the pages, and within five days all the content is replicated digitally in your Mod account. (You can have the notebook returned to you, but that costs extra; by default, the paper book will be destroyed by the scanning process and recycled.)

Read more: Handsome Paper Notebooks Come With Digital Backup | Co.Design