Army vision test: can you see this invisible tank?

Those British Ministry of Defence chaps and QinetiQ are playing with James Bond technology again: they've confirmed that in recent trials they've made an entire tank disappear... oh so much more impressive than a tiny Aston Martin, hey 007?! More invisibility after the jump...

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The system uses a specialist reflective coating on the tank, and a set of cameras and projectors to make the tank's skin match the view behind the vehicle and allowing it to be overlooked by the casual eye.  So less invisible, and more like a moving camouflage... but still nifty!

Apparently it could be in real battlefield technology in 5 years, according to invisibility expert Professor Sir John Pendry, and dipping further into science-fiction-become-fact they're also working on a jacket for troops that uses the same idea. Predator, anyone?

As Bond himself found out though, your tire marks and noise can still give you away ... and a 62-tonne Challenger 2 makes quite an impact as it rolls across the countryside! Then there's infra-red and radar to think about... where's Q when you need him?

(allheadlinenews.com, image: mine!)

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: I was just a bit pleased to have popped this online before both Engadget and Giz! Hehe... my old employers certainly have some good toys.

Binary clocks ... now for your wall

The digital revolution (?!) that's taking over wristwatches at the moment, is now available to hang on your wall or stand on your desk... Befuddle your guests! Amaze your co-workers!

Available for £60 from Firebox.com

UPDATE: thinking about it, if I owned one it might be exactly the right sort of test for my new vision. If all goes well I'm about to pop my eyes under a UV laser in a few hours... more updates later!

(RedFerret)

Glowing geeky goodness

You guys in the home of trick-or-treating wake up soon, so you'll have ages to get carving pumpkins before night falls... Get your geeky imagination going and see if you can beat this Death-Star wonder. Along with Gollum and Yoda designs, you can find inspiration at this underWired blog. Can you do better than this?

More interestingly, will dangerous, non-traditional lanterns like these little chaps get the authorities rushing madly into action all across Boston tonight?

Where I'm writing, Halloween is a little more sedate and a lot less squash-related... but if I spot some good ones, I'll post them here.

(Wired)

UPDATE: A squash-free evening! (Well, apart from the cutout paper one in a bar). 

Add a little DAB to your iPod

Not satisfied with the suite of radio add-ons for the iPod, Roberts Radio (whose wesbite impresses you right at the top with a couple of Royal crests) have just released the Robi, a teeny little DAB radio to give you some digital radio lovin'.

The Robi has both DAB and FM, comes with earphones, its small screen shows station names (very Britishly tuned to the Beeb in the image) ... and it also acts as a remote for your iPod and gets its power from there too, meaning you need no extra batteries. 

Weighing in at only 30g, it will cost you around £50 and plays nicely with iPods and Nanos.

(Roberts Radio, via pocket-lint)

$200 laptop sells at last!

Briefly: Good news for the (ahem!) $200 OLPC at last! Not a fall in its price, but a real, proper, genuine sale! Uruguay has bought 100,000 of them for schoolchildren. Hooray! At last some kids might benefit from what is, at heart, a pretty nice idea.

The $20,000,000 it'll bring in might help lower production costs too...

(BBC News)

Solar Cell Scrap

IBM has revealed a new technique that can turn some of the 3 million silicon chip wafers that are scrapped each year into useful solar cells. Either it's an unusually 'green' move for an industry known for its nasty chemicals, or a way of garnering extra cash from rubbish... but since all it involves is a little water and elbow-grease, it seems like a great idea. More illumination after the jump...

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By scrubbing away the failed etched circuits from damaged wafers, IBM's technique is not trying to particularly prepare the surface to become nice eco-friendly watt-generators... instead it's to erase any design IP that may have been present. What a litigious world, eh?

With a shortfall in supply of solar cells as demand rapidly grows, the water-based polishing technique (which is a greener alternative than yet more chemical etching) can easily be used to make clean sheets which can be turned into more cells to help fill the gap in supply. Considering that 3 million wafers could be turned into cells that generate 13 megawatts of power, that's a result that should please everyone.

Why's there a shortfall? It might have something to do with a huge demand in Germany in 2004 due to Government green subsidies which sapped global supplies ... or could it be to do with these huge ones, currenly being wiggled around in orbit as you read .... ?

(via CNET News, images from IBM and NASA)

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: Got this one online before a couple of the big players... it's a sciencey-gadgety article which plays into my expertise and what I'm interested in. 

A stitch in time

Is this what your clock's looked like for two days? Is your technology more confused than you are? When your Blackberry thinks it's an hour different to your watch, and your colleagues are just as confused as you when you turn up at the office an hour late, you realise that the daylight-savings time switch has a big impact nowadays. More after the jump...

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Particularly when the US Government decides to mess around with the dates: so when Europe switched an hour back this weekend, Summer hangs on with you for another week. It's been a problem for many devices which are smart enough to schedule their own time-switching and yet didn't have the date set correctly this year. RIM have even been posting alerts on their website about the issue and how it affects Blackberrys... and undoubtedly there'll have been many sleepyheads/well-rested people still confused about what time they arrived in the office yesterday. The economic impact of lost work time, or even Y2K-like miscalculations in people's financial software will probably remain discretely masked... but arguably do exist.

What's more, in Baltimore some of the parking meters revealed their truly evil design by getting the hour change totally wrong and thus dolling out parking tickets ... though the city authorities are kindly letting the unfortunate recipients off.

As an extra nicety, the same sort of confusion might happen again next week when you guys realise it is actually Winter now and hop those hour hands back. Sweet!

(p.s. for those of you whose clocks still are confused, and got your arrival times wrong today too, then good grief! It was two days ago!)

(via CNET News, image:mine)

Star-Trekkin' across the ... green

If Bones had ever prescribed a round of golf to de-stress Kirk, perhaps this is just the thing he'd have taken with him... check out the geeky-if-practical joy that is the new USS Enterprise putter from Golfsmith. Inspired by the similarity of their new counterbalanced design to the iconic Enterprise, the designers went the whole hog and got it officially licensed... And for the uber-fans? There's a limited numbered edition, of just 1,701... More...

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With two offset counterbalances looking pretty warp-engine-like, there's no guarantees that you won't damage the space/time continuum when you play with one of these... but the specs sound pretty good: both standard and limited "NCC 1701" versions come with a true temper double-bend steel shaft and a magnetised mallet cover. The special edition has the serial number engraved on the putting face and a few extra "limited edition" gold flashes.

And you know that when you're out on the green with this, you're going to attract attention... Just limit the "Ach I cannae give her any more Captain, she'll blow" jokes, eh?

Around $130 from the Star Trek store.

(Official Star Trek store, via Geekalerts)

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: rather pleased to have gotten this online before Giz did!

O Leopardo!

Hooray! Leopard leaps over the pond! I'd just written an article bad-mouthing Apple for its somewhat spotty global presence (no official shop here in Portugal, no online-store and they won't post here from the UK even if I use my UK cards to buy stuff!) since it seemed that I wouldn't be able to get my sticky mitts on a copy of Leopard for a while. Learn why after the jump...

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The semi-official but tiny "Apple Centre" in Lisbon had even emailed to say it would be a few weeks ... but after just checking their web page, and a quick phone call... it seems they have copies in stock! I can join the real-time Leopard excitement! Cool!

Anyone else out there in one of Apple's less favourite countries managed to snag a copy yet? Let me know how it goes!

UPDATE:

Here 'tis, all nicely labelled in Portuguese. €120 to see yourself reflected in those 4 shiny galactic arms on the front (I know... I know... sorry!). I'll write a little something later about how smoothly this next bit goes.

UPDATE 2: Fairly smoothly, actually. Bar one firmware-update problem, now fixed, it's all growling away. Lovely! 

(Maczone in Portugal)

Charge your stuff without spaghetti

Joining the line of gadgets that try to hide your mass of tangled wires, the Multibook also incorporates a digital clock. Whether you think it's slightly cheesy, or has that designer elegance that'll just suit your room, you can't deny it's a pretty good take on solving a problem that all us gadget-lovers face. More ...

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Inside it hides power sockets, with plenty of room for your power adaptors and their wires. With its LED-lit sides, a space for a personalised label on the top (?!) and that clock-calendar function, it's certainly better looking than the home-brew Ikea version I tried to put together the other day.

I guess the only drawback would be the 15 minutes it would take to untangle stuff inside when you needed to take your phone charger away on a trip :-)

Available for about €150 ($220).

(product page)

Will your mobile phone be a third eye?

... no no, not like Davros, evil Dalek scientist himself: Researchers at Accenture Technology Labs in France have recently unveiled a project called "Pocket Supercomputer" that processes video from a 3G mobile phone and gives you an instant data feed about what it sees. More after the jump...

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Effectively being an information-rich heads-up-display for your life, it could look at a plate of foreign food, work out what ingredients there may be and alert you if you're allergic to any... find a review of a book you see in a bookstore, or tell you where you can see the movie on a poster you've walked by.  

As the video shows, the idea is to just make a call from an ordinary 3G phone and a remote computer does all the clever object recognition bits (using a 'scale-invariant feature transform algorithm' to hunt through a - presumably enormous - database).

The potential uses of this technology are mind-boggling... if combined with, say, the Google Streetview database, you could just hold up your phone and learn where you are, how good the restaurant nearby is and what the weather prediction for the town is for the rest of the day. It could be invaluable for partially-sighted people, tourists in a new location ... and, if hooked up to a robot, those hell-bent on global domination... 

Imagination combines it with a 3G iPhone 2.0 with its internet capability, essentially making something that'd make the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy look a bit naff (to mix sci-fi references for a moment).

It sounds amazing, and looks like it's technically feasible right now, or at least in the very near future. Getting the consumer used to having such a data-rich life may be tricky ... but at least it looks like a good use for the video calling functions of 3G phones which so many users tend to ignore.

(Accenture lab, via New Scientist)

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: I liked this article... it's both gadgety and science, and though it's pretty amazing stuff it seems to have generally slipped under the radar online.

Samson mike does USB

While Thanko's designers sit there dreaming up how to wire surprising things to your computer's USB socket, audio tech company Samson have just released the G-Track ... the world's first condenser mike that does everything via USB. More...

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Allright - it doesn't make toast or chill your drink!

This professional-grade piece of kit is aimed squarely at those of you who like to record your own jamming sessions on the cheap, since it also has line-in inputs for instruments in the mike body, and comes with some serious-looking editing software.

Not only that, but it gets all its power from the USB line, and has mixer controls and a headphone monitor output right there on the base.  So with your band and instruments crowded round a single microphone and laptop, it acts as an entire recording studio front-end that measures only around 6" by 3". It sports some decent specs too, with a frequency response from 20Hz up to 16kHz, audio and USB cables bundled in the box and one of those neat zigzag spring shockmounts (optional, unfortunately).

Available for around $260.

(product page)

Interactive Zombie art

On wednesday this week hoards of short costume-wearing zombies will be lurching toward doorsteps in search of sugary rewards - which is interactive performance of sorts ... But in Brooklyn, the art installation "txt of the living dead" will let you put your own words into the mouths of giant projected zombies from a classic horror movie. The cute bit? It's all uncensored.

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In a nice blend of technology, art and (non?)human interaction, artist Paul Notzold's work puts text messages from the public into speech bubbles digitally mashed onto stills from 'Night of the Living Dead' which he projects onto screens and buildings. "It's all uncensored, and that's the beauty of it" he says... Marriage proposals from a zombie, writ large on a wall for all to see? Reminders to shop for milk? Could be funny... my imagination is beginning to explore the possibilities. 

Notzold's taken his portable "SMS-enabled interactive street performance" round the world, distributing the cellphone number in flyers his helpers hand out, inspiring the public to take part in art instead of just watching it, with sometimes hilarious results. Someone was inspired to try to nick his laptop in France, but that's clearly the interactive expression of a critic. 

Want to do some zombie high-tech graffiti? Turn up at the corner of Smith and Pacific at 7:30pm with your phone and imagination.

(Notzold's site, via Wired)

 

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: This article was really fun to find and write - the crossover between science/technology and art is very 'me'. It's why I liked the Giz article about the Philips LCD-jewellery thingys.

Instant Jailbreak out for iPhone and iPod touch

Hot on the heals of Woz's thumbs up to such things, the iPhone hacking crew has released an instant Jailbreak that works on the iPod touch too... and will open your device to full disk access and 3rd party Wozniak-approved application goodness. The instructions couldn't be simpler...

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You just have to download it, click "install" and wait for the device to restart. It even loads up Installer.app ready for you. Takes just seconds, apparently ... Nifty! 

(TUAW)

Nissan's Pivo 2... the Smart car (golf cart?) of the future

The 40th Tokyo Motor Show is getting up to speed as you read, and among its various events, Nissan is planning on a formal unveilling of its update to the 2005 Pivo concept electric car. The Pivo 2 should excite people who don't like parallel parking and those who like eco-friendly transport. It's cuteness factor has also already made someone go "ahhh! so sweet!" as they peer at my screen while I write.

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Nissan has added lots to its thinking on this concept over the last couple of years, and the new design has wheel-pods on each corner that rotate and allow the buggy-like car a huge amount of manoeuvrability. All that wheel twizzling round in this "METAMO" drive-by-wire system can save you a lot of effort in parking. 

It's 'front-loading' door is apparently designed to feel welcoming and the concept incorporates "intelligent life design" such as lamps that are meant to convey the "expression as if being asleep, waking up or feeling good". In a move that's cleverly aimed at the Star Wars fan market-share, the dash even includes an R2D2-like "endearing Robotic Agent". This chap sits there and "infers the driver's condition" then supplies you with necessary driving information and even "speaks to you to cheer you up or to soothe you accordingly." Hmmmmm.

It looks weird and lovable and strangely desirable and pretty unlikely, but if you look at the history of the Smart car as it went through its conceptual development in a very public way at Motor Shows, even unlikely designs can end up on the road for real. 

So one day, the Pivo 2 may turn into something you can actually own... I'd be tempted, if only by the prospect of using its spaceship-style controls to zip around town while ordering my dashboard R2"P"2 to lock down that pesky stabiliser. 

(Nissan, Tokyo Motor Show, via Yahoo news)

Terabyte thumbdrives in 2009?

Making SanDisk's lawsuit about USB drives seem like so much fuss and bother about old technology, it seems that researchers at Arizona State University have devised a new nanotechnology memory that should allow an almost thousand-fold leap in storage capacities. Feel like carrying around a 1TB iPod that carries 240 thousand songs (that'll be nearly 2 years worth of music!) in your pocket?

More>...

What's more, the new technology is a tenth of the cost of and 1000 times as energy efficient as current flash memory, on a bit-for-bit basis, making the prospect of gargantuan solid-state drives and iPod sizes even more interesting.

The 'Programmable Metallization Cell' technique, developed at Arizona State's Center for Applied Nanoionics, uses micro electric field manipulation to move around copper ions into bit-storing configurations of nano-wires. It even uses techniques and materials already commonly used in the chip-making industry, which may decrease the time it takes to get into eager consumer hands. Director of the Center, Michael Kozicki, notes that the first product using the new chip technology could be out in only 18 months.

If this stuff all works out, the potential impact on the electronics world, and the consumer, is mind boggling. As Kozicki points out, "all the current limitations" of data storage may evaporate: "You could record video of every event in your life and store it"... which either lends itself to a horrifying explosion of reality TV or more Orwellian thinking by the powers-that-be. 

Still, the fact that you could keep every email you get or send, and every photo you take, ever, certainly has its benefits.

The low power means it's also ideally suited to mobile applications, so that hypothetical quarter-mega-song iPod may actually be possible... making us wonder whether anyone has that much music in their collection? Bizarre.

Keep your eyes open for this technology, reported just recently in the IEEE's Transactions on Electron Devices.

(via Wired)

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: Got this online before Engadget and Giz did, by quite a margin. Seems like exciting technology - if a little too good to be true.

 

Wanna Pleo!

Those of you desperate to get your hands on the upcoming robot-pet Pleo will be cooing at this new video, just up on YouTube. In this first "professionally shot" webclip you can see a bunch of them winning over the hearts of the public in Idaho. Great marketing ploy? Certainly! ... I want one ... I want one ...

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As Pleo's inventor (and co-founder of manufacturer Ugobe) says in the video, owning a real baby Dinosaur is impossible .. but you can have a Pleo instead and "we don't want you to think of Pleo as a robot".

Thank goodness... they're clearly adorable little things and those guys in the video end up reduced to babytalk... but Ugobe have definitely got it right by leaving out the "will grow to 200ft in length, weighs 50 tons" or even the "has jaws strong enough to tear flesh from bones" features that the genuine dinosaur designs used to have :-)

(PleoWorld via RobotsRule)

Halloween Lego(ish) ... not for sensitive souls

Do you like to act-out weird corporate scenarios with your desk toys? Feel inspired by the zombie-like behaviour of your boss? These not-quite-Lego people might just be the ticket for an amusing Halloween at work for you then!

While not strictly Lego, and not right up there in the creepiness stakes with Lego Stephen Hawking these new Corporate Zombies from iwantoneofthose.com certainly made us chuckle, and wonder ever-so-slightly about the sanity of their designers.

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: Cheesy, cheesy... I know! Just so bizarre that they were appealing.

Lights get AI too ...

Is there no end to the rise of Machine Intelligence? Will our desk lamps one day spring athletically into the air and unleash Indiana-Jones style havoc with their power cords? Designer Assa Assuach has started down this dangerous road by giving his ceiling light design a rudimentary intelligence...

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All in the name of more realistic 'mood lighting' of course... Assuach's design uses its "five senses" to monitor what's going on in the room in terms of brightness and movement, and changes its brightness and shape by flexing its organic-looking nylon skeleton in real time... Somewhat creepily it can even learn from studying your habits and the room you have it in, giving "a unique character to each light".

Assa's website betrays the real 'rise of the robots' purpose though... "This smart structure might behave in unpredictable ways if moved to an unfamiliar space". Warning noted.

It will cost you £26,800 to buy this pre-Terminator bit of tech to jazz up your home.

[Assa Ashuach studio via New Scientist(Warning: subscription reqd.)]

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: This is my fave find, I think. Really enjoyed writing this.

Which comes first... Butterfly or Cocoon?

Or should that be the "Samsung concept phone" or the Cocoon? Seems that Syntes Studio, who are behind the design of O2's shiny new 'design' phone, have had the idea growing for a while. The concept phone shown looking all butch and proto-Cocoonish here was dreamed up ages ago in 2004... and the second phone concept that went along with it should excite Toshiba Matsushita and their swanky new round LCD....

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The phone-cum-alarm-clock concept that sat on a charging cradle was drawn up when Syntes joined Samsung's Global Design Membership, and it was aimed at "a chic urban fashion interested woman working and clubbing in a metropolitan area". Soften its curves up a lot, swap its colours around a bit and you've got something that looks remarkably like the loveable Cocoon, don't you think?

The second oyster-like design that came out of the process looks like a wet-dream for Toshiba Matsushita since it would go with their new round LCD like ... well, a round cellphone around a new round LCD!

Whether a "sensitive down-to-earth young woman who has decided to live at the countryside" would use it or not... and whether Syntes also developed some fancy time-travelling LCD-design-detecting technology three years ago remains to be seen...

(images and quotes directly from Syntes' site )

UPDATE FOR ADDY/JESUS: Just a teeny bit of investigative journalism here :-)