Jess is a playful and energetic 10 year old Border Collie. She enjoys ball games and hopes to find someone who can give her plenty of attention and regular walks. She’s good with other dogs and could live with older teenage children.
From designer Stefan Radev comes a wind-powered vehicle called the BMW Blue Dynamics Land Yacht. It’s got a huge sail in back for steering, seats one and all-in-all is appropriately reminiscient of a boat. We have to say, we’re loving the concept vehicles flying the BMW flag this week — not to mention that swanky “augmented reality” space for mechanics.
Check out more of the Land Yacht in the gallery below.
Live in a swamp? The Handycooler Personal Air Conditioner might not do you much good, but if you reside anywhere else, evaporative cooling might be just what you need to beat the heat. With this handheld unit that’s about the size of an ’80s cellphone, cooling off is as easy as dampening a small sponge and placing it inside. As long as you haven’t used up the five hours’ worth of power afforded by Handycooler’s required four AA batteries, it’s instant coolness.
If its manufacturer is to be believed, this 7-ounce cooler can lower the temperature of the air by “up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit.” We’re thinking that must’ve been measured in a desert somewhere, but still, this might well worth its $40 price. It’s no LEGO air conditioner, but it’ll probably offer you some semblance of relief until the blast-furnace-like weather finally goes away.
Via Think Geek
34-year-old Tao Xiangli is an amateur inventor whose efforts aren’t looking all that amateur. The Chinese man has built himself his very own sub all on his own, spending two years and 30,000 yuan ($4,385) on the project. It’s driven by electric motors and propellers, and even has some extra fixings, including a periscope and a depth control tank. And, unlike this Chinese-made helicopter, it looks like he’s being allowed to take it for a spin.
Click on through to see Tao Xiangli testing his creation in the waters outside of Beijing.
With all this talk of OLED screens on the way, it had to happen: an OLED laptop. Samsung says it aims to roll out this beauty with a 12.1-inch, 1280×768 AMOLED screen by the end of next year, and it might even be available as early as the third quarter.
Samsung SDI is the world’s largest OLED screen manufacturer, so it would be only natural for it to be first up with an OLED notebook. This will certainly be a premium item — nobody’s talking price, but we’re guessing this sexy lappie will probably cost at least $5000. Fast forward five years, and OLED laptops will be commonplace … and cheap.
OLED Info and techradar, via Gizmodo
What does it feel like to have a fighter jet fly just a few feet above your head? Only this brave soul and his cameraman know for sure. We especially like the way the guy seems unfazed by a jet fighter zipping along in excess of 600 miles an hour, flying low enough to almost hit him.
By the way, the video’s title specifies an “F18 Hornet” (known in the real world as an F/A-18 Hornet), which this aircraft is not. The Hornet has two vertical stabilizers — this jet clearly has just one. Nor is this an F-16, like the upgraded Thunderbirds we saw earlier this summer. This is more likely a Harrier Jump Jet.
YouTube, via Geekologie
Here’s a clever trick: using the energy generated by you pedaling your bike to charge up your phone or audio player. Dalton’s BioLogic FreeCharge does just that, hooking up to your bike’s generator hub and creating power to juice up any USB gadget you have on hand. Look for it in March 2010 for $100.
If you solder things in your spare time or are a smoker, you know the value of having a good ventilation system. Nobody likes sitting in a room full of deadly fumes, no matter where they came from. If you don’t have the scratch for a fancy fan system, why not build your own fume extractor out of an Altoids tin?
Make tells you how to do just that, and it looks simple enough for someone who’s just slightly handy to pull off. If you’re a complete klutz who’s all thumbs, on the other hand, maybe you should just head to Home Depot.
Via Make
3D is becoming more and more prevalent in movies, so why not in video games? Why not indeed. The PlayStation 3 is hopping on the 3D bandwagon next year, bringing a 3D mode to the console that’ll work with all existing games sometime next year.
Of course, in order to enjoy this, you’ll need a new TV that supports 3D. So it may be more than just the year it takes for Sony to get this firmware out to PS3s to make it commonplace. But it’s an exciting look at where consoles will be going in the not-too-distant future, or at least whenever you buy your next TV.
Via Engadget
French company Optinvent has teamed up with a Japanese manufacturer to introduce a more affordable brand of HMD (head mounted display) called the Clear Vu. The group cites cheaper lens materials as a major factor in their ability to offer a more affordable solution to consumers.
Once the device is available for commercial purchase it is expected to be used for everything from portable movie viewing, gaming, and augmented reality visualizations native to the iPhone. The Clear Vu is scheduled to hit the market at somewhere under $200 during the second half of 2010.
Via Nikkei
Nine year old Turner needs a new home urgently, due to a change in his family’s circumstances. He’s a kind-natured and loving boy who gets on great with children and other dogs. Can you offer Turner a new home and save him the trauma of kennels?
Bathrooms have been going hi-tech on us for quite some time now, but UK company Vado has designed a touchpad faucet that actually looks good — compared to some of the mixers we’ve seen before.
The main body of the faucet is made from white Tecnoril, and you can choose from either a black or chrome spout. Both temperature and water flow are controlled via the opalescent touchscreen. As yet, Vado hasn’t come up with a price for the v-touch, but there will be a version for the bath out towards the end of the year.
As part the STS-128 mission’s first spacewalk, astronauts Danny Olivas and Nicole Stott (right) removed an empty ammonia tank from the station’s truss and temporarily stowed it on the station’s robotic arm. Olivas and Stott also retrieved the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) and Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) from the Columbus laboratory module and installed them on Discovery’s payload bay for return. Image Credit: NASA
In this instructable im going to show you how to make a quick, cheap and easy Beneficial Bug Houses! So why and what is a Beneficial Bug? Did you know, your garden is an important refuge for wildlife and can be an amazing place to watch it? Your garden will be packed full of mini beasts, not as bi…
By: icecreamterror
Probably no other headline grabs our sympathy faster than “Big Bully Beats Up Little Kid.” We immediately side with the bully-ee, not the bullier. But every conflict has two sides, and two perspectives.
A few weeks ago, the media reported that Apple had rejected, or was otherwise trying to stall a Google Voice application for the iPhone. The app would let users access their Google Voice accounts, bypassing AT&T for a lot of services, like text messaging. Great deal for users… not so great for AT&T. The story seemed clear-cut: Establishment baddies AT&T and Apple were beating up on power-to-the-people Google. But you know what they say — no matter how flat you make a pancake, there are always two sides.
AT&T is learning the hard way that with the great iPhone comes great responsibility. Namely, keeping its network running smoothly even under the pressure iPhone users put on it.
The carrier is experiencing everything from dropped calls to choked download speeds because of how much more data iPhone users burn through. People do pretty much everything they would on their home computer on top of making calls, from browsing the web and sending emails to downloading music and games. Because of this an average iPhone user can churn through 10 times as much bandwidth as the average smartphone.
The problem is exasperated exacerbated by the concentration of users, too. “[AT&T's network] can only funnel so much at a given time,” wireless analyst Chetan Sharma told the New York Times. “It comes down to peak capacity loads, or spikes in data usage. That’s why you see these problems at conferences or in large cities with high concentration of iPhone users.”
AT&T, of course, wants to expand and improve its network to better shoulder the strain, though in the short term the company can do little more than restrict bandwidth-heavy features. There’s a worry that it won’t just be AT&T having such trouble, either, as phones continue to get more complex. That, and AT&T and Apple’s iPhone exclusivity contract will be up early next year, at which point the iPhone may make its way onto other carrier’s too — which’ll either lessen the strain by spreading it around or sink other networks, too.
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