Capturing at the speed of light - MIT Media Lab
38 posts tagged tech
Glowing Bacteria Could Power “Bio-light”
Oh hey…Nature is being awesome again…
(CNN) — This bizarre-looking concoction of glass, liquid and tubes could one day bring a whole new meaning to the idea of natural lighting.
The new “bio-light” concept designed by Dutch electronics company Philips creates light in the same way that bioluminescent living organisms like fireflies and glow worms do.
The phenomenon of bioluminescence is created by a chemical reaction where an enzyme called luciferase interacts with a light-emitting molecule called luciferin.
In the bio-light a collection of hand-blown jars — held in place by a steel frame — contain a measure of bioluminescent bacteria which glow green when fed methane gas — in this case through individual silicon tubes routed through a household waste digester.
Harnessing these biological techniques could help redefine how we consume energy in the home, says Philips.
(via ethanhein)
Twine - Listen to your world, talk to the Internet
Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing. A durable 2.5” square provides WiFi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that keep it running for months. A simple web app allows to you quickly set up your Twine with human-friendly rules — no programming needed. And if you’re more adventurous, you can connect your own sensors and use HTTP to have Twine send data to your own app.
Euclideon, an Australian company based in Brisbane has made the remarkable claim that they’ve developed a new graphics rendering technology for video games that is “100,000 times better” than existing systems.
Still a lot of skepticism in the air over this, mainly over whether they can do animation or not since only static worlds have been demonstrated so far. I’m excited though, it looks promising.
Re Euclideon, no chance of a game on current gen systems, but maybe several years from now. Production issues will be challenging.
Backtalk - SENSEable City Lab - MIT
Our cities, buildings and objects are getting ‘smarter’ and embedded with an increasing amount of electronic devices. Yet, new devices make old ones obsolete, and carry ever more batteries, rare metals, and other hazardous materials themselves. What happens to this digital refuse at the end of its life? What happens when we give it away, dispose of it properly, or just leave it on the curb? Does it get reused, or does it end up in a global e-waste dump?
RepRap - the self replicating 3D printer
RepRap is a free desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of RepRap are made from plastic and RepRap can print those parts, RepRap is a self-replicating machine - one that anyone can build given time and materials. It also means that - if you’ve got a RepRap - you can print lots of useful stuff, and you can print another RepRap for a friend…
Leafsnap: An Electronic Field Guide
Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed by researchers from Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution. This free mobile app uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves.
Lingodroid Robots Invent Their Own Spoken Language
When robots talk to each other, they’re not generally using language as we think of it, with words to communicate both concrete and abstract concepts. Now Australian researchers are teaching a pair of robots to communicate linguistically like humans by inventing new spoken words, a lexicon that the roboticists can teach to other robots to generate an entirely new language.
(Source: Boing Boing)
The tent that turns into concrete in less than 24 hours
The past 12 months have seen a remarkable number of humanitarian crises with earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and deadly tornadoes in the southern US being among the most recent.
Among new innovations which could help relief efforts is a fabric shelter that, when sprayed with water, turns to concrete within 24 hours.
Invented by two engineers while at university, Concrete Canvas allows aid teams to construct solid structures in emergency zones quickly and easily.
The first web browser - or browser-editor rather - was called WorldWideWeb as, after all, when it was written in 1990 it was the only way to see the web. Much later it was renamed Nexus in order to save confusion between the program and the abstract information space (which is now spelled World Wide Web with spaces).
(Source: Boing Boing)
Citizen Engineer
Citizen Engineer is an online video series and comic book/zine about open source hardware, electronics, art and hacking by Limor (Ladyada) Fried of Adafruit Industries & Phillip (pt) Torrone of MAKE magazine. The first video debuted at “The Last HOPE” conference in New York City.
