Y’know how we were brought being told we have to save the elephants if we ever want to make sure that our grandchildren and their grandchildren get to see one?
Well the same is true, apparently, for the sounds we’ve grown up with. Sounds like the Nokia start-up jingle or the sound of a 56k modem struggling to download naughties from the internet.
To make sure our kids get to know what life was like back in our day, the Museum of Endangered sounds has been set up to archive and keep all these annoying audial artifacts, lest we forget where we once were.
Any man will tell you that there is no bigger thrill than rocking up at a public bathroom urinal and finding a stash of ice at the bottom, just waiting to be melted.
The challenge: how much of the ice can I melt with just one bathroom break? Or better yet, can I do it all.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil they don’t use ice though, they use a whole other sort of rocking out.
The Guitar Pee urinal was an ad campaign to promote the Billborad 100 and the idea is simple: unzip, start playing your solo with the strings connected to an amp above you and then check your Mp3 number on the readout above. Then visit www.guitarpee.com and download an Mp3 of your pee.
Now here’s a company that just isn’t bothering with the touchscreen VS QWERTY keyboard debate, they’re just offering everybody the best of both worlds. Well they will be sometime in 2013.
Sounds too good to be true, but April was over months ago.
Tactus Technology have recently shown off their morphing touchscreen tech which lets keys on the screen appear and disappear as they’re needed. Using a science called microfluidics, the Android phone it was shown off on had a network of tiny channels running below the flexible screen in which a reservoir of oil could dump it’s contents into, inflating the keys as they were needed.
Coming to a tablet, smartphone or other touchscreen near you…in 2013…we hope.
All my years of High School science have done me bugger all good save for one process in nature I can still understand and even explain if asked: photosynthesis.
Handy then that I can tell you about this gadget, a piece of designer furniture that uses the energy released (and wasted) in photosynthesis to charge your smartphone or light a bulb.
The folk at BioPhotoVoltaics, who can explain to you many more processes in nature than I, have developed this table to demonstrate a potential future application of BPV technology.
BPV devices, like this table, generate electricity from light energy by exploiting the photosynthesis of living organisms such as moss, algae and vascular plants.
While not enough energy is being developed by BPV yet, not even enough to power that light you see, the potential is there and the hurdles that need to be jumped are being overcome.
At the moment the table plays a little animation which demonstrates the energy coming off of it.
For those who I didn’t lose during the science lesson: the table currently produces 520 Joules (J) of energy per day. A typical laptop requires about 25J per second, so in a day the table would produce enough energy to power a laptop for just 20 seconds!
There’s always one guy who has to ruin the party for everyone else. And in the tablet market, this month it’s eGlide who are now offering a properly decent specced tablet for less than R1 500.
The eGlide Steal has everything that the big boys have, at a fraction of the price:
A 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM which means it’s fast
A dedicated GPU which means graphics work without any lag
4GB of internal storage (granted, that’s not brilliant)
Wi-fi but no GSM SIM support
So there are some concessions to be made, including that you’ll need to order it from the States, but all that aside. Somebodies pissing a lot of people off.
Well at least that’s what 10 million people who pre-ordered before it’s launch said!
Now that it’s officially been released in 28 countries (and will arrive here on the 11th June) we know exactly what the most awaited for phone looks and feels like.
Main specs:
Android
4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD Gorilla Glass screen
136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm and 133g
1.4GHz quad-core processor and 1GB RAM
16GB or 32GB
8MP camera
More news coming at the launch. Follow @FHMMotoring for more!
A new product from a search engine that isn’t Google. Miracles never cease hey?
Yahoo Axis is a sleek new add-on from the Yahoo behemoth that will enhance your searching experience by popping up the results on the rights with screenshots of the pages.
There is space to Bookmark the page you’re on, visit a personalised home page or sift through results.
There’s a mobile app available for download from your relevant store. Or download it for your PC here.
Yahoo are probably some pegging some hopes on this toy to get them more users, but I’m not holding thumbs.
Now here’s a piece of tech that’s as cool as Colin Farrel’s cigarette butt…
The Leap Motion controller allows you to interact with and control your PC screen by reading your finger gestures all the way down to 1/100th of a millimeter.
They say: “It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen.”
They’re also not scared of the big boys in the motion controller industry (ie: Microsoft) calling their device 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market.
Still, I have learnt that videos leaked to Youtube can be deceiving so I’ll reserve judgment until I see it for the first time in the fingers of someone who doesn’t represent the company.
The potential is as you can imagine, enormous. Think of an app that can translate sign language into written text on the screen. Know how to do it? Head on over to their developers site and tell them how.
The Leap Motion plugs in to your USB port, understands almost instantly and looks like it could change the way you work on your PC.
Pre-orders open now. Expect to pay about R800 – R1 000.
Leap Motion controller
Now here’s a piece of tech that’s as cool as Colin Farrel’s cigarette butt…
The Leap Motion controller allows you to interact with and control your PC screen by reading your finger gestures all the way down to 1/100th of a millimeter.
They say: “It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen.”
They’re also not scared of the big boys in the motion controller industry (ie: Microsoft) calling their device 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market.
Still, I have learnt that videos leaked to Youtube can be deceiving so I’ll reserve judgment until I see it for the first time in the fingers of someone who doesn’t represent the company.
The potential is as you can imagine, enormous. Think of an app that can translate sign language into written text on the screen. Know how to do it? Head on over to their developers site and tell them how.
The Leap Motion plugs in to your USB port, understands almost instantly and looks like it could change the way you work on your PC.
Pre-orders open now. Expect to pay about R800 – R1 000.
Trust a Kenyan, hailing from the land of unbeatable marathon runners, to come up with a way to charge your phone using energy created by walking in your running shoes.
Anthony Mutua showed off his invention at the Kenyan Science Technology and Innovation Week. It works using pressure, sending energy to an inserted “crystal-chip”.
As you walk you generate pressure that in turn generates energy, once you have arrived where you were going you can now sit down and charge your mobile phone or charge while you walk.
