There’s two things an exploding bike lock will get you – a safe bike and a lawsuit.
Mike Lambourn, a product designer out of London, has built himself an exploding bike lock. Not exploding as in fire, but as in liquid. Inside the bike lock is compressed air and liquid which, when the wall is breached by a device such as a bolt cutter, shoots all over the place. As you can see from the video above it’s quite a spray, getting all over the bike, the ground, and especially the thief.
Why would you want to spray liquid all over everything?
It’s what’s inside the liquid that counts. “A bike that has been stolen will be covered in coloured dye (the dye renders the bike undesirable and therefore unsellable ) as well as transluscent Smartwater – an invisible forensic property marking liquid.” The hope is that the dye will mark the bike as stolen and UV scanners could pick up the invisible dye on thieves for police to arrest.
For those emergency situations where food might be scarce (or even destroyed by enemy fire) comes the Meal Ready to Take (MRT), a device loaded with enough food pills to sustain life for a week. Depress the top button for a full-sized meal.
Although we are told it time and again, not very many of us prepare for disasters. Likewise, soldiers in the field trust that they’ll have enough food in their backpack or vehicle to last them the duration of the mission. So how many water bottles do you have in your place in case of emergency? A half gallon at best? And food? It’s for this reason the MRT is essential to any disaster preparedness kit and in the field of battle.
Inside each pill is enough vitamins and nutrients to constitute about half a meal for a person on a 2,000 Calories a day diet. While it may not feel like you’re eating a meal due to the size (your stomach will still gnaw at itself), you’ll still notice a difference in your energy levels. Your stomach may be empty but your body is still getting the sustenance it needs to survive.
Tulsa, Oklahoma company 3DIcon has made an astonishing 3D imaging breakthrough with their prototype CSpace.
“CSpace creates a virtual moving screen display that contains a variety of particles suspended within its volumetric image space. When these particles are excited by two different infrared lasers, they illuminate to generate a 3D image.”
The two infrared lasers combine to form an image in a “volumetric image space” (something like a clear cube). The breakthrough made is in the technology as well as the display quality. Not only can the 3D image be viewed from any angle, but it also displays an incredibly high resolution. On top of this, the whole prototype requires no moving parts. So far they’ve only been able to create green 3D objects, but the hope is to eventually create full-color 3D images.
AU Optronics Corp, one of the top three manufacturers of thin film Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), have developed a LCD screen which has the ability to take your fingerprint or monitor UV levels on the environment (the UV thing is kinda weird, they hope to market it to women worried about too much skin exposure to UV rays).
The LCD screen is able to scan a fingerprint due to the high amount of sensors built into the pixels themselves. “The LCD panel is mounted with optical sensors and a detection circuit. Each pixel is equipped with four sensors.” The high pixel to sensor ratio allows it to scan a fingerprint only a few seconds after a finger is placed on it.
The scariest issue about all of this is the fact that surfaces, which we thought were simple, are becoming even more complex. This is a huge issue when you consider biometric information (fingerprints, DNA, iris scan) can easily be gained by technology that used to just make thinner TVs possible. It makes you wonder how decades from now people are going to protect their identity when the technology around them records everything about them.
On the eve of the election, the FCC approved the use of the wireless spectrum left void by the national switch to digital television (commonly referred to as “white space”) for tech company use.
“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today adopted a Second Report and Order (Second R&O) that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open. (This unused TV spectrum is now commonly referred to as television “white spaces”). The rules adopted today will allow for the use of these new and innovative types of unlicensed devices in the unused spectrum to provide broadband data and other services for consumers and businesses.” – FCC Website
Google, a long proponent of developing the strong white space spectrum for wireless internet, is ecstatic. Having lead the fight to free up the white space spectrum with other partners such as Dell, Microsoft and HP, Google must be feeling like they’re on top of the world.
While you were pounding a few beers back last night, a Korean company unleashed a product into the world that may give the iPod Nano a run for its money. Dubbed the Mintpass, this little guy (only the size of your palm and weighing only 3.2 ounces) has Wi-Fi capabilities, plays music, can chat, blog, function as a post-it and even surf the internet. Did I mention it has a 1.3M camera? Or a speaker and microphone? How about video capability and 4GB of space (on top of an 8GB microSD slot). Think of it as a Nano on steroids. Demo video here.
Arik Hesseldahl at Business Week wrote a very interesting article about how the iPhone and iTouch could possibly compete with the big-wigs of the gaming industry.
“For the last few days I’ve been sampling some of the games available from the iTunes Store on the iPod Touch, and I’ve been stunned at how elaborate and involved they are. On the iPod Touch I’ve played a version of Gameloft’s Real Soccer 2009 that rivals the version of the game on the Nintendo DS, and I didn’t even miss the buttons.”
And it’s true, the gaming experience on these mobile devices has gotten so good that people are able to play networked games such as Quake 3 on them.
But the fact of the matter is, like video, playing games on a screen the size of a pack of cigarettes isn’t going to do much damage to the gaming industry. It’s going to be years before the iPhone can reach the same processor capability to match, for instance, the XBOX 360. The gaming consoles themselves are also much cheaper than an iPhone and are capable of streaming High Definition to colossal TV screens.
Some great science fiction movies have depicted the protagonist sitting in front of a beautiful landscape with chirping birds and incredible gardens (Aliens, Total Recall, etc). Spooky Science Fiction has yet again struck close to reality.
Called the SkyCeiling, it uses high resolution imagery on embedded image tiles to give the looker a true 3D experience. Some of the technology they use in developing the SkyCeiling is used currently to treat seasonal depression. It provides “daylight-balanced light (the same light used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder) for rich color rendition and recognition as ‘natural’ daylight.” The hope is that the product would help sooth and calm people in hospitals who are unnerved by the white and sterile environment.
Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies has a spiffy new remote control car that runs on hydrogen. It uses solar power to convert water into hydrogen which the user then empties into the car. Platinum plates then compress the hydrogen to get the needed electricity from it. While the car can only run for about four minutes, it’s a step toward making our toys and gadgets that much more energy efficient.
Horizon itself is a very interesting company. They started out with the intention of being specialists in everything hydrogen and pretty much did just that. they offer a wide variety of products from small hydrogen fuel cells to portable ones for camping trips. The one that caught my attention was their development of a hydro-bike (video below) with puts a small fuel cell on a bicycle in order to power it. I want.
Chinese researchers have discovered that by sending current through sheets of carbon nanotubes they can create sound.
“Shoushan Fan and his research team at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, working with colleagues at Beijing Normal University, created a thin sheet by roughly aligning many 10-nanometer-diameter carbon nanotubes. When they sent an audio frequency current through the sheet, they discovered it acted as a loudspeaker.” -New Scientist
Carbon nanotubes have been touted the world over as invaluable in many technological projects such as efficient solar cells, localized medication delivery and even in larger structures such as the planned space elevator if that ever takes off. But this is the first experiment in using nanotubes as a replacement for traditional speakers.
Tulsa, Oklahoma company 3DIcon has made an astonishing 
While you were pounding a few beers back last night, a Korean company unleashed a product into the world that may give the iPod Nano a run for its money. Dubbed the 
