Posts by Category: future tech

It’s coming WHEN?

future tech December 5, 2007 posted by

OLED Tie – small flexible screens coming to a piece of clothing near you soon?

OLED Tie. I’m trying to work out why you’d want to wear a tie with an embedded OLED screen on it…um…maybe to sell advertising space? Or to broadcast your need for a mate? Anyhoo, it’s an interesting idea and who knows where it might lead. MP3 playing socks?  In the future, applications of flexible display will be expanded to our daily life ranging from a tie, a hat, a wallet and other small lifestyle products. ETRI demonstrated its flexible OLED…


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cool tech December 3, 2007 posted by

Google Sites – new Google collaboration tool promises amazing feature set

So there’s a new Google application due next year called Google Sites, which will be an extended amalgam of the Google Pages web site creator and JotSpot, the wiki app that Google bought a while back. This is interesting from a lot of angles, not least of which is the fact that it potentially introduces real Web 2.0 user generated functionality to business applications properly for the first time ever. One thing I will add is that JotSpot was the only…


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Awesome November 6, 2007 posted by

Nokia perfects the clicky tactile touchscreen – iPhone gnashes teeth, swears revenge

It’s taken them 10 years but Nokia boffins have finally perfected a ‘touch feedback’ touchscreen. Don’t be fooled by simple vibrational imitations folks, this is the real McCoy – you press a key on the screen, and it clicks under your finger with exactly the same sort of fingertip feedback as if you’d pressed a conventional keyboard key. Roope Takala, Senior Program Manager at Nokia’s research labs gave me a demo of the technology in Finland the other day on a…


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future tech November 6, 2007 posted by

Invisible tank draws closer – ooh’er where’s it gone…?

Invisible Tank. Apparently the UK defense industry is close to launching the invisible tank they’ve been talking about for a year or more. The technology has been developed by Professor Sir John Pendry at Imperial College, London and works by beaming images of the tank’s background onto its surface using cameras and projectors. The Daily Mail image above is clearly a goodly Photoshop effort, but nevertheless it’s a pretty unbelievable tech to be reaching this stage, isn’t it? And they’re…


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cool tech November 2, 2007 posted by

Ultra fast broadband over copper – Aussie student smashes through a bottleneck…

John Papandriopoulos of the University of Melbourne – here seen estimating his first potential paycheck – has come up with some nifty technology to reduce crosstalk interference on DSL broadband copper lines and increase speeds to a theoretical maximum of 200 Mbps. That’s just un-chuffin’-believable, considering we thought 56K was the maximum a short few years ago. And what’s even more astonishing is the lab work which suggests that speeds of up to 1–2 Gbps are possible in the future. For now,…


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cool tech October 26, 2007 posted by

The NanoTube Radio – world’s smallest AM radio debuts

Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen of U.C. Irvine have built a carbon nanotube AM radio. The teeny tiny device is thousands of times thinner than a human hair, which means that we could soon all be listening to our tunes through our follicles. Well OK, maybe that’s a bit far fetched, but why not plait a whole Hi-Fi system into your eyebrows? No, fair enough, that’s pretty silly too. Take a look at the video and see if you can…


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but is it art? September 5, 2007 posted by

Sneaker Power – DIY energy from roller shoes

The Energy Harvesting Sneakers produce power from roller sneakers to drive a small display. It’s part of a Kinetic Shoes art project at the moment, but why not extend the concept and give everyone a chance to produce their own power through motion, or what they call power harvesting? [PDF] Accelerometers, gyros, roller ball mechanisms, even solar panels – parcel them all up into a Personal Power Pack and never have to worry about charging your phone or music player again. Cool. Tags:…


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cool tech August 30, 2007 posted by

Retro Electro Cars – give your Mini an ecological makeover

The folks at Future Vehicles have launched a Retro Electric Car Conversion service which will convert an olde worlde Mini (or other suitable bone shaker like a Citroen 2CV) into an electric vehicle. The entry level priced model will travel at 40 mph and have a range of 50 miles, but you’ll need to stump up £17,500 to experience the joy of such stylish silent motoring.   The classic Mini is an iconic city car, it is lightweight and fun to drive. Converting…


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cool tech August 25, 2007 posted by

Sonex Electric Airplane – hum, crackle, swoop and soar

The Sonex Electric Airplane is a concept plane which runs on batteries. That’s right, you can recharge it from your wall socket and poodle off as and when you feel the need. Clever eh? Two things. First, there’s no way I’d trust any teeny tiny engine like that to keep me aloft at 5000 feet for any length of time and two, a 24 hour charging cycle for an hour’s flight time? Riiight! And it’s significant that while there’s a fancy…


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cool tech July 25, 2007 posted by

Greenbox – turning vehicle exhaust fumes into fuel

The Greenbox, developed by three Welshmen, is designed to trap the noxious gases from vehicle exhausts and use them to process a biofuel made from algae. It’s a pretty clever idea although there are some logistical issues which will need to be worked out. For example, each Greenbox needs to be replaced each time you refuel the car, which could add up to quite a lot of boxes for high mileage drivers. Not to mention the logistical nightmare of collecting…


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future tech July 9, 2007 posted by

The $30 replacement iPhone battery – coming to a classifieds near you soon?

Hear that noise? It’s the sound of a thousand Far East workshops beavering away to produce replacement iPhone batteries. At this rate the iPhone is going to end up one of the most hacked gadgets ever delivered to this sorry excuse for a planet.  Currently, the official battery replacement service for iPhone requires sending the iPhone to Apple. iPhone is sealed and is not “user-servicable”. Apple charges $79 plus shipping to replace battery. Skyway target is to manufacture self-replaceable battery…


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future tech June 18, 2007 posted by

Radio Dust – RFID tags go tiny tiny

Researchers at Hitachi in Japan have apparently created super small RFID tags that are smaller than a grain of sand. This ‘radio dust’ as it’s being called can be used to tag just about anything with a unique 38 digit identifier code, which will broadcast when requested by a nearby reader. Scary stuff actually. Look out for it in 2009 or thereabouts.  The so-called powder chip is thin enough that it can be mixed with paper pulp to add a…


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cool tech June 15, 2007 posted by

Low light photography breakthrough on the way?

The boffins at Kodak have apparently come up with a ‘breakthrough’ method of improving low light photography. They have come up with a new light filter which they are hoping to supply to mobile phone camera companies and the rest of the imaging industry. Anything that makes low light photos better than they are now is a Great Thing in our book.  When the shutter opens on a digital camera, an image is projected onto the sensor, which converts light…


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Awesome June 5, 2007 posted by

The Automotive X Prize – probably the best ecological initiative ever

The Automotive X Prize aims to do for alternative fuel vehicles what the Ansari X Prize has done for space travel. Namely move it up a huge notch in development urgency and effectiveness. The goal of the multi-million dollar prize is ‘To inspire a new generation of viable, super-efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change’, and if it achieves that in the 2 year target timescale it will be a whole…


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cool tech May 30, 2007 posted by

Explay OIO – nano projectors arrive (almost)

The Explay OIO is the latest entrant in the race to deliver large screen displays from very small devices. The idea is that we’ll all one day walk around with mobile phones, PDAs, video players etc which will contain their own small – nano – projectors capable of beaming large screen images onto the nearest flat surface. The OIO is apparently supposed to ship next year, but we’re not holding our breath. There’s a lot of hard core technology that’s going to be needed to make this tech work…


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