"Using a mouse is so 2012!" :>

'' Asus Laptops and Desktops to Ship with Leap Motion's Gesture Control
...
The deal will see Leap Motion’s sensors and software packaged with some “high-end” laptops and PCs. The bundled products will appear in the first quarter of 2013, says Leap, around the same time the standalone Leap Motion device, priced at $70, is due to begin shipping.
...
Leap also announced a new round of investment funding, taking the total raised by the company from $15 million to $45 million. “The main reason was to support a very dramatic ramping up in our manufacturing,” says Buckwald. '' [source and also here]

Virtual Keyboard and other cool things...

'' TYPE ANYWHERE YOU WANT: VIBRATIVE VIRTUAL KEYBOARD
Your iPhone transforms any surface in virtual keyboard. This concept uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to record the different vibrations of the fingers on a surface. Each variation corresponds to a letter so you have a full invisible keyboard in front of you! The system is currently 80% accurate but the results improve when used in conjunction with an autocorrect dictionary.'' [source]




'' KINECT-POWERED MAPPING SYSTEM FROM MIT - This device allows the user to build maps of indoor environnements in real time. '' [source]

'' Get a new screen for your iPhone with this smart case. The back of the popSLATE is an E ink screen which can display all kinds of pictures or informations, even in the brightest sunlight. The dedicated app lets you easily capture pictures and share them with your friends but you can also choose to display notifications, maps and so on. '' [source]



''WRITE LIKE IT’S 1979 WITH BLINKY '' [source]

Kinect + top-down projector = portable tangible computing!

'' Company uses Kinect to create a touchscreen out of any surface (w/ Video) '' [source]

'' Mobile Surface
It is a novel interaction system for mobile computing. Our goal is to bring Microsoft Surface experience to mobile scenarios, and more importantly, to enable 3D interaction with mobile devices. We do research on how to transform any surface (e.g., a coffee table or a piece of paper) to Mobile Surface with a mobile device and a camera-projector system. '' [source]

''  Audio d-touch is a collection of applications for real-time musical composition and performance, with very special user interfaces.  '' [source, build it!]

''Explay’s Tiny Projector Goes on Show'' [source] 

'' Cube Laser Virtual Keyboard for iPad & iPhone ...
The Future Has Arrived
Remember when you were promised all those amazing future tech innovations? '' [source] 

What the wind can do for you

A new kind of wind-harvesting technology "Windstalks"
''  Windstalk is completely silent, and the image associated with them is something we're already used to seeing in a field of wheat or reeds in a marsh. '' [video]


'' Unbelievable Kinetic Sculptures of Theo Jansen. ... 
Theo Jansen calls his kinetic sculptures “Animari.” The creatures walk in herds on beaches, powered only by the wind. Some of them are able to capture and store the wind, then keep moving for extended times.'' [source] 

Flying motorbike!

''Prototype hoverbike could soar to 3km altitude at 173mph ...

The current prototype doesn't have much in the way of safety features, but Malloy plans to add a pair of explosive parachutes to the frame, or just require the rider to wear a parachute, as well as covering the currently-exposed propellors with a mesh to stop limbs from being lopped off. Malloy also hopes to implement gyroscopic controls with onboard overrides to stop the craft from tipping over.

Happily you won't need a pilot's license to fly one, as the hoverbike is officially classified as an ultralight.'' [source]

Laser saber - now available in a shop near you :}

'' Get ready to wield the world's first and only LaserSaber! A radiant saber pulsing with laser powered energy. The LaserSaber is energized by the awesome light of the S3 Krypton & Arctic handheld WickedLaser. Featuring an ultra smooth magnetic gravity system that can "power up" and "power down", the LaserSaber is the next evolution in harnessing pure laser power. ...
Do not participate in any form of fencing or swordplay. Fencing or swordplay will cause serious damage to people, pets or property.'' [source]

Of course you should not participate in any fencing with these laser sabers... unless you are a licensed Jedi warrior! :D

Steampunk portal-gun

''  It’s a Steampunk styled Portal Gun, like the one carried by Chell in the Portal video game franchise, and it’s so purrrrty I just want to mount it on my wall and stare at it all day long.  '' [source]

2D + water = 3D

'' Printed 2D Tissues Transform Into 3D With Water, Suitable For Blood Vessels And Robots 
...
Researchers have determined how to control the shape of a polymer system at the micro-scale with a technique akin to half-tone printing.

The polymer they use swells like a microscopic sponge when exposed to water, however printing 'resist dots' in the polymer substrate creates points that will not swell (1). When all resist dots in one area are the same size, the area undergoes uniform expansion and the structure remains flat (2). When the dot size changes, however, buckling occurs from the mismatch in growth from one area to another (3). With a proper half-tone pattern of resist dots, almost any 3-D shape can be achieved.'' [source]

Geek stuff

'' New Turing Omnibus (New Turning Omnibus : 66 Excursions in Computer Science) by A.K. Dewdney'' [source]

''Interactive Fiction (often referred to as Text Adventures) are stories where you control the main character.'' [source]

''The mirror is an assembly of 768 motorized and laminated C-shaped prints along the surface of a picture plane that texturally mimics a homespun basket. '' [source]

''Japanese Card Game Looks Awesome'' [source]

''Dimension of Time in Strange Attractors'' [source]

Small digital camera

''This is the world's smallest digital camera, measuring just over one inch in all dimensions and weighing only half an ounce ... it uses a 2 MP image sensor that takes still images at 1600 x 1200 resolution and captures video at 30 fps at 640 x 480 resolution ... '' [source]

A game to kill numbers!

''Prime Slaughter
A computer game for playful math-learning.
We have designed and developed Prime Slaughter, a computer game to play with abstract mathematical concepts, like factorization and primality.
The target group is composed of primary and early secondary school students.
Following the findings of a participatory design study about children interaction in museums, our game maps operational aspects of prime factorization onto a gameplay inspired by 2D action-adventure games, where primality and factorizaton are experienced in a visual and direct way.
The museum study also suggested to support learning by multiple play styles and goal-directed activities. ''
Authors: Andrea Valente and Emanuela Marchetti
[source]


[playable game here]

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Roberto Capancioni for starting a stimulating discussion about prime numbers, that led to the development of Prime Slaughter; and Finn Nielsen for the valuable feedback and testing-time he volunteered during development.

Mini retro game and modular gadgets

''Mini Space Invaders arcade cabinet big on nostalgia, small in size'' [source]

''Modular Gadgets'' [source]

Fractal heating elements

''Fractal Heat Exchanger'' [source]

''Electric Resistance Heating'' [source]

Mixed news

''Soldier Re-Grows Leg Muscle After Experimental Procedure'' [source]
''Lytro Camera Lets You Focus Photos After You Take Them'' [source]
''Say cheese! Taking photos with a wave of the hand'' [source]
''Hipmunk is a travel search engine that wants to reinvent the way people search for flights online [...] The service lets people browse flights by a combination of factors that include pricing, travel duration and number of stops on a given flight. It also offers creative options, like the “agony” factor, which calculates the least amount of hassle for a trip.'' [source]
''MONSTER CHINESE TELESCOPE THE NEXT ET HUNTER?'' [source]
''Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers at The University of Western Ontario from The Centre for Brain and Mind can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed.'' [source]
''100 YEARS AGO, A CHUNK OF MARS HIT EGYPT (AND A DOG)'' [source]
''Deadly animal disease that shaped history is eradicated.
It decimated herds and caused disaster, devastation and death associated with the fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the colonization of Africa.
But after years of global efforts, rinderpest -- German for cattle plague -- doesn't exist anymore. It is the first animal disease to be eradicated and only the second disease ever, after smallpox in 1980. '' [source]

Mixed news

''A color-changing bandage reveals the state of the wound beneath it.
The invention could reduce the $500 million cost of chronic wound care in Australia.'' [source]

''A committee of international chemists and physicists has officially added two new elements to the periodic table: the ultraweighty elements 114 and 116.
...
“Element 114″ obviously isn’t a very catchy name, especially in a sea of molybdenums and seaborgiums. They have temporary titles — ununquadium and ununhexium — but final names are yet to been decided.'' [source]

''Zotac unveils new ZBOX mini-PC, powered by VIA's dual-core Nano X2'' [source]

''Chinese rice farmers 10,000 years ago were early pioneers of modern genetic breeding. Like modern breeders they seemed to realise that shorter plants would produce higher yields, and unwittingly selected for mutations in a gene that shrinks rice stems: the stalkier plants produce more grain without falling over.'' [source]

''A Rare Eclipse of the Midnight Sun'' [source]

''Quantum mechanics rule 'bent' in classic experiment'' [source]

Mixed news

''Dell's 10-inch Android and Windows tablets get names, specs, release dates'' [source]

''Digital fabrication'' [source]


''INCREDIBLE GIGAPIXEL PHOTOGRAPHY'' [source and here]
''ULTIMATE LEGO ART COLLECTION WITH USEFUL RESOURCES'' [source]

''Matrix L-system and Paper Folding with Scissors'' [paper]

''Very nice, short and visual solution of Rubik cube'' [source]

''One Size Fits Nobody: Seeking a Steady 4 or a 10'' [source]

Mixed news

''This video illustrates how several simple sorting algorithms operate, using people as the objects to be sorted. Produced by the Algorithmic Thinking class as part of Knight School 2009 at Menlo School.'' [source]
''Print from your phone with Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print'' [source]
''Your computer is full of garbage. No, not the hundreds of downloads cluttering up your hard drive that you keep meaning to delete, but the wasted by-products of everyday computation. The logic gates within your computer's processor constantly input and output information, but not every output ends up being useful. The energy used to generate these "garbage outputs" is lost and dissipates as heat. So why not recycle it?'' [source]
''Acer debuts education-minded Aspire One E100 with Android and Windows'' [source]
''Studio Ghibli news'' [source]
''The new proposal defines the kilogram in terms of the Planck constant h**, an important constant in quantum physics, which is expressed in units containing the kilogram. Efforts at NIST such as the watt balance experiment and determinations of the mass of one mole of silicon atoms offer new ways of determining an accurate value of h, thereby contributing to a more reliable definition of the kilogram.'' [source]
''Is there a way to halt memory loss or even reverse it? If so, could we also manipulate our brain to forget unpleasant memories?'' [source]
''Poll: Price, Not Honeycomb, Is the Key to Android Tablet Success'' [source]
''Man controls robotic arm with his mind'' [video]

Mixed news

''New “Mazinger Z” directed by Yasuhiro Imagawa coming on TV''

"Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z hen(True Mazinger Impact! Episode Z)" will be on air in 2009 spring.[source, and here]

''Park Slope Civic Council Names Prospect Park Gateway Design Comp Winners'' [source]

''Gravity Currents on Slopes'' [source]

''Boeing invention lets planes spot dangerous turbulence'' [source]

''PAPER-THIN SOLAR CELLS SHOW PROMISING EARLY RESULTS
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology do, and early results indicate you may soon start seeing these paper thin solar cells on everything from window blinds to your laptop.
...
Each cell has five layers of solid material that has been deposited onto a paper substrate. Each of those five layers serves a different action.
'' [source, and Is Solar Power Worth It]

''The challenge of the great cosmic unknowns
It is an embarrassment, to say the least. Scientists have no idea what most of the universe is made of. In fact, a whopping 96 per cent of it is made of something whose very nature we are at a loss to describe - something utterly unlike the ordinary matter that makes up stars and galaxies, planets and moons, birds and bees.'' [source]

''The Nissan Leaf ... is a five-door mid-size hatchback electric car manufactured by Nissan and introduced in Japan and the U.S. in December 2010. The Leaf is the first mass-produced electric car for sale from a major manufacturer. The United States Environmental Protection Agency determined the range to be 117 kilometres (73 mi), with an energy consumption of 765 kJ/km (34 kWh per 100 miles) and rated the Leaf's combined fuel economy at 99 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent.'' [source]

''Long-Distance Throwing Holds Key to Human Evolution
... the “size-weight illusion,” which is where someone lifts two objects that are of different size but the exact same mass. The “illusion” is that the person will perceive the larger object to be lighter. And what these scientists found is that the illusion is not only “reliable and robust,” but that the illusion is “intrinsic” to humans and that people pick objects based on their perception for how well something can be thrown. '' [source]

''Prepeat inkless and tonerless rewritable printer'' [video]

''12Blocks: A Simple Block Language that lets Kids Program Sophisticated Multi-core Robots'' [video]

Mechanical computers and games

''1968 Bally World Cup electro-mechanical soccer game'' [source]
''Electromechanical game based on the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain built for the ITP Spring Show 2010.'' [source]
''Babbage's Differential Engine reconstructed'' [video]
''The Logical Mill
...the design of the arithmetic logic unit, or Logical Mill as Babbage would have called it'' [source]
''10 most powerful computers ever'' [source]
''Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known computer science, built in Greece around 100 years BC.
... Lego used to create the Antikythera Mechanism – the oldest known in the history of the computer'' [source]
''Tomy released a whole batch of games consoles that were, actually, wind-up mechanisms powered with batteries to light a single red LED light, or sometimes just a plain old bulb.'' [source]

''Mechanical Games'' [source]

Mixed news

''India Introduces $30 Laptop Computer'' [source]
''Bring a seemingly-dead laptop battery back to life, to a usable condition, although not quite like-new. It could be almost as good as a replacement laptop battery and a lot cheaper than a universal external laptop battery. Using a Freezer, the same place you put your frozen peas and TV dinners, you could restore a dead laptop battery.'' [source]
''World IPv6 Day: firing up the engines on the new Internet protocol
'' [source]
''Dr. Sudoku Prescribes: Konkat-kuro'' [source]
''CHICKENS MODIFIED TO NOT SPREAD BIRD FLU
These genetically modified birds can get bird flu, but can't pass it on to other chickens.'' [source]
''FACES OF OUR ANCESTORS'' [source]
''SMOKING CAUSES GENE DAMAGE IN MINUTES
New findings should serve as a "stark warning" to those considering taking up cigarette smoking, say scientists.'' [source]