Conceptual Gadgets

Ah, you got to love concept technology at its finest. I mean, look at this thing. Someone actually made it so the time appears on my bed sheet for crying out loud.

And those numbers don’t just appear in that corner, they are very touchable, just like Braille. So when I get up in the middle of the night, and want to know what time it is, I don’t have to look at my cellular phone or the bright numbers on a clock radio. All I need to do is feel the sheets for the proper time.

Yes, besides the blind, I don’t really see a good use for this product. I mean, if I am too lazy to open my eyes and check the time, I doubt I’ll want to feel the corner of my bed for the time.

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Is it just me, or are MP3 players in everything these days? I guess some concept designer just had to put an MP3 player in clothes, and why not the pants? After all, the words “dance” and “pants” rhyme.

Say, is that an MP3 Player in your pants, or…all right, I think you all know where that one was going. I’m not liking where the Dancepants is going.

You see, the Dancepants isn’t just an MP3 Player that is designed to fit in the pants. That would probably be easy. You would just find a convenient place to stitch in the apparatus, and just make certain that the user can charge it and download tunes easily.

The Dancepants are not like that. You see, it is powered by kinetic energy. So if you like to listen to music while you are jogging, then you had better keep jogging, or your music will die. That, or you will. Heh heh heh.

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There are far more people than just parents that have to worry about the changing of diapers.  There are the obvious ones within daycare and preschool.  Then there are those that work within hospitals that take care of young children as well as the elderly.  This diaper monitor system was developed for the elderly to make life easier on those caring for them.  However, there are plenty of other areas in which a device like this could easily be used.

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If you walk on many city streets, you will often see the street name carved in the street itself.

I’m guessing that is there for tourists who have lost their way, and designer Jaie Kwon has figured out a way for people to have a better sense of direction.

It’s called the Map Hole, and it is designed to turn an ordinary sewer cover (politically correct word for manhole cover) into a round map and compass.

I’m not certain if you can see this in the photo, but it has a location carved onto the metal itself, a direction where the landmark is, and the time it will take to get there (presumably by walking).

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Kids are notorious for leaving lights on.  They don’t have the burden of knowing how high that energy bill really is when they constantly leave the lights on within rooms they aren’t using.  This light switch was probably created to save the earth, but it might be nice to have purely to save your sanity.  With this visual reminder of how much energy is being used, it might help you keep your energy bill down.

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Even if you’re used to using both a Mac and a PC, for some reason you’ll probably start to acquire a preference as to which calculator you prefer.  The one within Windows or the one you would use through Mac OS.  Either way you’ll get the same numbers, but for one reason or another you might find one of them more convenient than the other.  Well these calculators take the in-computer versions and make them real.

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Even if we never tested it, we’ve all thought about using the cup trick to communicate with a nearby friend when we were kids. To be able to secretly talk without your parent’s knowledge is every kids dream.  Well with technology as it is, it’s a touch easier for kids to do that.  If you’d still like to enjoy that same feeling you got as a kid when you used those cups, maybe you could give this cup trick a whirl in an updated way.

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This digital microscope made from a cellphone and $10 in parts could revolutionize bush medicine.

First there was the One Laptop Per Child laptop for under $100, now an engineer has created a $10 do it yourself microscope out of a cellphone!

The vision of engineering professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA, the microscope uses a cellphone and ten dollars ($10) of off the shelf parts. The idea is pretty groundbreaking and could help doctors who seek to diagnose illnesses in the “bush” areas of the third world where sophisticated lab equipment simply isn’t available.

The idea is pretty ingenious. Rather than take a slide and magnify it, the cellphone microsope can image the slide sample and send it wirelessly to the nearest hospital laboratory. But with special “app” software developed by Ozcan, the cellphones can also detect abnormal shaping of bloodcells which could show signs of infection.

And there’s even a special microscope box which can connect to a cellphone which can then transmit the data where it needs to go.

“There’s no need for regular microscope lenses anymore because the software can magnify the cells electronically,” said Ozcan, “by creating a hologram that can image several cells at the same time and analyze how they interact. We can learn a lot in seconds.”

And in a world where infectious disease can strike hundreds in a few hours, this invention can save lives to boot. My only question is, when will we see the iPhone app?

Hat Tip – the NYTimes via The Giz