Back in September we posted about the fake sun roof for your car, which served no practical purpose what so ever. However this pretend window is bordering on the useful, the bright blind.

Makoto Hirahara’s Bright Blind uses electroluminescent sheets (try saying that after a few beers) to simulate a window, and if the simulated sun is too bright you can turn it down by adjusting the blind. This means that even the crappiest cubicles can have the benefit of a window.

The electroluminescent does exist (prototype) but is not available to buy just yet, come on guys. More info at GNR8, found via Crib Candy with a bit more info over at the ever excellent Tree Hugger.

Most folks would probably dismiss a weather monitor with built-in clock function as a “meh” device, but this one from Oregon Scientific aims to impress you with more than just its functions. It boasts a projection clock that will react constantly to forecasted weather from 12 to 24 hours in advance, changing its display color accordingly (red, light blue, blue, orange and green), depending on the upcoming weather condition. Dubbed the BAR339P, this device helps you plan your day ahead with a range of outdoor conditions including sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, rainy and snowing using a remote sensor with a range of up to 100 feet (30m).

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I do a lot of home improvements around the house. The most recent was replacing my front door with a new one. That went just fine. However, when I was working on putting the interior trim back up, I had quite a hard time getting those little brad nails into the trim without banging the crap out of my thumb and fingers. After much swearing, a bruised thumb and some creative use of a needle nose pliers, I finally got that trim up. Finally. It was ugly, painful and a chore to do.

I really wish that the following product would have been available to me then. Designer Arthur Se has come up with the Nail Cushion.

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Changing the paint color on your car is a time-consuming affair - your workshop mechanics will need to go through a whole lot of disassembly and prep work, not to mention lengthy amounts of time in a spray booth followed by hand blocking sessions where you could grow a 10-foot beard by then. There is a new technology being developed that makes color change a simple affair of twisting a knob. This variable-color paint involves a special polymer coating that has paramagnetic iron oxide particles in it, changing their alignment whenever a current passes through the coating, which results in a different way light is reflected - and voila! Your eyes will see a different color.

Source: Autoblog Green

We all know just how slow sloths are, being even the subject of a proverb, but Korean scientists from the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) have managed to recreate a koala bear robot that ought to come in the form factor of a sloth instead. This robot might be slow and tiny, but it sure is big on the amount of technology packed within. Just imagine, poking its belly will startle the koala bear enough for it to wave its legs with its body still laid prone. In addition, it will turn its face in displeasure, in an attempt to see who the culprit was.

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When I was a kid, my first gaming console was the Nintendo Entertainment System. My beloved NES kept me entertained for hours with games like Zelda, Metroid and Tetris. Now and then I’ll go back and play these games, as they are just as much fun now as they were when I was a child. The great thing about Tetris is that it’s such a simple game. Just stack the various blocks on top of each other in the attempt to eliminate rows. This game has been recreated on just about ever platform imaginable, which now includes a watch.

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The Giz has a story about how an executive at Redmond is working on an application that will store and preserve real life images as they are experienced in a kind of searchable digital photo album. The “Sense Cam” interface for MyLifeBits, a project that uses “surrogate memory” which would sense something should be preserved and then take a digital still to archive it.

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Fujitsu Siemens is currently working on a prototype 22″ LCD monitor that comes with built-in solar panels working in tandem with a capacitor and special relay to reduce power usage when on standby. Heck, theoretically it ought to be able to operate in zero consumption mode for five days on standby. When active, this prototype LCD monitor takes up a mere 0.6-0.9W of electricity. Fujitsu Siemens is hoping that this new green technology will be used in TVs too, as it prepares to roll out an improved, consumer-ready version of its prototype sometime in Q2 2008.

Source: Crave