Any serious music lover would definitely have built up a sizable collection of audio CDs over the past two decades, and while the CDs sound as good as they were from the first day of purchase, the same might not apply to the CD jewel cases and album art. Chances are these cases will be scratched or even cracked, while the album art and inserts would definitely have received some dog ears through a regular thumbing process from yourself and friends who borrowed part of your collection. How about having a single CD jewel case that stores all your album art without the dangers of getting damaged? David Friedman thought of this concept by working on a digital CD jewel case.

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Ahh Switzerland’s latest brainchild is the Smartfish.

It’s a hydrogen fuel cell powered plane that features a lifting body and an alternative fueled turbofan powerplant. The styling is aero-outrageous.

This team has been developing the Smartfish since July of 2003 and have really generated a great system of both IP development (that means they’re patenting some sweet technology (the airfoils, control systems, and powerplant systems), as well as scaling up an effective system for airframe operations through small scale prototype experiments.

They’ve joined with a number of aerospace groups to push this new design forward as well.

Most importantly they’ve developed a lightweight, alternative fuel efficient light aircraft designed for near term use.

Check out the video on their site,, it’s great (a bit of a download but great nonetheless). Read the rest of this entry »

A human-sized android was paraded in a public demonstration in the middle of last week in Tokyo, and it was proudly showing off its weightlifting skills to everybody by picking up a 30kg package from a desk as well as lifting a 66kg humanoid doll out of bed. I suppose this droid would definitely be a boon to nurses and healthcare providers worldwide, since plenty of patients these days are from the obese and overweight categories, leaving nurses no choice but to call for help when transporting these patients out of bed.

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Designed by Atil Kizilbayir this is one of the coolest toasters I’ve ever seen. The toaster is designed to work like a heated tunnel, you put plain bread into the toasting carriage at one end, the ‘x’ seconds later the carriage pops out the other end with nicely tanned toast.

If this conceptual toaster ever becomes a reality I’ll be buying one though I’m not getting my hopes up.

via RGS, thanks Juegen.

Most of us have grown up watching more than enough war and science fiction movies to know that night vision images are often seen as an eclectic mix of green and black. Tenebraex has upped the ante by developing a pair of goggles that help both soldiers and physicians to see an entire spectrum of colors at night - a vast improvement over what is currently available in the market. These goggles will be made available to the Army for approximately $6,000 a pop, making it out of reach for the average Joe.

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At first glance, the square on the right actually looks like a transparent film of some sort, but you will be surprised to know that it is actually a battery. I know I was surprised myself, but what we see is actually a polymer based rechargeable battery developed by Japanese scientists from the Waseda University. This unique battery is made from a 200 nanometre thick (or should the right word be thin?) redox-active organic polymer film that come with nitroxide radical groups attached to it. These nitroxide radical groups act as charge carriers, offering a high charge/discharge capacity thanks to the high radical density. Other than this advantage over regular batteries, it was interesting to note that the power rate performance is nothing short of jaw dropping - it takes a mere minute to charge the battery fully and boasts a superior cycle life of over a thousand cycles.

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People don’t exactly get excited about conserving energy or creating energy by natural means. It’s a phrase that doesn’t even sound fun. Sure, you get that warm, fuzzy feeling because you’re doing something good, but you don’t exactly look forward to doing it. Michael Jantzen, the designer of that crazy contraption above, hopes to make producing natural energy into a public spectacle.
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Il Village from Italy is currently working on a GPS satellite system that will offer a greater degree of mobility and independence to the blind and visually impaired, and this system will be known as the Easy Walk service. The brainchild of Il Village’s technology officer, Andrea de Paoli, the Easy Walk system comprises of a Symbian-based cellphone, a Bluetooth GPS receiver, text-to-speech software called Talks, and a call center that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There will be a couple of dedicated keys on the handset, where one of them will let the user know of their exact location when pressed (down to the house or building number) while the other alerts the call center in the event where the user requires assistance with navigation.

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