Month: July 2014
This may be the ‘Coolest’ summer gadget we’ve ever seen!
We think we may have found the ultimate summer accessory. 'Coolest' is a cooler that charges your phone, and acts as a Bluetooth speaker, among many other things. Having smashed its $50,000 goal in its first day, with $1.7 million pledged so far only on its second day on Kickstarter, the Coolest has an 18…
Digital photos could help diagnose cancer in babies
Parents are known for filling up their phones with photo after photo of the best thing that’s ever happened to them/the reason they’ll never sleep again. But it turns out all those pictures of your new baby aren’t just a side effect of being obsessed with them, but also a potential tool for diagnosing cancer.…
The brilliant camping stove that boils water and charges your phone at the same time
The days of flat phone batteries on camping trips are over, thanks to the BioLite CampStove. Not only does it boil water like a regular camping stove, but it simultaneously enables you to charge any USB-compatible phone. The nifty little device is any minimalist camper's dream: it's conveniently small, self-contained and simple to use. It comes with a…
Scientists have invented this beautiful, transparent and touch-sensitive wall
Window shopping is about to get a lot more real with the news that scientists have invented a transparent wall that responds to the touch. A team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) led by Woohun Lee, a professor of Industrial Design, developed what they call the TransWall. It’s a two-sided…
Smart umbrella measures air quality as it shelters you from the rain
A new project has produced an umbrella that's smart in its application, its appearance and its aims - as you're huddled beneath it in the rain, it measures and records air quality in the immediate vicinity to inform you about pollution. Designed by a team of students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, the 'sensing umbrella' works…
Scientists start work on implant to restore memory
A brain implant that can bring back memories? Probably a bad idea after a night on the tiles, but a great idea for patients with Alzheimer's disease or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). This week, the US government announced that its Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a $2.5 million grant to…
New virtual reality system lets you control someone else’s movements
An out of body experience isn’t just a metaphor or something you have to drink a lot of ayahuasca to have anymore. Yifei Chai, a student at Imperial College London, has designed a virtual reality system to give users the surreal feeling of being in (and able to control) someone else’s body. One person wears…
A Better Queue is making it way easier to find the perfect Netflix movie
It's always the way isn't it? You sit down all comfy, having decided to watch a movie on Netflix and then have no idea where to start in actually finding a good one through all the bizarrely bad ones. A Better Queue is changing all this, making it much easier to find a great movie…
Clever skin cells can detect aromas to accelerate wound healing
You might think that your nose is the only part of your body that smells things, but you’d be wrong. Oh, so very wrong. Olfactory receptors (i.e. the things that detect odours) are also found in the colon – which seems unfortunate – and, if you’re a man, in the prostate and sperm (yep, that’s…
You can rent a bike wherever you go with Spinlister
Bicycles can be rented in thousands of cities across the world from someone just like you, as a result of peer-to-peer sharing website Spinlister. With a similar vibe to popular short-term lodger site Airbnb, Spinlister also allows you to rent surfboards, skis and snowboarding equipment from regular folk in over 100 different countries. The web…
