Reach for the Lasers

ELP have made a turntable that uses lasers instead of a needle, producing a better quality sound with no wear on the record. Its done with 5 lasers, 2 read the sterio tracks, 2 track the shoulders of the groove and another maintains the focus. They say that it should be able to play cracked, warped and off centre discs. They have models which will play records from 7-12 in diameter at speeds of 33-1/3, 45 and 78 rpm. It also offers CD player features like cuing to tracks, random play and repeat.

- ELP Laser Turntable

[Via. Design Technica]

Places you dont want to visit

Sprol is a satellite sightseeing blog of "some of the worst places in the world.". It covers chemical plants, urban sprawling, factories, chaotic freeways and ecological disasters, all from the safety of space.

- Sprol

[Via. Future Feeder]

Its A Gas

US telecommunications company Nethercomm has developed a way to send broadband Internet data over existing natural gas pipelines. They estimate that it should provide 40 - 100 Mbps at essentially the same cost as DSL.

Broadband-in-Gas technology traverses the last mile of broadband and represents a completely new era of low cost access to broadband services and a completely new alternative to cable video, phone and data services.

- Nethercomm

[Via. The Red Ferret]

Deep Fry PC

Pure boredom and a few beers drove Markus Leonhardt of Germany to submerge his PC into a tank of vegetable oil, and it still works over a year later. He said that the main advantage is that the case doesn't make any noise, and dissipates heat well, although the case must be kept below desk level to stop capillary action draining oil out over the mouse and keyboard cords.

- LINK

[Via. Boing Boing]

Play Good

Lego sculptor Henry Lim has made a full size lego Harpsichord. Whats more its playable. The whole thing is Lego, the keys, hammers, case, lid, everything except the wire strings and uses over 100,000 bricks. There is a MP3 of it being played, which goes a little way to explaining why harpsichords arent usually made of Lego.

- Lego Harpsichord

[Via. Gizmodo]

Interview with Keita Takahashi

Theres a really good interview with Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damashi. The site its on requires registration, but if you hit stop before it re-directs you you can watch it without registering.

- Interview with Keita Takahashi

[Via. Boing Boing]

Collective Subconscious

Collective Subconscious is a installation which uses RFID tags to display messages stored on a server. When a person waves their card in front of the sensor, a message they have chose will appear on the screen, and then fade back as new messages are added, creating a collage of 'thoughts'. Depending who is going through the public space, the resultant collage will have different themes, a sort of 'Collective Subconscious'. The messages can be changed via a web site so thought can change. There's a pretty good Video on the site.

- Creative Subconscious

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

penguinremixed

Penguin books is running a competition (UK only) to take samples from 30 different penguin audio books and mix them into a music track. Samples include bits from 'Alice in wonderland', 'Around the world in 80 days', 'Charlie & The Chocolate Factory', 'Dracula', 'Frankenstein', 'Picture of Dorian Gray' and many others. There are already many mixed tracks available to listen to on the site.

- penguinremixed

[Via. Boing Boing]

No More Socks!

New Scientist offers a page called 'No More Socks!' where New Scientist readers can buy and reccomend items.

By harnessing the collective gift-giving experience of New Scientist readers we’ve put together an eclectic and imaginative selection of fantastic gift ideas for all occasions

- No More Socks!

Some of the cool stuff on there is the LighTalk led wand, which lets you scan a image and then display it with a wave, and the Ecosphere, a completely sealed eco system, developed by nasa, consisting of red shrimp and algae, which only needs some warmth and light to continue living for around 2-3 years, although they have been know to live for 10!

Google Will Eat Itself

'Google Will Eat Itself' is a web project Hans Bernhard and Alessandro Ludovico who plan to make money through googles advertising program 'Adsense' (same as I use), invest the money in google shares, and then use these to hand the company over to GTTP or 'Google To The People'.

1. With a sophisticated and on-the-edge browser-server tool [flash/php] we generate a steady flow of clicks. We are locking the software on a limited amout of pageviews [~2500] and clicks [~200] per day. There is no difference between human clicking and this level of machine generated clicks - we are no script-kiddies but bastard artists.

Im pretty sure that violates the Adsense terms, still a great idea though.


- GWEI
- Project Description

[Via. Future Feeder]

Molecubes

Hob Lipson from Cornell University have designed Molecubes which are robots capable of self replication.

Each 10 centimetre cube contains a microprocessor, and they are all equipped with an identical set of instructions that tell the block how to connect and swivel, depending on the way it is linked to other blocks. The instructions are designed to make the blocks work together to self-replicate.

For example, three or four blocks piled on top of each other to form a tower can create an identical tower by swivelling round like a crane to pick up other nearby blocks and pile them on top of each other

The video makes the process a lot more understandable.

- Self-cloning robots are a chip off the old block
Video

[Via. Future Feeder]

The All Five

Dr. Wayne Danie has designed 'The All Five', a puzzle which nests a tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, dodecahedron, and finally the icosahedron without any in between voids.

- The All Five

[Via. Future Feeder]

Panda Food

Brano Meres, Slovakian hobbyist has made a bike frame out of bamboo.

- Brano Meres Bamboo Bike

[Via. Cool Hunting]

iPod shuffle Crucifix

Spotted at the Pratt Show 2005.


[Via. Engadget]

The Solar Umbrella

The Solar Umbrella collects and stores light during the day and uses it to power 48 LED lights underneath it when the sun goes down.

- 9' Solar Lighted Umbrella

[Via. Gizmodo]

Reach Out And Touch Someone

Deepak Sharma of India has gotten himself into the Guinness Book of Records by sending 182,689 SMS's in one month. He received a 1411 page phone bill, but luckily is on a unlimited SMS plan.

We’re not sure if that’s total, or unique messages, but if you’d like us to break that down for you, that’s about 6,100 messages a day, 253 an hour, 4.2 a minute, or a new one every 14 seconds or so.

- A Ludhiana guy sends 1,82,689 SMS in one month

[Via. Engadget]

What Day Is It??

"When the day is more important than the hour" is the slogan for DayClocks, a company which makes clocks that indicate the day of the week rather than the time.

- Day Clocks

[Via. The Red Ferret]

Nooka Zot Watch

Doing away with digits or hands, the Nooka Zot Watch uses Dots and a progress type bar to tell the time. Very Cool.

- Nooka Zot Watch

[Via. Josh Spear]

Musical Critters.

Created by grain-brain, critters is a osX application to use genetic algorithms to make digital music.

Our goal at grain-brain is to provide a versatile, easy-to-use tool that anyone can use to compose original music. No musical ability required. Listen to a batch of critters, rate them and create a new generation based on your preferences. Breed them repeatedly, ’steering’ your critters towards your desired destination.

- Grain-brain

[Via. Future Feeder]

All Natural Synthetic Landscape

Diogo Terroso has created a interface where users modify a real time computer generated landscape by manipulating peices of wood, leaves and sand.

- Natural Interface

[Via. Future Feeder]

Round One... Fight!

War of Monstars is a book of postcards by French designer Koadzn. He has invited 80 other illustrators to fight in a graphic battle. Koadzn draws 1/2 the image and then sends it on to the other competitors to create their own combatant. There is a large selection of images on the site

- War of Monstars

[Via. Cool Hunting]

Theres always room for Jello

Jello create one of a kind furniture pieces including really cool tables made of acrylic filled with toys. I want the rockem-sockem-robots table!

Jellio is about combining childhood fun with interior design. It's placing a few memories in your home, in a unique and stylish manner.

- Jello

[Via. Moco Loco]

Art Imitating Life

Manfred Gruebl has created a installation where eight men, dressed in the typical all black garb of gallery goers, stand motionless in the crowd of gallery visitors. Its only once the crowd leaves that its possible to really see the installation.


- Manfred Gruebl

[Via. Moco Loco]

SPINMASTER 2000

The spinmaster 2000 is a universal TV remote which allows you to adjust the volume with the spin of a fishing reel. It also includes fishing sound effects. I hope they have volume control too.

- SPINMASTER 2000

[Via. The Red Ferret]

“a soap bubble just floating over the ground”

Students at the Institute for Lightweight Structures, Munich, have created a glass dome with no frame made of laminated glass and held on a frame with titanium supports designed to expand at the same rate as the glass.

- Glass Menagerie

[Via. Future Feeder]

Project NERO

Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives, or NERO, is a experimental RTS set in a post-apocaliptic world, but thats about as much as it has in common with other RTS games. NERO has two phases of play of which the first is the most innovative. Its a training mode where you use a sandbox map to enhance the AI of your robot soldiers. Once a group of soldiers have begun to be trained the game uses genetic algorythms to 'breed' the most fit units to create even more advanced units, a term the team calls "neuroevolution." These advanced units can then be used to combat against another player in the more traditional RTS style.

- Project NERO: An Experiment in Technology Transfer

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

Minty Fresh

Oral Fixation is a company offering a set of 6 different gourmet mints in 6 flavours. They are sold in groovy specially designed tins and come with a special wax-paper print. They also look suspisciously like a party prescription.

Flavours are
* 7 Deadly Cinnamon (Hot Cinnamon)
* Night Light (Caffeinated Chai Mint)
* Mojito Mint (Lime Mint Cocktail)
* Sugar Free Tibet (Sugarless Wintergreen)
* Classical Peppermint (Strong Peppermint)
* Spare Mint (Spearmint)

- Oral Fixation

[Via. Josh Spear]

Hot Stuff Coming Thru

Sauce company Blair's has created the hottest sauce on the planet. The '16 Million Reserve' sauce is a small bottle containing a whopping 16 million Scoville units of pure Capsicum (the molecule that makes chillis 'hot'), and all this in 1ml of liquid. To compare the heat, a Red Savina, the worlds spiciest pepper measures just 570,000 units and a Jalapeno a puny 2,500. The complany even recommends “protective gloves and eye wear” and some medical experts are concerned that it could kill or hospitalize consumers. It is produced in a limited edition of 999.

- Chilli sauce is real killer

[Via. Boing Boing]

TV that watches you

Technology company Rosum has created a tracking system designed to plug the gaps in current GPS technology. GPS doesnt have the ability to dravel through buildings so Rosum is using television signals which are 10,000 times stronger than GPS signals and uses the technique of triangulation to find the position of a transmitting device.

- Start-up on track to fill gaps in GPS

[Via. engadget]

The Crystal Method

Designer Tokujin Yoshioka has created a addition the the Swarovski Crystal Palace collection called 'Star Dust'. Its a chandelier composed of thousands of individually suspended crystals each of which are used as pixels to display a digital image.

- Tokujin Yoshioka

[Via. Moco Loco]

Delayed

Interesting or Stupid will be updated later in the day, sorry.

Remix it

The History of Sampling is a program which allows you to link up samplers and samplees in a interesting visual exploration of the remix over 50 years.

- The History of Sampling v1.0

[Via. Future Feeder]

Music from beyond the grave.

Zenph studios, one of the worlds most advanced recording technology companies, is attempting to cheat death. They have created a piano playing robot and a new technique to sample recordings of master pianists and transform the recording into a special MIDI format which has 10 times the information as an average MIDI file. The process involves sampling the recording in high quality, and then using custom software to model the combination of pedal, hammer velocity and impact angle, and timing. The playback is handled by a Yamaha Disklavier PRO Grand piano.

The reproduction is so perfect that re-performance isn't the only thing the setup is good for. Great pianists travel to Zenph's studio just to record themselves on the piano, and then have it replayed while sitting in various places around the auditorium. Having never heard yourself play like this, it can be a very moving experience.

- Zenph studios
- Resurrection, Teleportation, And Cloning For Pianists
-

[Via. Gizmodo]

Milan Design Week Gallery

Due to the huge number of cool things that were on show at Milan Design Week I avoided writing much about it. Core77 has a really cool gallery of bits and peices from the show and is well worth checking out.


- Core 77 Milan Design Week Gallery

[Via. Moco Loco]

Pinhead Door

Architect Luis Pons has created the 'Mutables Pinhead Door' (no not from hellraiser) which has a series of panels with metal pins that you can leave an impression on.

- Aponwao design

[Via. Moco Loco]

Dropping Eaves

S. Morgan Friedman & Michael Malice run two sister sites called Overheard in New York and Overheard in the Office. Basically its a collection of overheard conversations from all of the place which people send in.

Woman #1: Ah, look at those beautiful puppies.
Woman #2: Puppies are bullshit.

Tween chick #1: So when we went to Canada, we had deer.
Tween chick #2: Really? Doesn't it have a special name too?
Tween chick #1: Yeah. Verizon, like the phones.

Woman #1: I got my grandmother the hugest card for Mother's Day. She likes things that are really big.
Man: See, and they always told me that size doesn't matter.
Woman #1: It really doesn't matter what it says; she doesn't understand English, anyway.
Woman #2: Do you think giving her the big card makes her understand it better the same way people think that talking louder to people who can't speak English make them understand you?

Dumb teen: Hey, look at this! It says "Train for jobs in beeyotch."
Smarter teen: Fool! That word is biotech. Why you gotta be ignorant all your life?

- Overheard in New York
- Overheard in The Office

[Via. Boing Boing]

Chair-Screen:Community

the Chair-Screen:Community project allows video communication by projecting a life size view of a person onto a chair shaped screen in order to give greater depth and involvment to the process.

- CHAIR-SCREEN : community
- Martin Azua

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

Connect to the Matrix

Mike Sandman is selling various devices which use the 48V DC that is available over the telephone network. The best thing about this is you can use this power for free, even in a blackout. He sells torches, electric razors, fans, radios, universal power supplys and even glow in the dark vibrators "to relax your muscles after dealing with this serious problem" when the power is out.

- TELCO POWERED PRODUCTS

[Via. Boing Boing]

Smile

Mauricio Melo has created a device for projecting emoticons into the real world. It allows you to send a emoticon over the web to someone with a similar device through a physical or web based interface

- INTERACTIVE

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

The Need for Speed

Too Fast For Tracks is a exploration in rapid toy prototyping by Christopher Hall of NY University. It allows you to quickly set up a track by placing infrared beacons around on the floor. As the car approaches these beacons the car will respond in a way dependant on the type of beacon such as turning left or right or doing a u-turn. There are some cool vids on the site

- Too Fast For Tracks

[Via. Boing Boing]

Watermelons

This is gallery of amazingly well carved watermelons. Move over pumpkin carving.


- Carved Watermelons

[Via. Boing Boing]

The Art of Luke Chueh

Luke Chueh has created a large number of emotive paintings which on the surface appear cute until you notice the darker themes within.

- Luke Chueh

[Via. Art Moco]