May 06, 2008
IRON MAN Spawns Mainstream Exo-Suit Love
Now that the IRON MAN movie has taught non-geeks why exo-suit/powered aromor is so fucking cool, the world begins to learn the technology already exisits. It has existed for some time now.
That's my favorite of the 5 mentioned in this click-fest of an article.
(via twitter)
Posted by Groonk at 01:22 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Only in Japan, Robots, The Future
April 30, 2008
Tomorrow's Concerns: Interface and Identity
Perceptive Pixel and Identity 2.0. Both have things to show you.
WATCH: Perceptive Pixel & Identity 2.0
PP wants to give you the future in GUI interface.
Identity 2.0 wants to manage who you are in this new Internet Age.
(via 7d, random finds)
Posted by Groonk at 11:49 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of The Future
Rocket Racing: The Future is Finally Fucking Here!
Is it still NASCAR if it takes place off the ground?
(via rocket racing league, digg)
Posted by Groonk at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of The Future
April 14, 2008
New Nike Olympic Shoe, Strangely Attractive
Posted by Groonk at 07:56 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Sport, The Future
February 19, 2008
Verva Vie Sports Gauntlet: Must Have. Give it to Me Now!
Du Nguyen Tran read my mind. He created something pretty darn neat.
The Vie (pronounced vee, French word for life) is a sports glove, of which the main objective is to incorporate today’s technologies to enhance human performance and safety via a simple human-machine-interface. The Vie is aimed towards those who keep active by running/walking but its features can easily be spread to other sports. The Vie is a typical health monitor that also uses GPS technology to do such things as map jog routes, rendezvous with friends, send out emergency distress beacons and more. To keep the sport natural, the input is made via a unique, single hand control interface.[...]
Jogging and other sports, like bike riding, usually require the freedom of both hands. The interface needed not only to be simple but flawlessly controllable with one hand. Influenced by sign language and communication through hand gestures, the Vie uses strain gauges embedded in the glove to receive input commands from each individual finger. Each finger corresponds to an icon on the E-ink screen and the act of tapping is the selection. The result looks like you are typing or playing the piano, in mid air. Miniature motors then also provide tactile feedback, to feel that you have actually pressed a key, as well as OLEDs to give visual feedback. This can be personalized by programming your own shortcuts through menus made up of a combination of few finger strokes. An interaction with a device that is so intuitive and natural, you will know it like the back of your hand.
(via grinding.be)
Posted by Groonk at 08:31 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Research, Technology, The Future
February 16, 2008
One Day, Your Jacket will Power your iPod / Pacemaker / Pocket Vibrator
Scientists in the US have developed novel brush-like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement.
Writing in the journal Nature, the team say that the materials could also be used in tents or other structures to harness wind energy.
"Our goal is to make self-powered nanotechnology," Professor Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the authors of the paper told BBC News.
(via bbc news)
Posted by Groonk at 08:23 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, The Future, USA
The Rinspeed sQuba Makes James Bond Blush with Anticipation
Things you should know:
- The car goes under at 2:30.
- It is not fake as far as I know.
- I needs me one...NOW.
(via geekologie, submerged You tube)
Posted by Groonk at 07:47 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, The Future, Video
February 13, 2008
Guitar + Tesla Coil = 250,000 volts of Distortion / Win
(via supercharged You Tube, scopeboy, eggradio.com )
Posted by Groonk at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Music, Tesla, The Future
February 07, 2008
Rewritable Holograms in Our Homes, in Our Lifetimes
A material that can create rewritable holograms could bring 3D displays to the home, or provide dramatically high-capacity computer memory, US researchers say.A layer of the material can record a holographic image, erase it, and replace it with another in a few minutes. While technological challenges remain, the researchers are confident they can advance the technology to refresh pictures at video frame rates of around 30 times a second.
(via grinding.be, newscientisttech)
Posted by Groonk at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of The Future
February 02, 2008
Nikola Tesla. He Saw Machines Swirling in His Head
The Groonk Nation admires most things Tesla, mad genius that he was. Others are talking about him now. Others are writing books with detailed history.
Studio 360 is podcasting about it all.
(via coilhouse)
Posted by Groonk at 08:39 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Podcast, Streamed Goodness, Technology, Tesla, The Future
January 31, 2008
E-Bracelet. Slap Books, Photos, Videos on Your Wrist. Sweet.
My love for e-paper has not dimished.
(via geekologie, sparking tech)
Posted by Groonk at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of E-Paper, The Future
Russia's Latest Delicacy: St. Petersburg Under Glass
It's not quite a glass-domed city yet, but St. Petersberg has taken the first steps towards that goal. British architecture firm Wilkinson Eyre, best known for the design of the Gateshead Millenium Bridge in Newcastle, unveiled a bold new plan to revamp the old market of St. Petersburg, Russia by putting it entirely under glass. Over the next few years they'll be putting a giant sheet of reinforced glass over Aprasin Dvor, a shopping district. A matching glass bridge will span the river.
(via i09, ponzu
Posted by Groonk at 08:46 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of The Future
January 29, 2008
Ambient Intelligence (AmI): Our Houses will Talk to Us. Tell Us Useful Things.
Things I look forward to seeing.
Ambient Intelligence is a key component in the next epoch of mobile and wireless communication systems.[...]
However, the enabling technology that provides systems with information to allow for Ambient Intelligence has been neglected and currently consists of many independent modes of input, mainly relying on active user interactions or specialised sensor systems gathering information.
Tangible results of the SENSEI project are: 1) A highly scalable architectural framework with corresponding protocol solutions that enable easy plug and play integration of a large number of globally distributed WS&AN into a global system -providing support for network and information management, security, privacy and trust and accounting. 2) An open service interface and corresponding semantic specification to unify the access to context information and actuation services offered by the system for services and applications. 3) Efficient WS&AN island solutions consisting of a set of cross-optimised and energy aware protocol stacks including an ultra low power multi-mode transceiver targeting 5nJ/bit. 4) Pan European test platform, enabling large scale experimental evaluation of the SENSEI results and execution of field trials - providing a tool for long term evaluation of WS&AN integration into the Future Internet.
(via grinding.be)
Posted by Groonk at 01:43 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, The Future
January 26, 2008
Self-Assembling Bionic Eyes are Here, Finally
Sporting circuits a few nanometers thick and grain-of-sand-sized light-emitting diodes, the lenses have full Count Zero potential. They're also the product of some ingenious hackery: since contact lenses are delicate and circuit manufacture is hot and toxic, the researchers designed each component to attach itself only to certain other components. Their powder of circuits and diodes literally self-assembled into gadgetry when sprinkled onto the lens plastic.
So how long do geeks have to wait? According to the press release, a stripped-down display with just a few operational pixels could be available "fairly quickly." More complicated lenses will take longer, but for good reason: they'll be wireless-enabled and powered by a combination of radio waves and solar energy.
Oh, crap. DOKTOR SLEEPLESS just came to mind. Newsfeds, TV, and porn fed straight to my lenses are dancing about my dreams. I'm pretty sure it's not the first ficitonal use of that idea. It's the most recent on my mind.
(via wired)
Posted by Groonk at 08:22 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, The Future
January 23, 2008
Hello, Distant Galaxy? It's Me, Groonk.
What they found, however, was totally unexpected: methanimine and hydrogen cyanide.The discovery, which was unveiled at the American Astronomical Society conference in Austin, Texas, last week, is significant because methanimine and hydrogen cyanide are building blocks for amino acids, the foundation of life.
(via discovery channel)
Posted by Groonk at 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Science, The Future
Space Ship Two: Taking Rich Bastards Into Space by 2009
SpaceShipTwo is what the passengers will actually ride in, and White Knight Two is the launch vehicle that carries it to a high altitude before releasing the rocket. (It takes less energy to launch from 50,000 feet than from the ground). The design is a little bit different than the initial SpaceShipOne and White Knight One. Both are all carbon-composite vehicles, and are designed with an open architecture so that in the future other companies can use it as a foundation to create space vehicles for unmanned missions. White Knight Two is a double-hulled launch plane with four engines from Pratt & Whitney.
Intial flight price: $200,000. To which Branson says:
Within five years of launching, we hope that price will come down dramatically. We accept that $200,00, even though the dollar is not worth much anymore, is still too expensive for the majority of people.
Techcrunch provides a brief history lesson, "a trans-Atlantic flight in 1939 between New York and England cost the equivalent of $47,000 in today’s dollars. That was one-way and coach."
So the future of space travel is heading in a direction anyways.
(via buzzfeed, techcrunch )
Posted by Groonk at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, The Future
January 19, 2008
In the Future, Hot Robot Luvin' will be Normal
Weeks ago, Warren Ellis posted a much blog reacted(53 as of this posting) Three Laws of Robotics. The special thing about these laws are they came from his mind...so...you know, be sitting down when you read them. I almost cracked a rib from laughing.
A few days ago the Colbert Report interviewed David Levy who wrote an entire book on the subject called Love + Sex with Robots. Levy did this without a scent of parody or snarkiness or satire. In fact, he proclaimed sex with robots will occur within 5 years. Love will take another half century.
The one thing Levy didn't touch on is that no one will expect them to be as smart as they are sexy.
A dangerous mistake to make.
(via warrenellis.com and my writerless TV)
Posted by Groonk at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Robots, Sex, The Future
December 06, 2007
Scivee: Scientists very Own You Tube
SciVee is doing this thing where they preload the video without you asking. I dropped that sucker under the cut cause that's annoying as all hell.
Not half as entertaining* as Moyashimon but then again what is?
(via warrenellis)
(*Scivee is not meant ot be entertaining. It's meant to share information. But who says hard fact can't be interesting too? 21st century Bill Nye/Mr Wizard, 'Where the hell are you??')
Here's a Microbeworld video on episode 11.
Posted by Groonk at 06:55 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Anime, Science, The Future
Son of a Bitch. Look What they Dug Up.
It's the damnedest thing.
I didn't know there was a Max Headroom pirating incident in 1987.
Sumbitch.
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Research, Tee Vee, The Future
November 26, 2007
The Future is Here and it Brought Giant Spinning Blades
Giant Spinning Blades!
Magnetic levitation is an extremely efficient system for wind energy. Here's how it works: the vertically oriented blades of the wind turbine are suspended in the air above the base of the machine, replacing the need for ball bearings. The turbine uses "full-permanent" magnets, not electromagnets — therefore, it does not require electricty to run. The full-permanent magnet system employs neodymium (”rare earth”) magnets and there is no energy loss through friction. This also helps reduce maintenance costs and increases the lifespan of the generator.Maglev wind turbines have several advantages over conventional wind turbines. For instance, they’re able to use winds with starting speeds as low as 1.5 meters per second (m/s). Also, they could operate in winds exceeding 40 m/s. Currently, the largest conventional wind turbines in the world produce only five megawatts of power. However, one large maglev wind turbine could generate one gigawatt of clean power, enough to supply energy to 750,000 homes. It would also increase generation capacity by 20% over conventional wind turbines and decrease operational costs by 50%. If that isn’t enough, the maglev wind turbines will be operational for about 500 years!
Posted by Groonk at 10:14 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, The Future
