First responders, pay attention, because you might be able to save some MORE lives with what I’m about to hit you with next.  Some engineer managed to take ten dollars worth of electronic parts–available off the shelf pretty much anywhere–and modify his mobile phone into a cell phone that does double duty as a microscope.

This is no ordinary engineer; he’s an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, and he’s actually started up his own company to market the cell phone microscopes.

Not that this is just great for the medical and scientific communities–now any putz can check a blood sample for signs of tuberculosis, malaria, or anemia!

It’s conceivable that, from here, the phone would then be able to remotely send the images back to actual medical professionals for diagnosis before the patient was even put on an ambulance.

No idea when they’ll be available, but they really should do a whole lot of good when they’re done.

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Several months back, we introduced you to the Philips Tapster headphones.  But there’s some bad news here for everyone who was looking forward to them–there’s now pretty much no way they’ll hit store shelves.

The folks out at Crave on Cnet’s Asian subsidiary believe they know why, too–they don’t work.

It’s a strange theme these days, gadgets that don’t work, but the beat goes on (or rather doesn’t) from these headphones.  They were supposed to be a major innovation in playback and volume controls, which are supposedly controlled by tapping and swiping the ear modules.  Under normal circumstances, this would dislodge them from the ear, but with these, they didn’t dislodge.  Something of an accomplishment there, but the problem was, the purported tap-and-swipe system of volume and playback control never materialized.

So a little bit of vaporware for you, folks…and that’s always at least a little sad.

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Oh Japan…have I told you lately that I love you?

You’ve given me some of the coolest, strangest, and most downright preposterous topics to write about of all time.  And today, you’ve given me a topic that’s ALL THREE.  You’ve given me a topic that proves conclusively that you’re going insane and yet you’re also brilliant.

You’ve given me the Tele Scouter, a headset-mounted translation device.

Yes, it’s actually called the Scouter.  For those of you now about to quote Dragon Ball Z, indeed, his power level is over nine thousand.

Anyway, the Tele Scouter uses an imaging device to project images directly onto your retina, and the images in question are fields of text, generated by voice recognition and translation programs that literally show you what someone else is saying, in your language, before your very eyes.

And it’s not just translation, either–there’s talk these can be used in sales pitches to get instant access to customers’ shopping records via face recognition technology.  Now, I don’t know what the long term ramifications are of getting all that light shined directly onto your retina, but the thought of an instant translator IS pretty cool.  The price is pretty salty, as you might expect–about eighty three thousand dollars for a set of thirty, plus the cost of any custom software to go with it.

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It might shock you to know there’s a Cyberdyne corporation in Japan.

But what only might shock you is to discover that they’re into robotics…but the helpful kind.  For instance, they’re working on a robotic suit that functions almost like an exoskeleton, augmenting weak limbs with outside mechanical help.  The really interesting part?  Since Japan’s population is getting older at a greater rate than the United States’, what I’m describing here could well become a “shape of things to come” sort of article for baby boomers right here.

The Japanese company is actually putting together other robots, too–not just walkers. How about a robot pet called the Paro?  It looks like a seal but is covered in fur, designed to offer the same benefits of a pet but without the difficulty and expense.  Holding and petting it causes sensors to form a “reaction”, while audio sensors allow it to “respond” to its name and neglecting it causes it to cry out, thus simulating a live pet.

One of the lead developers described it thusly:

“You forget it’s a robot. Some people think it’s almost a baby, and that’s a good thing, as it elicits a few little memories” from residents’ younger days.”

There are even more that are currently in development–robot housekeepers and walking PCs that surf the web at your voice command–so the future looks like it’s full of robots…at least for the Japanese.

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In a day and age where more and more people have more and more gadgets that need constant power, there needs to be more ways to offset all of this energy use.  A new concept has made its way to the blogs in the form of Power Saving Outlets.

Simple enough, this design only requires you to rotate the outlet using the plug as you would turn a key in order to turn on the power.  While the idea is good enough, I can’t see this being all that safe for children, and most of the time your powerstrip is plugged into an outlet that isn’t all that easy to get to, making using this concept not so convenient.

What do you think?

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And there’s yet another competitor throwing its hat into the steadily crowding e-reader arena (we get any more hats in there and we could open up a millenery shop!), but it’s not exactly from a source you’d expect.

Creative Labs is taking a run at the market, with a unit they’re calling the Zii MediaBook.  Now, this actually has some pretty choice add-ons with it, like a touchscreen, text to speech functionality (it will READ you a book) and an SD slot, plus, it will be “Internet-enabled”, though no one’s sure if it means 3G or WiFi.

Also on the unsure list are the Zii’s release date, its price structure and any content delivery methods, (pictures of the device were also in short supply) though word is Creative’s in talks with several different providers, and not just for books, either.  This could be one to watch…or Creative Labs could think better of it and stay out altogether.

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Although it might be a bit far from reality the Murakami Chair is one slick design that has my head nodding with agreement.  The attached OLED lamp, which requires less energy than a standard light bulb to operate, draws energy from an on board battery pack that is powered by the kinetic energy found in the chair’s rocking movement.  Oh, and that lamp shade you see; that’s the actual lamp.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any production timeline, but we’re hopeful.

[via Inhabitat]

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Today we’re talking about the new gotta-have-it watch, a watch that has all the performance of an MP3 player, but also a cool blue, almost holographic, face that screams “gadget buff”.

The Tick Tack Music Watch is like a wearable MP3, complete with a headphone jack and a set of tiny earbuds included.  It’s still in the concept stages right now, so you can call this a bit of a leak, and so there’s also not a lot of details about storage capacity or battery life or even price data just yet.

While I like the thought of an MP3 player in a wristwatch, I really have to wonder if this will go over that big when put alongside the likes of an iPod.  IPods really aren’t that much bigger than a wristwatch, and they probably hold more songs and deliver better quality audio, too.  But time will tell, as it so often does, so stay tuned.

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Gardening and horticulture are fastly becoming new hobbies for thousands of Americans embracing this powerful green movement and many of them may be very interested in what Olga Kalugina has created.

The FlowerPot Eye is a sort of X-Ray flowerpot that not only shows the roots of your plant but vital information such as:  Light levels, humidity, and the current soil conditions of the plant.

Very futuristic looking indeed and I’m sure these would sell great here in Portland.

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Cyborg babies.

Okay, so I’m overreacting.  But researchers at the University of Delaware have designed the UD1, a robot that will allow disabled babies to navigate their environment.  These robots are actually like a power chair that can be operated by a joystick.  You may not have thought that babies could operate joysticks, and you wouldn’t be alone.  In fact, it was commonly thought that a baby couldn’t operate a joystick until age three, but as it turns out, even a six month old baby can figure out how a joystick can make a toy that is far away move closer.

There have been concerns about babies outgrowing the power chair, and thus making them prohibitively expensive for any family to get for their disabled infant, but U of D researchers are also looking at “kits” for retrofitting the device to get them to better fit the babies.  They also want to drop the overall size of the chair to make it more mobile inside buildings.

It’s a pretty awesome concept, no matter how you slice it, and Baby Terminator just might make a good movie.  I wonder if Sam Worthington would come back….

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How much storage does it take to store a human life?

That’s a dangerous and highly subjective question, but according to Gordon Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, the average human being’s life requires three hundred and fifty gigabytes to adequately store it all.

On the surface, that seems low.  Given that the average two hour DVD runs about four gig, on a strict conversion scale, three hundred and fifty gigabytes would represent about eighty eight, give or take a few minutes, hours of video.  A human life is vastly more than eighty eight hours of video.  But then, we really don’t know what kind of compression or resolution we’re talking about–after all, my last dream involving sideswiping a Rolls-Royce that had Caterpillar-style tank treads instead of tires really wasn’t anywhere near the resolution of a regular DVD, and it absolutely didn’t have anything on Blu-ray.

But what this means is even more interesting.  Or exciting, or terrifying depending on how you choose to look at it.  Any schmuck off the street with a part-time job can afford a terabyte hard drive.  That’s effectively enough to store his entire life and consciousness almost three times over, and four times if he pops for the one and a half terabyte model.

So the question remains…how long before someone tries the upload?

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Assuming that you live somewhere where they won’t pay you good money to bring in your aluminum cans, you might be more interested in recycling them.  As such, you know that it’s a good idea to crush said cans first to make them easier to transport, and to make it so you don’t have to haul them in near as often because you can get more in a trash bag.  Enter the Zertronix Automatic Aluminum Can Crusher, a spetacular prototype of a device that runs on a rechargable battery and crushes cans.

We’ve all see can crushers before, but precious few of them that are both automated and designed specifically to be included in a household’s decor.  We’ve seen some thyroidal monsters before and they do the job, but you wouldn’t want one in your kitchen.  The Zertronix model, however, is a simple, sedate black job and looks good with most any decor.

And word is this little fella can go the distance in terms of battery life too, surprising since it’s a can crusher.  It’s still apparently in the design phase, so call this a concept for now.  But I don’t know if it’ll ever replace the good old fashioned stomp or even more old fashioned forehead crush or still more old fashioned two flat rocks.

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Over in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they’re talking about a gadget that may not lower any golfers’ handicaps, but it’ll help keep golfers in their etiquette lines.  It’s called the shoe cleaning sand rake, and if you wind up in a sand trap, well, this is just the gadget you need.

If you’ve ever golfed before (and I have, once– my score required NASA-surplus computers to successfully determine and they’re still debating whether or not to actually call it a “Frooglepoopillion”) then you know that getting your ball out of a sand trap is a mess.  Plus, you then have to try and rake the sand trap smooth once again, and that may or may not require you to get your feet back in there again, and that means that observing golf course etiquette will likely damage the course in its entirety by causing the golfer to track sand onto the fairway or possibly even the green.

The shoe cleaning sand rake, however, solves this problem by not only being a sand rake, but also offering several brush bristle points for the golfer to scrape clean his shoes before leaving the edge of the sand trap.

Golfers everywhere should love this idea to death.

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Here’s an interesting concept: the Galileo Wheel.  What appears to be an ordinary round wheel can transform into a tank track in a matter of seconds. The practical applications seem to be questionable, but these seems to be addressed in the below video.

Video after the ‘leap’

[via Craziestgadgets]

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Out at the University of Toronto, a whole lot of men all over the world are about to start cheering like no tomorrow–seems they’ve built a portable device that will accurately diagnose prostate cancer from a urine sample in less time than it takes to order and receive a pizza on a Saturday night.

That’s right–just thirty minutes and this Blackberry sized device will be able to tell you if you’ve got cancer.  No need for biopsies, no need for waiting days on end for lab results, no need for gigantic systems like you see above, just a combination of nanotechnology and biomarker readers working together to start simple, painless, noncomplex diagnostic processes for just about every human condition on earth.

Or that’s the goal, anyway–the device is in the engineering stage and should be ready for use within the next three years.  A fantastic goal, and I hope they make it.

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Just watch the video.  This thing is crazy looking.  Obviously taking some tech cues from Segway I would love to see a fat person riding one of these.

The Honda U3-X Electric Unicycle Concept uses internal balance control to ensure that the device stays upright and tops out at a speed of 3.7 Mph.  I really want to try one.  According to Honda president Takanobu It the concept has been designed with the elderly in mind to help them get around easier without all the bulk of present day scooters and such.

No word if this product will see production but I’m hoping it never sees action in a Mall Cop movie sequel.  Wait, or do I?  Last time I noticed Kevin James was fat right?

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It’s really, REALLY, hard to find a camera any more without an LCD display, so I was definitely shocked to find the OneShot camera, a camera so tiny that it’s about the same size, length and width, as your thumb.

There is no LCD display here.  No slots for flash memory, either.  But it apparently somehow manages to not only come with face detection, but also never need batteries.  This camera actually recharges like some of those flashlights you see–all you have to do is shake it.

The OneShot seems to not only run on a dynamo but also offers no expansions in memory.  This may be one of the weirdest cameras I’ve ever SEEN.

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This may well qualify as the strangest radio I’ve ever seen.  Not only doesn’t it have any outward controls or indicators, it also rolls around freely on a tabletop.

That’s because the very things that make it roll also change the channel and the volume.  The volume and channel knobs are built into the underside of the radio.

While it definitely gets some serious points for being compact enough for anybody, I can’t see people readily using this thing.  The biggest problem I can see is that there’s no way to tell what channel you’re on short of hearing it on the radio.  There’s no indicator to tell you what channel you’ve tuned in.  That and let’s face it, radio isn’t as big as it once was unless a clock or a car is involved.  That’s not the case all the time, but in all honesty, that’s the case most of the time.

So this is a very interesting idea, but sadly, an interesting idea alone can’t make a good product.

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Here’s an interesting concept from one of Japan’s leading telecommunication providers, the Polaris.  KDDI, in corporation with Japan’s Flower Robotics, have built what very well might be Roomba meets cell phone meets Loopt…and then some.  The phone itself doesn’t sound all that mind bendingly crazy, but toss it into the docking system, which includes a set of speakers, and the on board motor will fire up the wheels and drive it to its closest power source once its juice runs low.

Using what is probably a combination of GPS and NFC (near field communication) the phone tracks where you went and what you bought.  Connect it to a near by TV or monitor and the data can be displayed in a somewhat digestible format.

They plan on having a commercial version of the Polaris by sometime next year.

[via Popsci]

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You know, I can’t imagine how anyone might have thought this was a good idea, but in the early stages of design is a product that brings together a clothespin with an LED light.  Dubbed the Lighting Pin, it was never meant to be used for hanging clothes, but rather as a simple, go-anywhere book or task light.  It’s just a clip on light, much like the kind you see in garages  only much smaller and simpler to use.

It’s actually fairly powerful–you can see above that, when used with a bit of paper, you can actually get a tiny lamp out of the thing.  And I believe that, under other circumstances, this might have been a great idea, but no.  Not this one, not as long as flashlights are still cheap and plentiful.

But someday, this may be exactly what we need, even if we don’t know it yet.

Oh, and if you follow those links, try the via first–it’ll actually warn you that the read is a processor-hungry Flash-intensive monster, so you may not want to hit that one unless you’ve cleared some memory first.

[via WIRED]

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