"Still life paintings have been an artist favorite for plenty of centuries, and if done well they can be truly remarkable. But even if you really love art, looking at bowl after bowl of fruit can get a little boring. Artist Scott Garner got bored of those fruit bowls and decided to do something way more interesting with still life: make it less still. Using a flat-screen motion-sensitive display attached to a rotating mount, Garner turned this simple painting into a truly interactive work Read more [...]

Opel and KISKA have teamed up to design a fresh new urban commuter, the Opel Rak E concept.  This tandem two-seater is designed for light-weight, high efficiency, zero-emission driving on an all-electric drivetrain.  On a single charge, the Rak E can travel 61 miles and will re-charge in just three hours.  It’s not just the green-minded, city-friendly specs that attract us to the Opel Rak E, it’s the futuristic design philosophy which it embodies. Some may recognize the firm KISKA for their Read more [...]

"Solar energy can be considered “green” energy in the sense that it’s readily available and that it doesn’t release pollutants to be generated. Solar cells and batteries aren’t exactly new technology. There are already a lot of released products and gadgets where the sun is their major (and sometimes, only) power source. However, the idea of putting your device under the heat of the sweltering sun isn’t very appealing because it might overheat and end up getting fried if you don’t Read more [...]

"Want to have a pet but none of the responsibilities that go along with it? I just use my imagination, but if you want something more concrete you can get an electronic goldfish in a bowl. You don’t need to feed it, clean its home or worry that your kids will get attached to it and then be horribly depressed when it dies. The only thing you’ll have to worry about is explaining to your kids why you didn’t get a real fish instead. You don’t have to feed the electronic goldfish, but you’ll Read more [...]

"While you can still use Windows 8 without a touchscreen, the whole Metro UI experience isn’t as good navigating with a mouse and keyboard. So it would be nice to have a touchscreen tablet to try it out and get a real feel for Windows 8. Well you can actually build your very own Windows 8 tablet if you like, all you’ll need is a touchscreen and an old laptop that you don’t mind taking apart! Over at instructables some fella has posted about how he went about making his very own tablet so Read more [...]

"Back in the old days, starting a fire in a fireplace was a trick, something that had to be learned. I should know. I live in the tropics. And back in the olden days, man didn’t even know how to start a fire period. Now what do we have? Fireplaces that are Wi-Fi connected and can be controlled with mobile apps. The tech was developed by New Zealand-based fireplace manufacturer Escea and is currently available in their two latest models, the DX1500 and DL850. Both fireplaces can be operated Read more [...]

"While those of you up North are probably freezing or covered in snow, where I live the weather is actually starting to warm up. Of course, there’s still the occasional thunderstorm, but it’s mostly a whole lot of warm and sunny weather. But sometimes, it’s just too warm – almost warm enough to melt the case off of my iPhone. Just kidding. I don’t think I’d still be alive to tell the woeful tale of my smartphone’s case melting off because I’d think I would’ve been fried by Read more [...]

"This is one of the stranger tech products I have seen in a long time. It comes from Scosche and is called cellCONTROL. The idea is that you plug the dongle into the OBD-II port under the dash of any car from 1996 up, and then put an app on your mobile phone. The app and hardware work in conjunction to ensure you can’t use the phone while driving. Scosche says that when the dongle senses the car moving it will block all sorts of things on the phone including texting, email, voice calls, the Read more [...]

Healthcare and elder care is a big concern in Japan, whose population is aging more rapidly than their current human-centric infrastructure is prepared to cope with. Companies like Toyota are hoping that robots will be able to pick up a little bit of the slack, and this week they've introduced four new robotic systems designed to help keep people healthy and independent as long as possible. The first couple systems are designed to provide single-leg walking assistance to people who have Read more [...]

Photo: Tim Robberts/Getty Images 18 January 2012—Arman Ahnood, a researcher at the London Centre for Nanotechnology at University College London is working toward a simple goal: "We can have a mobile phone [that] requires charging less often," Ahnood told a November session at the Materials Research Society’s fall meeting in Boston. It might soon be possible to go a week or more without charging a smartphone. And eventually, we might see a phone that never needs to be plugged in. Illustration: Read more [...]

  I hate headphones. If they’re intended to deliver hiqh quality audio, like the noise-canceling ones I wear when flying, they squeeze my ears unpleasantly; if they're light and comfortable, they slip around. I hate earbuds even more. I’ve tried just about every type you can imagine, including custom,  and none of them feel at all comfortable. And I hate that my youngest son seems to have an earbud in just about every waking minute—I watch his volume controls, but still worry Read more [...]

We have previously posted about Google's Self-Driving Car and how it made it to the street, and now here's another sample of a french self-driving car that takes it to the road! Autonomous vehicle projects are picking up speed -- literally. Leading the pack is Google's famed robot car, which has logged thousands of kilometers driving on public roads. But there are projects also in Italy, Germany, the U.K., and reportedly China. Now we've learned about an interesting self-driving vehicle Read more [...]