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COOLLIGHT Recently, designboom had a "house party" design competition, and after looking at 3070 designers from 89 different countries, they decided on the top 3. Wen-Haur Yen from Taiwan took first place and in his own words describes his invention: COOLIGHT combines a handle and a steel cylinder filled with cryogen. When you need an ice beer, just put the COOLIGHT into the beer bottle. It would help you to cool down the beer as soon as possible. On the top of the handle , there is a cork made by rubber would fix the hole device and the bottle close together, and you can drink the beer through the hole on the top of it. COOLIGHT has another convenient device on its body, LED. LED would display the information of time and temperature in order that you could know what time it is or what the temperature of the beer.I'm sold. I just love the ideas of all these different colored lights dancing around at my next house party. Unfortunately, Wen-Haur Yen 's design is not yet in production; but we'll be the first to alert you when it is.
VERY COOL:
Brinker hopes to bring leak-fixing artificial platelets to water pipes Posted Dec 21st 2006 10:28PM by Donald Melanson Filed under: Misc. Gadgets U.K.-based Brinker Technology has been fine tuning its artificial platelet technology for oil pipelines for a while now, but it looks like the company's now looking to bring the leak-sealing solution to a water pipe near your. Unfortunately, the technology doesn't involve nanobots crawling though the pipes and fixing leaks with their pint-sized blowtorches (yet), with Brinker's solution instead relying on "squishy blobs" that flow through the pipes and attach themselves to leaks, forming a temporary "scab" that'll keep the fluids contained until the pipe can be permanently fixed. While the company apparently thinks that the blobs will be just at home in water pipes as they are in oil pipelines, they're currently stuck waiting for the necessary approval to put 'em to the test.
Researchers develop backpack to ease heavy loads Posted Dec 21st 2006 7:07PM by Donald Melanson Filed under: Wearables Those crack backpack researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are at it again, New Scientist reports, following up their power-generating backpack with one designed simply to lighten the load on the wearer, apparently re-purposing some of the same technology from their earlier model. As with that backpack, the person wears a metal frame with the cargo suspend from it, in this case using elastic cords instead of springs. But instead of generating power from the resulting bouncing motion, the backpack simply takes advantage of the natural action to keep the load at a constant height as the person walks, supposedly reducing the energy required to carry a heavy load by up to 40%. Unlike wth the power-generating backpack, however (which was developed at the behest of the US Office of Naval Research) Larry Rome, the creator of this new bouncy backpack, looks to be thinking commercially from the get go, founding the "Lighting Packs" company with the full intention of taking 'em to market.
University of Tokyo develops expansive plastic power sheet Posted Dec 21st 2006 1:52PM by Darren Murph Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless It seems this whole "wireless power" phenomenon is just getting warmed up, as we've got yet another creation that promises to rejuvenate our gadgetry without forcing us to hunt for those easy-to-misplace AC adapters. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have demonstrated a prototype which consists of "plastic and flexible electronics" that can wirelessly provide power to "any device that touches its surface." Of course, gadgets would need to be equipped with "a coil and special power-harvesting circuitry" to receive the energy, but it still beats lugging around half a dozen adapters on every outing. While this flexible sheet still relies on electromagnetic induction like the one's that have come before it, this particular rendition features a dual-sheet design that allows it to intelligently divert power to objects touching any part of the sheet, while not wasting energy on parts not being occupied. Takao Someya, professor of engineering, estimates that there's still "about five years" before the sheet will overcome the current "reliability issues," but hopes to one day "power flat-screen panels without ever needing an electrical outlet."
AutoDesk gives Students free software Posted Dec 22nd 2006 8:00AM by Ryan Carter Filed under: Design, Internet, Utilities, Productivity, Commercial, Freeware The makers of AutoCAD are giving away their software to students. If you have a university-issued email address, you can register with the AutoDesk student site, which gains you access to free downloads of AutoDesk software, as a student. Also on the site is a job search to help students find good gigs. When I tried to sign up with my university email, my school was apparently not a big enough school to be listed in their database, so they will get back to me within 3 business days. Fine, but my school is a fairly well recognized one. Anyway, the rumor is that there are many titles you can get as a student from the site as well as self-paced tutorials. Sounds good, if I could only get into it. Ho-hum.
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