TASTY TECH EYE CANDY OF THE WEEK XXVI

Tasty Tech Eye Candy Of The Week (Sept 28)
By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News, 27 September 2014.

This week we feature glowing, gooey, flying tech.

1. Ambilight TV

The "glow" comes from LEDs made by Philips that are illuminating skiers in a movie due out this October to promote the company's new Ambilight TV. The TV casts different hues of light onto the wall behind to create a more immersive experience. The ski movie, called Afterglow, was made by Sweetgrass Productions and recently won Best Cinematography and Best Short Movie at the International Freeski Film Festival in Montreal.

2. Facebook's Internet Drone

Facebook wants to deliver Internet to the two-thirds of the world that don't have it. This week, Yael Maguire, the engineering director at Facebook‘s Connectivity Lab, told Mashable's CEO Pete Cashmore, that the planes would be “roughly the size of a commercial aircraft, like a 747.” No no one really imaged the drones would be that big, although they'll be much lighter than a 747. Maguire also said that the drones would fly between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, where weather and other air traffic won't be a problem and they'll run for months or longer solely on solar power.

3. Liquid Battery

Researchers at MIT are working on a battery that has two layers of molten metal, separated by a layer of molten salt. Such a battery could work better than conventional batteries at storing large amounts of energy harvested by wind turbines and solar power plants. Storing energy means less of it goes to waste because more of that energy can be used when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

4. Heart-Shaped Solar

The people of New Caledonia are building a beautiful solar farm in the shape of a heart. The solar panels will produce 2 megawatts of electricity and deliver it to 750 homes on the Pacific island.

5. Flying Lampshades

Drones can also be works of art. A collaboration between Cirque de Soleil, Swiss university ETH Zürich and Verity Studios has resulted in a magical short film called Sparked. Here, UAV quadcopters bring colourful lamp shades to life.

6. Monolitt

An art project shows the sticky side of emotional tweets. Two artists in Norway, Syver Lauritzsen and Eirik Haugen Murvoll, created a sculpture called Monolitt and linked it electronically with Twitter. Every time nearby phone users tweeted emotions, goo oozed from the top. Different colours were assigned to different emotions. For example, black showed annoyance and pink revealed happiness. Watch the results here.

7. LED Hammock

LEDs come into play again. This time it's with a temporary art installation called Swing Time, located in Boston, between the Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre and D Street. Here, 20 softly glowing hammocks invite people to recline and sway. The more they swing, the brighter the hammocks glow.

8. Smart Light Bulb

Alba light bulbs from Stack are smart enough to adjust when sunlight is adequate to light an interior and also learn and adapt to people's habits. The bulbs have sensors that detect motion, occupancy and ambient light. At US$150 for two bulbs, they're expensive, but they use 60 to 80 percent less energy than a regular LED bulb.

9. Sunflower-Shaped Solar Panels

First a heart-shaped solar energy farm and now concentrated solar dishes in the shape of sunflowers. Each dish, developed by IBM, not only converts 80 percent of the sunlight harvested into useful energy, it's also capable of filtering water to produce 30 to 40 litres of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day.

10. Robot Octopus Swims Faster Than Ever

We love robots that mimic living creatures. This one from the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas in Greece, takes after an octopus, right down to the web between its tentacles, which helps it swim fast. While studying the robot in the ocean, the scientists noted that little fish followed it around as if it were a normal part of the scenery. That suggests it could one day be a nonintrusive tool for observing ocean life.

[Source: Discovery News. Edited. Some links added.]