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Monday, 26 October 2015

TASTY TECH EYE CANDY OF THE WEEK LXVIII


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Tasty Tech Eye Candy Of The Week (Oct. 25)
By Tracy Staedter,
Discovery News, 25 October 2015.

Self-lacing shoes, fingerprints that glow in the dark, and bulletproof bricks show up in this weeks Tasty Tech Eye Candy gallery.

1. ‘Back To The Future’ Shoes

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In honour of October 21, 2015, "Back to the Future" day - the day that movie heroes Marty McFly and Doc Brown programmed into their time-traveling DeLorean - Nike gave a pair of power-lacing Air Mags to Michael J. Fox, who played McFly. The company promises mass-produced Air Mags for the rest of us sometime in spring, 2016.

2. Modular Transportation

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If you rely on public transportation to get to work, you know it needs improvement. Italian industrial designer Tommaso Gecchelin thinks that future modes of public transportation should combine the best attributes of current methods. To that end, he founded Next Future Transportation, which proposes self-driving modules that each hold up to 10 people.

The modules can link together to form a bus and then break off to go in separate directions. When the modules are connected, passengers can move about to stretch their legs or make their way into a module scheduled to break off the main path and head in a different direction.

3. Corbusier Car

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The 50th anniversary of the death of French architect Le Corbusier is this year and French automotive manufacturer, Renault, is commemorating the man with a concept car. The Coupé Corbusier features the geometric shapes and rounded corners that reflect Corbusier's signature style. The car will be part of an exhibition on French automobile design and manufacturing at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux from October 22, 2015 to March 20, 2016.

4. Toy Robots

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Dash Robotics, which successfully crowd-funded a toy robot a couple of years ago, has a new one on Kickstarter called Kamigami. The fast little robot is one kids not only build themselves from but can program and control with an app.

5. Glowing Fingerprints

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Fingerprints are still dusted for at crime scenes, but sometimes the dust doesn't stick well enough. At Australia's CSIRO materials scientist Kang Liang developed a liquid that binds to the residue left behind by touch, including proteins, peptides, fatty acids and salts. In just 30 seconds, the liquid creates an ultrathin coating that glows under UV light.

6. Urban Forest

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Designer Noam Son has turn discarded bottles into a beautiful urban forest. His TetraForest concept is a wall made from recycled bottles that support fast-growing vines and other plants to create a vertical garden where greenery might be lacking.

7. Bulletproof Bricks

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The machine here, called a compressed earth brick press, allows anyone to make bricks that are bulletproof, fireproof and soundproof. A new Kickstarter campaign wants to raise money to make designs for this machine available to anyone through Open Source Ecology.

8. Bloom

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The winner of the annual industrial design contest sponsored by Electrolux each year was Bloom, by Jordan Lee Martin. Bloom is a modular appliance that heats water and uses the steam to cook vegetables and also sterilize dishes.

9. Exo Skateboard

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The EXO is a personal electric skateboard that folds up for compact storage. Two 150W motors located in each wheel power the board, which the rider accelerates, brakes and steers with her feet.

10. Hope of Ocean

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One winner in the Best of Best category of the annual Red Dot Award was a lifesaving buoy called Hope of Ocean. It consists of a string of buoys attached to the side of a ship that activates and inflates when it hits the water. The buoys can be connected to form a ring around the victims until help arrives.

Top image: NEXT modular self-driving vehicles. Credit: Next Future Transportation.

[Source: Discovery News. Edited. Top image and some links added.]

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