Nifty New Invention: GolfBoard

• When people want to criticize electric cars, they often refer to them as glorified golf carts. Why? Because golf carts (with a few exceptions) are known for being slow and boring. That being the case, what options are there for hip, young golfers who are too cool for carts? Well, they might soon be able to carve across the greens on an electric GolfBoard.

[Now my 14 year-old nephew knows what he wants for Christmas!]

To learn more (and watch a video), go here.  

Nifty New Invention: Aspirin-Storing Wrist Band

• Having a heart attack? Chewing an aspirin could save your life. 
• The question is: If you or your loved one had a heart attack right this moment, would you be prepared? Do you have aspirin nearby? In your house? In your car? At work? With you when you exercise? Do yard work? At all times? 
• We have invented the BeatFirst Aspirin Band, a silicone wristband with pill-storage chambers, to provide you with immediate access to medication – such as aspirin – for when you need it most.

I read about it here. You can order one here (for about $5). [Highly allergic people may benefit from carrying Benadryl, too.] Hopefully they will have more colors soon. 

"Sleek and Sexy Bus Concepts from the Future that Never Was"

• Our mass transit future looked much cooler in the mid-20th century, with these slick bus designs. Just imagine taking to the roads in these retrofuturistic buses.

See many more here. 

Nifty New Invention: The "Stem" Citrus Spritzer

• A spray gun that spikes straight into citrus fruits and instantly extracts fresh juice to be squirted onto food and drinks has been launched.
• The plastic ‘Stem’ gadget plugs directly into lemons, limes and oranges and sprays out a fine mist of tangy juice.
• The...device means users don’t have to worry about the nightmare of making a runny mess when squeezing a lemon or fret about wayward pips [i.e., seeds] falling onto their plate.
• The three-inch atomiser can be used to quickly spritz up a salad or a gin and tonic rather than go through the arduous process of getting a knife and chopping up the fruit.

Learn more about it (and watch a video demonstration) here.  You can buy it (for $4.99) on Amazon here. 

Nifty New Invention: A Fabric That Sucks Out Sweat and Remains Completely Dry

• Unsightly underarm sweat patches could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a new fabric developed at the University of California, Davis. Instead of simply soaking up sweat like conventional fabrics, the new fabric is threaded with tiny channels that pull the sweat from one side to the other where it forms into droplets that drain away.
• The fabric not only remains completely dry but breathable as well, which should make the technology attractive to clothing manufacturers. 

Learn more (and see a video), here. 

"When [And Why] Heineken Bottles Were Square"

• Since the first beer consignment was delivered to the United States upon the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, [Heineken] has been a top seller in the United States. The distinctive, bright green of a Heineken beer bottle can be found in more than 70 countries today. The founder’s grandson, Alfred Heineken...better known as “Freddy,”oversaw the design of the classic red-starred label released in 1964. He had a good eye for marketing and design.”Had I not been a beer brewer I would have become an advertising man,” he once said. 
• In 1960, Freddy took a trip to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea and discovered that he could barely walk 15 feet on the beach without stepping on a littered Heineken bottle. He was alarmed by two things: First, the incredible amount of waste that his product was creating due to the region’s lack of infrastructure to collect the bottles for reuse. (Back then, bottles were commonly returned for refilling, lasting about 30 trips back and forth to the breweries). Second, the dearth of proper building materials available to those living in the impoverished communities he visited. So he thought up an idea that might solve both of these problems: A brick that holds beer.
• The rectangular, Heineken World Bottle or WOBO, designed with the help of architect John Habraken, would serve as a drinking vessel as well as a brick once the contents were consumed. The long side of the bottle would have interlocking grooved surfaces so that the glass bricks, once laid on their side, could be stacked easily with mortar or cement. A 10-foot-by-10-foot shack would take approximately 1,000 bottles (and a lot of beer consumption) to build. 

Read the full story (in Smithsonian Magazine) about this clever idea that never made it to market.

"Eye-Tracking Technologies Are About To Make Advertising Even More Invasive"

• Advances in eye tracking technologies will soon make it possible for the ads you look at to watch you right back.  As the next generation of computing turns to the eyes, a whole new world of interaction and control is becoming possible – along with entirely new methods of invasive data collection and tracking. 
• Although advanced eye tracking is still years away from mainstream deployment, in the last year alone there have been some incredible advancements in usability and accuracy.
• Consider for a moment the type of future that Moti Krispil, CEO of eye-tracking startup Umoove, describes (and warns about): “If you see a picture of Adele somewhere in an article, when you’re looking at her for more than 2 seconds, an Amazon ad could pop up suggesting you buy her latest record now.”  For advertisers, this is a goldmine – there’s an enormous amount of value in knowing what groups of people pay attention to which types of ads... 
• Jay Stanley, ACLU Senior Policy Analyst, points out that there has already been extensive research into what we can learn about people from tracking where they look, and the results are worrisome.
• To varying degrees of accuracy, eye tracking can possibly reveal certain cognitive disorders, the use of drugs and alcohol, mental and psychological illness, deceitfulness, and even sexual orientation.  
• This is not to suggest that these inferences are currently actionable.  But if any of these measurements even come close to revealing your behaviors or traits, you can be sure there will be somebody to collect and sell this information.

Read full article (by Tarun Wadhwa for Forbes) here. 

Nifty New Invention: "Kickstarter Crowd Gives Glowing Plant the Green Light"

• A glowing plant that could provide a sustainable light source has caught the imagination of backers on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.
• With a month still to go, the project has raised $243,000 (£157,000). Its initial goal was $65,000.
• Backers are promised seeds for glowing plants, although delivery will not be until next May at the earliest.
• The "biohacking" team behind the project said that in future trees could act as street lights.

Read more about the project here. It sounds early-stage, but worth watching.

Nifty New Invention: Casetop "Laptop" Uses Your Smartphone As Its Brains

• Packing powerful processors supported by a healthy amount of system memory and storage, modern smartphones are just like mini computers that can be carried around in your pocket. 
• As a mobile office, however, such devices do have some practical limitations. Even with the relatively large display offered by Samsung's new Galaxy S4, for example, having to use a finger to input text can be a real productivity killer. 
• What's needed is a comfortable physical keyboard and more spacious display real estate. 
• That's precisely what's on offer with the Casetop from Livi Design, a netbook-like LCD panel, keyboard and battery pack combination that uses a smartphone for its computing power.
• Currently at the pre-production development stage, it's compatible with any smartphone that sports Bluetooth and a video out option, including the iPhone, Blackberry 10 and many Android smartphones (at the moment, there's no support for Windows phones due to the lack of video out).

Learn more here. 

Nifty New Invention: New App Turns Melodies Into Musical Notation

• Researchers at the KTH Institute of Technology in Sweden have developed a smartphone application that converts simple melodies into notation. 
• The app, which is available now worldwide, provides a simple and effective tool for getting that melody out of your head and into written, shareable form.
• The most compelling thing about ScoreCleaner Notes is its simplicity. Users can play a melody into their smartphone's microphone and moments later its key, tempo, time signature and the musical notation itself will pop up on the screen. 
• Users don't need to know how to play an instrument to use the app, and don't even need to know how to read or write music, but can simply hum or sing the melody into the microphone. Once recorded, the melody can be played back as both a MIDI piano sound or the original recording.

Learn more here.

Nifty New Invention: Water-Saving Shower Head Fills Water Droplets With Air

• TOTO [a Japanese company] is releasing an interchangeable shower head which features their Air-In Shower technology and uses 35% less water than a conventional shower head.
• "Ordinary water-saving showers use less water by having smaller holes, but we wondered if we could save water ergonomically, without losing the cleansing sensation of an ordinary shower. What's special about the Air-In Shower is that it aerates the water to make the droplets larger, so it can save water without making the water volume feel low."
• The Air-In Shower costs...US$70...for just the shower head, and the Air-In Click Shower, which comes with a hose and has a button on the head to turn the flow of water on and off, will be available for...US$170.

Learn more here and here.

Nifty New Invention: "'Airwriting' Glove Turns Arm-Waving Into Text Messaging"

• If you’re one of the many people who hate poking at the tiny virtual keys on smartphone keyboards, then you might like the experimental “airwriting” glove system created by a team of computer scientists at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. 
• When the glove’s wearer draws letters in the air with their hand, the system can identify which letters are being drawn. Those letters are converted into digital text, which could then be input into an email, text message, or any other type of mobile app.
• So far, the system has an error rate of 11 percent – that drops to three percent, however, once it picks up on a specific user’s style of airwriting.

Read more here. 

Nifty New Invention: "Straw Bale Urinal Turns Festival Goers' Pee Into Compost"

• Festivals and beer go hand in hand – and the wait in line for the nearest port-o-potty is usually a long one. To address the issue, French design firm Faltazi has created the Uritonnoir – a straw bale-like urinal that turns urine into nutrient-rich compost.
• The funnel channels the incoming urine...into the center of the straw bale, where the nitrogen begins to mesh with the carbon of the hay. Around six to twelve months later, the decomposition process will have meshed the two together enough to create a rich mound of compostable humus.
• Not only does L’Uritonnoir provide a faster place to pee, but it also brings awareness to festival goers of the simplicity of upcycling and composting

Read more here. 

"From Decapitations To Celebrity Portraits"

• Laetittia Barbier traces the macabre origins of the wax museum all the way to the foot of the 18th century guillotine:

• Behind the scaffolds, a 32-year-old woman undertook the gruesome labor of casting in wax the severed heads of the enemies of the [French] Revolution. 
• The effigies were then paraded on picks in the streets as symbolic sacraments of the people’s victory. 
• The diligent wax manufacturer’s name was Marie Grosholz, a name she promptly changed after her wedding to become Madame Tussaud.

Saw it on Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Will Mint-Scented Garbage Bags Keep the Raccoons Away?

• Is mint really the secret to keeping raccoons out of your garbage? 
• Walmart Canada thinks so, announcing Thursday that its stores will start carrying mint-scented garbage bags designed to keep those pesky, garbage-loving rodents at bay.
• So, how effective are they? The retailer cited a 2011 study by the University of Maryland, in which two bags – one Mint-X bag and one standard, untreated bag — were filled with regular food items and placed in a test area for a week. The Mint-X bags were left undisturbed, but rodents successfully made their way into the regular ones 67% of the time.

Read more here. 

[A little-known tale from my life: When I was a kid we found a baby raccoon at a state park in PA; the mother had been killed by a car. We took him home (with the Park Ranger's permission), named him "Lucky," and raised him. It was an amazing experience. Within about 6 months, though, he became a bit too "active" for the house. We found a new home for him at a nature preserve, where he lived out his days as an ice-cream-cone-eating star attraction. Lucky indeed.]

What the What: "Glow-In-the-Dark Lamb"?

• A genetically altered lamb glows under ultraviolet light in this picture taken April 5 and released Wednesday by the Animal Reproduction Institute Uruguay (IRAUy). 
• According to IRAUy, this is the first time transgenic lambs have been produced in Latin America. 

Found it here.

Fun Find: Oru "Origami" Folding Kayak

Very clever new invention:

• Developed by Anton Willis (and inspired by Origami), the kayak is made from a single sheet of polyethylene that has been molded with permanent creases. 
• The one-person kayak can fold [in 5 minutes!] into a carrying case, complete with latch and shoulder strap, and is able to support 250 pounds although it weighs only 25 pounds. 
• The durable body is guaranteed for 20,000 folds, and the skin can be detached from the frame for repairs, if necessary.

To be released this summer. Cost: $850.  Can't wait to see one in person.  Discovered it here.  Product website (and pre-order) here. 

"Doodle3D Creates 3D-Printed Objects From Your Drawings"

This is super-cool. Learn more here.

"YouTube VHS Filter Takes You Back In Time To the '80s"

Hilarious:

• While most of the video we view today is clear or high-definition, there was a time, just a few decades ago, when even blurry video was a treat. 
• Now, YouTube has unveiled a new filter that offers a very realistic simulation of how video used to look back in the days when MTV was still devoted to music videos.
• VHS mode for the YouTube player turns select videos into snowy, glitchy, low-resolution videos that perfectly mimic the look of VHS video from the '80s and early '90s. 
• When you find a video featuring the filter, you simply click the video tape icon and watch as the video takes you back in time.

Read more here. 

"Avoid Awkward Family Reunions With Icelandic 'Anti-Incest' App"

• Most people have enough to worry about without wondering whether their date is actually a close relative. 
• But in Iceland - a country with just 320,000 residents - the likelihood that you are related to any given person is a bit higher than in the U.S.
• Luckily, there's [NOW] an app for that.

Learn more here. Find the app here.