Future Steve » gadget

Inkling by Wacom

Steve — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:18:03 +0000

This looks very, very cool.

The biggest problem with this kind of tech before was that you needed special paper (with small grids, or dots) to have it work with your computer. This doesn’t. It lets you import your drawing as vectors, with layers, using regular paper.

A Robot That Flies Like a Bird

Steve — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:34:04 +0000

Flip Camera: RIP

Steve — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:27:14 +0000

Cisco has axed the Flip camera, and is laying off 550 employees.

Metropolis 2

Steve — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:19:09 +0000

Universal Robot Gripper – Made with Coffee and a Balloon

Steve — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:00:41 +0000

Sometimes the simplest things work the best. Researchers at Cornell, University of Chicago and iRobot (the Roomba folks) have created a robot gripper that is made with ground coffee and a latex balloon.

Basically, they vacuum air out of the coffee filled balloon and the structure inside becomes rigid. Let air in, and the structure relaxes. Think of how hard a brick of coffee is, and what it’s like after you cut through the vacuum packing.

The balloon presses into the object that they want to grip, vacuum out the air, and the balloon and coffee grip the object. A very inexpensive solution to a problem many people have been working on for a long time.

Check out the details and video at Physorg.com.

Flexible e-paper in production

Steve — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:15:54 +0000

LG is putting 9.7-inch color and 19-inch flexible e-paper displays into production.

Could this be what the future of digital books really is? It seems a little odd to me that it would be in a multi-page format, rather than a single page that changes. I thought at first it might be interesting to have a blank book, with each page being a digital display, but…. that would be kinda stupid. A much more likely scenario would be to have posters made from these displays. For advertising, it would mean less work sending people out to change bill boards. For home, you could have large format displays for just about anything you’d want. Plus, since they would be able to change, you can make them time aware, so the poster would change depending on how you usually use it during the day. News in the morning, television schedule or cooking instructions in the evening.

I know you can do all of that now, but the real bonus here is that it’s so thin, you can put the display in places where bulky monitors just won’t fit.

Lot of possibilities.

Sooner or later, someone’s going to figure out how to put these things on cereal boxes, and you’ll never be able to walk down that aisle in the grocery store again without having your brain go into overload.

via Engadget.

Steve Jobs Talks about Flash

Steve — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:16:24 +0000

If you’d like to read why Apple is not supporting Flash on iPhone, iPod and iPad, you should read Steve Jobs himself has to say about it. He’s posted a note on Apple’s website, “Thoughts on Flash”.

America’s Test Kitchen – Let’s Get Cooking For Nintendo DS

Steve — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:03:04 +0000

Now, what I first hear about America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking, I thought that it was just another one of those cooking games like Cooking Mama which frankly would have been crazy. I mean, can you see a little Christopher Kimball running around taste testing things, or explaining beef cuts in a video game? TV, sure, but not in a video game.

It turns your DS into a kind of kitchen computer, as it were. You can select an ingredient, and it’ll show you all the recipes that contain that ingredient. Pick a recipe, and it’ll give you the full details. If you already have a Nintendo DS, and like America’s Test Kitchen, this is worth looking at!

Deep Fried Foods – Without the Fryer

Steve — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:22:04 +0000

A Purdue University researcher is working on an oven that can deep fry foods without an oil fryer.

Damaged iFrog iPhone Case

Steve — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:47:44 +0000

That chip in the case of my iFrog case I bought at the AT&T store appeared not to long after getting the case. The same thing happened to my wife’s case. I’m very disappointed in the quality.

I brought a Casecrown case, same color, and so far I’ve been happy with it. I won’t be buying from iFrog again.

Just FYI.