An opportunity to hear many of your favorite bands isn’t the only reason to attend a music festival. There are other recreational activities to enjoy, but they don’t always leave you in a state where you can remember who’s performing next at which stage, where you left your schedule, or even your first name. So a temporary tattoo that puts the event’s lineup right on your … Read More → "You’ll never lose a music festival schedule thanks to a temporary tattoo"

By enabling users to communicate and control devices with their thoughts, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) hold almost a scary amount of potential. While they have achieved feats such as directing the flight of a quadcopter and helping victims of paralysis to communicate, sufferers of brainstem stroke with “locked-in” syndrome have so far been beyond reach. But now, a researcher at East Tennessee Sate University (ETSU) has demonstrated BCIs may in … Read More → "Brain-computer interface enables “locked-in” brain stroke sufferer to communicate"

There are plenty of ways to do the two things that Spira does: Charge your phone and tell you the time. But there’s nothing quite like the device that interaction design student Alice Robbiani has built to combine them—her inductive charger turns your iPhone into an interactive wall clock while … Read More → "This inductive charger and clock makes powering up your iPhone beautiful"

To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day Popular Science has put together a timeline of Ada’s life and accomplishments. Ada Lovelace was a brilliant mathematician and groundbreaking creative thinker whose work was at the vanguard of computer programming a whole century even before the Turing machine.
via Read More → "The life and times of Ada Lovelace, the"

Tesla’s plans for the new Autopilot features on the Model S aren’t exactly humble, with CEO Elon Musk suggesting EVs that could come to heel at your beck & call and even read your calendar to know when they might be needed, but what works now and what’s merely on the roadmap? Speaking at the launch of the Tesla “D”,the AWD version of the Model S, Musk cited regulatory lag for … Read More → "How smart will Tesla’s Model S Autopilot be?"

Vertical farms are all the rage, yet these systems are often expensive, messy, and utterly impractical for most urban dwellers. The Robotic Urban Farm System (RUFS) by Better Living Through Robotics improves on nearly every shortfall of the typical system: It uses very little water, no … Read More → "A robotic vertical garden you can build with hardware store materials"

You won’t find any delicate nylon material to rip, or flimsy metal rods that’ll break… in fact, no canopy at all! Instead, this innovative design uses air flow to protect the user from rain. Call the Air Umbrella, it creates an invisible shield with multidirectional air-jets that dispel raindrops and keep the user dry. Though it looks high-tech, it’s actually quite simple. Better yet, it might just … Read More → "The invisible umbrella"

Starting tomorrow, any French resident with a bank account and Twitter handle will be able to transfer money simply by tweeting it. The new service, dubbed S-money, was launched last month by French mega-bank BPCE and Twitter. It differs from Twitter’s Buy Now, which lets users to pay for goods at companies like Home Depot and Burberry using an embedded “Pay” button. Instead, S-money is aimed … Read More → "You can now tweet money to friends, if you live in France"

Following in the footsteps of Hiroshi Ishiguro’s eerily lifelike creations, Toshiba introduced its very own take on the human-looking droid at Japan’s CEATAC electronics trade show this week. The communication android has been built to communicate in Japanese sign language, requiring fluid and precise movement of its arms and hands.

The result of an in-house ideas program, the android has the look of a young Japanese woman, complete with blinking eyes … Read More → "Signing robot developed as chatty companion for the elderly"

A comedy club in Barcelona is charging patrons per laugh. This is real, according to the BBC.

The Teatreneu club, in partnership with ad agency The Cyranos McCann, has installed tablets on the back of each seat equipped with facial recognition software that can apparently detect when you laugh. The going rate is 0.30 Euros ($0.38) per laugh, up … Read More → "Comedy club uses facial recognition to charge by the laugh"