The Nest learning thermostat and Google Glass have had a love child and it’s called Glass Nest. Developer James Rundquist got his Google Glass unit earlier this month wanted to get his hands dirty with some Glassware development, he tells me in an interview. The result is a mash up between two of the most buzzy devices to hit the Internet of Things … Read More → "Nest meet Glass, the learning thermostat lands on your eyes"

After the horrific tsunami hit Japan in 2011, officials have been attempting to think up ways to protect areas from flooding. It’s obviously really expensive to implement an entire new infrastructure, but researchers at Kyoto University and Hitachi Zosen Corp. have made a cheaper option that looks promising. It’s a new floodgate that raises and lowers based … Read More → "New floodgate uses mother nature to automatically power itself"

This past winter, I found myself at the intersection of Green Street and High Street in Charlestown, Massachusetts, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but one of Google‘s Street View cars.

“Here comes my 15 minutes of fame,” I thought to myself. “I shall be forever immortalized in the Street View imagery of this intersection.” Forever, as in until the next time a Google Street View car swings through here and takes new photos.

Well, Google still hasn’t updated the Street View … Read More → "Google is reportedly testing blimps that dole out wireless internet signals"

… Read More → "Turntable that “plays” the rings of a tree (video)"

Plants that were frozen during the “Little Ice Age” centuries ago have been observed sprouting new growth, scientists say.

Samples of 400-year-old plants known as bryophytes have flourished under laboratory conditions.

Researchers say this back-from-the-dead trick has implications for how ecosystems recover from the planet’s cyclic long periods of ice coverage.

The findings appear in … Read More → "Centuries-old frozen plants revived"

Propane–it’s what American philosopher Hank Hill calls “God’s gas.” Sculptor Colin Selig takes the tanks that gas is stored in and turns them into benches. Some are conventional and still look like propane tanks. Others are, you can see, delightfully eccentric.
via Neatorama

Continue reading</ … Read More → "Propane tank benches"

The Raspberry Pi camera has been out for less than two weeks, and it’s already skirted the final frontier. Armchair astronaut Dave Akerman strapped the $25 shooter to the equally inexpensive Raspberry Pi, put it inside a protective case shaped like the berry that inspired the product’s name, and then attached it to a weather balloon. Three hours and quite a few vertical miles later, his experiment was recovered by a stranger … Read More → "Earth, as seen by Raspberry Pi camera attached to weather balloon"

London’s Thornhill Jewellery takes old British coinage and laser-cuts carves sweet/funny/silly designs into them.
via Boing Boing

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… Read More → "GIFTY, a small camera that captures and prints animated GIFs as tiny flip books (video)"

The game of Anti-Tetris is played by standing in front of a monitor and watch falling Tetris pieces overlaid on a video image of your body. Each hand is used to make pieces disappear so that they don’t stack up to the top of the screen. We don’t see this as the next big indie game. What we do see are some very interesting techniques for hand tracking.

An … Read More → "Anti-Tetris project is a study in hand tracking (video)"