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Latest Video: Bleeding Edge TV 325: HP Envy 13 and Envy 15 notebook computersx

Get a look at the new HP Envy 13, Envy 15, and Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition notebooks in this episode!
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WoW Self-Contained Pod

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Accessories, MMORPG

WoW Pod

Leave it to MIT to come up with an extreme WoW “accessory.” Cati Vaucelle, a self-confessed hardcore gamer, developed the WoW pod, which is self-contained and resembles a hut in the game. Made of MDF wood painted with lacquer, it has acrylic sheets outside for texture and skin and fur inside. Because she doesn’t want to be interrupted during her game time, she added a throne that doubles as a toilet, a pot for cooking and automated stovetop. This is how Ms. Vaucelle describes her creation, “The WoW Pod is a cocoon that structures a relationship between your physical body and your avatar.”

Read More | Cati Vaucelle

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MIT Creates Super Battery

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Science, Storage

ElectrodeImagine charging your self phone in seconds instead of hours. Professor Gerbrand Ceder from MIT has devised a new lithium-ion battery electrode that is many times faster than its predecessors. While most discharge at a rate of a minute and a half with the best high powered batteries, this one works in only 10 to 20 seconds. That rate will allow a 1 liter battery to deliver about 25,000W, enough power for about 20 vacuum cleaners. Ceder and his team modified lithium iron phosphate, an electrode material, so that electrons and ions could move more quickly.

Current lithium rechargeable batteries can store large amounts of energy but don’t have the acceleration speed. Professor Cedar claims that because the material is not new, but simply remade, scientists could conceivably market it in the next couple of years.

Read More | MIT via Technology Review


Chameleon Guitar

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Design, Misc. Tech, Music, Science

There is a new guitar in town, sort of. The Chameleon Guitar takes on almost any style with an internal computer. By swapping part of the soundboard it changes the acoustics. For example, adjusting the hybrid instrument can make a classical-sounding guitar turn electric. Amit Zoran and his team from MIT will keep working on the prototype and envision music companies developing their own soundboards and new instruments.

(Thanks, Stace)

Read More | MIT

MIT Develops Software to Replace Post-its

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Science, Software

Michael BernsteinA team of MIT computer scientists decided to develop software to combine all those sticky notes with a result that it will enter, store and retrieve information. Michael Bernstein claims the team is not trying to replace Post-its, just understand the “classes of things people do with Post-its and see if we can help users do more of what they wanted to do in the first place.”

What started out as a 2007 simple study became a larger project. The systems devised include a program to capture broad content and one that streamlines note taking. The team found that if too much effort is required to store the data, most people won’t bother. We admit that we would miss our collage of paper scraps that adorn our desk.

Read More | MIT

MIT Student Straps A Wii On His Guitar

Posted by Patrick Phelps Categories: Mods / Hacks, PC / Laptop, Video Games, Videos

Tired of changing effects pedals with his feet while performing with his band Vivian Darkbloom, MIT graduate student Rob Morris attached a Nintendo Wii remote to his guitar with a strip of Velcro.  Mapping acceleration and button press values from the Wii, Morris set his Mac to translate the movement of his guitar into a variety of audio effects. The result: a new hybrid instrument that you’ll have to see to believe!

How does it work? The Wii controller sends data to a laptop, so the computer knows where the instrument is positioned, and it knows when he’s pressing buttons on the Wiimote. Morris takes this information and smooths it out a bit with some computer code (MIT grad student, hello…); the data is then sent out of the computer through a firewire cable. This firewire cable then sends the data to his stompboxes and other effects. So, essentially, he’s controlling guitar effects by pressing Wii buttons and gesturing with the instrument, rather than pressing a pedal on the floor.

Check out the above video for a demonstration.


N55 Walking House

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Household, Science, Transportation, Videos

This house can hustle. The Danish art collective N55 teamed with MIT to make a walking house. Standing 10 ft. high, it is both solar and wind powered, and features a living room, kitchen, bathroom, bed, wood stove and a computer for its leg control. They are hoping that the legs can be mounted under any structure and that modules can be linked for larger living spaces. One of the designers, Øivind Slaatto, plans to live in it in Copenhagen. What a great thing it would be if this prototype became real and could get out of the way of tornadoes, overflowing waterways, and nasty neighbors.

 

Read More | Telegraph

iShoe Detects Balance

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Clothing, Design, Science

iShoeErez Lieberman, a Harvard-MIT graduate student, has devised the iShoe that will help physicians detect balance problems before falls occur. Given a $50,000.00 grant from the Lunar Ventures Competition to take it past the prototype stage, Lieberman originally developed the shoe for NASA to help them monitor balance problems incurred by astronauts after they return from space. While there he managed to come up with a new system for collecting data and an algorithm to analyze it.

Because his own grandmother had a bad fall a while back, Lieberman realized that the tech could help others. The iSole may also be equipped with an alarm that would let other family members know that a fall has occurred.

Read More | MHT

MIT Makes Inexpensive Solar Dish

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Design, Editorial, Misc. Tech, Science

MIT Solar DishA team of MIT students has successfully tested a prototype solar dish by lighting a plank of wood on fire. The system is a 12 ft. wide mirrored dish made of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror. It concentrates sun rays by a factor of 1,000, enough heat to melt a steel bar. Because water in the tubing turns to steam, the team is hoping that could revolutionize energy production as we know it. We think it’s great and would certainly opt for solar panels over building more nuclear power plants, as was recently suggested by a certain presidential contender.

Read More | MIT

MIT Created Nanowire Membranes Clean up Oil

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Misc. Tech, Science

Nanowire MembraneMIT researchers have come up with a new membrane made out of nanowires that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. Not only can it be reused, the oil can be recovered. Made of potassium manganese oxide, the membranes work when heated above oil’s boiling point. Team leader Francesco Stellacci claims that the mesh selectively absorbs hydrophobic liquids from water. It is believed that the same technology can be used for water filtering and purification. We call that Brawny to the max.

Read More | MIT

Nexi Wants to Teach

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Misc. Tech, Science, Videos

Shades of Chucky. MIT Media Labs Personal Robotics Group has created Nexi, an MDS (Mobile/Dexterous/Social) bot that moves, has some dexterity, and communicates. About the size of a 3-year old, they hope that the robot will excel in areas of human/robot interaction, teamwork, and learning. While this is another step forward in the annals of robotics, the video kind of creeped us out. We wonder what would happen if a real child encountered it.

 

Read More | MIT Personal Robotics Group

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