Lady Gaga and Polaroid's upcoming Grey Label Camera Glasses can record video and snap pictures, but who really wants to show the world what they're up too on those mini LCD screens? It's nothing more than a fancy gimmick between a pop star and a failing company. Isn't the intention of camera glasses to capture things around you as they are? Drawing attention to yourself with clunky video-displaying eyewear kind of defeats the purpose, but that's why they're "fashion" glasses and not practical...
In recent years, communication has become more intimate with the advent of applications like Skype and FaceTime, but what about the longing for actual physical contact? What if you could feel a loved one's hand, or even exchange a kiss? Impossible, right?
Dactyloscopy isn't going anywhere. Forensic science has much relied on fingerprinting as a means of identification, largely because of the massive amount of fingerprints stored in the FBI's biometric database (IAFIS), which houses over 150,000 million prints. And thanks to the departure of messy ink-stained fingertips, biometric analysis isn't just for solving crimes anymore.
Outstanding advancements in medicine and super creepy Androids aren't the only jaw-dropping inventions out there. Every once in a while, an incredibly random—and at first glance, seemingly useless—device comes along and strikes a chord of strangely deep satisfaction. Behold, the SWITL, a mysterious goo-scraper robot hand created by factory equipment manufacturer Furukawa Kikou:
How can an orchestra be stupid, one may ask? Well, when musically measuring a toaster next to a cello, one device certainly comes across as inherently… dumber. Think 200 vintage vacuum cleaners, blenders and washing machines assembled into a whirling, ringing, humming cacophony of daily function. It's not exactly music to the ears, but a kind of robotic harmony is formed.
Since the early genesis of the brilliant Microsoft Kinect hack, inventive applications have been popping up nonstop. One of the most fascinating projects to surface recently falls within the realm of 3D printing. "Fabricate Yourself"—a hack presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference in January—allows users to pose in front of an Xbox Kinect, which then converts a captured image into a 3D printable file. What does this mean exactly? Think Han Solo trapped in...
It's gigantic! It can handle over 100 simultaneous touch points! It has a curvature of 135 degrees! And best of all, it is not the newest, insanely expensive gadget to hit the market. Instead, this touchscreen was hacked together with a bunch of PCs, video cameras, projectors and cheap infrared illuminators at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.
WonderHowTo loves gadgets. We also tend to enjoy getting our hands (just a little bit) dirty. So, naturally, Brando's Wall Hook Coat Hanger Camcorder is the latest gadget to excite. Disguised as a coat hanger, the device is actually a camera triggered by motion detection. And paired with the see-all glass doorknob, your significant other ain't getting away with nothing...
Below, designer Chris Woebken'sFlicflex isn't a new concept (Woebken displayed it at MOMA in '08), but still amazingly cool. And still not on the consumer market. Watch his paper thin, magazine-like "page turning":
Wired posts a gallery of the original models of now iconic devices, with some fun tech-fetish facts. Did you know the first cell phone weighed a whopping 4.4 pounds? Or that the world's first super soaker was invented completely by accident? Examples below; click through for Wired's complete gallery.
Shiny, pretty touchscreen vending machines have finally gone mainstream in Japan. My only question is... what's taken so long? The vending machine business can be quite lucrative (location, location, location), so all the more reason to make the interface as aesthetically appealing and user friendly as the iPhone AND as smart as a robot (read below).