The PEG harvests one of the biggest energy hogs on earthyou. Place the little device into your bag or briefcase, plug in your cell phone, GPS, or iPod, and let your kinetic energy power up your gadgets while you walk. You can get an 80% charge in one hour through your own energy alone. Green and brilliant.Now you can be your own recharging station to all of your USB enabled devices. Cell phones, iPods, Kindles, GPS units, and just about any other hand-held electronic device can be charged by this renewable energy source.A kinetic energy generator based on a wave energy converter, the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator) can go with you anywhere and will recharge your devices as you walk, run, hike or bike. By harvesting vertical movements of your everyday activities, they state that it is “able to charge handheld mobile electronic devices at the same rate as a wall charger, which means most devices reach an 80% charge with just an hour of walking throughout the day.” Just think of how much additional energy you could create at the green gym!Charging battery-powered things while traveling has always been a challenge, and while there's no shortage of portable solar chargers on the market, none have exactly tickled our particular fancies. Maybe the PEG from nPower will enable us to get some juice on the go, a kinetic-based "personal energy generator" that pledges to recharge gadgets by harnessing your movement. Sadly, the company lists no actual specs for the device beyond USB 2.0 compatibility, leaving us guessing when it comes to the all- important question of "How far do I need to run with this thing to recharge my celly?" We'll find out in June when the $149 wunder-baton ships. Order now and you can get yourself a limited edition model with "First Mover" engraved on there. Better than "Late Bloomer," we suppose.
Flying Car: Terrafugia
Even though were well into the 2000s, nobody has come up with a Jetsons-style flying car. Until now. The Terrafugia Transition is more of a driving plane than a flying car, but its a promising first step. The worlds first street legal plane hits runways and highways in 2010.Every pilot faces uncertain weather, rising costs, and ground transportation hassles on each end of the flight. The Transition® combines the unique convenience of being able to fold its wings with the ability to drive on any surface road in a modern personal airplane platform. Stowing the wings for road use and deploying them for flight at the airport is activated from inside the cockpit. This unique functionality addresses head-on the issues faced by today’s Private and Sport Pilots.Terrafugia’s award-winning MIT-trained engineers have been advancing the state-of-the-art in personal aircraft since 2006. Now you can streamline your flying experience with the revolutionary integration of personal land and air travel made possible by the Transition® Roadable Aircraft.
Sony 3D-360 Hologram
Sony's latest gadget looks like a cross between a coffee-maker and a fan, but it's a whole lot cooler (see photo below).The "360 Degree Stereoscopic Display" unveiled by Sony is a prototype of a tabletop 3D display that can be seen from 360 degrees and doesn't require funky 3D glasses for full effect.According to Sony's press release, the gadget measures 13 cm in diameter and is 27 cm tall (or about 5 by 10 inches).So what's it for? Seems that Sony isn't sure yet. Speculations are swirling that the device could be used commercially (for advertising, medical visualization, and digital signage) or in the home as a 3D digital photo display.
Xeros Waterless Washing Machine
The beads are removed automatically within the machine at the end of the load so there’s no need for the user to worry about separating the beads themselves. They also don’t require cleaning and can last for about 100 loads or laundry, or about six months of average family usage.Since the Xeros doesn’t require a rinse or spin cycle the it uses just 2% of the energy of conventional washing machines, cutting CO2 emissions on top of the water savings. The energy savings are further enhanced by the fact that the clothes come out nearly dry, meaning no power-hungry clothes dryer is required. Xeros claims that, taking all these factors into account, its machine achieves a 40% reduction in carbon emissions over conventional washing and drying.The technology was developed by researchers at Leeds University who have established a spin-off company called Xeros Ltd to market the technology.
Recompute: The Cardboard Computer
Powermat Wireless Battery Charger
Samsung Water-Powered Battery
Sure, one mat, one plug is cool. But what if you didnt have to plug in at all? Samsung is speeding past the AC plug, around the solar charger, and directly into the water faucet. Its new micro-fuel cell and genereator rpowers your cell phone through water alone. Jurys still out on whether it will work long-term."When the handset is turned on, metal and water in the phone react to produce hydrogen gas," explained Oh Yong-soo, vice president of Samsung Electro-Mechanics' research center. "The gas is then supplied to the fuel cell where it reacts with oxygen in the air to generate power." Other fuel cells need methanol to produce hydrogen, while Samsung's needs only water.Oh said water-powered handsets are expected to hit the market by 2010. "If the user uses the phone for four hours a day on average, they would have to change the hydrogen cartridge about every five days," Oh said. "Later handsets will be developed that don't need the hydrogen cartridges to be changed, and would only need to be filled with water."
Apple Tablet
According to his conversation with the unnamed individual, next week's San Francisco event will concentrate on three specific projects: Apple's long-rumored tablet, the next iteration of iLife, and an updated iPhone OS. However, iPhone owners have no reason to get too excited just yet, as the report specified that any discussion regarding the next iPhone will strictly be on a software-only level.TheNextWeb pointed out that author Clayton Morris has correctly broken Apple related stories in the past, with him knowing of the now-confirmed Apple event before anyone else.
However, despite Morris' clearly assured sources, Apple's cryptic wording on the event's invitation may suggest he isn't right this time. Apple's invitation welcomed the press to come and see the company's "latest creation." If you take note of the plural, could Apple be hosting an event dedicated entirely to the device which has been so extensivly desired, or will it show more than just the expected?It has always been tough to determine what Apple will put out in the next year. But this time, the anecdotal evidence seems to add up. Its safe to say you will see a touchscreen-based tablet Apple product that will both fight with Kindle for books and netbook manufacturers for small computing.
Panasonic 50-inch 3D 1080p Plasma TV
Plasma Scalpel
Touted as a lightsaber for military doctors, the new plasma scalpel works by using ionized gas in a controlled light beam. This simultaneously slices and cauterizes a wound on the battlefield. Coming in 2010 to a war zone near you. Heres to hoping you never see one!A new thermal knife, the plasma scalpel, capable of simultaneous division of tissue and coagulation of blood vessels, is described. A high temperature argon gas plasma (unrelated to blood plasma) is created by passing the gas through a direct current arc, ionizing the gas and elevating its temperature to 3000 degrees C. A small plasma cutting jet is formed by a nozzle at the tip of the handpiece. Liver resections and muscle transections performed in a canine model, and full thickness burn excisions in a pig skin model showed effective division of tissue and significantly less blood loss when compared to the steel scalpel. Wound healing studies of histologic comparisons and wound breaking strength were performed for steel, plasma, laser, and electrosurgical scalped incisions in the skin of mice and rats. All thermal knife wounds showed localized tissue damage at the edges of the incision, but the events of healing began at the same time. Compared to the steel scalpel, there was a three to six day delay in the onset of healing, but healing occurred in the normal fashion and all thermal knife wounds reached the same healed breaking strength as the steel scalpel wounds. Clinically, the plasma scalped has been used for 138 procedures in 96 patients. The majority of cases have been transection of muscle, hepatic resection or debridement, or soft tissue debridement. Muscle transection data for the plasma scalped compared to the electrosurgical scalpel has shown virtually no blood loss with a shorter time to hemostasis for the plasma scalpel. The plasma scalpel has proved to be an effective thermal knife, capable of simultaneous division and coagulation. Further development work and proof of its efficacy in the clinical setting are necessary to establish the plasma scalpel and adequately demonstrate its proper role in surgery.Gibbs Quadski
Heres the scene. 007 is in the middle of an ATV chase, 4-wheelers spewing mud all around him as he speeds toward the sea. Helooks like hes done for. Then, suddenly, he plows into the ocean and hits a button. The wheels on his ATV fold as he speeds away,