Posts

Posted on

Nanofluids Are Cool

We keep hearing more and more about “nano” tech these days. Hell, the pants I just bought claim to offer “nano-care” that’ll help prevent wrinkles and reduce stains. As one blogger put it: “nano” is the new “turbo.”

It’s not all hype, obviously. Take “nanofluids,” a technology being researched at Leeds in the U.K. (among other places) where nano-particles are suspened in water or other fluid (which can then transfer heat 400% faster than a non-nano’d liquid). The resulting nanofluids offer all sorts of cooling applications, from cooling the hardware in super-PC processors to cooling the wetware in your cranium during major surgery. They could even be used to deep freeze cancer cells while leaving surrounding cells unaffected. Protein Feed offers more details.

Posted on

Damn Small Linux

We don’t cover a lot of software here at Street Tech, but we like to respond to people’s enthusiasm and we got a very enthused email from our pal Alberto about Damn Small Linux, a Linux distro which is, well, damn small. How small? Small enough to fit (and boot from) a thumb drive, small enough to fit on a business card (one of those CD business cards, of course). And it’s smart enough to be bootable from WITHIN Windows. Hell, it can even run from a Compact Flash drive or fully within RAM! It also grows modularly, so it’s highly customizable/expandable. I’m planning on putting it on my wristwatch, just for fun.

Posted on

Robot Does Interpretive Dance of Delay’s Resignation

Oh those loveably weird Japanese robot engineers. Just when you thought they might have had their fill of bots that dance, play musical instruments, and flash lights and bleep and bloop along to your iPod, a company called Speecys has announced a robot that can act out Internet content to delight the whole family.

Called the ITR (“Internet Renaissance”), the foot tall robot uses something called RTML (“Robot Transaction Markup Language”) to present Internet contact in a form that the robot can interpret in sound, motion, facial expressions and speech. The company is hoping that RTML will become a standard for Web-to-Bot translation and that robots like the ITR will become a common way for families to get their news, information, weather reports, and entertainment news.

Let’s try a little thought experiment to see how this would work. Here are some of today’s top stories. Imagine a 12″ bot on your dining room table dancing, lighting up, and making grunts and groans while delivering these items in one of those slightly unnerving synthetic voices:

*Delay Resigns from House
*Protestors and Police Clash in Paris
*Saddam Accused of Genocide
*Tom Cruise Gets Candid About His Dyslexia

Actually, now that I think about it, I can’t get one of these robo-clowns acting out my daily news fast enough. Jon Stewart may soon be out of a job.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

Posted on

Nintendo Controller iPod Casemod

Here are some Flickr photos of a casemod for an iPod Shuffle made from an old Nintendo controller. The right/left buttons now control volume up/down and right/left has become Forward and Back. The Select switch controls Continuous Play, Shuffle, and Off. The Start button is the Hold switch, button A is Play/Pause, and button B is empty.

[Via Make]

Posted on

Akihabara Gadgets Via Video

One of the great things about so much video content coming to the Web is that it gives you an opportunity to virtually visit trade shows, cons, and “scenes” in far away places. One of our favorite sites for keeping up with the gadget scene in Japan is Akihabara News, and with the recent addition of their HD video feeds, we can now see as well as read about what’s going on in Akihabara (the heart of the Japanese electronics, anime, and otaku scenes).

Recent vids have included part 1 of their guide to gadget shopping in the area and a trip to the Tokyo Anime Fair. HD-camera aside, the productions are very lo-tek, and site owner Daimaou’s thick French accent is hard to understand sometimes, but it all just adds to the surreal quality of peeking into this strange world half a planet-spin away.

Posted on

The Great Robot Race

If you missed the recent showing of NOVA’s “The Great Robot Race,” about the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, the entire program is available online in seven video chapters. There are also some video interviews with builders, a team database, some techie bits, and other material worth checking out.

Posted on

Chicken-Based Circuit Boards

No, there’s no joke in that title. We’re actually bringing you news of a new type of printed circuit board that uses the keratin fibers of chicken feathers and a soy-based epoxy to construct the PCBs. The resulting boards are not only more environmentally-friendly, they are also faster than traditional boards.

The chicken PCBs were delveloped by Mingjiang Zhan, a student at the University of Delaware, in association with Intel and chicken giant Tyson. While the technology looks promising, it remains to be seen how environmentally-friendly full-scale manufacturing of such “green” boards might be.

An article from the journal Environmental Health Perspectives offers more details.

[Via Treehugger]

Posted on

Pocket Drive Macho Enough to Wear Pink

The U.K.’s Reg has a review of the new LaCie 30GB pocket hard drive (US$150) called, inexplicably, Skwarim. We have no idea what it means either, but its neon pink rubberized case is bright and gawdy enough to make Hello Kitty blush. No idea who the target demo is (beside Japanese school girls), but the tiny size and weight (8.5 x 8.5 x 1.3cm box weighing 99g) and the 30GB (or 60GB) storage capacity makes it attractive despite its flamboyant lifestyle. We like rubberized hardware as much as the next techno-fetishist, but we’re just not comfortable enough in our geekitude to spring for pink. Now, BLACK rubber, and you’re talkin’ a sale. We definitely dig the ’70s op-art pattern.

Check out the full review here.

Posted on

Street Tech Travel Tip: Finding Your Outlet

Street Techie Andrew Plumb writes:

One big challenge when traveling is finding enough power adapters to plug your 120-240VAC compatible devices into.

Then it suddenly hit me – I needed a power bar! …but good luck traveling light with a full-size bar. Instead, I picked up one of these medium-duty, multi-outlet extension cords. You want something reasonably heavy-gauge, since technically, it’s not designed for 240VAC. This cable is 14 Gauge, 15A, 125V; much heavier than most of the extended-voltage device cables I’m plugging into it, so quite safe.

It fits comfortably in my laptop backpack and is flexible enough to redirect socket-access from many a cramped hotel room outlet.