Luxury coffin with built-in phone created
March 11, 2010
The rich and famous could be queuing around the block for a chance to get their hands on what must surely be the most over the top way in which to enter the afterlife: a gold-plated coffin with a gold-plated mobile to match.
The International Luxury Fair, which is taking place in Verona throughout March, is playing host to a number of the most over-the-top items for the seriously loaded amongst us and the golden coffin will surely be a talking point.
You will need fairly deep pockets if you want to be buried in an excessive style: the coffin will cost £255,000. For your money, you get a lined casket with a touchscreen mobile phone inside, presumably to avoid being buried alive.
Other insanely expensive items on show include a grand piano encrusted with crystals and a speed boat that has the engine from a Ferrari supercar humming beneath the bonnet. There is no word on the price of these items, but then if you have to ask, you probably cannot afford them.
Although the golden coffin pushes the boundaries of taste, it is the gem-covered sofa coated in crocodile skin that takes the prize as the most inappropriate item on show. Perhaps the organisers’ understanding of the word ‘luxury’ is closer to the word ‘macabre’ than it might seem to an outsider.
Coating standard gadgets in gold and then selling them for incredible prices is not a new idea. In fact, potential clients who are considering the golden coffin might want to replace the included mobile phone with the gold-plated iPhone Supreme.
Wall-crawling technology invented
February 24, 2010
A team of researchers from Cornell University in the USA have come up with some very clever gloves which allow the wearer to traverse vertical surfaces in Spider Man fashion.
However, it is not a spider that is the inspiration behind the technology, but rather a Palmetto tortoise beetle, which can be found in the US state of Florida.
The gloves have an adhesive area that covers just the palms of the hands and the bond that it forms between glass, wood or brick surfaces is quickly reversible, allowing for speedy ascent and descent. Funding for the project has been provided by the US military, which suggests that there are some tactical advantages to allowing soldiers to scale obstacles like superheroes.
Cornell University’s Professor Paul Steen is the man behind the idea. Professor Steen discovered that forcing water through minuscule holes on a flat object would create enough surface tension in the water to stick the object onto walls.
By altering the electric field within the device, it is then possible to reverse the effects and detach the object from its sticking place.
Prof. Steen said that a single 8cm square pad powered by the adhesive water technology could hold a weight of around 127kg. This would be more than enough to keep a 20 stone human suspended indefinitely.
It is believed that the applications of the technology could be used across industry and in the armed forces, allowing larger objects to be quickly attached to a surface and subsequently removed without delay whenever they are needed.
UK trails Sweden in technology rankings
February 12, 2010
The latest analysis of tech-hungry nations from around the globe has rocketed Sweden to the top of the charts, outstripping the UK with ease and knocking the USA into second place.
Professor Leonard Waverman developed the technique for ranking nations two years ago based on the way in which gadgets and gizmos are used by their citizens. Ever since it has been interesting to see which country is going to come out on top.
The chart is based on various indicators, including the availability and use of high speed broadband, mobile phones and PCs. Of the 50 nations included in the chart, all are assessed for the competency of the average consumer when it comes to emerging technologies and popular electronic devices.
Professor Waverman said that there was no chance of Sweden losing its place at the top of the charts in the foreseeable future. This is apparently due to an increasing gap between Sweden and the second placed USA as a result of better education and general levels of knowledge.
At number eight in the chart, the UK is at least in the top ten, although Waverman predicts that the government-funded broadband initiatives that are being instigated at the moment will drive an improvement in the rankings over the coming years.
A majority of the top 10 is made up of European nations and many may be surprised that Japan is ranked lower than Canada at number 10, contradicting the traditional stereotypes of its citizens as gadget fanatics.
Underwater craft from Virgin revealed
February 4, 2010
Richard Branson’s firm may be looking to launch people into the stratosphere with Virgin Galactic, but this latest toy is a new way for the super-rich to get their kicks without having to leave Earth’s atmosphere.
The Necker Nymph is effectively an underwater plane, using wings to provide downward pressure that pulls it beneath the surf and then allows for a 2 hour journey around the aquatic realm in a way that few will have experienced before.
If you have £204,000 lying around then you can book a place on the Necker Nymph for yourself and a passenger, with a pilot being the only other person present in the three seater craft that is named after Mr Branson’s private residence in the British Virgin Islands.
The Necker Nymph will make its first commercial trip on the 20th of February and with panoramic, uninterrupted views its passengers are likely to have their minds blown ever so slightly.
The Nymph has been a project of Hawkes Ocean Design and a spokesperson for the firm said that the transition from aquaplaning along the surface of the ocean to underwater cruising was seamless and simple to control. He also said that any passengers would be required to have undergone SCUBA training.
Virgin has said that the Nymph will cause virtually no damage to the environment, with minimal emissions of light or sound to worry the life underwater and a clever system that, fortunately, allows it to avoid crashing into any reefs or the bed of the sea.
Self-selling intelligent box created
January 26, 2010
An artist has created an oddly compelling electronic work that basically begins a perpetual cycle on eBay in which it attempts to sell itself to the highest bidder over and over again.
On the outside the box is just that; a black, shiny cube with no notable features to speak of. It is undeniably minimalist and arty, but it is its internal workings that contain all of the clever gadgets and gizmos.
The box can connect to the internet via an Ethernet cable and a broadband connection and it will then automatically add itself as a listing on eBay. From then on it will check to see if it has been sold every 10 minutes.
If the box fails to sell in its allotted time, it will just create a new listing and try and sell itself again. If it is snapped up, then its current owner is required to post the box on to its new home, where of course it needs to get online and try and sell itself again.
This creation is certainly a fairly interesting idea and presumably tracking its movements around the globe will add more depth to the experiment. Whether anyone will actually purchase the box is another matter, but if word gets out it could sell for a high price on eBay.
The one slightly confusing thing about the box it the fact that the artist failed to include a Wi-Fi connection. This would have been a far more elegant solution than the Ethernet cable.
Forgetful Phone Owners Savior is Zomm
January 4, 2010
If you have ever found yourself in a complete blind panicsearching for your mobile phone you might appreciate this little gadget by ZOMM. This puck shaped key chain can locate your phone with its built in tracker but this is not it’s main selling point.
ZOMM have designed the device to pair with your mobile phone via bluetooth so you can take incoming calls even when you can not access your phone. It also includes a panic button that will allow users to make an emergency call even if their phone is locked in a different room (up to 10 metres), in a briefcase or locked in your car. One final quirky feature is that it will give an audible warning if you start to get out of bluetooth range.
There is speculation that this product will come to retail at around $79 and should be released in the very near future.
The World’s Largest Underwater Museum
May 16, 2009
Quite often there comes a time when we find ourselves diving (quite literally, in this case) into the weird world of weird art and this is certainly one of those times. What’s more, if you ever visit Mexico (and, indeed, if you’re ever allowed to visit Mexico) then you too could be diving into the weird world of weird art too thanks to the quite unique sculptures of British artist Jason de Caires Taylor that will be sunk to the depths of one of the world’s most visited sites in the National Marine Park of Cancuna.
Between 250 and 400 sculptures will be sunk to the depths and placed between natural choral and sea life in order to create what will hopefully become man-made choral. Jason de Caires Taylor said that he hopes that it will become the beginning of the world’s largest underwater museum. The main piece, which will look something like the picture above although on a considerably grander scale, will encompass between 300 and 400 lifelike figures.
Over time, more artists will be encouraged to submit their own sculptures and work to be included in this unique scheme. Unfortunately, de Caires Taylor is, like much of the world, stuck outside Mexico at the moment since the outbreak of swine flu and has currently only finished two of the sculptures and considering plans are to have the first stages completed by September of this year, hopefully he’ll be able to get back out there and continue his work singing art to the sea bed.
Source – Wired
Loc8tor the simple solution for finding just about anything
April 30, 2009
Recently exhibiting at the Gadget Show Live 2009 was a company supplying a very handy device for locating lost or mislaid important items such as keys, mobile phones or even a car in the local car park. Loc8tor is a fantastic gadget that will bring some comfort to those that have panicked not knowing where they have parked the car in a multi-storey car park. However there is another extremely handy use for this gadget and that is locating children, pets or even elderly confused relatives.
Yacrosoft Deal Dropped
May 4, 2008
Microsoft has dropped its proposed bid to buy out search giant Yahoo. Microsoft had wanted Mihoo, or Yacrosoft (or maybe just MY!), to compete with the seemingly untouchable Google for the search king title. Having raised their initial bid from $44.6bn to $47.5bn, Microsoft has withdrawn because they were not willing to meet the $53bn valuation set by Yahoo.
Websites and Internet businesses have set a truly astonishing benchmark when it comes to valuations and bid prices. Yahoo are demanding more than $50bn for a company that has a fairly minimal share in a $40bn market – although analysts do expect this value to rise to $80bn by the year 2010.
In march 2005 Ask Jeeves, which holds considerably less market share than Yahoo, was purchased for a $1.85bn investment. More recently, Skype was purchased by Ebay for $2.6bn (which could rise to as much as $4.1bn depending on performance) – that’s a lot of money for a free service. YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65bn while MySpace went for a snip at $580mn to Fox Interactive.
Most of us can barely comprehend a figure of that magnitude but it seems that the search engines and portals are buying businesses for tens of billion dollars without hesitation. Can Ebay really turn a profit on Skype when they payed $2.6bn for it? In comparison to some of the prices, the $580mn for MySpace has the greatest chance to impress but, even then, that’s a lot of monetisation.
MySpace Adds Karaoke To Its Features
April 30, 2008
MySpace – never a website to shy away from trying new things – is launching a MySpace karaoke service. The new site, released on Tuesday and found at ksolo.myspace.com enables users to sing along to any of their favourite hits. This move comes in light of the recent purchase, by MySpace’s parent company News Corp of the karaoke website ksolo.com.
The unique blend of the karaoke feature and MySpace music uploading means that registered users will also have the chance, should they desire that chance, to upload their efforts to the MySpace site where it can be viewed and laughed at by the community members.
MySpace is one of the largest social networking or social media sites on the Internet. It is largely geared around a community that listens to, creates, and shares music. With many an unsigned band using MySpace to highlight their own flavour of tunes, the site isn’t a stranger to bad music.
You might be surprised to learn (at least I was) that kSolo is only one of a large number of karaoke sites on the Internet. Electronic Arts owns SingShot and Yahoo! Owns Bix. However, this amalgamation of kSolo and MySpace will be the first time that avid sing-alongers will be able to upload their efforts directly to the site.
Is it really something we should applaud them for?
