Protect The Item In Your Suitcase

When you ship something, you typically put bubble wrap or newspaper around it, to provide impact protection and to keep it from rattling around inside the box. Well, PaQ is a self-inflating gadget that does the same thing for the precious contents of your suitcase. About the size of a thick smartphone, the ABS-bodied main PaQ device is attached to […]

Old Fisherman Shack Turned Into An Eco Retreat

Eco-conscious couple Jamie and Ingrid Kwong have breathed new life into an old fisherman’s shack by transforming the dilapidated structure into a cozy, environmentally-friendly getaway. Located on Pittwater’s Mackerel Beach in New South Wales, Australia, The Little Black Shack is a restorative retreat that offers complete immersion in nature with minimal site impact. The house was reconstructed by hand with […]

Sail Your Worries Away

For those wanting to sail away from the stresses of daily life, this solar-powered tiny house boat is the perfect off-grid escape. Built by Quebec-based boat builders Daigno, the floating home, which comes with a price tag of approximately $65,000, provides all the amenities needed for a comfortable life on the water. Daigno is well-known for its boat constructions, but […]

Robot That Detects Plastic In Our Oceans

Plastic waste has become such a significant issue, even a junior high student knows it’s an overwhelming task. Anna Du, a sixth-grade student from Massachusetts, is in the beginning stages of a robot that can help clean up plastic littler. It follows some of the other amazing entrepreneurial efforts to eliminate plastic waste, like Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup project. Du’s […]

Cycling On Water?

Among other things, Josep Rubau has designed cars for Volkswagen, and was the creator of the Tramontana supercar. Now, the Spanish industrial designer is CEO of RedShark Bikes, a company that sells a pedal-powered prop-driven trimaran which he invented. There are actually three versions of the RedShark trimaran – the recreation-oriented Fun, the rough-and-ready Adventure and the high-performance Sport. The […]

Drone Catcher

There are various places – such as airports, prisons and military bases – where people aren’t allowed to fly consumer drones. If someone does so anyway, it’s always possible to shoot the thing down or remotely disable it. Another option, however, is to net it in mid-air, using the new-and-improved DroneCatcher. Made by Dutch startup Delft Dynamics, the DroneCatcher quadcopter […]

Aquaponics Facility In Kansas Food Desert

Nonprofit Nile Valley Aquaponics is raising fish in a Kansas City food desert—and they’re creating jobs, providing healthy food and promoting sustainable urban farming in the process. To help the nonprofit lead the community to greener and healthier living, American architecture and engineering firm HOKdesigned the Nile Valley Aquaponics Facility, which could double the annual harvest to 50,000 pounds of […]

Rethinking About Poo Treatment

As anyone who’s been to a community meeting knows, the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) syndrome is often a frustrating roadblock. So when Vancouver-based firm PUBLIC: Architecture + Communicationwas approached to build a wastewater treatment center in the middle of a residential neighborhood in British Columbia, the project predictably ran up against some challenges. Fortunately, the architects turned widely held […]

Reading Your Messages By Touch?

As part of Facebook’s ongoing quest to be first to capitalize on The Next Big Thing in Technology (whatever it turns out to be), the social media juggernaut has written a check for some Purdue College research into haptic technology that can not only alert you to new messages through your skin, but read them too. “I’m excited about this,” […]