We Make Money Not Art: SpotScents, developed by Yasuyuki Yanagida at the Media Information Science Laboratories in Japan, uses scent projectors to deliver localized odors to a human’s nose through the air without requiring users to wear any special devices. A scent projector is composed of an air cannon that launches vortex rings which can travel several meters. Because Scent […]

RFID in Japan: A Tokyo-based company TechFirm is launching a service that connects consumers and small retailers using RFID. Consumers having RFID-chipped phones can “bookmark” their “favorite” stores by showing their phones to RFID readers installed in stores. Information about a “bookmarked” store is automatically transmitted to a mobile phone. Consumers can access information about all “bookmarked” stores using dedicated […]

Popgadget: A Spanish designer has come up with “Your Turn”, a washing machine which uses fingerprint recognition technology to ensure the same person is not using it twice in a row. “I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn’t do anything around the house except drink beers,” said Pep Torres was […]

BusinessWeek: Video-on-the-go has long been a dream of cell-phone companies worldwide. Carriers have spent the better part of a decade building networks capable of carrying fast video streams, partly in hopes of boosting profits by hooking customers on clips of pop singers and soccer goals. But just as those networks are starting to work well enough that consumers might actually […]

ITWorld: Efforts to introduce electronic-ticketing systems in Germany’s huge mass transit sector have moved forward with the successful testing of a smart card system that combines RFID (radio frequency identification). T-Systems International GmbH, the IT services and infrastructure arm of German telco Deutsche Telekom AG, has developed an e-ticketing system in collaboration with the German Mass Transit Authority (VDV), which […]

We Make Money Not Art: Erez Kikin-Gil ‘s Eco Pod is a TUI-controlled system that mimics the growth of a plant and allows children to keep track of their class garden and learn how the different natural elements influence it, and each other, over time. One pod represents the wind, another the sun’s heat, a third one the light and […]

CFO.com: When CFO began publishing, back in the primordial ooze of 1985, each issue contained a sizable amount of technology coverage. The editorial slant made sense. The arrival of IBM’s original personal computer just a few years earlier, and the subsequent release of Lotus 1-2-3, had turned the finance function on its head. Suddenly liberated from the drudgery of manually […]

New York Times: A knitted bag holds a weakened heart, helping it pump blood. Electricity flows through the threads of a battery-powered fleece jacket, keeping the wearer warm. Carbon fibers are braided into structures that look like mushrooms, but are actually prototypes of automotive engine valves. Other fibers are shaped into bicycle frames and sculling oars. Textiles are no longer […]

we make money not art: Toyota is working with Stanford University and Affective Media for a few years to create a car that can read your feelings. The Pod concept car has headlights that fade from bright to dull and change color to indicate happy, sad or angry moods, depending on the driver’s mood. Affective Media CEO, Christian Jones, says […]

Mobile Digest: Orange tells us that its 3G Mobile Office card is being put to unusual use by scientists in the UK. Researchers over here are using the cards to let them access and control one of the largest fully robotic telescopes in the world based over in Hawaii. They can access the internet from their laptops to connect to […]