To get up to top speed, bullet trains have to pull a huge amount of electrical current from the grid. typically through unsightly overhead power lines. But this newly debuted train prototype from South Korea sucks up electricity invisibly from the tracks below. More » ...
Briefly : Not even Ellen DeGeneres can beat this one: NASA asked people to take selfies on Earth Day, and humans from Antarctica to Zimbabwe submitted more than 50,000 photos. Of those, NASA selected 36,422 photos to create this fully zoomable 3.2 gigapixel image of Earth’s Eastern and Western hemispheres. More » ...
What’s the most ridiculous piece of design that you can imagine? Chances are someone else has already thought of it — especially if it’s a lightsaber knife. This year’s Electrolux Design Lab competition includes exactly that, as well as dozens of other innovative ideas, on show at Vivid Sydney. More » ...
The fate of net neutrality has never looked bleaker , with the FCC’s proposed rules basically dismantling the free and open internet that we know today. You can thank the agency’s notorious revolving door for that; for years, FCC officials and the people they’re supposed to be regulating have been playing a horrible game of telecom musical chairs. More » ...
It’s probably related to our limited existence on this planet, but mankind has an unmistakable obsession with time. How else would you explain all the energy we put into building countless clocks designed to tick away the seconds, from a simple Timex watch, to this wonderful WaterColorBot that paints every passing minute? More » ...
Briefly: An email from outspoken Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie to communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has surfaced, with the prominent Australian startup boss taking aim at the poor state of government investment in and support for the country’s startups. More » ...
Holy crap, somebody invented something that makes Google Glass seem cool. The augmented reality wizards at Metaio just showed off their Thermal Touch technology, a new kind of user interface that basically turns the whole world into a touchscreen. It looks pretty futuristic. More » ...
A lot of kids love iPads, to the point where they’re almost never just, y’know, playing with kids stuff. Osmo is a nifty little gadget that does both, encouraging kids to play with tangible, real-world toys that magically interact with games on the iPad’s screen. And you can pre-order one through Osmo’s crowdfunding campaign starting today. More » ...
China loves to counterfeit, and architecture is no exception. So it was no surprise when a massive, massive German-style castle popped up in the seaside city of Dalian. It’s exciting, however, that Starwood Hotels has announced that it will open a giant hotel inside of it. More » ...
Video : The fact that Dan Brisse is a professional snowboarder doesn’t make this any less nuts. Dan climbs to the top of a four-storey carpark, puts his snowboard on, gets pulled by a truck to get speed and finally does a backflip jump landing on the rooftop of the building across the street. Crazy! More » ...
I really wish YouTube and the internet as we know it today existed when I was in high school. So instead of reading textbooks and taking notes in class, I could just watch YouTube videos and Wikipedia entries on any test I had coming up. Seriously, I could have dozed off in class and just watched this animation detailing the major workings of World War II. More » ...
This beautiful new commercial from Nokia uses the same principle of bullet time — the effect made popular by the movie The Matrix – but in a different way: Instead of freezing a moment in time, the rig is built to give the illusion that the world is spinning. It’s pretty, but it can make you a bit dizzy. More » ...
Briefly: Look, we all know that electronic music DJs can be a bit ridiculous. When your job mostly involves tapping some buttons and spinning some wheels, or at worst just pushing the space bar on your MacBook Pro, you have to have a lot of free time on stage for other activities. Saturday Night Live sets these press-play DJs clearly in its sights in this skit. More » ...
At some point in physics class, your teacher probably rubbed a balloon against his hair and explained static electricity. But what your teacher didn’t tell you — the full story about static electricity — is that scientists are just now realising it is a lot more complicated than thought. More » ...
Take a video of roller coaster ride. Then GIF it. Make a flipbook from your GIF. Record a video of that flipbook in action. Put it on Vine. Turn that into a GIF. And this is what you get! More » ...
The rest of the world may think of the US as a nation full of oversized people living in oversized houses, but the AIA Chicago wants to change the perception that American architecture is always too big. Its Small Projects Award (tagline: Not Everyone Needs a Skyscraper ) focuses on something most other award programs neglect: tiny buildings. More » ...
Caleb Charland has been merging science with photography for years, creating images that challenge you to figure out just what the heck is going on. His most recent work is a collection of disparate materials and methods, each one with their own wondrous flavour. More » ...
Shark skin is famously sleek and dragless, the envy of swimsuit designers. Perhaps less famous is what shark skin’s oddly rough surface looks like up close: an eerie matrix of microscopic tooth-like scales. Now, scientists are 3D-printing artificial shark skin in hopes of unlocking its swimming secrets. More » ...
This incredible Russian dash cam footage shows a car driving through a forest fire while the drivers wonder if they are going to die or not. Around the one-minute mark, it looks like they are crossing hell itself. Fortunately, they managed to get out alive from this mayhem. More » ...
Video : Artist Takeshi Murata has physically animated this sphere using kinetic motion and strobes — it is not a 3D render. It is in fact a type of zoetrope, a rotating illusion originating in the 19th century, and was designed on a computer then fabricated by craftsmen and mechanical engineers. More » ...