Product Inspiration

In this picture, the light bulbs aren’t connected to anything at all- just mounted to stand up straight. Notice the big power lines above, well, the strong electromagnetic fields given off by the power lines provide enough energy to light all of these bulbs alone.

The analogy and takeaway here is huge- there’s electromagnetic fields all around us, especially in urban areas, and these fields are prime picking for ‘free’ energy to power electronic gadgets. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, the power isn’t normally substantial enough to run a cell phone or other device. Luckily, a team at MIT found a way to send usable wireless power through EM waves to gadgets by focusing on particular frequencies.

Perhaps we could modify conventional power lines and home wiring to target specific resonant frequencies in the same way. Its early in the game, but this could really revolutionize how we power all of our many electric devices within the next 10 years. Then, at least you could get something out of the cancer-causing fields all around us!

http://gizmodo.com/361390/1301-florescent-bulbs-lit-solely-by-magnetic -fields

In our continuing coverage of the evolution of the smart home, First Alert has just come out with some smoke alarms which communicate with each other and tell you where the fire is. It seems like a great step in the right direction, but its still missing a few features I’d like to see:

1. Does not mesh with existing wireless internet. Lots of us have wireless connections in our houses, why can’t we just add these guys to the network?

2. Will not tell me if my house is on fire when I’m away. Conventional smoke alarms are very loud, and I’ll probably hear them if I’m anywhere inside my house. What would be REALLY useful is if they would call / text / email me when my house is on fire so I could send over a neighbor to grab a few valuables / use an extinguisher.

3. Does not mesh with other home automation products (as far as I can tell). Granted, there’s no one single standard yet for connecting electronic household gadgets together, but it does not make sense long term to have a different wireless system for rain gauges, fire alarms, and lights. Hopefully, this will be sorted out soon.

At any rate, its another example of a dumb device getting smarter. Lets hope it keeps on learning.

http://www.gizmag.com/onelink-wireless-talking-networked-smoke-alarm/8 900/

I spend a lot of time talking about how important “manufacturability” is. While it takes a bit of fun out of the whole technology research work we do, its very important to our clients to know that the cool technologies we present are not only shown to work in the lab, but also have some promise of being cheaply mass produceable.

OLEDs are finally living up to the promise of being cheaply mass produceable, as GE has just demonstrated its roll-to-roll printing system for the thin, flexible displays. If the other promises also ring true, this will mean cheap, flexible displays in everything from cell phones to TVs to bus stop ads.

http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/ge_demonstrates_worlds_first_rollt oroll_manufactured_oled.php

LED light bulbs, while great, still fall behind other light bulbs in the amount of light they give off, and in the ugly color of light that is emitted. Well, that may soon be a thing of the past, as researchers have recently shown that a nanocrystal coating applied to the outside of the bulb both increases the amount of light given off, and turns it into a much more natural color.

Its been said that LEDs will eventually replace all other light bulbs, but I’ve always been skeptical given the ugly colors and weak light output of the models so far. If this new technology proves to be both true and cheap enough to mass-produce, I may be proven very wrong in a few years.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/nanocrystal-coating-led-lightb ulbs.php

The effective range of cell phone towers and wireless internet hubs has a lot to do with how high they are mounted. In the conventional world, this translates to building taller towers and mounting on tall fixtures. Now, with dropping prices of electronic components and a rising demand for remote data and phone connectivity, its becoming cost effective to send “disposable” cellular and wireless internet stations up on balloons, which provide communication for a wide area on the ground.

This could be a great way for us rural folks to get reliable voice and data reception out in the middle of nowhere. Personally, I think it has a lot of potential, especially given the fact that “a single balloon can serve an area otherwise requiring 40 cell towers.” Lets just hope one doesn’t get sucked into a jet engine and cause a plane crash.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120347353988378955.html?mod=blo g

Up until the last few years, whenever I thought of bacteria, thoughts of sickness and rotting food came to mind. Now, I’m learning that bacteria are being harnessed to do all kinds of work for us- from generating electricity, to processing waste, to sensing chemicals. Here’s another notch in bacteria’s belt of achievements, as they’ve just been proven to clean water for drinking.

Basically, the bacteria are put into the unprocessed water, and consume any contaminants present. This takes a lot of the load off of the expensive and sensitive membranes that are used to purify the water further down the pipe.

With all of these cool abilities, bacteria are becoming less of a nuisance and more of a development platform to build new technologies on. Cool!

http://www.physorg.com/news122896811.html

As many people know, GPS systems work great in open outdoor spaces, but perform very poorly indoors and in urban areas. There are quite a few different methods to mitigate this problem in development or available now, and here’s a new one: Each light bulb in a commercial building flickers at a specific frequency, and a handheld gadget reads the frequency of the flicker, and determines its location.

Frequency-modulated light communication has been tossed around for a little while now, but other than theory and research projects, we haven’t seen many useful civilian applications to date. The concept is a great one, as there are light bulbs all around us, and in theory we could make a mesh network intranet using light bulbs that talked to each other.

What do you think, will this light-based communication paradigm ever gain significant ground, or will it remain a novelty for years to come?

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2008/02/lightbased_hospital_gps_for_ lost_patients.html

No, the title is not an oxymoron, a not-so-new technology called “ammoniac-water absorption technique” is making a comeback to provide a sunlight-powered cooler for keeping food and beverages cold in places away from grid power. This method has been known for quite some time, though little has been done with it outside of flame-powered devices. Lets hope that changes, and we all get sun-powered coolers for those hot Texas summers in the near future.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3106924,00.html via DVICE

This new gadget could add another tool in the modern day police officer’s toolbox for going after drunk drivers. While its about as simple of a product as it gets - a conventional flashlight was upgraded to include an ambient alcohol detector, it could be extremely useful in telling the difference between drunken late night revelers out for a spin and some students on the way back from IHOP.

Invention fairs are full of wacky, impractical gadgets that combine two functions into one device (the toothbrush pen comes to mind), but this is a great example of how such combinations can really be a good thing.

http://www.myfoxkc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5711382&versi on=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Stitches could soon be a thing of the past, as this new surgical tape promises to heal wounds better and less problematic than conventional wound closure tools. The tape uses a combination of adhesives and nano pillars to create a strong bond, and is bio-degradable so that an internal (or external, for that matter) wound can be left untouched without any need to go back later and remove stitches.

In addition, the tape has micro-pockets built in that can hold medication, which could further speed the healing process and prevent infections.

This gecko tape concept has been making lots of news lately, and while its not yet really cheap enough to manufacture in large quantities, it will make a significant splash someday.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/20301/