Technknowledge

Ah, children: those lovable balls of built-up energy. If only there was a way to harness that force? That's exactly what designers Aaron Tsui, Irina Kozlovskaya, Jasen Mehta and Sergio Silva had in mind when they came up with "Rocco, the energy pal."

Rocco is a rocking horse that, when rocked, charges up its flashlight ears. These ears can then be used as a regular old flashlight, or — appropriate for kids — as a nightlight. It's a great idea, but, like all things designed for kids, I could imagine it backfiring. You're sleeping, say, while your little terror is up too late with way too much energy. What happens next? One of the runts, now armed with a fully-charged flashlight, barges into your room and wakes you up.

Still, let's just imagine we go the nightlight route instead, and Rocco's power is something used only for good.

Rocco is one of the entries in the Greener Gadgets Competition in NYC.

Rocco, via Inhabitots

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Want to impress your Super Bowl visitors this weekend with more than 7-layer dip and mini-sandwiches? Have some extra time on your hands? Happen to have 66 feet of salvaged particle board sitting around?

Well, even if you don't meet all of those requirements, this is still a pretty neat project. Roommates Jandra, Priya, and Ruella cobbled together their very own apartment photo booth for pretty cheap, though they got a little help and used their heads to keep the price down. Still, none of it is stuff you couldn't find at a hardware store or IKEA.

Check out the full list of instructions here.

Via Apartment Therapy

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Forget those compact fluorescent bulbs, or even fancy LED lighting. Scientists in Sweden and the USA say they have developed lighting panels using the wonder material graphene, which one day could make the basic lamp redundant.

The material can be fashioned into large energy efficient flexible sheets called LECs (light emitting electromechanical cells) that can cover an entire wall or ceiling, filling the room with an adjustable and even source of light. We've seen how OLED technology promises a similar approach to lighting, but the scientists say the graphene panels are much cheaper to produce, and don't contain the metal alloy indium tin oxide that makes OLED panels tricky to recycle.

No word on how long we'll need to wait before you can buy LEC panels at your local hardware store.

ScienceDaily.com, via Treehugger.com

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Have you ever come across a certain item that, from the moment you laid eyes on it, you felt like it really brought something innovative to its category? I mean, a device providing certain unique, never before seen features that you felt were going to change the respective product segment for good?

Well, if you have (and I'm pretty sure all of you must have felt like this regarding a gadget at some point), then you'll completely understand why we were so excited whe... (read more)
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Some of the most interesting products we came across during our short visit at Sony's booth from IFA 2009 were the MDR-NC300D noise canceling earphones, recently released by the Japanese company (well, at least they were pretty recent at the time of our visit), which really managed to draw our attention for two reas... (read more)
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Back in September last year, Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices did what most of the industry was already prepared for, namely the introduction of its first series of graphics processing units with support for DirectX 11. The chip maker did so by announcing their fastest cards yet, the Radeon HD 5800 series, which als... (read more)
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Blackberry users who have been frustrated by their phone's inability to properly sync Gmail can unclench their fists. Documents detailing the new features of the upcoming BIS 3.0 show Gmail syncing and WMA support are on the way.

RIM is finally updating BIS so that Gmail will accurately sync read and unread status of your mail. It's about time.

The update will also add support for Windows Media Audio attachments as well as OpenOffice documents. BIS 3.0 will also include the decidedly less exciting updates of a reconfigured, more secure E-mail setup application and more accurate error messages that will direct users to their specific carrier. I'm not kidding.

Carriers are themselves responsible to roll out the new Blackberry Internet Service so it's hard to say exactly when it should be popping up on your Blackberry. But just be glad that Gmail syncing and more exacting error messages are on their way. [BBLeaks via Crackberry]

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Yesterday, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington was driving around Google's campus, talking on his phone trying to figure out where exactly his meeting was. One righteous Googler didn't approve of Arrington's potentially unsafe talking-while-driving, so he took a stand. Literally.

In what Arrington describes as the young man's Tiananmen Square moment, a stand-off ensued between the TechCrunch proprietor and the bespectacled Google geek. Thankfully, this moment was captured in photographs by both participants.

Here's how Arrington recaps the drama:

...this guy, who's wearing a Google employee badge, decides it's time to take a stand against cell phone use in cars. So he stands in front of my car and won't move...Cars behind me start swerving. I back up to go around him. He steps forward, vigilant in his defense of the law. I'm off the phone now, and snapping this picture didn't help getting him to move on. The light changes. The light changes again. Cars are now backed up behind me...I'm not sure what comes next in a situation like this. I can either drive over him or park my car. So I put the car in park, open the door to get out and discuss the situation with him. That's when he ran away. His mission, apparently, accomplished.

The employee in question, Mike Shields, has not backed down in the face of public semi-humiliation:

@arrington If you really want to talk about this, let's do that when your car is not abandoned in the road.

I take automobile safety as seriously as the next guy, but I'm also a fan of a good razzing when its appropriate, so I'm not really sure who comes out on top in this soon-to-be-legendary Mountain View stand off. I'm just glad that I live in a day and age in which camera phones let me relive the high drama as if I were actually there. [TechCrunch via Business Insider]

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As Make puts it, the atomic clock is old and busted. The quantum-logic clock from National Institute of Standards and Technology, keeping time 100,000 times more accurately than its predecessor, is definitely the new hotness.

The quantum clock, developed by physicist Chin-wen Chou of the NIST, keeps time by measuring the energy of a single aluminum ion with UV lasers. It loses one second every 3.4 billion years, compared to the cesium fountain clock which loses a second every 100 million years, and upon which the current international standard is based.

In fact, the new quantum-logic clock is so precise that Chou's team can't even measure it, as the current definition of a second is based on the prevailing cesium clock.

Don't get too excited about setting your life to a more precise clock just yet: there are currently no plans to adopt the quantum clock as the international standard. But with potential applications ranging from use in more precise GPS devices to answering questions about the speed of light and Einsteinian relativity, this clock is still a serious tick into the future. [Wired via Make]

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I thought Google Map Buddy's ability to generate printable, hi-res versions of Google Maps was pretty neat but figured I'd never find a reason to use it. These Google Maps envelops, however, are definitely worth the ink and the effort.

There's not a whole lot to them, but some of the best ideas are the simplest. Beste Miray Dogan, a graphic designer from Istanbul, showed that with a Google Map print out and a little ingenuity, you can make a custom envelop that pinpoints the exact location from which it was sent. How nice.

There's no template on her site, but with some trial and error I trust you'll be able to master the mapenvelope in no time. [Beste Miray via Nerd Approved]

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