Invis Mx2 is an interesting product (magnet-driven connecting fittings) that allow you to screw items together using magnetic forces. To use it you just use a typical drill with a connector that uses magnetic forces to turn a screw inside what you are trying to connect.
Related: Make Your Own Chalkboard Paint – A Pen That Prints in 3D While You Draw – Self Balancing Enclosed Motorcycle
Ok this isn’t really a gadget but it is my blog so I get to do what I want 🙂
PulsePoint is a crowdsourced iOS app that locates nearby help for a cardiac arrest and helps get help to those in need quickly.
Life-Saving Crowdsourcing App Expands Reach to Stop Cardiac Arrests
[PulsePoint] on his phone warned him that someone nearby needed CPR. Brawner reportedly raced around the gym, trying to find the victim, before heading to the parking lot, where he saw a man sprawled on the pavement. He began giving the man CPR until fire and rescue units showed up.
The man’s survival wasn’t just a blessing for his family, it was a huge victory for the PulsePoint Foundation, a Bay Area nonprofit whose app is making it easier to alert CPR-trained people that someone nearby needs help.
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PulsePoint’s free app connects to local 911 call centers and alerts users when there is someone nearby in need of CPR. PulsePoint users get an alert the same time as local emergency responders.It also shows the location of the closest automated electronic defibrillator (if there is one nearby) as well as a reminder about how to do CPR, just in case the user has an adrenaline-induced brain-freeze.
Very cool. It is great to see us find ways to help improve the health care system.
Related: Using Drones to Deliver Medical Supplies in Roadless Areas – Night Vision Contact Lenses – Gadgets to Mask Noise and Help You Sleep or Concentrate
Very cool device that fits inside the card reader slot of your Mac laptop to add 128 Gb of storage (it sits flush with your MacBook, you can barely even tell it is there).
Simply insert JetDrive Lite into the card reader slot on the side of your MacBook and instantly boost your storage capacity.
You need to select your laptop version so my guess is you can’t use one card for both a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro (or between some versions of MacBook Pro that have different JetDrive Lite versions).
It is compatible back to late 2010 MacBook Air 13 inch so I am buying one for my old MacBook Air. Buying via Amazon a 128 Gb version is only $80 (at least right now), list price is $120. Currently it is back-ordered for 2-4 weeks.
I would include a way to lookup the production date of your laptop if I were selling these but they didn’t do so (maybe they will be smart and update the page to do so). You can use this Apple page to determine the production date of your MacBook.
Another similar product, PNY StorEDGE 128 Gb is $75 from Amazon ($200 list price – it is a bit older so likely price to places like Amazon has dropped, even if they didn’t lower the list price, since the release).
Related: Storing and Sharing the Photos You Take with Various Gadgets – Macro Lens Band for Phone Cameras
Sono is a conceptual gadget to turn windows into sound cancelling filters (similar to noise cancelling headphones). A microphone listens to noise coming in and then a speaker sends out sound waves to cancel the noises that have been set to cancel. In this way they are even cooler than noise cancelling headphones as you can tune the filter to let in birds singing and filter out car alarms, etc.
Very cool, I hope this becomes a gadget we can buy (it is only conceptual now). Read more at Dyson design award site.
Noise canceling works not by blocking sound but by using properties of the wave pattern of sound to send sound waves that add to the existing sound waves to effectively eliminate the sound wave – thus we don’t hear anything. This is know as Active noise control or active noise reduction. It isn’t blocking the noise but adding other sound waves that combine with the noise you want to filter to eliminate the sound wave – it actually doesn’t eliminate it, as countering the sound wave exactly is not likely possible, but it results in a very limited sound.
Active noise reduction is best for low frequency sound (due to the nature of waves – low frequency has longer wave lengths). My guess is this will mean this product has difficulty blocking high frequency sound nearly as well as it will do with low frequency sounds.
Related: Gadgets to Mask Noise and Help You Sleep or Concentrate – Dealing with Noise Pollution in Your Condo – Zeo Personal Sleep Manager – Universal Translator on the Way
The 3 Doodler, from Wobble Works presents the opportunity to print your own creations in 3D. 3Doodler is the world’s first and only 3D Printing Pen. Using ABS plastic (the material used by many 3D printers), 3Doodler draws in the air or on surfaces. It’s compact and easy to use, and requires no software or computers. You just plug it into a power socket and can start drawing anything within minutes.
Template allow the 3Doodler to print your very own artist-designed 3Doodles.
The Ink (i.e. ABS/PLA plastic): The 3Doodler uses 3mm ABS or PLA plastic as its “ink” – just like a 3D printer. Each 3Doodler backed on Kickstarter comes with at least one bag of plastic; each bag will contain ten 1ft strands of plastic; and each 1 ft strand produces approximately 11 ft of 3Doodling fun… yes, you read that right, a foot of plastic goes a very long way in the 3Doodler.
Wobble Works plans to offer plastic sold in strands (making it easy to switch colours and create different styles), but 3Doodler-compatible plastic is also available in 1kg spools from between $30 to $55 from a variety of sources. They are not mistreating customers like the old fashion printer companies do with broken by design print cartridges, $8,000 a gallon ink and the like.
As of right now (in the first 24 hours of launch) on Kickstarter they have $449,797 pledged (with an original goal of $30,000).
Related: Qubits Construction Toy – Amazing New Light Field Camera: Adjust Focus After You Take the Picture – The Latest Leap in Computer Control via Gesture – Make Your Own Chalkboard Paint
Universal translators are a gadget I think will be great. We still are not there, but we keep getting closer. Microsoft, Google and Apple are doing a great deal of work on making this happen.
At the end of this webcast Microsoft demonstrates speaking in English and having that translated and then output in spoken Chinese.
Related: Getting Closer to a Universal Translator – Sony Student Design Workshop: Print Odor on Postcards – Computer Control via Gesture
Raspberry 1 circuit board diagram
One great thing about technology is all the great disruptive innovation it makes possible. And while some gadgets cost a large amount of money it is also great how many really cheap but nevertheless extremely cool gadgets we get to choose from. The folks at Rasberry Pi are creating this computer (alpha boards have been sent to the manufacturer), that just a bit larger than a credit card, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system.
The ICs used in the design are an ARM-based application processor (center) and an SMSC LAN9512 USB 2.0 hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller (right and down from center). The SDRAM is mounted on top of the application processor in a PoP configuration.
Following the example of the BBC Micro, we intend to launch both a Model A device (lacking the LAN9512, and with 128MB of RAM) at the $25 price point, and a Model B device (including the LAN9512, and with 256MB of RAM) for a $5-10 additional cost. We remain confident of shipping before the end of 2011.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.
They are developing, manufacturing and distributing an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children and expect the computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.
Provisional specification
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