Old to New: Typewriters

Last week I stumbled upon the USB Typewriter etsy shop and my jaw dropped! Jack Zylkin has invented a Typewriter Convertor process that turns any manual typewriter into a keyboard for your computer! He sells ready to purchase typewriters or you can buy a kit and do it yourself! I think these would be awesome for hotel/B&B lobby computers or electronic guestbooks at a shop... something memorable to catch your eye! Or if you're a modern Angela Landsbury, use it for writing a book the semi-old school way!

Jedi Housekeeping

Miele unveils the R2D2 cleaning droid and Jedi accomplice (HEPA filtration and lightsaber storage included), as conceived...

Toshiba 3D TV to enjoy programs without glasses

Tokyo, Oct 5: Many of our grandfathers enjoyed television programmes in black and white. The technology advanced and moved to colour televisions. But still TV sets occupied a large space of our old living rooms. Later the technology improved and the size decreased. Then comes the era of LCD TVs. We fixed our TVs on the walls like a calender. Again the world moved forward and LED TVs emerged.

Justifying the old phrase, 'change is the only thing that we can't change', LED era moved to 3D TVs (thanks to Avatar). The latest sensation is the 3D TVs which the users can enjoy the HD 3D videos in their homes. But it also became outdated by the announcement of the latest 3D TV where users can enjoy 3D programmes without wearing glasses.

Japan based consumer electronics manufacturer Toshiba has announced the world´s first 3D Flat panel-TV without glasses. Toshiba has launched two 3D TVs with a screen size of 12 inch and 20 inch in Japan’s biggest consumer electronics show, CEATEC 2010.

Toshiba claimed that the new integral imaging system helps the users to experience 3D videos without wearing 3D glasses. The new Toshiba 3D TV uses a perpendicular lenticular sheet, an array of small lenses that directs light from the display to nine points in front of the set. If a viewer sits within the optimal viewing zone, the brain integrates these points into a single 3D image.

Toshiba also has plan to launch the 40-inch version of this 3D TV but the officials revealed that this project will take time. The suggested viewing distance for the 20-inch model is 90cm and 65cm for the 12-inch size.

"With its new 3D TVs without glasses Toshiba once again aims to offer the highest possible picture quality," says Sascha Lange, Head of Marketing, Visual Products, Toshiba Europe.

American student finds GPS tracker stuck to car, FBI shows up to reclaim its 'federal property'

Mechanics spot strange things stuck under cars all the time, but when 20-year-old Yasir Afifi's ride was put up on lifts his shop found something that hadn't been kicked up from the road: a cylindrical tube connected to a device with an antenna. An extremely paranoid person would think they'd found a bomb, but the truth isn't much better. It was an FBI tracking device. Afifi posted pictures and his story on Reddit while a friend contemplated cunning things to do with it, sticking it to someone else's car or selling it on Craigslist. They didn't have long to ponder before long two "sneaky-looking" people were spotted outside his apartment. Afifi got in his car and drove off, only to be pulled over by FBI agents who demanded the device back, threatening "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."

Now, we've already given our opinions on using GPS technology like this and, while it's unknown whether these agents had a warrant to place this device, the 9th US Court of Appeals recently made one unnecessary for this sort of thing. The ACLU is working with Afifi to fight that ruling, and for now we're hoping that he, who is an American with an Egyptian father, is currently able to hit the town without agents following his every move. However, at this point they may not need a tracker: one agent who retrieved the device took the time to list off his favorite restaurants and even congratulated him on his new job.

Just Listening To Cell Phones Significantly Impairs Drivers, Study Shows

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have shown that just listening to a cell phone while driving is a significant distraction, and it causes drivers to commit some of the same types of driving errors that can occur under the influence of alcohol.

The use of cell phones, including dialing and texting, has long been a safety concern for drivers. But the Carnegie Mellon study, for the first time, used brain imaging to document that listening alone reduces by 37 percent the amount of brain activity associated with driving. This can cause drivers to weave out of their lane, based on the performance of subjects using a driving simulator.

The findings, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Brain Research, show that making cell phones hands-free or voice-activated is not sufficient in eliminating distractions to drivers. "Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road," said neuroscientist Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging.

Just listening to a cell phone while driving is a significant distraction, and it causes drivers to commit some of the same types of driving errors that can occur under the influence of alcohol. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dennis Oblander)

Other distractions, such as eating, listening to the radio or talking with a passenger, also can divert a driver. Though it is not known how these activities compare to cell phone use, Just said there are reasons to believe cell phones may be especially distracting. "Talking on a cell phone has a special social demand, such that not attending to the cell conversation can be interpreted as rude, insulting behavior," he noted. A passenger, by contrast, is likely to recognize increased demands on the driver's attention and stop talking.

The 29 study volunteers used a driving simulator while inside an MRI brain scanner. They steered a car along a virtual winding road at a fixed, challenging speed, either while they were undisturbed, or while they were deciding whether a sentence they heard was true or false. Just's team used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods to measure activity in 20,000 brain locations, each about the size of a peppercorn. Measurements were made every second.

The driving-while-listening condition produced a 37 percent decrease in activity of the brain's parietal lobe, which is associated with driving. This portion of the brain integrates sensory information and is critical for spatial sense and navigation. Activity was also reduced in the occipital lobe, which processes visual information.

The other impact of driving-while-listening was a significant deterioration in the quality of driving. Subjects who were listening committed more lane maintenance errors, such as hitting a simulated guardrail, and deviating from the middle of the lane. Both kinds of influences decrease the brain's capacity to drive well, and that decrease can be costly when the margin for error is small.

"The clear implication is that engaging in a demanding conversation could jeopardize judgment and reaction time if an atypical or unusual driving situation arose," Just said. "Heavy traffic is no place for an involved personal or business discussion, let alone texting."

Because driving and listening draw on two different brain networks, scientists had previously suspected that the networks could work independently on each task. But Just said this study demonstrates that there is only so much that the brain can do at one time, no matter how different the two tasks are.

The study emerges from the new field of neuroergonomics, which combines brain science with human-computer interaction studies that measure how well a technology matches human capabilities. Neuroergonomics is beginning to be applied to the operation of vehicles like aircraft, ships and cars in which drivers now have navigation systems, iPods and even DVD players at their disposal. Every additional input to a driver consumes some of his or her brain capacity, taking away some of the resources that monitor for other vehicles, lane markers, obstacles, and sudden changes in conditions.

"Drivers' seats in many vehicles are becoming highly instrumented cockpits," Just said, "and during difficult driving situations, they require the undivided attention of the driver's brain."

The project was funded by the Office of Naval Research. Other members of the research team included post-doctoral research associate Timothy Keller and research assistant Jacquelyn Cynkar.