Gizmodo: innovation

Hobo Hut Features Solar Power, Is Nicer Than My Apartment

Adam Frucci — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:10:00 EDT

If you're gonna be a hobo, you might as well be a hobo with the sweetest hobo house on the block, right?

This hobo hutch, discovered in a homeless camp along a river in Tokyo, is outfitted with a solar panel to power the goodies inside, such as TV and radio. The guy who lives in it used to work for a camera company, so he knew his electronics well enough to put this together with found objects.

Also, he claims it can float, making this the most terrifying houseboat ever. Sorry, MacGuyver hobo, but I don't trust your skills that much. [0 Yen House via Neatorama]

IBM First Company to Win 4,000 Patents in a Year, More Than Microsoft and Intel Combined

matt buchanan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:20:00 EST

IBM has always hoarded patents like a dwarf and his gold. But this year, they're the first company to ever win more than 4,000 in a single year, more than Microsoft and Intel combined.

IBM picked up 4,186 U.S patents in 2008, while Microsoft won 2,030 and Intel earned a patriotic 1,776. The silver medal surprisingly went to Samsung, who earned 3,515. We would tell you to just give up if you're planning on inventing anything, since it's already been patented, and knowing the USPTO, they've awarded patents for broad, overly general and totally obvious ideas.

But there's hope—IBM says they're going to increase the number of inventions it takes to publishing annually instead of grabbing a patent for to try to spur broader, more open innovation. But likely that just means some asshole in Minnesota will try to patent the world's first supercomputer sex machine and deprive everyone of it instead of IBM. [Reuters]

Guy Invents Potential Cancer Cure With Radio Machine Built Out of Pie Pans... and Hot Dogs

matt buchanan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:30:00 EDT

You know, I really love it when (sorta) average guys out-innovate mega-corporate profit machines, like that homemade MRI machine. But this is more amazing: John Kanzius has no background in cancer research but might have invented a real cure. He was diagnosed with leukemia, and struck by the idea that radio waves could kill cancer cells. So he built a prototype machine using pie pans and conducted tests on hot dogs injected with copper sulfate—the radio waves only heat up metal spots, for tactical nuking without nasty side effects. It's now being tested at the University of Pittsburgh and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where the lead doc says that it "may allow us to treat just about any kind of cancer you can imagine."

So how to get metal bits to cancer cells? This is where the big corporate research comes in: nanotechnology. Thousands of nano-particles composed of metal bits can fit in a cancer cell. So far, they've conducted successful cancer extermination trials using the Kanzius machine and metal nano-particles at both M.D. Anderson and Pittsburgh. The catch is that it's only been tested on solid tumors—hitting cancer that's spread around the body is what they're working toward, and if they can't hunt down the individual cancer cells with the nano-particles, this will only have limited applications.

Human trials are also still four years away, which unfortunately might not be in time for the machine's inventor to cure himself. [CBS via Medgadget]

P.S. On a lighter note, if you really liked the CGI in the video, the guys at Hybrid Medical Animation emailed us to let you know it was all them, baby.

Pico Interface Merges Multitouch and the Physical World

Charlie White — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:14:41 EDT

Pico is a computer interface that can move electromagnetic pucks, merging the digital and physical worlds. In this video from earlier this year, see how researcher James Patten has used his unique combination of projection, magnets and computing to help visualize problems such as determining the best place to put a group of cellphone network transmission towers. Imagine the games you could play with this thing! [James Patten]

Smart Scene Carving Resizes Images Without Distortion

Charlie White — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:00:00 EDT

Take a look at this smart image resizing algorithm introduced at the SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group: Graphics) convention. Ariel Shamir of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science in Herzliya, Israel, aims to make images just as dynamically resizable as text is on a web page by using a technique he calls "scene carving." We're also thinking it would make a convenient Photoshop plug-in. We really can't stand looking at stretched images, but this is a smart way to stretch or compress them. Bring it on! [Ariel Shamir, via YouTube]

Serene: Bang & Olufsen's 'Upside Down' Cellphone

Gizloco — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:55:41 EDT

Good ol' Bang & Olufsen is making some noise with the Serene, a clamshell cellphone jointly developed with Samsung. Unlike other cellphones on the market, the screen is on the bottom and the buttons are up top. Try it out with your cellphone and see how it feels. In fact, check the jump for some more glamor shots and a virtual simulation of just how such a cellphone would look like.

So much more natural...

The Serene supports all the standard features found on cellphones, like Bluetooth and a VGA-resolution camera. The catch? Its price tag is $1,275. Ouch. Maybe that's why another tech blogger called it "a hunk of shit." It'll be available here by the beginning of November. While it's nice to see some innovation for a change, is it innovative enough to warrant that kind of money? I'll put all my chips on "no," thank you very much. – Nicholas Deleon

North America Gets Bang & Olufsen's Serene [Digital Trends]

Poland, Everyone Else is Better than US in Programming

johnb — Wed, 10 May 2006 10:45:44 EDT

It's a sad day, friends, but one I saw coming. As you've probably already noticed, technical innovation in the US is fast fading. Most of the stuff we post—the phones, the PCs, the MP3 players—come from smart people very far away. What does the US have? Motorola, Apple, Microsoft, and TiVo. Oh, there are a few others, but those are the folks that are making the biggest waves.

Case in point: at the latest TopCoder event in Las Vegas—a large gathering of top programmers who compete for prize money—there were 4 Americans... and 11 Poles. That's right—coders from the land of the submarines with screen doors and one-armed tree surgeons thrashed our boys but good.

It's not at all clear that any of the famous U.S. technology entrepreneurs of the past several decades would have done particularly well at such a contest.
Still, when contemplating how out of place some of the strongly disciplined Russian or Polish programmers would be among American college students, who all too often become either slackers or salary-obsessed careerists out for the easy score, it's hard not to be depressed.

That said, I believe the children are our future and that they should get off their fat asses and start taking an interest in innovation. We are currently technological consumers, not creators, and that's one of the most frustrating things about this industry. (Thanks, Kasper!)

Cause for Concern? Americans Are Scarce In Top Tech Contest [WSJ]