DLNA : Digital Living Network Alliance

Digital Living Network Alliance

The DLNA is about connecting all your equipments together : laptop – TV – digital camera – mobile devices – sound system, so that they can share their content easily.
Watch your picture on your TV, record your shows on your laptop, listen to the music of your iPod on your speakers…

And there are already some devices from various brands that include DLNA certifications!

The energy producing sidewalk

http://www.fastcompany.com/1617178/toulouse-france-tests-out-piezoelectric-pavement-power
http://ecologie.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/04/14/a-toulouse-un-trottoir-produit-de-lelectricite

Here are two links to an interesting project developed by a dutch company in Toulouse. (The second article is in french for those who speak french).
The idea is to use the urban kinetic energy generated by people walking on sidewalk to power the street lights.

This project is still at the prototype stage but it could represents huge savings of energy for big cities.
They also plan to extand the idea to other structures, like soccer stadium.

“Non-stop” Train

A new Chinese train innovation – How to get on & off the bullet train without stopping.

No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time. If there are 30 stations between Beijing and Guangzhou, just stopping and accelerating again at each station will waste both energy and time.

A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

The passenger at a station embarked onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrive at the station. When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof of the train.

While the train is still traveling away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train’s roof. After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

When the train arrives at the next station, it will simply drop the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leave it behind at the station. The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left. At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train’s roof. So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train’s roof at each station.

Progress Science – Nanotechnology – Morph

Smallest coolest Apartment..

Ron Marvin talks about the efforts he made to convert his small apartment into a beautiful home. He has used intelligent choice of paint colors for the walls as well as the entrance way to gie a bigger look to his apartment. His unique taste in lamps and lighting has enhanced the beauty of his place.  To our big surprise he reveals that most of the furniture and lamps had been purchased from a flea market!

HOME OF THE FUTURE!

The energy management system keeps track of the power consumption at home and adjusts the operations of the equipments accordingly!

Curious Displays Populates Your Home With Hundreds of Tiny, Autonomous Displays

Curious Displays functions simultaneously as a form of design research and as a proposal for a new product, a future display technology.

The project explores our relationship with devices and technology by examining the multi-dimensionality of communication and the complexity of social behavior and interaction. In its essence, the project functions as a piece of design fiction, considering the fluctuating nature of our present engagement with media technology and providing futurist imaginings of other ways of being.

Curious Displays is a product proposal for a new platform for display technology. Instead of a fixed form factor screen, the display surface is instead broken up into hundreds of ½ inch display blocks. Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface. The blocks operate independently of one another, but are aware of the position and role relative to the rest of the system. With this awareness, the blocks are able to coordinate with the other blocks to reconfigure their positioning to form larger display surfaces and forms depending on purpose and function. In this way, the blocks become a physical embodiment of digital media, and act as a vehicle for the physical manifestation of what typically exists only in the virtual space of the screen.

Collaborative Computing

We talked about the Microsoft Surface last week. Here is a prototype idea that scales really well for multiple people quite smoothly.

- Rahul

Muscle-Computer Interfaces

A new type of way to interface with computers which I think makes a lot of sense in some situations. For example, the scenario played out in the video when both your hands are full with groceries and you want to open the trunk.

-Rahul

Good Thinking – Mobile for the elderly

The majority of elderly people have a hard-time working with mobile phones, and to make this task easier than never before, Doro has HandleEasy cellphones.

There are features that are specifically made for the senior, which includes a big color display, big buttons, and easy functionality. On the hand, the phones also have the usual details like FM radio, speakerphone, and SMS.