While the functionality may be suspect, these flat-pack wheels have awesome maker flair. Designer Nicolas Belly of Bordeaux, France won 2nd place in the L’Argus Design Contest which had the theme of “Less is More: Traveling in the Era of Simplicity.” [via the Ponoko Blog] More: Wooden bike Wood Motorcycle Strange 4-legged Scooter Scooter hack […]
Tweeting from weird places (like a space station) is the new “I installed linux on a weird thing”… Next up, the space station will tweet on its own… Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro_TJ, from […]
Over at Boing Boing, MAKE bud Xeni Jardin has an interview with MSF (aka “Doctors without Borders”) Logistics Supervisor Laurent Dedieu in New York, and Hocine Bouhabib in Haiti, about the inflatable hospitals they’re setting up in Port-au-Prince. How do you create a surgery center in a disaster zone in the shortest amount of time […]
I just had a major “the future has arrived” moment when I saw this video, taken aboard the ISS, of three spherical robots doing precision formation flying in zero-g. Note that the video embedded above is clearly time-lapsed–they’re not actually moving that fast. Here’s another video (with inevitable Strauss accompaniment) that shows two of the bots orbiting each other at actual speed. They maneuver using compressed carbon dioxide. It’s all part of MIT’s SPHERES project. [via BotJunkie]
Hewlett-Packard sets their sites on the budding, low-cost 3D printer market by signing a deal allowing them to brand Stratasys‘ pre-established technologies (see above demo) – Stratasys Inc. (Nasdaq: SSYS), the leading manufacturer of 3D printers and 3D production systems, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement with HP for Stratasys to manufacture an […]
The folks at Council, think tank focused on the Internet of Things, have declared April 9th the Global Internet of Things Day to help focus attention on this anticipated burgeoning of smart/RFID-enabled/networked spimes. Council proposes to hold very small Council meetings anywhere in the world on April 9. These can vary to having a cup […]
This project by design students Julien Bergignat and Patrice Mouille seems cool at first, but Fast Company’s Cliff Kuang points out some serious flaws: [The Tatoo] neglects the way bike helmets actually work. It’s not simply that they’re padded–the padding inside a bike helmet is mostly for wearer comfort, rather than protection. Rather, helmets protect […]
