Bold statement, right? But look at this thing! The Solar Cell Tree Charger is an engineered tree with 54 solar cells that charge your gizmos by the sun. While nothing is plugged in a battery charges will power your devices when there is no power. All of the branches are adjustable so that you can make sure each is exposed to the sun.(Link)
Make your children work for their keep. After the birth of a child there's always the temptation to say "Yes, it's cute, but what can it do?" Until recently the answer was simply "lie there and cry," but now babies can be put on the payroll, so to speak, almost as soon as they're born. Just dress your young one in Baby Mops and set him or her down on any hard wood or tile floor that needs cleaning.(Link)
In December 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented something that would, decades later, revolutionize photography: the world’s first digital camera.
It was the size of a toaster, and captured black and white images at a resolution of 100×100 - or 0.01 megapixels in today’s marketing terminology. The images were stored on cassette tape, taking 23 seconds to write. The camera uses an ADC from Motorola, a bog-standard (for the 1970s) lens from a Kodak movie camera, and a CCD chip from Fairchild Semiconductor - the same technology that digital cameras still use today. To playback the images, a special computer and tape reader setup (pictured below) was built, outputting the grainy images on a standard TV. It took a further 23 seconds to read each image from tape.
This handsome fellow is known as “Lonesome George,” and he is a 200-pound tortoise whose entire species' survival relies upon him mating with a similar species of giant tortoise. George is between 90 and 100 years old and has an expected lifespan of 150 years. Though he hit a “sexual prime” in his early nineties none of the giant tortoise eggs that he fertilized were viable, so for now he is still the world's last example of his breed.(Link | Photo)
LONDON: A UK based telecoms and cable giant Virgin Media said it will test the world's fastest broadband as demand grows for lightning-quick internet connections.
The company said it planned to trial speeds of up to 1.5 gigabits per second - more than 10 times faster than its current fastest service of 100 megabits per second and 240 times quicker than the UK average.
It would mean that customers could download a high-quality movie or video game in 55 seconds, rather than the three hours and 40 minutes it would take with the current UK average speed of 6.2mb.
Trials of the super-fast internet connections will begin this month at four companies near Old Street, in London, dubbed the 'Silicon Roundabout', but the service will eventually be used in homes as well as offices.
The company said one of the greatest advantages of the 1.5gb service is not the speed, but the increased number of users who will be able to use the network simultaneously without interruption.
Motel Inn in San Luis Obispo, California, is the world’s first motel. It was built in 1925 by LA architect Arthur Heineman, who coined the term motel meaning "motor hotel."
Motel Inn was originally called the Milestone Mo-Tel. Back then, one night stay was $1.25. Heineman couldn’t afford the trademark registration fee, so his competitors were able to use the word "motel." The motel is still in operation today.
Umbilical cord and iPhone are two things you probably never imagine landing in the same sentence, much less a gadget article's title. However, you should have known that the iPhone is capable of bridging all sorts of weird gaps. The media artist Mio I-zawa has managed to create the strangest iPhone accessory you will ever come across. Instead of plugging your iPhone into the usual cord, just imagine hooking it up to a squirming umbilical cord. Once it's plugged in the cord squirms it looks like it's trying to suck the life out of the iPhone, when in fact it's restoring the iPhone back to life. People wish you couldn't hear the electronic device moving so much. It almost kills the visual effect entirely, but it is still a cool gadget in all the wrong ways.(Link | Via)
