London’s Heathrow Terminal 5 will open its gates on March 27th, welcoming the first British Airways passengers through its doors. It seems British Airways wants their customers to have a stress free and luxury experience while they wait to board their flight. However, for those of us that won’t be visiting the terminal any time soon, here’s a 3D walkthrough of the “Tech Room”, which has several computers lining the wall…because we all know how much travelers love checking up on their MySpace/Facebook.
It’s pretty damn impressive. Remind me to fly British Airways should I ever go to London.
Designed by Muhammad-Oli, the Sony Ericsson K950i concept phone sports a large touchscreen display, capable of displaying in either portrait or landscape mode — perfect for movie watching and photo viewing. The K950i concept is a slider, which reveals the numpad for easy dialing and text input, for those that don’t want an on-screen touch-sensitive keyboard. The K950i also features dual webcams, on both the front and back of the device. The rear camera is revealed after sliding the phone. It also has simple media control: stop, skip, and rewind buttons — for easy music and video playback.
Japanese art director and copywriter, Masashi Kawamura, has created the Rainbow In Your Hand book, which is 36 pages of black paper with a small strip of the color spectrum on each page. As you flip through the book with your fingers (as seen in the photos), it generates the illusion of a rainbow. It kind of reminds me of those pencil drawing animations we drew in the corner of our notebooks back in grade school.
You can buy the book at Heeza for 11.50 Euros ($18 USD).
From designer, Tao Ma, the Say Time Watch concept is not your ordinary flashy, bling bling watch concept we normally see. Instead of using digital numbers (or analog hour/minute hands), the Say Time Watch uses sentences to tell time. The watch allows you to connect it to a PC and program sentences that are meaningful to you to signal what time it is. So, for example, you can program in the sentence, “Night Night time”, to describe that it is now 10 p.m. — your bed time. Or you can write, “Coffee Sip Sip”, to describe 8 a.m. It’s all up to you.
The Say Time Watch allows you to choose your own font and color for the sentences. Awesome, no?
Check out this multi-colored wind up Dancing Robot. According to the product page, back in ancient Egypt, dancing robots were considered entertainment, bringing joy to wealthy merchants and emperors. Who knew robots existed back then?
Now, you can have the same ‘ancient’ good-times with the Dancing Robot. Simply turn the key and let it entertain you. It measures 75 x 20 x 52mm and costs $12.95 New Zealand, that’s about $11 USD. Get it at I Want That. Check out the video for a demo:
Japanese researchers have created a silent smoke alarm to alert the hearing impaired in the event of a fire. By using wasabi powder, the researchers hope that the smell will alert the deaf. Wasabi, for the non-sushi eaters, is Japanese horseradish. It has a very pungent smell and is spicy to the taste. The alarm consists of “cans” that contain the scent of wasabi, which are able to release the scent in the event of a fire.
To test the strength of the wasabi scent, researchers sprayed wasabi extract into a room of 14 sleeping subjects, one of which was deaf. 13 out of the 14 woke within two minutes. The deaf subject awoke within 10 seconds of the spray. You know, they say, those with sensory impairments are more sensitive to the senses they have. I bet the guy that didn’t wake had hyposmia?
Researchers hope to have the wasabi smoke alarm system in the market within two years.
