Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on May 31, 2011
French Find Open Parking Spaces On Their Cellphones
The French city of Toulouse is testing a system that displays available parking spots on drivers’ smartphones. The system can also tell when someone is illegally parked or hasn’t fed the parking meter.
“This technology comes from space travel,” says Patrick Givanovitch. “They were supposed to help find landing spots on Venus.” The French space agency CNES and Givanovitch’s Toulouse-based start-up company Lyberta helped develop the street-level sensors and refit both their hardware and software to map urban parking spaces. Over time, they plan to add data from global positioning systems as well.
“We know in real time where there is parking available in the city,” Givanovitch says. In addition to helping drivers find spaces and easing congestion, the hope is that city planners will be able to use the data to optimize traffic flows and parking arrangements throughout the city.
The sensors actually work by electromagnetism. They’re placed just below the street and connected in a network using ordinary coaxial cable. An occupied parking spot has a different magnetic profile than an empty one. If a garbage bin or service truck is parked in the space, they can sense that too.
Since they can detect the exact time a car parks and leaves in a space, the sensors can bust meter-cheaters as easily as overhead intersection cameras can detect cars running red lights. Just as the information that a spot is open can be relayed to a driver looking for a space, information that a car’s gone over its time limit can be relayed to the police.
Toulouse’s pilot program will eventually be expanded to cover the entire city; city planners in Paris and Los Angeles are also interested in implemented the technology.
Relief for Harried Drivers: The Parking Space that Finds You [Der Spiegel]
Image by Stefan Simons for Der Spiegel
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 15, 2010
Mailable, Mechanical, Movable Sculptures for the Geek in Your Life
If you were wondering what to buy Gadget Lab editor Dylan Tweney for Christmas, her’s your answer. Send him a Mechanicard, a mailable greetings card which is also a handmade kinetic sculpture. Dylan is both a tinkerer and a sucker for cool stationery, so he’ll love it. Just don’t expect it to be a surprise – I’m pretty sure he reads this blog.
There are five different Mechanicards, from the Radial Engine seen in the picture above through the Strum-U-lator (plays music!), the Dragonfly Surprise (it has a dragonfly. Surprise!) and the wonderful Ambigulator, “featuring a hand-cranked optical effect, and a mechanism that asks more questions than it answers.”
The kits are all hand-operated with a tiny, supplied handle, and can be had fully made or in kit form. The kits begin at $45 assembled ($35 for the DIY option) and the prices rise to $75 for the more complex models. If you’re feeling stressed today, then go grab a cup (or cocktail glass) of your favorite beverage and watch the video of all the Mechanicards in action. It’s hypnotic, and very relaxing.
Mechanicards mailable sculptures [Mechanicards]
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 14, 2010
Note-Worthy Panasonic Earbuds Have Best Packaging Ever
Really, the Panasonic RP-HJE 130 is just another earbud. Price is a good indicator of headphone quality, and after that you choose whether you need noise-canceling or an in-line remote and you’re done. But the real genius behind the RP-HJE 130, the thing that will make people buy a pair, is something that has nothing to do with Panasonic. It’s the packaging.
It’s fantastic, right? The design was done by the Scholz And Friends agency in Berlin, Germany, and shows the two hook-shaped buds as a pair of eighth-notes linked together by a bar formed by the in-line remote. The design was so good that it won a Cannes Lions award this year. These buds, it is certain, would jump off the shelf at you, whatever their specs.
And those specs remain a mystery. A Google search for “RP-HJE 130″ comes up with nothing but articles about this design. Switch to Google Shopping and you get precisely zero results. But then, I guess it doesn’t really matter. After all, it’s better to pick headphones on their quality, not their packaging, which will be ripped open and tossed into the recycling-bin after a few minutes anyway.
Panasonic Earphones: The Earphones Note [Coloribus]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 29, 2010
Model-Kit Business-Card Transforms into Plane, Car, Boat
If you worked at Tamiya, the Japanese model-kit company, you’d have the chance to hand out the coolest business-card ever made. At first glance the letters on the “card” look like a stencil cut into plastic. Peek a little closer and you see that it is itself a tiny model kit.
Break the letters from their surrounding frame and then snap them together. Depending on which card you have, you’ll end up with a Formula One car, a warship or a fighter-plane. According to the Coloribus advertising archive, the cards proved so popular that they had people “rushing to the shops” to ask for them.
The downside? Once the recipient has ripped your card apart to make a model, he no longer has your contact details. Oops.
Model Kits Shop: Tamiya Business Card [Coloribus via the Giz]
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 15, 2010
