Lenovo external hard drive responds to touch

I reviewed the WD My Passport external hard drive recently and thought it was really cool with the storage gauge that lights up when plugged in to show how much storage space has been used. Lenovo has gone one step further with an external hard drive concept that can reveal the same information without even being plugged in.

The concept external hard drive features a finger-touch access button, much like a biometric reader, and an external display. Once you touch the button, the display will show the remaining storage space in the form of simple digits.

It's unclear how this works but I would assume that the drive must have a battery of its own that recharges when the hard drive is plugged in.

While this seems rather unnecessary feature to some, it's actually very nice to know how much space left on the media. Personally, I've run into many cases where I ended up having to recopy a huge amount of data just because the free space ran out before the copying process was done.

Via Crave CNET | Source: DesignLaunches.com

Self-adapting F1 tire

Tire maker Bridgestone is currently developing a new F1 wet tire that can replace the two existing models used in standard and extreme wet weather conditions. Adapted from the Grand Prix 2 racing, the new tire design features a sloping thread profile which wears down as the track dries up. This, in turn, changes its grab characteristics from one scenario to another.

The Japanese company also mentioned that the prototypes will be fielded during the next F1 test in wet conditions, though current official regulations still require teams to have two different types of wet tires, this prototype dual-purpose rubber will not be hitting the pits anytime soon.

Via formula1.com | Photo credit: Bridgestone Motorsport

For teens, the future is mobile

Marketers recently convened to figure out how best to reach teens on the Internet. The answer: It's all about the mobile phone.

Advertisers are clamoring to reach teens in digital environments because that's where they're spending much of their time--either online, with cell phones or playing video games. What's more, teens wield an estimated US$200 billion annually in discretionary spending.

Fuse, a marketing agency based in Vermont, talked in recent weeks to senior technology executives from companies such as Sony, MTV Networks, Yahoo, and Nokia to find out what the future of technology will look like for the teen market.

Among the predictions: Mobile phones in the US will surpass the popularity of desktops for teens. Only an estimated 20 percent of teens currently own a smartphone such as the iPhone, but mobile phone and content companies are counting on the idea that smartphone adoption will spread fast among teens in middle America and other areas.

"The iPhone is just the beginning of the all-in-one device. Uses of mobile devices will expand to include all kinds of bar code applications and prepaid debit card payment methods," said Bill Carter, a partner at Fuse, who presented the findings here at the YPulse 2008 National Mashup, a two-day conference on teens and technology.
Read more »

The house that Jack built from 3D printing

In an almost The Sims-like take, the folks at the University of Southern California (USC) are laying the foundation to have entire houses, right down to the internal plumbing, constructed directly from 3D printing techniques.
Fantastical? It's concrete enough, all right. Just check out a video of a working model that can create a 6ft wall, sans human help.

"Contour crafting", as it's called, can recreate anything the CAD software designs, in concrete. So you can toss out the idea of ugly boxy housing usually associated with mass production.

To give this legs, construction giant Caterpillar is funding the USC Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) in its project.

In fact, the brains at CRAFT are confident a full-scale, automatic setup can erect a 2,000sqft two-story house in just 24 hours, all at one-fifth the current costs, not to mention a potential reduction in worksite injuries, waste and construction time. Of course, nobody's yet heard how the blue-collar construction workers will take to this idea.

Via The Register

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