Media Platforms Design TeamNew? No, it’s been around three or four years. Highly technical? Not really; it’s got some simple gearing. But this hand-crank blender, from GIS, means that the frozen mixed cocktail is always within reach, electricity or no. And that’s brilliant design.Swiss Army proves once again that there’s no product that can’t be melded with an MP3 player. This one can dual earphone jacks, for sharing with a friend....
Besides the whole intense motion sickness thing, there’s another little problem with the sudden rise of streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope: All that live video will destroy your battery life and obliterate your data plan. In fact, that’s part of the reason why the video quality is so charmingly crappy. If it got markedly better, your phone might die very quickly. As Dylan Love reported at Daily Dot: Just a five-minute Periscope stream was enough to knock my phone’s battery down 20 percent....
Media Platforms Design TeamMost drugs now used to treat the flu have a straightforward strategy: attack the virus. But a new study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison proposes that it might be possible to take another approach. Researchers there have discovered a way to reduce the cellular material inside a person that influenza cells use to multiply. A news releasefrom the university likens it to “cutting the fuel line on a bank robber’s getaway car....
TASS, a Russian-government-owned news outlet, is reporting that Russian President Vladmir Putin has dissolved Roscosmos. The space agency, founded shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, has run into a number of rocket troubles of late. Putin claims the problems include widescale mismanagement of appropriated funds and internal corruption. Roscosmos will be officially dissolved on New Year’s 2016 and eventually replaced with an all-new federal agency with more government oversight....
Media Platforms Design TeamIt started a year ago, with one wild thought by Stanford associate professor of materials science and engineering Yi Cui: “Wouldn’t that be cool if you had a transparent cell phone to carry around?“A gadget’s exterior casing could easily be made of a transparent material like plastic, of course. But what Cui envisioned was transparent all the way—including components. “To make things transparent you need the electronics to be transparent, and you also need the batteries to be transparent” Yi Cui says....
In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi was all set to demonstrate wireless transmission in England was going apace. Marconi had many rivals, and a pretty substantial ego. The latter led him to claim that his signals couldn’t be interrupted or encroached on. The former led to someone proving him wrong. As Marconi set up for his big wireless demonstration, a transmission across England via morse code, a signal intrusion occurred. A rival inventor, Nevil Maskelyne, had one message for Marconi: rats, rats....
To hear more from the editors of Popular Mechanics, download this week’s episode of The Most Useful Podcast ever here, and be sure to subscribe and comment on iTunes!http://i.imgur.com/bfinDRf.jpg77T.jpg><span id=When a manufacturer makes bold claims about a product’s durability and then you get your hands on that product, you feel compelled to take it past those limits. Such was the case with the Motorola Droid Turbo II. Motorola claims the Droid Turbo II will defy the stereotype about fragile phone screen and survive the types of drops that typically result in a spider cracks....
No, that’s not a laser cannon. It’s a 2540mm f/8 mirror tele lens, a positively gigantic lens that NASA used to keep eye on rockets in the sky. And it can be yours for a cool $33,500.The Jonel 100, as it’s known, was posted on eBay by the seller aeroziess2 (100% positive feedback!) with a little bit of background as to its pedigree along with the hefty pricetag. According to the listing, it was used by NASA to track rockets like the Saturn V across the sky, and similar lenses were used to capture the spectacular tragedy of the Challenger explosion....
Media Platforms Design Team1.) Gather Parts This antenna spins to orient a pattern of wires, known as an array in engineerspeak, toward broadcasting towers. Rabbit ears and some other older antennas can’t receive high-frequency digital TV transmissions (but if you have an old antenna, try it). To assemble this DIY design, get 32-inch- and 6-inch-long 1 x 4 pine boards; eight 17-inch lengths and two 34-inch lengths of bare 12-gauge copper wire (for the ears and phasing bars); heat-shrink tubing; and 10 No....
Elon Musk isn’t the only internet mogul-turned-rocket-man. Jeff Bezos wants in on the action too. He has a rocket too, just look. Look at it go. A product of Bezos’ historically secretive aerospace company Blue Origin, this (let’s admit it, pretty phallic) rocket is called the New Shepard, and it quietly launched for the first time yesterday. No livestream here, no pre-launch fanfare. That’s probably due to performance anxiety, despite successful tests of the rocket’s BE-3 engine in the past....
Media Platforms Design TeamAt 12:32 pm on a warm November day in Brooklyn, N.Y., the first drops of clear alcohol drizzle from America’s newest still. Nick Haase, a slender technician from the still manufacturer Christian Carl Distilleries, kneels to collect the drippings in a plastic pitcher set on the concrete floor. Above him looms a copper kettle studded with gauges, bolts, and portholes; a pretzel of iron pipes; a steel catwalk; and the corrugated-metal peaked roof of a cavernous 5000-square-foot barn in the shadow of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway....
As of this moment in the evergreen vehicle revolution, you still can’t buy a purely electric car from a major manufacturer. Oh sure, there are plenty of exciting startups with headline-grabbing machines. Tesla’s Roadster is one of the most promising, although billionaire CEO Elon Musk is the only one with a permanent plug-in for his garage (co-founder Martin Eberhard will follow with series production that began last month). Of course, startup companies like Aptera, Hybrid Technologies, A/C Propulsion and many more are on our radar screen–and are poised to produce some exciting stuff....
What’s old is new again–it’s a common expression used these days to describe the state of the American automotive industry. To sell more cars in an economic downturn, every top manufacturer seems to be resurrecting a classic nameplate–the Dodge Challenger, Chevy Camaro, even Ford Taurus–in hopes of pulling at the public’s heartstrings (and purses). There’s another way of saying that, though: Been there, done that.In the midst of the television writers’ strike six weeks ago, NBC took a page out of Detroit’s playbook and brought back the cult classic Knight Rider (you know, the show that made David Hasselhoff a household name)....
While we all love to complain about air travel, there’s one annoyance few travelers even notice: Flying isn’t getting faster. In fact, cross-country flights were a little quicker 50 years ago because airlines included less scheduled time for inevitable delays. Like This? You’ll Love:What It’s Like to Fly the F-35The U.S. Navy’s Minesweeper Fleet Is in Bad ShapeThe Long, Weird History of Strobe WeaponsWe’re used to the idea that 50 years is an eternity is technological innovation....
In many ways, America is a post-lock society. Most places are safe enough that home security isn’t a huge concern, and in others, even the best locks aren’t going to stop an intruder who really wants to break in. Locks are as much about portraying security as they are about actually keeping people out.That might be why smart locks are taking off: They are mainly about convenience. The core feature of every smart lock is that you can open them with your phone, and they get smarter from there....
Media Platforms Design Team The quirky but lovable Mazda5 mini minivan has been refreshed for 2008 with updated styling, a more comprehensive list of standard features and an improved interior. It stands out among the sea of tall, six-passenger crossovers and bloated minivans, because it’s small and sporty enough to drive like a compact sedan, yet has the room to haul the fam and all the gear that comes with ’em....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowBase Price: $30,515 to $43,255Competitors: Ford F250/350, Chevrolet Silverado 2500/3500, GMC Sierra 2500/3500 Powertrains: 5.7-liter V-8, 383 hp, 400 lb-ft; turbocharged 6.7-liter diesel I-6, 350, 370 or 385 hp, 800 or 850 lb-ft; six-speed manual, six-speed automatic, RWD or AWD. EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): Not EPA ratedWhat’s New: Cue your Tim Allen Tool Time grunting: This is an all-new truck built on a stronger, tougher frame, with revised suspension, upgraded interior, and new electrical architecture, all of which allows for more features and higher cargo and towing ratings to keep Ram competitive in the pickup arms race....
LAS VEGAS — Virginia Postrel’s book, The Substance of Style, argues that aesthetics will be increasingly important in product design and marketing. I think it’s right. I talked to a guy at the Microsoft Windows Mobile booth about handheld gadgets, and he told me that two terms used in design are “fondleable” and “high caressability.” Making devices fondleable and caressable—fancy terms for feeling good in your hand—is a big deal now, and it should be....
A train derailed this morning near Louisville, Ky., with the highly flammable chemical butadiene on board. Could this be a redux of the toxic train wreck in South Carolina we investigated last year?After alarming new details emerged last fall about the Texas oil refinery disaster we also investigated, an independent panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker is now pushing BP to overhaul its safety procedures.There’s lots of chatter regarding global warming in Greenland today, but we’ve been watching that for a while now....
Ease of use is the golden rule of computer operating systems. Anything that makes browsing and launching files quicker and more efficient is an improvement.That’s why it seems that most OS upgrades these days–particularly when it comes to Apple’s OS X–appear to offer only incremental improvements. The fact is, there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with OS X. It was easy to use, loaded with features and had no glaring security weaknesses....
