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From MAKE: Tilt Out Window Garden


I’m a big fan of the blog There, I Fixed It, which covers “Epic Kludges and Jury Rigs,” according to their tag line. While most of the time, they’re posting about the bad and the ugly, every now and then a really good jury rig comes through my feed from them. This particular one caught my eye and one commenter tracked down the source. This drawbridge-style window garden, named Volet Végétal, comes to us from Paris-based design and architecture firm BarreauCharbonnet. As one of the selections from the “Jardin Jardin” design contest, they’ll be showing their prototype at le Jardin des Tuileries exhibition this summer. Check out this video for how they made it.

 

from MAKE

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From MAKE: Oru – The Origami Kayak

Last week, I had the pleasure of testing out Oru Kayak, the world’s first origami kayak. It was wonderful!

Anton Willis, the designer, and I met at the Berkeley Marina to put his latest iteration to the test. I had been watching Anton construct the kayak for months at TechShop and had always bugged him about taking me out for a test ride. I finally got my wish.

He pulled the folded kayak, roughly the size of a large artist portfolio, out of his car and set it in the grass near the docks. A small crowd began to form as he unfolded the cut sheet of corrugated plastic, the same material as the political advertisement in your neighbor’s front lawn. The entire build time took about ten minutes, but easily could’ve been halved without the peppering of questions from the onlookers.

Before I knew it, I was paddling around the marina at a surprisingly high clip. I don’t consider myself a kayak expert, but the Oru design felt fast and comfortable. You quickly forget that it’s a neatly folded piece of plastic. The big question on my mind, and probably everyone else’s, was: how much water would it take on? It was, after all, an origami kayak. After kayaking around the marina and near the larger waves of the San Francisco Bay, I was still completely dry without a drop of water inside the vessel.  Anton told me it doesn’t take on any more water than a typical kayak - spray and paddle drip.

Anton expects the kayak to retail for about $500. You can sign up to receive the release date announcement on Oru’s website.

 

 

from MAKE

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From Engadget: ICE Computer’s modular xPC returns to Computex in working-prototype form, we go hands-on

ICE Computer modular xPC returns to Computex in workingprototype form, we go handson video

From one year to the next, we see many of the same characters make an appearance at the same trade shows — this week, it’s Taipei’s Computex, and today, we’re back to visit ICE Computer. What last year was known as “Trinity” and hadn’t progressed beyond the mock-up stage has returned for 2012 as xPC — a working prototype of the company’s modular computer concept. Internet Communication Entertainment, abbreviated as ICE, envisions xPC being the only computer you’ll need. The device itself is barely larger than a smartphone, and would contain either an Intel, AMD or Tegra chipset, 2 gigs of RAM, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a 1.3- or 2-megapixel webcam and a 32 or 64GB SSD — all in a package that weighs in at approximately 50 grams. The sample we saw today was so light that we first mistook it for a plastic shell, yet it powered a typical desktop setup, complete with a monitor (HDTV), keyboard and mouse.

The current prototype doesn’t include a cooling infrastructure, so it was limited to a low-power 1.5GHz Intel Atom CPU for the time being. All of the company’s various enclosures will feature built-in fans, however, opening the concept up to a variety of configurations. The xPC doesn’t function on its own — instead, you dock it within a variety of accessories, such as the xDock, which would sit permanently on a desk or in a home theater cabinet and includes HDMI input and output, speakers, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, Ethernet, SATA and several other connectors. The xTop is the portable variant, offering many of the same connectivity options, but on a smaller scale. Finally, there’s the xPad, which brings 9.7- or 10.1-inch touchscreen control to the xPC in a tablet form-factor, yet still includes a bevy of connectivity, along with a webcam and battery.

There’s also an xPhone (think PadFone) concept, that packs all of the xPC’s functionality into a device that doubles as a smartphone — the California-based company didn’t have any mock-ups to speak of there, however. ICE expects to ship the xPC and xDock by the end of this year, with the computer module itself ranging in price from $100 to $250 depending on how you opt to configure it. The xPad could ship late this year or sometime in early 2013, with pricing to be announced. For now, the xPhone remains a concept, without any functional prototypes or even a mock-up to speak of. ICE representatives suggested that the company may partner with a smartphone manufacturer to develop that last component, so we have no idea if or when that may come to market. All in all, it’s a solid (and, thanks to PadFone, proven) concept — you can get a closer look in our hands-on after the break.

 

from Engadget

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From Ars Technica: Science fiction author Ray Bradbury dead at 91

Ray Bradbury at a signing in 1977

Ray Bradbury, the American author of Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, died today. He was 91 years old.

Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920, and he spent part of his teen years in Los Angeles, where he graduated high school. He got a start in publishing as a newspaper hawker, and in 1943 he became a full-time writer. Bradbury’s first published works consisted of short stories, a form he would master over the course of his career. The prolific writer also wrote novels, essays, plays, teleplays, and poetry.

Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles was his first big break in science fiction publishing. The series of short stories told tales of Earth’s inhabitants colonizing the planet Mars, and Bradbury collected them into a single work. He also sold The Illustrated Man at the same time as The Martian Chronicles; both works brought him commercial success. In 1953, Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451. The book’s vision of a totalitarian state that burns books proved to be a provocative ideological work that evoked strong memories of Nazi Germany during World War II and pitted a strong ideology of freedom of ideas against totalitarian regimes.

from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: New Willow Glass is rollable and paper-thin

Corning’s new thin and bendy Willow Glass

Corning’s latest display glass technology, Willow Glass, launched Monday at a trade show in Boston. Willow Glass is glass spun extremely thin and flexible enough to roll into two-inch radius tubes, thanks to a manufacturing process similar to that used to make newsprint.

Corning, the company that makes the Gorilla Glass widely used in smartphone displays, uses roll-to-roll processes to make Willow Glass. The material is processed at temperatures of up to 500º C and rolled out over many cylinders (a rendering of the process is posted on YouTube). The result is a scratch-resistant, bendable sheet that measures 100 microns thick, about the same as a sheet of paper.

Willow Glass performs “exceptionally well” with touch sensors, so it will make a natural pairing with the curved smartphone designs that are all the rage, like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and HTC One X. Corning further notes that the glass could be used in flexible solar cells and lighting. Spinning possible uses out further, we could see the glass used to make e-books into a physical manifestation of their pulpy predecessors—books with glass pages instead of paper ones. In photos, Willow Glass appears pliable enough that it can roll into a two-inch radius, and the PDF fact sheet shows that the 0.1mm thick Willow Glass can bend to a 5cm radius before reaching significant bend stress.

 

from Ars Technica