Presenting Interactive LED Futuro Cube from Think Geek .
A motion-controlled gaming console. It reminds me of the classic Rubik, with one or two exceptions: you can play a lot of games or puzzles and it's not that easy to master this toy.
Let's see the movie clip from ThinkGeek :
Now that we've seen what this is about, let's take a look at How it works :
Despite the fact that it's a simple technology combined with an innovative design, Futuro Cube is packed with clever sensors that send data into the main processor.
It can determine gravity : the cube uses this feature for Gravitap and Rotoselect functionality, having also other uses. Remember the game called "Snake" from the first mobile phones ? Thanks to this feature you can play it on this toy.
Motion tracking : it tracks your motion and recognize the patterns used as a game input.
Tapping : The accelerometer embed in the cube can determine when you tap it. It can also determine on what side of it you tap, whether it's on top, bottom or any of the lateral sides.
LED coloring : The first version came with 3x3 twin color LED lights matrix (blue and red). The latest version comes with more colorful LEDs. Each light can shine a different color, varying in intensity.
Sound : Futuro Cube can play sounds by it's 4 channel audio. It can play short descriptions of the games, information on how to play or the score.
Another thing to mention about this cool futuristic gadget is the fact that it can connect wireless to another Cube and you can play multi-player games.
It's built-in rechargeable battery provides hours of play time, and it can be connected via USB port in order to recharge batteries or to upgrade the software.
Let's see how people react to this new toy :
This gadget can be found on the ThinkGeek.com website, with a listing price of $99,99 for US delivery only.
The games included so far in this toy are :
Cubris, Multi Cubris, Gravity Puzzle, Gomoku, Multi Gomoku, Gravity Challenge, Piano, Snake, Ring Dream, Sokoban, Road Runner, Dream Quest ( find the description of the games on the ThinkGeek website).
To be announced : developer tools this year, so you can code your own games.
Beyond the fact that technology continuously grows beyond our imagination, we see that every year the electronic producers try to exceed consumer expectations and probably their own.
Therefor a technology that drawn my attention was Tactus : "What if buttons could morph out of the surface of your device?"
Tactus Technology consists in dynamic buttons that appear and disappear as needed. The company calls this technology "morphing tactile surface". In other words there are real physical buttons that grow on the screen when you're typing and disappear when there is no tactile interaction.
The company has this technology running on an Android-based tablet, but it's not yet tied to any particular operating system.
How does it work ?
A Tactus touchscreen device stores a small amount of fluid in a reservoir inside the phone or tablet. When the system call for buttons on the screen, a tiny amount of fluid flows into specified areas on the screen forming a QWERTY keyboard or a numeric keypad.
A risk in this particular technology might be the leak of fluid into the battery compartment.
Another question might be if this technology isn't a little too late for the market, taking in consideration that physical keyboards are no longer popular among smartphones, and also the cost that imply this technology.
The technology has built-in capability for multiple arrays, so that the manufacturers could enable dynamic switching between keyboard styles and it was tested for durability, passing all the tests with good grades.
Craig Ciesla ( Tactus chief executive) says: " We're planning to be in production by the end of this year". " We're working with customers on an exact launch date."
Here is the presentation video for this new technology :
Reference : Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas
Your eye muscles move 100,000 times a day.
Your eye muscles are the busiest muscles in your body, moving more than 100,000 times every day, according to a research paper called "Portable Eyetracking: A Study of Natural Eye Movements." .Just try counting how many times your eyes move just to read this paragraph.
You get taller in space.
NASA verifies that astronauts increase 7.5 cm due to micro-gravity To some degree, a similar stretching of the spine happens to you every night. When you lie down, gravity isn't pushing down on your vertebrae, so you might be 1 cm taller before you wake up.
There are more chickens than humans on earth.
According to the World Resources Institute, in 1998 there were close to 13,500,000,000 chickens scratching out a living on planet Earth.
A sneeze can travel at 65 km/h.
The reason why sneezes are so powerful is because not just the nose is involved. It is a
reflex response that involves the sudden contraction of muscles of the abdomen, chest, diaphragm, throat and face. Have you ever noticed that you have to close your eyes when you sneeze? This is because the muscles that close your eyes are part of the reflex response as well.
Spider silk is stronger than steel.
Spider silk is made up of chains of aminoacids. The two primary aminoacids are Glycine and Alanine. In other words, spider silk is simply a protein.
Mosquitoes love the colour blue.
Mosquitoes, like other insects, see in the blue, ultraviolet spectrum. So they're attracted to blue lights and clothing, but not to reds and yellows. That's why bug zappers have blue lights and why some people use yellow lights on porches.
You lose 10,000 brain cells a day.
"The human brain is by far the greatest user of energy in the body. It consumes a whopping one-fifth of the energy produced by what we eat and drink.
Your body contains enough carbon to fill 9,000 pencils
Most of the human body is made up of water, with cells consisting of 65-90% water by weight. Therefore, it isn't surprising that most of a human body's mass is oxygen. Carbon, the basic unit for organic molecules, comes in second. 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: Oxygen (65%) Carbon (18%) Hydrogen (10%) Nitrogen (3%) Calcium (1.5%) Phosphorus (1.0%). So, a 70 kg adult contains 13kg carbon. If we assume a pencil has about 1.5g of graphite in it; that’s close to 9000 pencils.
Cat pee glows under black light
Many body fluids contain fluorescent molecules. The term "fluorescent" means that the substance will glow in a visible colour (blue, green, orange...) when illuminated with high-energy, short-wavelength ultraviolet light.
A blue whale's heart is the size of a car
Blue whales grow to be an average of 25m long and weigh about 10,000kg. The largest of the blue whales (136,000kg) has a heart that weighs about 450kg and has 6,400kg of blood circulating in its body. The heart is about the size of a Volkswagon bug car.
And I'll let the rest of the images speak for themselves :
