We’ve seen shipping containers that have been converted into small living or business spaces before, but now architects are getting serious about this novel solution to the US container glut. The problem is that as a country we buy so much cheap stuff from China, that the shipping containers are piling up near the ports of entry to the tune of over 5 million a year. I guess it must be cheaper to make new ones than to ship the old ones back empty.

Welding them together to form a house has a lot of advantages. They’re pretty much rot free (although I’d watch for rust), they should be pretty earthquake resistant, and they won’t light up like a bonfire the next time junior gets carried away playing with the stove lighter.

Several green friendly architecture firms now specialize in homes built from recycled containers.

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LED lights are far more efficient than standard light bulbs, using a half of the energy and burning five times longer than their rudimentary cousins. It’s a wonder, then, that we don’t see them used more. Ann Arbor, Michigan is the first city in America to replace all its streetlights with fancy, fancy LED lights, saving money and energy in the process.

By replacing every streetlight in their fair city with 1,000 LEDs, the Ann Arbor town fathers are putting their burg on the forefront of energy responsibility. It’s only a matter of time before other cities follow suit and we’re constantly lit by the efficient glow of LEDs. Bring it on, I say.

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We’ve heard of a white-hot spotlight, but this flashlight is ridiculous. Manufacturer Wicked Lasers calls this monster The Torch, and the 4100-lumen light packs enough punch to literally set the world on fire, starting up a pile of loose paper in a matter of seconds. Jeez, that’s hot stuff. To give you an idea, a 2000-lumen projector is considered exceptionally bright.

This 9-inch light has a big disadvantage, though. Its battery can only keep up that blinding illumination for 15 minutes. Let’s take a look at a video, proving that this thing is hotter than a two-dollar pistol (and costs a lot more, too):

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Great ergonomic strides have been made in the past few years in the field of pointing devices, but this Moldable Mouse design concept by Lite-On takes user-friendliness to its limit. The mouse is made of lightweight modeling clay with a flexible polyurethane and nylon fabric cover that lets you mold it into whatever shape is most comfortable for you.

If your hand gets tired of mousing in one position during a long day at work or play, just morph this pointer into an entirely different shape. You can even place the radio-frequency controlled stick-on mouse buttons and touch-sensitive scroll pad in different positions, too. This design concept was clever enough to win a 2007 Red Dot Design Award in the category of Productivity and Work.

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Sure, there are way, way, way too many Simpsons licensed products out there, from t-shirts and lunchboxes to grills and toiletries, but this one seems like a cut above the rest. It’s a webcam shaped like Mr. Burns! How could you go wrong with such a product?

In addition to looking like Mr. Burns sitting at his desk (accompanied by Bobo, his stuffed bear), it’s got a handy clip for hooking on to the top of your monitor. It can take 30fps video at a resolution of 640 x 480 and is, you know, a pretty standard webcam. But it looks like Mr. Burns! Stop trying to resist already!

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A large US spy satellite has lost power and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials have said. The satellite, which is now out of control, could contain hazardous materials, and it’s unknown where on our planet it might come down.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council said, “Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation…Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause.”

He would not however, comment on whether it’s possible for the satellite to be shot down by a missile.
“The Andromeda Strain ” image courtesy of Universal Pictures

Scenes like this…could soon become commonplace

Such an uncontrolled re-entry could risk exposure of US secrets, director of the defense research group Global Security John Pike, told Associated Press. Spy satellites are typically disposed of through a controlled re-entry into the ocean so that no one else can access the spacecraft.

Pike also said it’s not likely the threat from the satellite could be eliminated by shooting it down with a missile, because that would create debris that would then re-enter the atmosphere and burn up or hit the ground.

It’s estimated that the spacecraft weighs about 20,000lb – roughly the size of a small bus – and might contain beryllium: a light metal with a high melting point that’s used in the defense and aerospace industries.

This isn’t the first uncontrolled re-entry for a NASA spacecraft: Skylab, the 78-ton abandoned space station, fell from orbit in 1979. Its debris dropped harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and across a remote section of Western Australia.

In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000lb science satellite smacked into the Earth’s atmosphere and rained down over the Persian Gulf, a few thousand miles from where they first predicted it would plummet. ®

The US Navy will astound the world tomorrow by test-firing a radical new weapon system at an unprecedented power level. The new piece of war-tech on trial is that old sci-fi favourite, an electromagnetic railgun.

According to the Office of Naval Research, which is in charge of the project, the electric cannon will deliver over ten megajoules of energy in one shot. The ONR say this is “a power level never before achieved” by a railgun, and already represents significantly more poke than a normal five-inch naval gun can put behind its shells.
Obliteration by velocity

Another triumph from the Office of Dodgy Mottos.

The designers hope in future to get the technology up to 64 megajoule muzzle-energy levels, able to shoot hypervelocity projectiles at a blistering Mach 7 and strike targets two hundred miles away – still going at Mach 5 – with pinpoint precision.

The US navy is interested in the kit for a number of reasons. For one, its next generation warships are expected to use electric drive systems, meaning that they will be have 80 megawatts or more on hand. If this power can be used to put violence onto the enemy as well as driving the ship, that’s good news for logistics and supply. The only ammo you need is solid shot with guidance fins; there’s no need for tons of high-explosive warheads and low-explosive chemical propellants for regular shells and missiles. These are replaced by nice simple fuel for the ship’s engines.

The lack of exploding warheads could offer a chance to deliver more surgical strikes, too. They could take out a single vehicle from far out at sea, perhaps, rather than pulverising a whole area like present-day cruise missiles. This kind of thing is very trendy nowadays in military circles, though the problem of getting the right vehicle remains a tricky one.

Furthermore, even the ritziest missiles struggle to get above Mach 3-4, especially over any distance; thus the railgun slugs would be quicker to arrive when bombarding shore targets. They might also be good for shooting down fast-moving flying things.

Indeed, if the cannon could aim quickly enough and the hyper-bullets could steer well enough in flight, lighter-calibre weapons might tip the balance of naval warfare back in favour of surface craft. Ever since the Battle of Midway, sailors have reluctantly been forced to accept that aircraft win sea battles, not ships. But railguns might demote aircraft carriers from their current big-dog naval status and bring in electric dreadnoughts as the capital ships of tomorrow, able to sweep the skies of pesky aircraft or missiles as soon as they dared show themselves above the horizon.

It’s easy to see why navies like the idea of electric hypercannons, then. But there are a lot of problems to be overcome. For one, the gun barrel tends to come apart after just a few shots. For another, packing a steady hundred-megawatt supply down into ultra-brief 64 megajoule pulses isn’t simple.

The railgun plan is, unsurprisingly, seen as a “high-risk” effort by the ONR. A long shot, in other words (*cough*). ®

If you’ve got so much money that you’re just looking for new ways to waste it, Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid created the Gold Pill for you. It’s a pill dipped in gold and filled with 24-karat gold leaf. You’re supposed to eat it “to increase your self-worth.” That would be funny if it didn’t cost $425 for the joke. Supposedly an added benefit is that it will make your poop sparkle, but no one seems to have proven that part yet (and if you do, please don’t send us the pictures). This is either genius social commentary or a brilliant way to bilk rich people out of their money. If Wong’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he also created the $2,000 ccPhone.

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Tired of looking like a wuss on your Segway? Then put down your bike helmet and put on the Skull Helmet from Santiago Chopper. Owning anything from a place called Santiago Chopper is guaranteed to add +1 to your self esteem, but this brain bucket (that’s cool biker slang for “helmet”) will “scare the crap out of any onlookers while you’re enjoying your mid day [sic] cruise.” Also recommended for spastic World of Warcrafters who frequently “biff” or “auger” during extended gameplay sessions as this will prevent the ensuing “cranial disharmony.” And since this “lid” is only $149, you can afford to get one for your “betty” too.

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Dubai gets all the cool stuff. If it isn’t the world’s tallest hotel, or a building inspired by an iPod, it’s a hotel that is underwater. The Hydropolis Undersea Resort will open its doors this month, offering guests 220 rooms of scenic underwater views. Located in the Arabian Gulf, the hotel sits approximately 60 feet underwater, and has a roof that can open for special events. Obviously the roof is located above water, or that would a real problem for those inside.

Trains connect guests from dry land to the hotel, and while staying at the luxurious Hydropolis Undersea Resorts guests can shop in the mall, dine at island restaurants, or watch a movie in the state of the art theater. Best of all you can sleep sound knowing you are protected by the hotel’s very own missile defense system.

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Technology has come quite a long way since the original USB Missile Launcher was unveiled a year ago. It was so popular that biggie Microsoft wanted some USB desktop weapon action and has teamed up with Dream Cheeky for vastly improved missile launchers.

The first launcher is attacking the biggest flaw of the missile launching predecessor, the cord. The wireless USB missile launcher still work the same way via your PC, but this time there is a little more flexibility where it can be set up. The second launcher is where Microsoft got its hands dirty and addressed another concern with the original: covertness. Previously, it was tough to setup and aim the USB missile launcher without being discovered, but the included top-mounted webcam makes it all the easier. Both launchers should be making its official debut at CES in less than a month, much to the disappointment to the local dweeb in the cubicle farm.

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t’s easy to track the tidal movements of the ocean by looking at waves, but all of that energy is moved around under the surface of the water as well. Florida Atlantic University’s Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology hopes to harness these underwater currents by placing 100-foot-in-diameter 20 kilowatt turbines that are anchored to the ocean floor along the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. The system would be hooked up to floating generators and monitored by solar powered control buoys and small naval vessels.

The team at Florida Atlantic University will first test the waters with smaller prototype turbines to be deployed in February 2008. How much renewable energy the system will be able to generate is still up in the air, but the team hopes it will provide a significant amount to the state of Florida.

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So there you are, walking down the street, when you hear a voice in your head. And instead of the regular voice, the one that tells you that you want a cheeseburger or that you should buy more video games, this one is an unfamiliar one telling you to watch a new TV show. Are you going crazy? Perhaps, but that’s not the cause of this. Nope, it’s just a new form of advertising. Awesome!

Yes, there’s a new add in Soho in Manhattan that uses a speaker beaming down an “audio spotlight” that only you can hear, making it sound like it’s coming from inside your own head. Is nothing sacred? If advertisers can start beaming sound into our heads from afar, what’s next? In-dream advertising? I weep for the future.

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The Portable PC Theater probably won’t replace your PC, even if you do use it as a media center. It will come in handy, though, if you want a computer that you can tote around and take to show friends whatever hot video is going around the web. Instead of a monitor, it has a detachable projector up top that’s between stereo speakers, and all the cables tuck away inside the machine when you pack it up into its tight little package that’s only a few DVD cases wide.

It’s a cool concept, and a whole lot prettier than a projector taped to a DVD player. But it really works about the same. Designed by Jin Woo Han, the Portable PC Theater looks to be a concept for a Microsoft shuttle.

Outdoor types who are into extreme sports: listen up. You don’t have to rely on some wired-up coat that controls your MP3 player when there’s a helmet that can do it for you. Hammacher Schlemmer has a winter sports helmet with Bluetooth headphones built in. The transmitter wirelessly connects to an iPod sitting safely and snugly in your coat pocket while you whip down the trail listening to your favorite hard-rockin’ granola-lovin’ music mix.

Made of ABS plastic and polycarbonate foam for the liner, your noggin is protected should you slip and fall, and the classic black design tells everyone your helmet is cooler than theirs. Listening to music while having fun? Great idea. $300 for a helmet that keeps you from hearing someone screaming at you to get out of the way? Not a great idea.

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The race to build a working and dependable scramjet is happening all the world over — the United States, China, Australia and who knows who else all want one. DARPA’s HTV-3X, also known as Blackswift, is an unmanned scramjet-powered plane that may take to the skies as soon as 2012, hitting speeds of up to Mach 6. Why the rush? Planes flying with scramjet engines would be able to fly from New York to Tokyo in two hours. Certainly more enticing to the nations of the world, a missile using a scramjet would be able to hit any target anywhere on the globe in a handful of minutes.

The fastest jet at the moment is the SR-71 Blackbird, which tops out at Mach 3.3. Scramjet engines have been tested at speeds of anywhere between Mach 6 and Mach 15. This amount of crazy acceleration is possible by sucking in air through the front of the engine, squeezing it into the thin sleeves of the combustion chambers until it superheats and subsequently igniting the fuel and generating thrust.

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The Kanguru USB Duplicator allows you to plug in up to 24 thumb drives at once and dictate what information goes onto all of them. An LCD on the unit helps you to know what you’re doing, and you can map hotkeys so that you can copy and format drives with the touch of a button.

The Kanguru USB Duplicator might not seem so useful if you’ve only got a thumb drive or two (just copy and paste you lazy bum!), but these days flash drives are replacing pamphlets. If you’ve got a press release or a portfolio that requires not only text but large images as well, handing out cheap, low-capacity thumb drives is a lot easier than printing it all out.

The cost might make you wish you were duplicating cash, though: $3,000 for a Kanguru

Kanguru

The Digital Veil is an art piece by Soomi Park that combines black and white flash animations with a wearable LCD screen. The wearer’s face is visible through the white parts of the animations and obscured by the black areas, so onlookers are presented with a distorted face that’s always shifting. The wearer can randomly change what images are displayed by making noise toward a pin microphone, as the animations are saved to different levels of volume.

The other model seen above to the right is wearing another piece of Soomi Park’s, a set of LED-tipped eyelash prosthetics that raise questions about the fetish-like obsession with large, or “bedroom,” eyes in Korea and the lengths women go to get them, including plastic surgery.

Soomi Park is a designer and student at International Design School of Advanced Studies in Seoul, South Korea.

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Powering your boat via an engine is so last year. The new cool way to propel your new luxury yacht? A big kite, of course. What, you don’t think it’d be enough? You obviously don’t know much about kites, my friend.

This Kite Sailing Yacht uses a giant parachute-sized kite on a long tether. By keeping it high above the boat, it’s able to catch the faster winds that zoom at higher altitudes. The kite is shaped so even a light breeze can propel the boat. The yacht itself can hold 8 passengers and is sure to be the most badass boat docked at the marina. Or at least it would be if it actually existed and wasn’t just a design concept. Oh well, maybe someday. You need time to save up for it anyways. — Adam Frucci

Via YankoDesign

I remember when a pen was considered fancy if it had more than one tube of ink in it. Y’know, the kind with all the different click nubs on top so you can write in black or blue or red. Well, that’s not enough for a pen these days. We just got done gawking at this pen/camcorder hybrid, and now here’s the mysterious “Design A” pen phone. Despite only being 8.7 inches in length, the pen phone still manages to pack in a full row of numbers, a control wheel where the click-nub would go, a micro SD slot and a screen to display calling information. While you could hold it up to your head to talk, ultra compact designs like the pen phone usually capitalize on the prevalence of Bluetooth headsets.

“Design A” is just a concept at the moment. The undisclosed designer is reportedly attempting to gauge how much interest there is for it before it braves the murky waters of a real market. — Kevin Hall

Gizmodo, via Textually

Do you like Legos? Of course you do. Legos are pretty much the ultimate toy, allowing kids to build whatever they want to play with. I grew up with them, and they do nothing but foster creativity and imagination. God bless Legos.

That’s why it’s always fun to see grown-ups still hooked on their childhood obsessions to stunning results. Take a look at this: it’s a functioning air conditioner built out of Legos. It’s got a spinning fan, compressor, and valves and actually works. I could never have built this when I was a kid, but if I could have I probably would have gotten into a better college. Ah well, regrets. — Adam Frucci

BrickArtist, via Crave

Did you know there’s a division at MIT called the Smart Cities group? It’s true, and judging by the designs the team puts out maybe we should just leave city planning to them from here on out.

They have a two-seater electric buggy in the works called the City Car that can stack against other City Cars to cut down on space and make transporting easy. Six to eight cars are said to be able to fit in one conventional parking space. The cars are built around an omni-directional robot wheel, which not only allows for impressive maneuverability, but also contains the vehicle’s electric-drive motor. City-goers will be happy to hear that the system allows for each wheel to turn 90 degrees, making parallel parking as easy as driving sideways.

The City Car is due to be shown off next year. Until then, we have this video to ogle at the very least. — Kevin Hall

Technology Review, via Engadget

The Mademoto Electric Cruiser has done the unthinkable and taken all of the beneficial purposes out of rollerskates, skateboards and other manual modes of rolling transportation. Thank of the Electric Cruiser as the front half of an electric moped, a juiced up unicycle or a severely gimped Segway. It is designed to happily drag you around while using rollerskates, skateboards or other modes of manual, wheeled transportation.

Obviously, the included flame decals on the Electric Cruiser demonstrate the badassery that one electric cruising individual embodies. It likely won’t make you look any cooler and definitely won’t help you exercise while skating, but at least it is electric, and therefore green! — Travis Hudson

Mademoto Electric Cruiser, via 7 Gadgets

Unlike in the States, cigarette machines are everywhere in Japan. Rather than get rid of them due to the problem of underage kids being able to buy packs of smokes from them like we did here, they’re using technology to keep the machines around and ensure that only adults can make purchases from them.

A new machine is in development that will have facial-recognition software built in to gauge the age of wannabe purchasers. If they have a young-looking face, it’ll require photo ID, which it will then compare with your actual face to determine if it’s legit. It’s a pretty clever and sophisticated system, one that’s clearly way more expensive than just forcing people to go deal with a human being at a convenience store but much more convenient for the many smokers of Japan. — Adam Frucci

Textually, via The Raw Feed