What if cellphones knew what sort of moods we were in? What if they could anticipate to whom we’d crave to talk? What if they knew which calls we’re waiting for? If Intel has its way, they soon will.

The cell phones of 10 years ago look like ancient relics compared to the smartphones of today. But our iPhones and Droids may be primitive compared to what’s coming next. Justin Rattner, Intel’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, explained in a keynote at Intel’s Developer Forum this week that the next big thing in mobile devices will be “context-aware computing” from devices that anticipate your needs and wants. Read: psychic cell phones.

How is this possible? PC Magazine explains:

All this works…by creating a cognitive framework for managing context. It centers on a context engine that unites information from extensible analyzers, inference algorithms, data stores, and sensors, and then distributes them to the appropriate applications. The framework protects context information by putting the user in complete control of it: The user may specify what context is released, when it’s released, and to whom it’s released.

For example, a sense system embedded in a cell phone might know whether a user is running or walking, and whether they are outside or in a well-lit indoor area. Combined with inputted information (i.e. whether a user is free at a certain time), the phone could offer suggestions on what a cell phone user might want to do next.

Eventually, Intel might actually produce truly psychic cell phones. Earlier this summer, we learned about Intel’s Human Brain Project—a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh that uses EEG, fMRI, and magnetoencephalography to figure out what a subject is thinking about based entirely on their neural activity pattern. The technology won’t be ready for at least a decade—and that’s just fine with us.

Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.

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Unless China and Japan can sort out their shit and the exportation of rare earth elements can proceed into Japan, the future of electric cars could be thrown into jeopardy. Production of cars like the Prius could slow down dangerously.

According to the NY Times, a tiff between China and Japan over the capture of a Chinese fishing trawler captain after he was caught fishing in Japanese waters (and then collided into two Coast Guard ships) has escalated to the point where China is reportedly refusing to export the sought-after elements for use in electric car manufacturing.

Cars such as Toyota’s Prius use 1kg of neodymium and up to 15kg of lanthanum (pictured) per unit in production, and with China holding 90 per cent of the world’s neodymium under lock and key, Japan will be wanting to sort out this “business matter” fairly quickly.

According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economics, nothing amiss has happened—but if Japan doesn’t get anywhere with their talks, they may be forced to take it up with the World Trade Organization. [NY Times via Salon]

Image Credit: Thermograde

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The Israeli Department of Defense has cooked up the world’s smallest gyroscope—powered by lasers and as small as a single grain of sand. The new gyros are sensitive enough to track your position and movements anywhere—no GPS required.

The underlying tech is the same that’s found in aircraft and seafaring ships—minute physical changes are compared to each other, calculating a new position without the need for an external reference point. Essentially, the object (be it an aircraft carrier or something smaller) can detect itself moving. But for a gyro to be this tiny changes everything. Think of a smartphone that could pinpoint your movements in a cave—or, probably more realistically (and practically), a museum, or new apartment building. Sadly, we’ll still need GPS a little bit, as the gyroscopes need to be told exactly where they are from above before their own internal detection can kick in. But this breakthrough will mean GPS access could someday be of minimal importance—which is great news (especially for any city dweller, who knows lining up a signal can be a pain at best). Just get one little satellite zap, and the micro-gyros will take it from there, anywhere in the world. [Pop Sci]

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It sounds too good to be true, but researchers at the University of Cincinnati are convinced that they’ve developed a revolutionary electrofluidics display that combines the color and video capabilities of an LCD with the low power consumption of e-ink.

The technology, which was seven years in the making, sandwiches reflective electrodes between two layers of liquid and lets ambient light do the work.

Behind the display screen are two layers of liquid (oil and a pigment dispersion fluid like an inkjet fluid). Between the two layers are reflective electrodes. Think of these electrodes as a highly reflective mirror.

Ambient light enters through the display screen and through the first layer of liquid and hits the reflective electrodes. When the light hits that reflective electrode, it bounces back out to the viewer’s eye, creating the perception of a bright, color-saturated image…or text or video… .

A small electric charge powers the movement of these oil and pigment-dispersion liquids. The movement occurs between a bottom layer behind the reflective electrodes and a top layer in front of the reflective electrodes. When the pigmented substance is positioned in the “top” layer (sandwiched between the ambient light and reflective electrodes), it creates a reflected ray of colored light which combines with literally millions of ambient light rays to produce a full-color display.

Changing what’s displayed requires power, of course—and displaying video will require considerably more than changing the page of an ebook—but after that, like e-ink, the image can be displayed indefinitely with zero power. UC researchers say that their screens are two thirds brighter than Qualcomm’s Mirasol displays, which have also promised to bring low-power color ereaders to market sometime next year.

The displays can be manufactured with existing facilities, and researchers expect them to be used for applications like displaying product info in supermarkets within three years. Glad they’re getting to the important stuff first. [UC]

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It’s not often (ever?) that a convention center is anything worth being excited about, but Ireland’s new Convention Centre Dublin uses ingenius engineering and an omniscient mother brain to monitor and adjust itself. The result? Zero carbon footprint.

Every aspect of the CCD’s design has been finely tuned to prevent waste—despite possessing enough space for a performance hall, giant auditorium, and enough floorspace for 8,000 attendees. Engineers began with 6,000 tons of low carbon concrete. A good start. From there, things take a turn for the higher-tech: sophisticated heating and cooling systems that that use minimal amounts of juice, all linked up to a central computer that monitors environmental conditions in real time and adjusts electricity consumption accordingly.

When the building is stuffed with guests, it even traps their radiating heat and water vapor to be stored for later use. The CCD even produces its own giant stores of ice to tap for a quick cool-off, no air conditioning required. And it doesn’t hurt that the place is pretty damn pretty, to boot. [Inhabitat]

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What would you sacrifice for a phone that charges by inducting heat from your body? An OS? A brand-name you can be proud of? A touchscreen? That’s the question I pose to you, after spotting this concept Nokia phone.

It’s been dreamed up by English designer Patrick Hyland, who envisions the phone to be made from copper and capable of drawing heat from your body (or something like an overheating laptop), converting it to energy. That’s by way of a thermogenerator that’s been placed in the copper E-Cu phone (“E” for environment, and “Cu” for copper, naturally).

I’m not so sure the increasing prices (and demand) for copper will ever make this phone a reality, but in the meantime it’s nice to see someone use the Nokia name for good. Unlike, err, Nokia. [Dezeen via Recombu]

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I don’t know why you’d want to be a leftie, but at least we know the choice is out there if now. The magic causing the change of dexterity is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, and is specifically intended for right-handers.

When magnets are applied to a specific part of the brain (the posterior parietal cortex region, which is involved with planning physical movements), researchers at the University of California Berkeley found that their 33 right-handed guinea pig volunteers started favoring their left hands for smaller tasks instead.

While people weren’t beginning to write with their left hands, they did find that they started picking stuff up with their other hand, or pressing an elevator button.

The potential here is obviously vast, and I’m not just talking about which hand we use. Imagine if magnets could make us favor healthy food over fattier food? Earlier mornings instead of long lie-ins? I can almost see horror movies being planned using unauthorized TMS technology, that’s how big this could get.

Still, it’s only early days for the team in California, but I doubt I’m the only one who’s on the edge of their seats over this one. [PNAS via io9]

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The Astronomical Clock in Prague’s Old Square displays not only time but sunrise, sunset, zodiac, mean revolutions of the moon, and a whole bunch of other crazy stuff. It recently celebrated its 600th birthday with this incredible projected light show.

According to a commenter at BoingBoing, the projection took 4 months to create and used 2 Christie 18K HD projectors—that’s 5000×1200 resolution.

The projection mapping was done by Michal Kotek and Lukáš Dub?da at The Macula with sound design by data-live and production by Tomato Production. And while the projection is pretty insane, the clock itself, which has over 20 functions, might be even crazier.

[Vimeo via BoingBoing]

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Say hello to architect Matthew Fromboluti. If he lived in a comic book, he would be designing lairs for super-villains. In the real world, he just wants to build this formidable subterranean skyscraper in the desert outside Bisbee, Arizona.

His project, called Above below, is a building that drills 900 feet into the ground, in the now-abandoned 300-acre wide Lavender Pit Mine.

It has it all. Beautiful design, complete autonomy from the outside world, skylights and tubes channeling the natural light, farms, and climate control. Now he only needs a Utopian society with enough money to build it. And John Carpenter to film something really horrific and alien happening to all of them. [evolo via Inhabitat]

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Every two weeks, the last person capable of fluently speaking one of humankind’s over 6,000 languages dies. Let that sink in. Then, consider that two linguists have discovered a new one—unlike any other ever encountered in history.

The language, called Koro, was found within a tiny community of around 800 inhabitants of the Himalayan foothills—nestled in a region where 120 other dialects are already in use. The discovery of Koro is of enormous importance to linguists for reasons beyond its novelty. Koro sounds and is structured like no other language on earth, giving scientists an opportunity to interact with a population whose conception of the world is, because of the words they use, fundamentally different from the rest of us. Koro speakers “uniquely code knowledge of the natural world in ways that cannot be translated into a major language,” explains Dr. Gregory Anderson, one of the linguists behind the breakthrough. [WSJ]

Photo by rajkumar1220

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The Paik Nam June Media Bridge project—in Seoul, Korea—is more than a kilometer long (0.67 miles). It has museums, libraries, and shopping malls, but what it really needs are anti-gravity engines so it could fly to orbit.

Those ramps are not engines of any kind, however. They just lead to gardens by the river and ship docks:

Each of the bridge’s floors has horizontal gardens. The building uses solar panels for energy, as well as water from the river for climate regulation.

I wish they built something similar in New York. Walking from Brooklyn to Manhattan over the bridges is nice, but this look a lot nicer. [Design Boom]

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The Mozilla Seabird, part of the Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series, is an experiment in how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technology advances. Drawing on insights culled from the Mozilla community through the project’s blog, a focus quickly developed around frustrating physical interactions. While mobile CPUs, connectivity and development platforms begin approaching that of desktops, the lagging ability to efficiently input information has grown ever more pronounced.

Interaction

The Seabird, then, introduces a few possibilities into how user interaction might evolve with the advancing motion capture and projector driven innovation in the market. First out, the Seabird imagines how a multiple use dongle might augment the crowded gestural interface with greater precision and direct manipulation of content in 3D space.

Pico Projector

With mobile phone companies such as Samsung, LG and Motorola moving towards display applications for projectors, the technology remains open for expanding user interaction and input at the same time. The Seabird, on just a flat surface, enables netbook-quality interaction by working with the projector’s angular distortion to deliver interface, rather than content. With the benefit of a dock, each projector works independently and delivers laptop levels of efficiency.

Design

The form development took its cues from various aerodynamic, avian and decidedly feminine forms. Its erect posture intends a sense of poise while its supine conformity to the hand reconciles that with the user’s desire for digital control. The curvature of the back also serves a functional role in elevating the projector lens elements when lying flat.

Seabird is a community-driven exploration and does not mean that Mozilla has plans to produce an OS or hardware at the moment. Find out more about Mozilla Firefox for Mobile here.

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Ditch those bifocals. You might soon wearing spectacles whose lenses allow you to see clearly regardless of how long or short-sighted you are.

With age, the lenses in our eyes often lose the ability to change shape enough to focus light from near objects onto the retina – a condition called presbyopia. This leaves people who were already short-sighted unable to focus on either near or distant objects. Bifocals offer a solution by having two lenses in the same frame, but users must get used to tilting their head up or down to switch focus.

Zeev Zalevsky at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, has developed a technique to turn a standard lens into one that perfectly focuses light from anything between 33 centimetres away and the horizon.

It involves engraving the surface of a standard lens with a grid of 25 near-circular structures each 2 millimetres across and containing two concentric rings. The engraved rings are just a few hundred micrometres wide and a micrometre deep. “The exact number and size of the sets will change from one lens to another,” depending on its size and shape, says Zalevsky.

The rings shift the phase of the light waves passing through the lens, leading to patterns of both constructive and destructive interference. Using a computer model to calculate how changes in the diameter and position of the rings alter the pattern, Zalevsky came up with a design that creates a channel of constructive interference perpendicular to the lens through each of the 25 structures. Within these channels, light from both near and distant objects is in perfect focus.

“It results in an axial channel of focused light, not a single focal spot,” Zalevsky says. “If the retina is positioned anywhere along this channel, it will always see objects in focus.”

Zalevsky has fitted one of his lenses to a cellphone camera to confirm the extended focus effect, and he has also tested the lenses on 12 volunteers (Optics Letters, vol 35, p 3066). He has now co-founded a company, Xceed Imaging, to develop the technology.

The approach is not without its problems, though: the interference pattern tends to cancel out some of the light passing through the lens, which reduces the contrast of images viewed through it. Pablo Artal of the University of Murcia, Spain, warns that if the contrast reduction becomes too large, the brain will struggle to interpret the information.

Zalevsky counters that people wearing the lenses do not notice a loss in contrast because the eye is very sensitive to light at low intensity. “Unlike a camera, the brain has a logarithmic and not linear [response to light].” He says that the brain adapts to and minimises the reduced contrast within a few seconds.

This is not the only way in which the brain must adapt to the new lenses. Fixed in a pair of glasses, the lenses would not move as the eye looked in different directions, so the focusing effect would be lost in the regions between the circles. But Zalevsky says that the eye learns to fill in the gaps as it moves from one engraved structure to another, generating a continuous effect.

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the results of human endeavour set in the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.

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Services like Gazelle and ecoNew are great, because you can sell them your old, unwanted gadgets for a decent price, and they’ll be recycled, which is better than just throwing them in the trash. Ecosquid makes this process easy.

Instead of manually entering in your info on multiple sites, Ecosquid acts like an Expedia or a Priceline or an Orbitz, searching all those sites for you and spitting out the best offers. An example!

Above is the 16GB iPhone 3GS. The top four offers are there, giving you a pretty comparable payout for sending in the phone. There are some more results below too, like AT&T, Motorola, Best Buy, reconnect, Apple and Cell Phones for Soldiers, plus two more pages of various organizations that offer $0 for your stuff. My guess is you won’t make it past page one most of the time.

Ecosquid! Just like you’re not going to search individual airline sites unless you’re married to one specific carrier for luxury or points reasons, you probably don’t care which recycling service your old junk goes to. [Ecosquid]

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Typhoons are a deadly problem along eastern Asia, killing dozens yearly. Their lifeblood? Warm ocean water. Which is exactly what Japanese inventor Koichi Kitamura wants to fix, with subs that would pump cold water to the surface, killing storms dead.

When seas are between 77 and 79 degrees Fahrenheit, typhoons are able to grow in, boosting their ravaging power as they head ashore. But Kitamura’s subs—only existing as patents, for the time being—would slip beneath the rampaging storms and then use 65 foot tubes to pump cold water to the surface, halting the typhoon’s progress (or at least weakening it). Kitamura claims a fleet of 20 such subs, pumping 480 metric tons of seawater per minute, could reduce the temperature of over 61,000 square feet by three degrees—enough take down the storm. [Telegraph via Scuttlefish]

Photo by NASA Goddard

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