future

Time Trumpet was the winner for film and TV in this year's South By Southwest Interactive Web Awards this past Sunday (see our coverage here). The site contains a number of faux-futurecentric video clips with historical satire about politics, current events, and celebrities. What's neat is the somewhat experimental interface that blends various media in partial 3D, similar to Universe which we took a look at yesterday. You can sort through it all by episode or subject, and each clip will organize itself into a neat, swirling vortex. It's total eye candy.

Most of the clips about … Read more

What the hell is going on these days? Seriously.

All of a sudden, scientists have created living remote-control pigeons, monkeys that can control huge robotic arms using only their brains, and cats that are getting pimped-out bionic eyeballs. And then there's that gaming helmet that can read your mind. It's awesome, but it's also creepier than 70 clown Draculas.

Here is what I'm talking about, yo.

We fully admit to having precious little information about this item, but the photo alone is simply too good to resist. According to a blog called Big Marketing for Small Business, "A revolutionary new miniature computer is being worked on in Japan that comes in the shape of a pen that you can slip in to your pocket." It's especially interesting given that the whole concept of "pen computing" became something of a laughingstock years ago, at least until the PDA stylus came along.

This pen-sized device supposedly projects a virtual keyboard and screen, recogizing … Read more

Pardon us--make that a washing system.

The KaionWAVE, from the design labs of Electrolux, is an appliance concept for the true germaphobe. Shunning mere soap and water, it uses ultraviolet light to penetrate fabrics and kill bacteria and viruses while presumably taking care of that ring around the collar. And it will do it all wirelessly, of course. (It would also be a perfect match for the WinePod.)

One problem: It's designed to work on "nano-coated" material, which Appliancist describes as "a durable and stain-resistant fabric that many hypothesize will be used to make the clothing … Read more

Is the future finally here? We've started to hear murmurs and rumbles about flying cars. Then there's all that research on the cloak of invisibility. And now, according to a BBC story, automatic translation machines that dub your speech, movie-style, could be next. Over on Digg they're extolling this in-the-works product as a "real Star Trek Universal Translator" (of course), but the scientists who are developing it are using the name "Tower of Babel." It looks like they're still having some accuracy issues, so I doubt you'll be seeing world leaders … Read more

The room depicted in the photo at left might look like your average well-furnished living room in your average pricey loft apartment in downtown Manhattan. But it isn't: it's one of the rooms that was featured in a model apartment for the Z-Wave Alliance's demonstration of home wireless control earlier this week. The apartment was packed with hardware, software, and futuristic controllers that can make everything from the thermostat to the window blinds accessible at the push of a button. Check out CNET News.com's photo-adorned coverage. Z-Wave home control might be a few years away … Read more

Crave's car tech experts warned us not to get too excited about this because it's only a concept model, but we couldn't resist. The photos alone are just too delicious to pass up.

The proposed electric Audi R-Zero, which Treehugger says was created by three students at France's International School of Design, looks like something right out of a sci-fi movie. In fact, some sharp-eyed readers have noted its similarities to another Audi concept developed for the 2004 movie "I, Robot."

Its proposed specs are equally fantastic, with four in-wheel motors that would supposedly … Read more