If that headline made you feel like you may not be contributing as much effort to society as you could…you’re not alone.
Yes, a 15 year old from Canada has created a flashlight that runs off of nothing more than your hands. While you might guess that magic is the cause (possibly evil magic) it in fact functions because of peltier tiles, which generate an electric currency when one side of the tile becomes hotter than the other.
In this case, the exterior of the handle is heated by your hands, while the interior components remain cool. Specifically, the exterior must remain 5 degrees Celsius hotter than the interior for a useful enough current to be produced.
The developer calls this the design’s greatest flaw, since being humble is much easier when you are a 15 year old genius.
Dubbed the hollow flashlight because of its hollow handle, the design is still in a sort of prototype phase and is currently making its rounds at various young achievers contests, including the worldwide 2013 Google Science Fair, where it finished in the top 15.
Garnering impressive accomplishments aside, there doesn’t seem to be much direction for the hollow flashlight as there is only the one known model and, no matter how intelligent they are, 15 year olds usually don’t mass produce on their own.
This is a great design, though, that improves upon some recent battery free flashlight ideas, by functioning off something you always have easily on hand (pun sadly intended) without relying on cumbersome and time consuming mechanics.
Hopefully then someone picks up the concept, as some form of this design would ideally be in every emergency kit worldwide.
Without trying to sound like they’re cutting me a check for saying so, I love JetBlue. Not only do they provide noticeable amounts of more leg room, but they also give you a personal TV screen with basic cable, and overall provide the best service of any airline I’ve ever used.
The reason for this shameless shilling is to get across the point that JetBlue really do have an eye on making drastic improvements to the flying experience. That is now evident more than ever, thanks to the recent Google sponsored contest asking people to come up with their own uses for the upcoming Google Glass device through the twitter hashtag campaign #ifihadglass. While some amazing concepts have already spawned from the contest (such as 911 liveview assistance), one of the more complete visions of the Google Glass future comes from JetBlue.
Essentially they are envisioning a world where you can stay on top of your flight, and the airport experience in general, without ever breaking stride thanks to using Glass to do everything from the expected but awesome (check live flight status, know when your baggage will arrive, get a cab fare estimate) to the “HOLY CRAP, REALLY?!?!?” ideas such as viewing the capacity of the nearest parking garage and a tracker for the nearest available electrical outlet in the terminal.
This is all of course just a concept, and a very early one at that, but it not only shows how much more pleasant the flying experience could be with Google Glass, but is also slowly showing the world exactly the type of things this device is truly capable of, and why its upcoming release is set to be the biggest gadget release since the iPhone.
As part of their collaboration with the film and music industry, Google is working on modifying its search engine parameters to filter out pirated material. Google’s current search method works off of hundreds of variables to determine which webpages are the most relevant to your search. The largest factor is possibly your page rank, which is determined, in part, by how many sites link from you.
A new variable will soon be added, however, that takes into account the number of valid copyright removal notices a site receives. Basically, the more that a site receives, the lower they fall on the overall search rankings. Since Google is processing more copyright claims than ever before, they feel that they are primed to recognize sites with pirated material, and divert searchers to legal sites like Hulu, and Spotify instead for their content needs.
I’m not as convinced. This surely sounds like a proper move by Google, but really how much is it going to help? For one thing, can even Google process enough copyright claims in time to shut down that many websites from appearing in top hits, and even if they can couldn’t you just go to page 2, or *gasp* 3 on your search to find the site? Also, wouldn’t smaller sites with the same material just pop up instead in specific search results as the bigger ones go down, creating an endless loop of fresh pirated material? Speaking of search hits, will this still filter out specific searches? In the interest of not outing anyone, if I search say, Swashbuckler’s Cove for a torrent of “Game of Thrones,” wouldn’t Google still take me directly there regardless of the copyright claims?
What’s even better is that no mention of the Google owned YouTube is found in any of the statements on this matter. You know, one of the world’s most popular and prolific websites where just about any copyrighted material can be found free of charge (except for porn of course, in which case you need to go to PornTube, YouPorn, or PornPorn).
So wait a minute. Is it possible that Google just pulled a fast one on the continually technologically ignorant music and film industries by doing something to please them, while effectively doing nothing to aid them?
