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Friday, June 28, 2013

A 15 Year-Old Girl From Canada Has Built A Flashlight Powered By The Heat Of A Hand

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-year-old-flashlight-powered-by-hand-2013-6

There's almost no real reason to own a flashlight now that all smartphones have bright flashes that work as flashlights.

However!

If, for some reason, you do want a dedicated flashlight in your life, a 15 year-old genius, Ann Makosinski from Victoria, B.C. has developed a new, innovative version of the flashlight.

Instead of using batteries, the flashlight converts the heat from your palm into energy that powers LED lightbulbs.

Incredible!

The best part of this invention is not the flashlight, which, as we already noted is obsolete. The best part is knowing that a 15-year-old is already playing around with this energy technology.

Hopefully in the next ten years she can do the same sort of thing for smartphones. Imagine just having to hold your smartphone for it to have enough energy to run?

Makosinski is a finalist in Google's Science Fair. To see who she's going against, click here »

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There's Now A Way To Anonymously Search The Web On Your Phone

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/duckduckgo-mobile-app-2013-6

DuckDuckGo CEO gabriel weinberg

DuckDuckGo just released its first mobile app for browsing the Web anonymously.

The app launch for iOS and Android comes in light of the NSA's PRISM program.

DuckDuckGo doesn't track your clicks across the Web, unlike Google. So if the government were to come knocking on DuckDuckGo's doors, seeking information, they would have no way to tie that information to individual users.

Though, it's worth noting that Google's Chrome app for iOS and Android does support private browsing. Apple's Safari browser also has a private search feature. However, those features aren't switched on by default like they are with DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo's app provides instant answers to help you find what you're looking for, without ever having to click on a search result. Since it doesn't track what you do, the search results aren't specific to your history and your interests. That's why the company positions its solution as a way to increase your exposure to information that you might not see otherwise.

DuckDuckGo launched back in 2008 as an alternative to traditional search engines that don't respect your privacy.

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg has mostly bootstrapped the company, but he also received $3 million from Union Square Ventures, Scott Banister, Peter Hershberg, Joshua Stylman, Joshua Schachter, Kal Vepuri, and Jim Young.

You can download the free app for iOS and Android here.

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This Building By Luxe Auto Designer Pininfarina Looks Like a Ferrari

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-building-by-luxe-auto-designer-pininfarina-looks-l-608338157

This Building By Luxe Auto Designer Pininfarina Looks Like a Ferrari

Pininfarina: you may know it as the high-end Italian firm that designs fast, expensive cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Now, for the first time, its designers are branching out into residential design with a condominium in Singapore. And it looks like the cars they design.

Many architects have designed cars, including Frank Gehry, Bucky Fuller, and Le Corbusier. But very few car designers have designed buildings. Pininfarina's plan for the 104-unit, 335-foot-high condominium quite obviously harnesses many aesthetic features of a luxury automobile. The lines of the towering red building compliment those of the body of a pricey Porsche. And the warm wooden interior of the building echoes that of a sleek woodgrain dash. For example, this is a 2006 Pininfarina Ferrari P4/5:

This Building By Luxe Auto Designer Pininfarina Looks Like a Ferrari

And this is a Maserati Birdcage 75th, a concept Pininfirina designed in 2005:

This Building By Luxe Auto Designer Pininfarina Looks Like a Ferrari

And this is a render of the building:

This Building By Luxe Auto Designer Pininfarina Looks Like a Ferrari

Either of those cars would fit right in the garage of this Singapore residence. It makes sense that a luxury car designer would design a luxury condo. Hell, the people who are buying Pininfarina-designed Maseratis would clearly be in the market for a big, showy building to call home. Now they can have the car and the condo to match.

It turns out that Pininfarina has quite the corner on the luxury living market—it's designed not just fancy cars, but also yachts and private planes. Real rich people stuff! One thing's for sure—these guys definitely know their audience. [DesignBoom]

Now You Can Rent A Lamborghini Gallardo From Hertz

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hertz-launches-supercar-rental-program-2013-6

lamborghini ferrari hertz

Rental cars no longer need to be boring. For travelers who want to drive in style, Hertz is now offering a fleet of supercars through its Hertz Dream Cars program.

The fleet includes rides from Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Tesla, and more, at 35 locations around the U.S.

Naturally, a top of the line rental costs more than a few days in an old Chevy Impala. Hertz's Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Bentleys start at $1,500 per day, and cost $3 for every mile above the 75 mile limit.

The Aston Martin Vantage and Audi R8 both start at $1,000 per day, with the same $3/mile penalty. The cheaper end of the luxury lineup, including Porsche and Mercedes rides, will cost you $350 per diem, with a $.49 penalty for roll of the odometer over the 75 mile limit.

Here's the full list of available whips. Hertz does not disclose how many it has of each:

Aston Martin V8 Vantage
Audi R8
Bentley Continental GT
Cadillac CTS-V
Ferrari (California, F430)
Lamborghini Gallardo
Land Rover Range Rover Sport
Mercedes-Benz AMG (SLS, C63, E63)
Mercedes-Benz SL550, S550 and G550
Porsche (911, Cayenne, Boxster, Panamera)
SRT Viper
Tesla Model S

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Visualized: The Lumia wall at Build 2013

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/27/visualized-the-lumia-wall-at-build-2013/

What happens when you take 200 Lumia 820s and pin them to a wall? You get a 12,000 x 6,400-pixel display, natch. This week at Build 2013 in San Francisco, Nokia and Microsoft teamed up to show this tiled monitor made of identical phones each running the same custom-built app. A master handset is used to control what's on the wall by communicating with each phone over WiFi (IP multicast). One demo was showing a massive animated grid of live tiles representing a selection of apps from the Windows Phone store. In another demo, the wall was displaying Bing Maps (using Here data) and being controlled interactively by the master handset. Take a look at our gallery below.

Gallery: The Lumia wall at Build 2013