Pillete

Pillete, the new concept of Bluetooth headset is so tiny, it’s almost invisible to the untrained eye when you are wearing it. So you don’t have to worry anymore about looking like Robocop when walking down the street with it, but you have to consider the possibility of people starting to think you’ve lost your marbles and you’re talking to yourself.
The downside is the fact that people have different sized ears and the device might be to small and slip out or to big and not fit. People who often use earphones will tell you I’m right. But once they’ll figure out a way to make the Pillete adjustable, this design will be the future of all headsets.

Thirsty Light Blinks

There are people who tend to over water their plants, but more importantly most people do not give enough water. The Thirsty Light Blinks helps solve this dilemma by letting your “plants” speak with you. This unique detector is a digital moisture meter that uses a patented process that interpret readings it obtains from the soil, offering you a (claimed) more precise measurement of the potting medium’s dryness, unlike other detectors that are readily available in the market. You will know when it is time to bust out that dusty watering can by seeing whether it blinks or not. for those who do not have green thumbs and literally need a signal whenever their plants get thirsty.
Source: RGS

Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

From the dawn of intellectual thought, man has been contemplating the idea of independent flight, soaring through the clouds, nothing between us and the earth’s surface. What if us humans had wings?
No doubt, airplanes were a huge step towards the independent flight of man, but in order to fly a plane, you have to be a licensed pilot, and who has the time and patience for all of that mess? A Swiss man named Yves Rossy has unveiled his personal flyer, a jet-powered set of wings which allows humans to act as airplanes, even performing plane stunts such as the figure eight.
48-year-old Rossy sprang into the air at 7,500-feet, jumping from the inside of a Pilatus Porter aircraft, with nothing but a pair of eight-feed wide wings standing between himself and the unforgiving Earth below. As Rossy’s free fall slowly evolved into a steady glide, four jet-turbines were ignited, accelerating the man to speeds of 186 miles per hour, or “about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver.”
“I still haven’t used the full potential,” Rossy told reporters, exclaiming his hope to one day use the wings for a fly through the Grand Canyon. He explains how there is almost no stress caused to the body while using the wings, how it’s almost like “riding a motorbike.” Though he still must wear a heat-resistant suit to protect him from the heat of the jet-engines, with the air temperature also assisting in cooling him down.
Rossy and his sponsors have poured about $285,000 and countless hours of labor into producing the personal flyer, and he won’t comment on how much the device might be if it were marketed to the public. Though one thing is for sure, thrill-seekers everywhere just got a glimpse of the future. Something to really look forward too.

FUEL CELLS FOR THE HOME

Energy of the Future Could Be Available Next Year (

The world's smallest home fuel cell (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries)
Competition to develop fuel-cell systems for the home is heating up, and some could be on the market as early as next year. The spread of such systems to generate electricity will help conserve fuel and could slow down environmental destruction. The government is giving full support to these moves and has established a target of meeting 4.5% of all household electricity needs with fuel cells by 2010.
Smaller, Cheaper SystemsFuel cells for the home generate electricity and hot water when oxygen reacts chemically with hydrogen that has been extracted from natural gas and other fuels. Such cells for motor vehicles have already been developed, and the first fuel-cell-powered automobiles went on sale late last year.
To make them feasible for home use, though, technical improvements were required to ensure a steady supply of electricity and to make the equipment small enough to be placed around the home. Another big bottleneck was cost. These obstacles have now been cleared to a considerable degree, opening the door to commercialization.
An experimental system built by Nippon Oil has been operating at a model home in Yokohama since February. It measures 100 centimeters high, 90 cm across, and 50 cm deep and is small enough to be placed in front of the house. The world's smallest model was later announced in early June by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; it is 100 cm high, 60 cm across, and 30 cm deep. Both models are expected to go on sale in fiscal 2004 (April 2004 to March 2005) for around ¥500,000 to ¥600,000 (approximately $4,000 to $5,000 at ¥120 to the dollar), placing them within the reach of ordinary households.
The biggest advantage of fuel-cell systems is their eco-friendliness. They rely on a chemical reaction that is electrolysis in reverse, and the only byproducts are electricity and hot water. No carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides are generated. Fuel-cell automobiles, moreover, are completely nonpolluting, since they use hydrogen that is stored in a tank.
Storing hydrogen near people's homes has raised safety concerns, however, and so household systems will generate the volatile gas from natural gas or kerosene. This process will result in emissions of carbon dioxide, but they will still be 20% less than that generated by thermoelectric power plants.
Tokyo Gas, which also hopes to launch a household model on the market during fiscal 2004, estimates that if fuel cells are used to meet households' entire hot water needs and two-thirds of their electricity needs, consumption of primary fuels can be reduced by 20% and emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides cut by 20% and 68%, respectively. An additional 20% savings is anticipated due to the elimination of energy loss during transmission.
There is, moreover, the savings on actual energy costs due to lower consumption. A family of four using the world's smallest home fuel-cell system developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries can expect to save ¥50,000 ($417) annually on utility bills.