A Bridge To The Future: 3-D Printing Robots To Build Metal Footbridge Over Amsterdam Canal

The projects that 3-D printers are now capable of undertaking are vast, from organs to garments to housing.  The architectural aspects are proving to be fascinating new ways of creating structures, including some that might not be cost-effective or even physically feasible for humans to similarly construct...

Bots building beauty...coming soon!
(Image courtesy trueactivist.com.)

Computerized Couture: New 3-D Printer Creates Clothing

It's a fast-paced world in modern times, one in which it's easy to lose your shirt.  Fortunately, the future has some fashion sense, and a new 3-D printer is ready to deliver it straight to you, sans stores or shopping.

Futuristic tank tops, just in time for all the global warming!
(Image courtesy domusweb.it.)

Hack In Black: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Portable Blacklight

Since your smartphone already can seem like something out of the future, why not give it an extra superpower?  You can now act like a criminal investigator (handcuffs optional) and scan for clues using your smartphone as a blacklight...

And then, adorning everything in blacklight ink becomes your new graffitti...
(Image courtesy pinterest.com.)

Real-Life "TRON" Lightcycle Hits The Grid After Sotheby's Auction

This year has been a good one for futuristic vehicles.  We have a prototype hoverboard, a new crew-bearing spacecraft, and now, a "lightcycle" that looks just like the one featured in the "TRON" films...

Kickass cycling suit not included.
(Image courtesy theredlist.com.)

A Whole New World (Of 3D Printing): Disney Makes Soft, Snuggly 3D-Printed Prototypes

With 3D printing technology expanding dramatically, the innovative ideas just keep coming.  Want to 3D print a mud hut to chill in?  Covered.  Need to get fresh tools to the International Space Station on the double?  3D printing can handle that.  And now, 3D printing isn't even limited to materials that are supposed to remain sturdy...

Straight outta E.P.C.O.T....
(Image courtesy 3dprint.com.)

I Know It's Only Rock 'n Roll (Setlyst App Review), But I Like It

Are you a rocker?  Do you rock out?  Then you know that, amid all the beers, babes, gear, and gregariousness of live performance, it really helps to be organized.  A new app can help take care of at least a little bit of that (without making you start a budget for a real manager...)

Now you just have to worry about staying inflammable and keeping your gear in one piece.
(Image courtesy wallpedes.com.)

True Story: New "StoryCorps" App Aims To Preserve Diverse Histories

Since the dawn of mankind, humans have passed down traditions, songs, legends, folklore, family history, and more via the medium of storytelling.  In modern day, transcribed oral histories have lent insight into some of the most important events of recorded time.  Now, a method to preserve these tales for the ages has been made easy in app form.

"That's how much of my intestinal tract the German bomb eviscerated,
but I still bayoneted five of 'em before I passed out."
-"Uh...Dad, weren't you born in Ecuador?  In 1950?"
(Image courtesy lifehacker.com.)

Art And Sole: New E-Ink Shoes Sport Different, Programmable Designs

Ladies, we know it's difficult finding that perfect pair of pumps to match your outfit.  Now, thanks to the futuristic fashion known as iShüu, you can customize your kicks for whatever occasion...

Whether you're meandering, moseying, walking or waltzing, iShüu has something for you.
(Image courtesy blog.gsmarena.com.) 

Send In The Drones: New "Drone Circus" To Open In Amsterdam

You may have heard that finding crazy and interesting things to do and see in Amsterdam is easy.  Now, it just got a little more intriguing...a circus where the performers are all drones is set to open this year.

Get Mesmerized By The Coolest Futuristic Architecture: The Dynamic Tower!

Hey friends, it's the future!  How about these (literally) swinging futuristic digs in Dubai?

It's the Da Vinci dynamic tower, and it's the architectural version of Twist 'n Shout!

Go with the flow.
(Image courtesy glazette.com.)

Get Your Recording Groove On For Free With New "Pro Tools First" App

Are you a rocker?  Do you rock out?  Or, for that matter, do you sing opera, hit jazz, bust rhymes, yodel, or otherwise create music?  If so, you've probably recorded or wanted to record your craft so it can be immortalized and shared worldwide.  Now, the most famous program in the business is going to help you do that...for free.

Live out your craziest rock 'n roll dreams...ok, except the app can't really help with the alien part.
(Image courtesy pavelche.deviantart.com.)

For fifteen years now, Avid's Pro Tools software has been the industry standard for digitally creating and altering recorded music.  With the ability to layer tracks with precision and add countless effects to a composition, it is a valuable (but pricey) means of making a masterpiece.  Now, according to engadget.com, Avid will be unveiling Pro Tools First, a free app that is a scaled-down version of their professional program.

The main differences between Pro Tools First and the regular Pro Tools is the capability for literally hundreds of tracks to be layered together in the same composition.  This essentially means that in the full version of Pro Tools, you could individually record an entire orchestra and chorus with each musician on their own track, then seamlessly blend them using the software.  Pro Tools First offers the capacity for 16 mono/stereo audio tracks, 16 MIDI tracks and 16 Instruments tracks for a maximum of 48 tracks, and 21 audio plug-in effects - all of which would be completely satisfying for many types of projects.

You don't want to worry about all this.  Just worry about the basics, and your song not being awful.
(Image courtesy effectszone.com.)

A detailed analysis of the comparisons and contrasts between the versions of Pro Tools can be found here on Avid's website.  While there is no score editor or video playback in the app version, such amenabilities as Elastic Time and Elastic Pitch are there to help you tune up your timing and tone.

A very useful feature of both Pro Tools and Pro Tools First is the ability to share your work with other artists, producers and engineers via cloud computing.  This enables a production to be worked on remotely, where updates to the work or wholly new sonic attempts can flow freely.  While space for such projects is limited on Pro Tools First (you get room for three songs), this could theoretically help to keep you on task.

Sign up to be notified when Pro Tools First drops...soon, you could be a superstar!  Or at least give yourself an objective viewpoint on how your shower singing and karaoke jams really sound...

ROCK ON!
(Image courtesy elitedaily.com.)

Rock And Scroll: X-Rays Peer Into The Ancient World By "Reading" Volcanically-Charred Papyrus

When we ponder the implications of modern and future technology, it is interesting to note that while they drive us ever further forward, they can also help us understand history more thoroughly.  Such a case was just brought to light by an x-ray technician who creatively solved a classic problem by using an unexpected piece of modern technology.

According to the BBC, Dr. Vito Mocella, of the National Research Council's Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems in Naples, Italy, was at a scientific conference in France when he learned that "X-ray phase-contrast tomography", a common medical analysis method, was being adapted for use in paleontology. He liked the idea and extrapolated it for another interesting historical cause: how to read data on volcanically-scorched ancient scrolls.

It could save your life from breast cancer, but it can also tell of many lives past.
(Image courtesy nature.com.)

Phase contrast refers to the changing "phase" (slight distortion) of light waves as objects are X-rayed. The analysis of the contrast in the light provides a detailed 3D image of an object (as opposed to simply measuring the amount of light that is visible through the object, as is done with a conventional X-ray.) The technique is frequently used for mammograms, as it helps differentiate layers of an object when there is little contrast in the background material.

This allowed scientists to observe the difference between the ink and the papyrus of a scroll from the Herculaneum, an ancient library that was battered by the Mt. Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD. Volcanic gas at temperatures of 320 Celsius (608 Fahrenheit) charred the scrolls almost to the point of destruction, but ink remnants a mere tenth of a millimeter high were enough for the synchotron machine to deduce some of the words on the scroll.

"Cleopatra is a bitch."
(Image courtesy popsci.com.)

Though the squashed papyrus fibers made determining letters with straight lines difficult (as they were harder to distinguish from the fibers themselves), letters with curved elements were identifiable. The scroll was written in Greek, which was the language of philosophy in ancient Rome. The team believes the scroll to be a work called "On Frank Criticism", a study advocating honesty between friends, written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus.

The Herculeaneum, the only surviving library from the ancient world, as it looks today (fortunately sans any crazy volcano action.)  More collections from antiquity may benefit from the technology used on the scrolls found here.
(Image courtesy news.softpedia.com.)

Dr. Mocella admits that while the innovative deciphering technique hasn't yet been perfected, he intends to continue experimenting with the project.  Mocella's team was quoted in National Geographic, saying, "This pioneering research opens up new prospects not only for the many papyri still unopened, but also for others that have not yet been discovered."

The scroll, seen by the naked eye in Image A, and then as rendered by the phase contrast x-ray.
And you thought reading regular books was hard.
(Image courtesy nature.com.)

Compositions From Composites: New 3D-Printing Materials To Include Wood, Stone, Iron

The concept of creating objects on demand using 3D-printing technology has caught the eye and imagination of artists and designers worldwide.  The scope of what can be made - from mud huts to human skin to prototype motorcycle parts - grows by the day.  Now, the palette of available materials for 3D printing expands still further, and will soon include composite filaments of wood, stone, iron, and bronze.

L-R:  Bronze, limestone, iron, and maple:  the remix.
(Image courtesy 3ders.com.)

According to engadget.com, the MakerBot 3D-printing company is moving past plastics and by late 2015, will have developed printable composite filaments of maplewood, limestone, iron and bronze.  The items created with these materials retain the visual look and some of the strength of the main material, but the plastic that also comprises the composite lends a lighter feel.

The cavemen would be so proud of how far we've come.
(Image courtesy engadget.com.)

The physical elements of the source material retain several characteristics that would make prototype printed parts much more accurate to the real thing.  Metal composites can be magnetized.  Wood composites smell like wood, and can be stained, sanded and treated as normal nature-grown wood would.

Can't carve?  No worries, just print!
(Image courtesy 3dprint.com.)

Other filaments can glow in the dark or change color by temperature, but these new composites are good for more than just novelty.  The wood and iron filaments create a convincing hammer (although the functionality of such a hammer is still being improved on.)  The iron filaments can create nuts and bolts. All that's required to print the different materials are swappable "Smart Extruders", which manipulate the filament composites into your desired items.

As reported by 3dprint.com, MakerBot CEO Jenny Lawton expressed enthusiasm about the upcoming year, telling fans at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show that "...for 2015, we are focused on enhancing the overall MakerBot 3D Ecosystem by listening to our users, fine-tuning our 3D printers, iterating our software and apps to unlock their full potential, and launching new MakerBot PLA Composite Filaments as well as services that will make 3D printing even more interesting and accessible.”

What could these new artistic abilities create for you?

3D-printing in limestone could make for some very ambitious projects...
(Image courtesy whiteclouds.com.)

If No Words Can Express Your Deepest Feelings...How About Emojis?

Alright look, this is the future, and you don't need to be bound by petty things like the proper use of language or even the construction of complete sentences anymore.  In fact, thanks to a new app, Emojiary, you can create a whole chronicle of your day without ever typing a single word.

These are your new ABCS, children.
(Image courtesy genius.com.)

Based off of the current trend to express oneself in social media via nothing other than small, colorful, variously-mooded facial avatars, Emojiary is literally a diary created only from emojis.  This allows you to "remember your feelings", as their website says (they wrote that part in real words though.)

Except we don't remember feeling this weird...ever.
(Image courtesy thejournal.ie.)

Over time, one can chart the arcs of their malarkey and "learn the rhythm to your emotional ups and downs."  Because self-awareness is apparently now best served in facial cartoon form, they have invented and included new emojis for your chronicles.  Privacy is also paramount to the program, lest anyone else see your shocking secrets of frowny faces or blushy-kissy faces.

This is the emoji for people who have spent years perfecting their usage of language to express their ideas and emotions, as they now ponder the societal implications of Emojiary.
(Image courtesy blog.lawyers.net.)

If this seems jaw-droppingly inane and thoroughly counterproductive to thousands of years of humans attempting to artistically express themselves in thoughtfully written form, know that Emojiary has been created to help.  Their mission statement explains it all:
 
   "Emojiary is a product from All Tomorrows—a product studio working at the intersection of emotion and technology, focused on developing a constellation of products to support emotional well-being and help people unlock their potential. We’re on a mission to tap into the best that technology has to offer in service of supporting a kinder, more self-aware society. A brighter future starts with understanding what motivates you, what scares you, and where you’re being held back. We’re all about creating products that help you do that."

From another intersection of emotion and technology, we're saying this is kind of weird.  But if your self-awareness is best recognized through sending smileys, here is your new closest confidante.

Um...yay?
(Image courtesy huffingtonpost.com.)

Be A Street-Art Snob With New "Public Art" Locator App

In the course of your adventures, it can be fun to see what rogue street artwork pops up along the way.  However, if you have trouble identifying artists' names from their purposefully-abstract spraypainted tags, or if you'd like to stroll to where more of their work can be found, there's now a way to appreciate more of their art - even if it never makes it into a museum.

Truth and beauty.
(Image courtesy thewgnews.com.)

The new Public Art app (available on the iTunes store) was created by art enthusiast Leonard Bogdonoff of New York City.  According to their description, the app "pulls geotagged grafitti and street art images from around the world" into a large collection which is updated daily.

It's worth walking an extra few blocks for things like this.
(Image courtesy gogoem.blogspot.com.)

Art adventurers can plot a stroll by determining works in their zip code, or by searching city names and addresses.  As the images are organized by location, the app can conveniently plot walking directions for you via Google Maps.  It's like a gallery in your own alley!

Check out Public Art app here and feast your eyes on some unauthorized surprises!

It may be a crime to create it, but it's not a crime to enjoy it.
(Image courtesy highsnobiety.com.)

Step Up Your Art With New E-Traces Dance Shoes

As technology is accepted more and more into our daily lives, the effect it can have on one of our most elemental fascinations - artwork - becomes increasingly intriguing.  Now, thanks to one company's innovative new ballet shoes, the worlds of dance and abstract visual art have got a new way to tango. 

Like shoe-shaped Sharpies for your feet.
(Image courtesy cargocollective.com.)

According to makezine.com, designer Lesia Trubat Gonzalez's new project, E-traces, follows your footwork and turns it into artwork.  A Lilypad Arduino-based sensor takes pressure data from a dancer's feet, sending data from the customized ballet shoes to a computer program.  This then transforms the various movements into brushstroke-esque imagery.  The app allows customization and even graph readout of the data.

The technological palette.
(Image courtesy cargocollective.com.)

The technology could be used to assess one's performance (particularly in comparison to other dancers' graphical results) as well as to create a new form of visual art.  Can calligraphy be choreographed?  Dance a mile in these shoes and see what strokes of artistic genius appear.

Don't just wait for the dancefloor to change colors as your boogie!  Use E-Traces to add to the art!
(Image courtesy 2.bp.blogspot.com.)

Reverse Undercover: Get The Full Picture With "Sousveillance" Jacket

It's no secret that a variety of devices and their masters are going to be watching you every time you leave the house.  Instead of being infuriated or marginalized by this, why not use their own powers against them?  Now you can shoot first (well, photos, at least) with the new Aposematic Jacket.

As reported by wired.com, this new wearable technology protects not just with surveillance, but with the threat of it as well.  Welcome to the world of "sousveillance", taken from the idea that you are watching from below, not being watched from above (the "sur" in "surveillance.)  The Aposematic's South Korean creators, artists Kim Yong Hun and Shin Seung Back, stitched four working cameras (and eight dummies) onto a regular black blazer, daring any passersby to mess with the wearer.

The Aposematic, spotted in the wild.
(Image courtesy mashable.com.)

The Aposematic is named for the bright frogs and other creatures who use their overt threat of danger to ward off predators.  These days, too much information can sting worse than a dose of too much poison venom. Four cameras are triggered from a discreet button hidden in the Aposematic's sleeve, immediately offering a panoramic image which can be beamed to a website for realtime extreme exo-monitoring.  It's the ultimate selfie, plus a sort of security.  “Cameras make people act ‘properly,’ ” Kim says. “Once someone’s behavior is recorded, it will exist beyond time and space so that will have the possibility of being ‘judged’ by others anytime and anywhere.”

What're you lookin' at?
(Image courtesy pinterest.com.)

Kim raises serious questions about the state of our society and how surveillance/sousveillance now acts as a built-in behavior modifier.  He ponders, “How will people act when everything is recorded all the time? Will people have to always behave themselves? Or will we have to re-invent the concept of the ethics of humanity?”

Even though the Aposematic is an art project rather than a fashion movement, it makes it neatly known that accountability is for everyone.  We must first observe and affect our own surroundings before we can hope to do so with others.  We must be the checks and balances that the surveillance of the powers-that-be lacks.  Hopefully the changes that are enacted as we progress further into a surveillance society aren't just because someone is watching...they'll be because some people should have been acting better all along, and will shape up in a world where they have nowhere to hide.  And now, that includes the watchers too.

Bling bling, sousveillance is a thing.
(Image courtesy de.wikipedia.org.)

Robo-Written: New Computer Programs Tell Tales To You

Telling stories has been a way of preserving our history since before the first written word was ever scrawled onto some bark or chiseled into stone.  Now, like many other modern developments, we've figured out a way to make machines do it for us.

As reported by New Scientist, there are several computer programs that are currently capable of spitting out a story.  Or at least, the idea for one.  The program that does "write", called Scheherazade, will give you a tale that's not near Shakespeare, but might entertain a young reader learning to string sentences together.  Set in any world that the program can learn about via the internet, Scheherazade uses crowdsourcing to gain knowledge of actions and scenarios.  It then strings the actions together to form a story.  

While this requires a great deal of human interaction on the input and refinement level, the program can nonetheless create accurate historical timelines from information presented, as well as fairly detailed short stories.  According to Technovelgy, once the plot points are entered, Scheherazade then "clusters them based on semantic similarity to create plot events that unfold sequentially until a decision point is reached, at which point a new line of plot events and decision points is triggered."

Scheherazade is currently being developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology under a grant from DARPA, which wants to use the program as a means to develop instructional materials for the "online cultural training" of American troops.

"Online cultural training."  Sure, DARPA. You're surely not teaching your murderous robot army how to dream up evil plots.
(Image courtesy techradar.com.)  

If you're not in the mood to be regaled and would rather write, a program can offer you a plausible (if possibly strange) character arc to work with.  The Flux Capacitor, a program being developed at University College in Dublin, uses a metaphor generator to create conflict via "role transitions."  These then become the inklings of a story, which are paired with the program's basic knowledge of the world, juxtaposed with characters that undergo a personal change.  

For example, the Flux Capacitor could take the concepts of "cool" and "angry", adhere them to the roles of "musicians" and "politicians", and generate the idea of, "What causes cool musicians to change their style of rock and roll, start a campaign, and become angry politicians?"  The "what causes" question prefaces each of the scenarios, which include two transitory notions before reaching the conclusion of the character arc. The Flux Capacitor uses @MetaphorMagnet twitter handle to assess its progress.

Then there's your simple "What If?" scenarios.  There's a program now for that, the What-If Machine, being developed at the University of London.  More of a computerized Mad Lib than anything you'd write a novel from, it nonetheless generates notions if you need them.  In addition to human, animal, and object scenarios, one can also make Kafkaesque or Surrealist what-ifs.  A Kafkaesque what-if (based off of the premise of "The Metamorphosis", whose lead character wakes up as a giant bug) might read, "What if there were a man who woke up as a manta ray, but he could still sing opera?"  A Surrealist scenario might read, "What if there were a computer who fell in love, but his only object of attraction was a malfunctioning toaster?"

That actually might not be too much of a Surrealist leap, anymore, considering computer programs are becoming advanced enough to write.  And what's writing if you're not doing it for love?  Just another string of code stringing together words.  Could computers learn enough about situational experiences enough to want to replicate them or experience them?  If they don't, in their stories, at what point do humans put in that ineffable touch of literary love?  Will there be a literary computer singularity, where a machine writes a book so good it fools humans?  

What if we just kept using our brainframes to imagine all these what-ifs on our own?  Can't we preserve a piece of art we still do as well, or better, than a computer?

Even if you do dream up and write the whole story on your own, you'll still want an editor.  That's where you can hire Hemingway, an editing app that pares down your excessive verbiage into the taut, tough style of the classic American author.  Robo-Hemingway highlights run-on sentences that you need to break up, adverbs that can be replaced with action verbs, polysyllabic words that you don't need to use to show off, and passive voicing to eliminate.  That last part, for those who may want to work on it manually, means it's more effective to say, "The artist lost money because the computer wrote the book", rather than "The money was lost by the artist because the book was written by the computer."

Although hopefully, neither you or the computer will ever have to write that.

The preceding article was 100% non-computer-generated.  Except for the research part.  They're pretty good at that.

A Museum In Your Monitor: Immerse Yourself In Art In New Virtual-Reality Gallery

Do you like museums, but live in the middle of nowhere?  Do you long to gaze upon the world's artistic treasures, but are daunted at the thought of walking through miles of gallery halls just to spot one specialty?  Now, thanks to virtual reality, some of the finest art and artifacts are available for your perusal, in 3D, from the privacy of your own computer screen.

According to factor-tech.com, the University of Sheffield in England has created the "Computer Love 2.0" program to make art enthusiasm available everywhere.  Navigated with an Oculus Rift system or simply a mouse and keyboard, the Computer Love 2.0 program takes the viewer through virtual versions of Sheffield's National Fairground Archive, the Turner Museum of Glass, and the Alfred Denny Museum.

If you don't trust yourself around the artifacts (pictured) in the real-life Turner Museum of Glass, perhaps visiting the virtual version is smarter.
(Image courtesy bbc.co.uk.) 

The galleries are not limited exclusively to artwork.  Many of the installments in these particular institutions involve animal elements, such as an eagle skull or guillemot eggs.  Dr. Steve Maddock, a member of the university's Computer Science department and one of the program's creators, explained, “Hopefully our art gallery – which explores the relationship between science and art by ‘displaying’ things like our half-specimens as artworks – will pique the interest of visitors and encourage them to make the trip to see the full collections in real life."  

With virtual reality poised to make a major impact on how we see and interpret new things to learn, this could be an important first step in sharing culture worldwide. Could the Met or the Louvre soon follow suit? Will Banksy start writing grafitti electronically? And what happens when someone creates a piece of art that REQUIRES the digital 3D format?  Someday soon, we'll see...in elegantly rendered 3D.

Now you can take a field trip anytime!
(Image courtesy sheffield.ac.uk.)

I Like Big Huts And I Cannot Lie: New 3D Printer Constructs Locally-Sourced Mud Homes

With all of the ultra-modern, high-tech uses for 3D printing, it may come as a surprise that someone thought to repurpose it for one of the oldest and dirtiest tasks known to mankind.  Yet that's just what has happened thanks to WASP, a 3D printing company whose latest invention specializes in constructed houses made of mud.

While 3D printing has been used to experiment with architecture already, WASP's plan does not simply throw up a suspiciously-indefensible concrete castle for your backyard.  Crafting a triangular honeycomb wall design that can properly bear weight and outside impediments, the new WASP machine slowly layers on a solid structure that, if mixed with strong enough natural binding components, could prove to be as durable as anything our ancestors could have dug up once their cave neighborhood wasn't fashionable anymore.

Ugh, cave-hipsters ruin everything.
(Image courtesy fanpop.com.)

According to makezine.com, WASP uses a 20-foot tall, three-armed 3D printer that is portable (to aid in construction in remote areas) and can be assembled in two hours.  It can use a variety of locally-available materials to construct its mud layers, including materials like wool (which is set to be tested when WASP prints a 3D hut in Sardinia.)

The WASP company rose to prominence as the second-largest 3D printing company in Italy by manufacturing various smaller 3D printers of exceptional quality.  Their previous models have the ability to carve out creations, create food or adhesive products, or even design ceramic pieces that can then be glazed and fired.  That's right, the next generation of fine Italian art might not come from the hands of a sculptor or painter, but rather from the design program entered into a 3D printer.

Is it worth it to use our new technological bounty in places where rudimentary handiwork has long sufficed?  Will lives really be improved when one of the most time-honored types of local labor is outsourced to a large robot?  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, this extremely "green" type of housing may appeal to hut-home enthusiasts the world over.  Clubs and pelts optional.

WASP's CEO Massimo Moretti examines a scale-model hut.  Could mud be the material of a masterpiece?
(Image courtesy thehomesteadingboards.com.)