Archive for March 26th, 2008

Programmers, college kids and anyone else who needs one or two (or more!) cups of joe (n. Morning Joe) to get through the day might enjoy this unusual coffee maker, Kahva. (”Kawa,” pronounced the same as “kahva,” is “coffee” in Polish. Other cognates exist, too. We’re educational.) While the premise is not all too dissimilar […]

kahva

Programmers, college kids and anyone else who needs one or two (or more!) cups of joe (n. Morning Joe) to get through the day might enjoy this unusual coffee maker, Kahva. (”Kawa,” pronounced the same as “kahva,” is “coffee” in Polish. Other cognates exist, too. We’re educational.) While the premise isn’t all too dissimilar to a percolator, the fact that the water flows upward bemused more than one passerby.

Not me, though. Not bemused.

UPDATE~! Oh man, egg on my face. Seems Kahva can more accurately (read: “correctly”) be described as a vacuum coffee maker. What do I know? I go to Starbucks and spend $2 on a grande bold each day.

Via [crunchgear]

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The ABB IRB 340 FlexPicker’s legs instantly put me in mind of a kind of merciless Matrixesque robot, snatching up human bodies and doing terrible things to them. But apparently, it’s the world’s fastest industrial robot, and is used to pick and sort items on a production line— innocent things like sausages and croissants. By fastest, it means 10g of acceleration: that’s zero to 280mph in a single second. Which makes for one heck of a rapid sausage, as the fascinating (and eerily Matrix-like) video reveals.

That arm/pincer thingy can do over 150 picks per minute, deal with payloads as massive as two kilos, and carries a camera so it can check products that don’t meet the grade. Looks like it’s using it to sort those croissants… the funny-shaped ones go where, we wonder?

Extraordinary stuff, even if I can’t get those scary images out of my head. It’ll be nightmares of robotic world domination tonight. [ABB via BotJunkie]


Via [Gizmodo]

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This morning I got my mytreo.net Newsletter and despite the fact that the page anchors don’t work in Gmail, I read (skimmed) the first paragraph and decided to try the service they were promoting, Jott. The link in the email took me to a Palm page with a longer article that I didn’t actually read and […]

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This morning I got my mytreo.net Newsletter and despite the fact that the page anchors don’t work in Gmail, I read (skimmed) the first paragraph and decided to try the service they were promoting, Jott.

The link in the email took me to a Palm page with a longer article that I didn’t actually read and no swift and simple way to get to what ever Jott was going to make me do to use it (sign up or download whatever).

A swift Google search and I was on Jott’s website, cleverly called jott.com
Set up was simple, nothing to download. First and last name, email, password, and telephone number. Then a confirmation email, then you’re asked to place a call to a 866 number to set up your phone.

With the email and phone confirmed, an automated lady voice at the other end of the phone asks you to make your first Jott, which unless you have already added contact thru the web interface is to yourself. In true geek fashion, she recommends sending yourself “Hello world”. Original. I spoke into my phone, sent my self a message, easily set up a reminder (which texted and emailed me at a set time). So far so good. This could actually be useful.

Read more…

Via [crunchgear]

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Starting October 1, if you’re flying first class from Dubai to New York on an Emirates Air A380, you’ll have the option of grabbing a hot shower midflight. It’ll cost you $18,000, but some showers are worth it, am I right? “No!” say those party poopers in the environmental lobby.

You see, in order to offer each first-class passenger a shower, the airline will have to add one metric tonne of water to its payload, dragging a carbon cost of around 50,000 lbs. per trip.

All part of the luxury experience, right? No one has seen pics of the upcoming A380 first-class cabin, but it is allegedly something on par with the “seven star” Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, and that it makes Singapore Airlines’ front end—with double beds and dining “environments”—look like a dog’s backend.

Sure, an in-air shower might negatively impact the earth in catastrophic and irreversible ways, but think about it this way: the only people who will make use of it come from oil wealth, so they probably wouldn’t give a shit to begin with! [Times UK via Luxurylaunches]


Via [Gizmodo]

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