For a rainy day

The Japanese love for seemingly wack inventions never ceases to amuse me. Make way for the internet-embedded umbrella designed presumably to keep you entertained while you wait for the night bus in the drizzling cold. Just make sure you don’t get mugged for it in that case — you’ll have a hard time convincing police that a bunch of guys beat you down for your umbrella..

Tokyo, Japan (AHN) – Japanese researchers have developed a unique hi-tech umbrella named “Pileus” which is Internet ready, has an integrated digital camera, built-in Wi-Fi plus an attached video projector.

Developed at the Okude laboratory in Tokyo’s Keio University, the digitized umbrella can capture both still images and video and can automatically upload them to Flickr and YouTube respectively.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the mechanism can also project previously uploaded images above the user’s head on the inside of the umbrella.

For this hi-fi umbrella to work efficiently the user must be within range of a wireless Internet hotspot, so that it can capture the signal before he/she can access the photo- and video-sharing websites.

The umbrella’s grip can be twisted to scroll through the Flickr photo sets and YouTube videos.

Webcam bot

It’s no secret that the Japanese are absolutely obsessed with robots. Well here’s the latest (I think). A webcam robot that’s controlled through WiFi and email. Out this December!

Mosquito attack!

A British engineer has successfully reproduced and commercialized the sound of a mosquito flying near our ear — designed for the purpose of warding off teenage gangs — and was awarded the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize in Peace. Read about it here. The whole list of laureates and their research can be found here.

For those of you affiliated with the chemical industry, may I draw your attention to the 2006 award in Chemistry: “Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature.” And that for 2005: “Can people swim faster in syrup than in water?”

Somebody set up us the laptop

A Dell laptop blows up at a Japanese conference. Excerpt:

At a conference in Japan, a Dell laptop suddenly exploded into flames, and lucky for its owner the fiery blast occurred while the PC was sitting on a table and not in his lap. An onlooker reported that the notebook continued to burn, producing several more explosions over the course of about five minutes.

The model of the offending Dell notebook wasn’t mentioned, but since it was of the Windows persuasion, we can now boast that we are unbiased in our reports of fiery laptops, both Mac and PC. It’s only a matter of time before something like this happens on an airplane.

What you say!