Technology – Page 18

Flashing Electronic Ink Displays On “Clothes”

June 7, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

It won’t be long enough when we begin seeing T-shirt apparel or even tyvex cloths enclosing our postal envelopes, being fully embedded with animated messages and icons. This upcoming technology is pushing the capabilities of the existing electronic inks to a bright new level.

We’ve witnessed the invasion of Electronic readers packed in super thin plastic case and even proper e-papers that can easily store and display written content at our convenience, consider Amazon’s Kindle which is powered by E-Ink’s ‘virtual ink’ technology.

Now, this concept of virtual ink has been taken a step ahead to place them onto cloths, and we know that cloths can easily be crumpled and folded owing to it’s physical nature. So let’s say, sometime in the future, we may actually see status updates from Twitter and Facebook on our apparel, or worse, advertisements! As pointed out by FastCompany.

Watch the video demonstrations of how the display works when embedded onto cloths, and yes, it works perfectly even with the crumpling and folding efforts!

These screens are powered by SURF which defines a Segmented, Ultra-thin, Rugged and Flexible display. An interesting aspect of this futuristic display is that the screens are easily viewable in open light as opposed to many flat display ones, allowing the content to be easily readable even in bright sunlight. This is possible because of a reason that E-Ink products display reflected light just as a regular paper does.

E-Ink is ready with this technology and could commercialize their electronic ink displays on such cloths anytime soon. They just need an interested party who may fund the production overheads.

Sync And Control Android Phones From Your Computer [Android]

March 2, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

— AndroidPC project has been withdrawn by its author. Hence, this article is no longer valid —

AndroidPC v.2.0 is one of the best mobile managing suits available for Android phones, enabling the users to quickly connect their Android phones with the computer, regardless of the operating system, whether it be linux, mac or windows. The user can easily send and receive SMS, calls, get desktop notifications for incoming calls and messages, sync contacts and messages with the computer.

I’ve been hunting for a mobile managing suite since the day I bought an Android powered HTC Wildfire. Mobile managing suits really help to make things more convenient to control your cell phones without having the need to physically touch them. I recently discovered this tiny app called ‘AndroidPC’ that performs much more than it’s size. It allows the users to connect and take control of Android phones with a computer bearing a Mac, Linux or Windows operating system. It is compatible literally with any operating system.

In order to use AndroidPC, you need to install AndroidPC app on the phone and a provided Java App on your computer.

Make sure you have a Java Runtime Environment install on your computer, or else get it from Java’s website:
With that, get AndroidPC for your phone from the Android market or with the QR code:

At last, you need a working Wi Fi connection (I know that sucks, but for now this the only connectivity path the app supports) and follow the steps from this link: Installation – How To

To summarize, here are some key facts about AndroidPC,

The Goodness –

Runs on all operating system platforms
Low on system resources
Small size
Receive and make a phone call from PC
Send and receive files on Android phones
Manage contact information and messages
Reply to messages from PC without the need of touching the phone
View your phone’s information
Missed call list

What sucks –

With the version 2.0, you can only use the suite with a working Wi Fi connection, the author is working on adding the USB support in the upcoming versions.
No support for Bluetooth

Self Healing Materials (Polymer) – They Heal, They Grow

February 20, 2011 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY – The concept of self healing materials is not a fresh idea to science and technology. The ‘Self healing capability’ is one great upcoming technology where objects are made capable enough to fully restructure themselves to their original shape and structure with self efforts, when damaged or even broken apart.

It’s amazing to visualize and even witness (in some cases) to what it means and how it can change the way we deal with damaged objects. Some time ago, a video was released on youtube which displays the marvel.us capability of a self-healing vehicle tyre. On a regular set of rubber tyres, a single encounter with a sharp-pointed object can bring your vehicle to a stand still. Very recently, new form of self healing tyres have been successfully built to heal back from almost any puncturing attempt. The following speaks for itself.

The demonstration of an innovative self healing tyre as shared by Creax.com. A sample tyre is tested with multiple puncturing attempts and how it aptly repairs itself within a fraction of seconds to it’s original position.

On a different note, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and his co-workers at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA) and Kyushu University (Japan) have developed a new polymeric material that can heal and repair itself on multiple attempts when exposed to UV light, as reported by MaterialsViews.

The new polymeric material produced by the American and Japanese team is stable and repairs itself again and again. The secret to their success is that the polymer is cross-linked through trithiocarbonate units. These are carbon atoms bonded to three sulfur atoms, two of which use their second bonding position to attach to another carbon atom. These groups have a special property: they can restructure under UV light. The light breaks one carbon–sulfur bond in the trithiocarbonate groups. This produces two radicals—molecules with a free, unpaired electron. The radicals are very reactive and attack other trithiocarbonate groups to form new carbon–sulfur bonds while breaking others to form more free radicals. The chain reaction stops when two radicals react with each other.

In simpler words, this newly developed polymer can be easily repaired from damages like cuts and shreds by firmly pressing the affected areas together followed by the irradiation process. I say, this is great beginning for an awesome and technologically enriched future. Imagine the level of convenience, cost and price reductions the self healing products may offer the consumers as well as the manufacturers!