Polara Self Correcting Golf Balls Reduce Slice And Hooks
By Andrew Liszewski
Lets get this out of the way first and foremost. Polara’s self correcting golf balls, which promise to correct slices and hooks by up to 75%, are not approved for professional competition play. So if you think you’ve found a way to sneak into the PGA or LPGA, it isn’t going to happen. However, if you’re completely unable to play through a round of golf at your local course without constantly landing your ball off the fairway, and have very understanding friends, you might want to give them a shot.
I don’t completely understand the science of what keeps them on the straight and narrow, but it’s a combination of a deep, shallow and tiny dimple pattern on the outside of the ball. And what looks to be a specialized layer core which optimizes spin and increases distance. A set of 12 Polara balls will cost you $39.95, which I assume is more expensive than a regular set of balls. But since Polara’s balls will also reduce the number of snickers and laughter from your fellow players, I’m pretty sure it’s more than worth it for a lot of golfers.
[ Polara Self Correcting Golf Balls ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]
Steelcase Node Reinvents Classroom Seating
By Andrew Liszewski
It might be designed for the needs of modern classrooms, but I’m pretty sure I could use one of these Steelcase Node desk chairs around my home/office. Besides better addressing the needs of today’s laptop-toting students with ample bag storage under the seat and an adjustable work desk sized for most notebooks, the Node also swivels and is on wheels making it very easy to re-arrange an entire classroom should a different configuration suit the day’s lesson plan. Whether it’s a lecture or working in smaller groups. The chairs are also available in a variety of color combinations since branding seems to be an important part of higher-learning these days.
[ Steelcase Node ] VIA [ designboom ]
Posted: August 25th, 2010
at 5:38am by Andrew Liszewski
Topics: Design, Furniture, General, Innovation
PrePeat Printer Needs No Ink, Will Soon Be Murdered By HP
By Evan Ackerman
Paper is a huge waste of paper, and ink is a huge waste of money. The PrePeat printer could be a huger waste of money, but at least it doesn’t use paper or ink. Instead, you feed it special heat sensitive plastic sheets and it uses a precision thermal head to print out gray scale text and images. Feed the sheets through the printer again, and a different temperature will erase everything or just write over it. Don’t wash, don’t rinse, but feel free to repeat up to a thousand times with a single sheet of paper.
The PrePeat printer itself costs $5500, and each sheet of the special plastic paper is $3.30, which is certainly a tad steep. Want to know what else is a tad steep, though?
That’s piracy, man. Piracy on the high seas of ink. It may not actually make any fiscal sense whatsoever for you to replace your personal printer with a PrePeat (think more like a medium to large office that’s still stuck in the seventies) but it would strike a blow against the tyranny of the empire of black gold. Huzzah!
VIA [ PopSci ]
Gestural Computing Is The New Multitouch
By Evan Ackerman
Remember back when the display in Minority Report was the future technology that everyone was talking about? Well, now it’s the past, ’cause MIT’s Media Lab has come up with a display that can potentially do all that fancy gestural stuff, except without the gloves.
Called BiDi (for Bi-Directional), the display works on a very basic level a little bit like a Microsoft Surface table: there’s a screen, and behind that, there are cameras (of a sort) to watch what’s going on at the screen. And also like Surface, because cameras are in use as opposed to just a touch panel, the display is sensitive to actions that don’t directly contact it. Where the MIT display really takes the cake, though, is that it uses a field of optical sensors embedded in the display combined with some fancy image processing to make a detailed three dimensional map of exactly how far things are from the display, which not only allows you to make recognizable gestures much farther from the surface, but also allows you to gesture in and out. The LCD alternates back and forth very quickly between displaying and image and capturing data (sort of like Microsoft’s SecondLight Surface mod), and it does it so quickly that all you see is the image itself.
MIT says that they’re trying to steer away from novelty applications a bit, which is sad, but they hope to “inspire” LCD manufacturers to start working on this stuff. So, you know who you are: GET INSPIRED. I want one of these.
Map-Hole Concept Has Merit
By Andrew Liszewski
Designed by Jiae Kwon, Map-Holes are replacement man-hole covers that serve as a sort of static compass for tourists and pedestrians, showing them what direction to head to find a particular landmark in the city they’re visiting, and letting them know how long it takes to walk there. The idea definitely has merit, but I don’t think replacing man-hole covers is the ideal solution. Not only because they usually exist in the middle of a street, but they’d also have to be perfectly oriented in order for them to be effective. If one gets even slightly misaligned, there’s going to be a lot of misguided tourists.
[ Yanko Design - Map Hole Points The Way ] VIA [ The UberReview ]
