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Smart Design
Athletic Supporters: Gizmos for the Active Set Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Tuesday, 05 August 2008
With the notable exception of the Wii, exactly none of my favorite gadgets and gizmos require anything from me in the way of physical exertion. Which is fine by me, except that, since retiring from active espionage fieldwork, I just don't get the regular exercise I used to. Nothing gets the blood pumping like evading Stasi agents in the labyrinthine tunnel systems under East Berlin, I'll tell you.
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Biomimicry: Going Back to Nature Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 16 May 2008

In NYC this week, for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF ). All the best designers congregate here every year to show off their latest offerings -- chairs, tables, cabinets, this sort of thing. I kind of have a thing for contemporary design. You might think a furniture maker convention would be a boring crowd -- not so. These guys can party, and the Russian studios always have the best vodka. Also, the most fashionable couches on which to pass out.

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The TrekDesk: Where Working Meets Working Out Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
One significant drawback to the Information Age: The sad fact that for many of us, a full day's work means eight hours sitting in front of a computer screen. Used to be that a hard day's work involved, you know, tilling the fields, or at least some kind of industrial labor in a sooty, overheated  manufacturing plant.
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Advanced Gadgetry: Milan Design Week Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 25 April 2008
I've been splitting my time this week between San Francisco and Milan, which is exactly as complicated as it sounds. Luckily, I have my Nightcrawler 3000 Teleportation System, which at least makes things speedy. Still beta testing, though, and there are some bugs. On my third return trip, I somehow wound up at the bottom of a commercial trout pond in East Lansing, Michigan. Very difficult to explain yourself in a situation like that.

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City of the Future: Design Under Pressure Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Monday, 03 March 2008

The History Channel recently sponsored a design competition for architects and engineers in Atlanta, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Competing teams were asked to envision a model for their city as it might exist 100 years from now. The catch? Designers had one week to plan, three hours to construct their models, and 15 minutes to make their case to a panel of judges. So, you know… no pressure.

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This is Progress? Waking Up To Math Problems Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Now, this is just plain evil. News of a crazy DIY alarm clock has been orbiting the blogosphere, and I thought for sure it was a hoax. Not so. The Turing Alarm Clock -- a prototype invention from math geek and enterprising young person Nick Johnson -- functions like a regular alarm clock, with one small but critical design adjustment. Once the alarm starts squealing, you can't turn it off unless you answer a series of fairly difficult arithmetic questions.
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Hear, Hear: Earbuds, Canalphones and Headsets Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Thursday, 24 January 2008
My nephew Calvin, being 15 years old, is naturally several light years ahead of me when it comes to understanding the particulars of digital music. He's a good lad, though. Very enterprising. He once created an entire bit torrent network expressly for the purpose of sharing and distributing old Devo records. It's so nice to see a respect for the past from the young people today.

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WiTricity: Is Uncle Telsa Resonating in His Grave? Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 30 November 2007
Those of you familiar with the work of Nikola Tesla will find this one interesting. It concerns wireless power transmission, and the recently demonstrated viability thereof. Very exciting. It seems that over the summer a couple of the rowdier MIT guys actually put together a working system that lit a 60-watt bulb from seven feet away. This news has been slightly under-the-radar for a while, so let's take a look.

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Solar Decathlon: Sunshine of Your Life Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Live-blogging today from beautiful downtown Washington D.C., where the 2007 Solar Decathlon is underway on the grounds of the National Mall. I always enjoy my trips back to the nation's capitol. There's a certain feeling in the air, an aroma almost -- a charged, electric, sometimes overpowering scent … of power! Either that or they're fertilizing the South Lawn again, I can never tell….
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Optimus Maximus: Keyboardus Absentus Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Tuesday, 09 October 2007
Winning the award for the most excruciatingly postponed product rollout ever, the Optimus Maximus display keyboard , which first made the blogosphere rounds in 1455, the same year Pope Nicholas V penned the widely panned encyclical Romanus Pontifex to King Afonso V of Portugal. I'm sure you recall...

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NanoClothes: Fashion-Forward and Functional Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Thursday, 04 October 2007

We've touched on some ideas regarding the future of clothing already in this space, but a recent report in Popular Science got me thinking about it all again. There's growing interest in the concept of nanotextiles, clothing and materials that incorporate a dusting of nanoparticles for various purposes.

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Smart Design Roundup: Laptops and Yoga Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Wednesday, 19 September 2007

I've become something of a sucker for industrial design ever since I split a Brooklyn coldwater flat with Raymond Loewy back in -- well, it was a while ago. Ray was a good guy. Clearly brilliant, but very … meticulous is the polite term, I think. He could not abide an apartment that was anything less than completely spic-and-span at all times. We had an Oscar and Felix thing going. Rumor has it he designed the Leisurama style of prefab housing just to get me out of the apartment. Anyway…

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The Skeletool: Size Matters Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 07 September 2007

Even those who are not at all handy -- or into gadgets and general tech-fetishism -- dig the Leatherman tools. They're just so cool -- an entire toolbox in your pocket, with enough options to fuel dozens of MacGyver daydreams. I once escaped from a maximum security prison in Kiev using only a Leatherman, a fax machine, and a contact lens. Long story. Still on file at Interpol, actually, so I can't go into details.

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Sugar High: Sony's New BioBattery Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 07 September 2007

Something about the concept of alternative batteries appeals to eco-friendly tech-nerd inside of me. We recently discussed the paper battery initiative , and now I come across this new prototype initiative by Sony concerning batteries that run on sugar .

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Robotic Restaurant: No More Waiters? Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 31 August 2007

In Nürnberg hat eine Art Geisterrestaurant eröffnet: Bestellung und Lieferung laufen darin vollautomatisch ab. Oops, wait a sec. Wrong language. Sometimes I slip into German when perusing source material. Or Korean. Or Maori or Gaelic or Latin. Sucks to be icosalingual sometimes.

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From Grain to Glass: DIY Brewery Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Wednesday, 29 August 2007

I so admire initiative in the young people today. And so I'm pleased to report on the ongoing development of a next-generation home-brewing machine designed to streamline the process of making your own beer.

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Spin Cycle: Reinventing the Washing Machine Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Thursday, 23 August 2007

Laundry has forever been an occupational hazard for me. Back when I did contract work for the Hanso Foundation , I used to come home covered in voracious little nanobots that liked to eat the stitching out of my lab coats. They also preferred corduroy, for some reason. I had to design a sub-molecular dry-cleaning machine to eradicate the little idiots. My patent application was denied, however, when the machine somehow caused a temporal rift near Alpha Centauri .

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The Greening of the Laptop Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Here's an interesting infonugget: By 2009, laptop computers sales are expected to surpass desktop system sales, worldwide, for the first time. Bearing in mind that the typical laptop user buys a new system every three years, the question becomes: What happens to all those used laptops?


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Paper Batteries: An Idea Whose Time is Coming Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
PNASUSA is an acronym I've long enjoyed, as I suspect you have. It stands for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. A venerable scientific publication, PNASUSA (PNAS for short) publishes research reports, colloquium papers, reviews, etc. It's good for breakfast reading, I've found. Along with Marmaduke, of course. I'll tell you what -- that dog is huge, and the joke somehow never gets old!
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Toothbrushes and an Anti-Dentite Screed Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Tuesday, 07 August 2007

Every time I think I'm making a fashion-forward joke about modern technology, reality beats me to the punchline. As loyal readers are aware, I tend to make many memorable, high-quality quips about dentists, dentistry, and dental technology. Like the amazing iToothpick, or the greatly anticipated Cybermolar Initiative.

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The iCat: Artificial Friskiness? Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 27 July 2007

The stalwart and doughty researchers over at Philips have been working on an interesting project for a few years now. It's called the iCat, and though it looks similar to the menagerie of virtual pets that have come and gone, it's actually a refreshingly practical research endeavor.

 

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Walkabout: The Technology of Strolling Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Thursday, 26 July 2007
I have learned, over these many years, to cultivate a keen distrust automobiles and the urban motorway system. Having done some contract work in Detroit during the 1980s, I can assure you that the auto industry has the same ultimate priority as any industry. Safety and environmental issues take a back seat to profitability, always. No side-impact airbags in that backseat, either. I once spent a charming afternoon with Lee Iacocca, after which I possessed an enormous new respect for the ruthlessness and cunning of our species' reptilian brain stem.

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Transformers: A Practical Application Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Wednesday, 18 July 2007

It's hard to fathom now, but many years ago, I was but a youthful undergraduate with a triple major in Physics, Mathematics and Toxicology. (Actually, the Toxicology curriculum was more like independent study, conducted in the various taverns and inns of our quaint college town.) I remember at one point becoming aware that the university offered a degree in Packaging. This was amazing to me -- you could actually major in gift-wrapping?

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Let There Be (Tolerable) Light Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Friday, 22 June 2007

I can't prove this, but I have a working hypothesis that fluorescent lights , of the variety typically deployed in offices, are more than simply depressing -- they can actually suck the life-force right out of you. I did some work for Quantico back in the 1970s, and for security reasons was assigned to an office approximately 17 doors away from the closest natural sunlight. The overhead fluorescent lights gave everyone a delightful corpse-like glow, and began my lifelong hatred of argon plasma.

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Cultural Decadence Corner! Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Wednesday, 06 June 2007

The history of consumer electronics is littered with failed gadgets, crazy inventors, and breathtakingly bad ideas. Then there's the iShave. I'm not saying these two sentences have anything to do with one another; they just happen to be adjacent.

 

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The iPhone Cometh: Gadget Rapture Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.   
Monday, 04 June 2007

According to some TV ads aired over the weekend, and Apple's website, the much-heralded iPhone will officially hit store shelves June 29. Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at last January's MacWorld Expo, where it was unveiled with a reverence and awe typically reserved for Biblical artifacts.

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