Latte Art Like No Other

You’ve probably seen normal flat 2D latte art, but check out 3D versions from Japanese coffee artist Kazuki Yamamoto. The 3D redententions are made mostly of milk foam found in cappuccinos and lattes and include miniature sculptures of animals and cartoon characters.

Looks too good to drink, doesn’t it?

Using Hair for Biometric Testing and Soda

A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition shows a link between hair content and sugar intake.

If I asked you how much soda you consumed in the past week? Not sure, could you remember?  Or would you even admit it?

This new research looks at carbon isotope analysis to track how much sugar has been consumed over a longer period than a traditional  urine test would show.

When people drink soda, a type of carbon called C-13 gets trapped in alanine, an amino acid. So the more C-13 present, the more likely it is you’ve been drinking lots of corn syrup and cane sugar.

Given the link between sugar and obesity and increased health risk, anyone see the potential for a future where hair strands are analyzed to see how much you’ll pay for health care insurance?

Get a Tweet from Your Baby’s Wet Diaper

Check out this prototype developed by by Ogilvy Brazil and Huggies: the TweetPee!

The TweetPee is a little sensor that attaches to your baby’s diaper and sends a tweets whenever it detects pee (in the form of a higher humidity level)!

You can see an ad for the device here.  Apparently, the clip-on humidity sensor is only a concept device and will not be available to purchase.  If it were, would you purchase it?

Congratulations Yahoo+Tumblr?

Congratulations to Yahoo and their $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr.

It’s easy to see how Tumblr is an attractive target with:

- More than 300 million monthly unique visitors,

- 120,000 signups every day,

- More than 900 posts per second (!!!), and

- 24 billion minutes spent on the site every month.

But, let’s look at a couple other stats:

- Tumblr lost money last year on $13 million in revenue (it’s 7 years old this year).

- In 2006, Google spent $1.6 billion for YouTube (which is 8 years old today!) and is on track to generate $4 billion in revenue this year.

- WordPress claimed 72,000 blog posts imported from Tumblr in just one hour yesterday (compared to an average of 500 on a typical day) — but consider that Tumblr gets over 75 million blog posts in a day, that’s just a drop in the bucket).

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Tumblr now that it’s under the Yahoo umbrella.  Do you think it will be good or bad for the site?

Boston-Inspired Art

Check out these two Boston art pieces I did last night.  

Any other Boston-related images you’d suggest for future inspiration?

Turn Yourself Into a Stormtrooper!

Disney’s enabling fans to put their faces on a 3D-printed Stormtrooper figurine.

The D-Tech Me experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios uses a high resolution single-shot 3D face scanner and a 3D printer to create a figurine.

The completed figurine will arrive in seven to eight weeks for domestic shipping.  The Star Wars D-Tech Me experience costs $99.95.

Something worth considering for your Star Wars fanatic?

Real-time Customer Feedback at Bubba Gump

Recently, I went to Bubba Gump for the first time and they have an excellent real-time customer feedback system.

The tables throughout the restaurant all featured a license plate on a little stand. On one side of the license plate, in blue it reads, “Run Forrest, Run.” On the other side, in red it says, “Stop Forrest, Stop.” This is how you let your server know you need something:

- Run Forrest, Run means you could use a refill on your drink

- Stop Forrest, Stop means you’re doing good and don’t need anything.

And you know what?  It works — brilliantly.  We flipped over the Stop Forrest Stop sign a couple of times and always got immediate service, even from other workers who just happened to be walking by.

Why don’t more restaurants do something like this?

Mapping Hate in America

This project called the Geography of Hate analyzed 150,000 geo-located tweets from June last year to this April — researchers looked at which areas were using Twitter to express homophobic and racist slurs.

You can search for “dyke,” “fag,” “homo,” and “queer” in the homophobic category, “chink,” “gook,” “nigger,” “wetback,” and “spick” in the racist column, and “cripple” under disability. The maps show relative use: where people tweeted the offending terms most often. The worst are in red, the moderately bad are in blue, with the least bad are unshaded.

The maps were put together by Monica Stephens, an assistant professor at Humboldt State.

The data is normalized based on how much content there is on Twitter, and shows areas where the proportion of content is above average.  And, to protect privacy, actual tweet locations are aggregated to the county level.

While racist and homophobic sentiment exists around the country and not just in red states, there is a significantly higher portion in the eastern half of the map.

Any of these findings surprising to you?

Fast Food Not Much Healthier than 15 Years Ago

According to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, fast food restaurants have not made much progress towards creating healthier menus, a

Even though there are more options for salads, fruits and vegetables, many fast food chains have also increased the number of unhealthy options available – reminds me of carbon offsets for fat!

Researchers analyzed the menus offered at the following restaurants between 1997 and 2010:

• McDonald’s
• Burger King
• Wendy’s
• Taco Bell
• Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)
• Arby’s
• Jack in the Box
• Dairy Queen

Results were measured using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Eating Index, a 100-point scale that assesses nutritional quality.

Overall, researchers said that fast food restaurants had only been able to improve their scores by three points in the past 14 years!

While some restaurants – like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Jack in the Box – improved their scores by lowering the amount of sugar and saturated fats on their menus, other restaurants, like Burger King, increased levels of sodium, saturated fats and sugars in their foods.

It’s amazing to think that the original 1950s hamburger, French fries and soft drink you got as an adult back then, is now considered a children’s meal!

How does this jive with your perceptions?  Have you felt that fast food options have been getting healthier?

Office Desk/Gym Set Combo

Check out this new furniture set created by designer Darryl Agawin — it combines the office desk and gym  looks to re-define the office gym set up.

The No, Sweat! is a three-piece furniture set that converts into pieces that a person can use to exercise. The set converts into a balance board, exercise step, skip rope, weight bar, and kettle bell.

Would you exercise more if your office desk was set up like this?

T.Jacket: Innovative or Creepy?

Meet the T.Jacket — a tablet-controlled jacket that simulates hugs and aims to calm children without human contact.

The jacket is designed based on the idea of ‘deep pressure theory’, which proposes that pressure has a soothing effect on children with autism or attention deficit disorders.  These individuals do not process sensory information in the same way as those without the condition. P

The waist and shoulders of the jacket contain pockets of air and inflate to produce the effect of a hug.

Initially, I wondered how emotionally defective a hug would be without a real physical human partner, but apparently for autistic children, human interaction can be distressing, so the jacket provides the sensations involved with a hug without the potentially distressing human interaction.

This video explains more about how the T.Jacket work.  The jackets are available to pre-order for $399 and are currently compatible with the iPad, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy SIII and Samsung Note II.

Would you consider using this with your autistic child?

3D Printed Guns and The Future of Gun Control

Meet the Liberator, a 3D printed gun that is almost entirely plastic: Fifteen of its 16 pieces have been created inside an $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer The only non-printed piece is a common hardware store nail used as its firing pin.

The gun is the brainchild of Cody Wilson, a 25 year-old  law student at the University of Texas.  He founded the  Austin-based non-profit group called Defense Distributed and how holds the digital blueprints for that so-called Wiki Weapon.

In a future world where anyone could download blueprints and print their own weapon, what power does gun control laws have?

Anywhere there’s a computer and an Internet connection, there could be a gun.

The files were posted online and downloaded over 100,000 times before the U.S. State Department demanded their removal.

How do you feel about a future where plastic guns can be printed that can’t even be detected by metal detectors?

Put on This Mask and Control Your Dreams!

This mask from Remee aims to help you enter a lucid dream state.

Lucid dreaming is a state in which you become conscious within your dreams – being able to take control of your surroundings and achieve what would normally be impossible in the real world.  Think Neo in Matrix or flying like Superman!

The mask will detect when you’re in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) portion of sleep (when dreams normally occur) and start flashing the built-in lights. These will then diffuse into your dreams and allow you to identify that you’re dreaming and take control of of things.

The company is funded through Kickstarter and raised more than 1600% of its target amount.

Masks will retail for $95 dollars.

Will you try one of these out?  Might your lucid dreams be more enjoyable than reality?

3D Printers now at Staples!

It’s official — 3D prints are now mainstream, with Staples offering the 3D Systems Cube 3D Printer.

The printer retails for $1,299 and allows you to print objects up to 5.5” x 5.5” x 5.5” and use either ABS or PLA plastic.

Have you thought about getting one of these?

Airline Charges By Passenger Pound

Samoa Air is first airline in the world to charge passengers based on their own weight.

Travelers booking a space on one of the company’s planes will need to estimate the weight of their luggage, as well as their own personal weight – give or take a few kilograms.

Larger fliers will be charged more than their lighter counterparts, and families flying with children will be able to fly for cheaper than usual.

Seems like a fair system since more weight means increased fuel usage and costs, but I wonder if there are any worries about discrimination against heavier passengers?