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Austrians are roaming the world, and they're looking really cool doing so in the Mehrzeller Inhalt. This new little trailer was designed to offer the world's travelers a design savvy alternative to the Jayco or Airstream you normally take across the country. What makes this little gem even more special is that (like everything else these days) you can customize the layout entirely to suit your own needs. Just be prepared for the commotion you'll cause at the KOA.
Housed at Arizona State University, the International Institute for Species Exploration (yes you read it right - cool, eh?) just released their annual list of top 10 new species. Among the proud recipients for 2008 are a 14" long insect (the world's longest), a species of coffee that is naturally decaffeinated, and a snail with a shell that pivots around four separate axes (pictured).
The list is compiled every year to highlight how incomplete our knowledge of our earth, really is. Since modern taxonomy and classification began in the 18th Century, an estimated total of 1.8 million species has been catalogued, which many scientists believe is a fraction of the number of living species on our planet; some estimate there may be as many as 100 million species alive today, of which of course, humbly we are but one.
And so this got us thinking. It would appear that when you think you've exhausted all avenues, and thought through every possible idea, there are still undiscovered ones that exist - you just don't know about them yet - and sometimes they're as elusive as a half-inch long seahorse.
Texting is so wonderful.
Read that one way, and I'm a sarcastic jerk. Read it another, and I'm an earnest techophile.
Mere typed words can't convey subtext, but Nokia is looking to change that. The Finnish communicator recently filed a patent for a system that will tell your friends how you were feeling as you were leaving a text, or voice message - and it'll be done through colour. As your friend is reading your words, an LED in their phone will glow accordingly to how you feel, (or at the very least what you told the computer you were feeling at the time).
This brings about a new level of digital communication of course, involving sarcasm, passive aggressiveness, even lust. The next stage is when the computer itself will read your mood and convey your emotion without your having to tell it how you feel.
It makes me a little nervous when we start conveying all of our emotions through our gadgets. (If only you could read what I was really thinking when I typed that sentence just now...)
As people become more and more virtually connected, (and duly, more and more isolated from actual contact with each other), the need for anti-social social experiences grows. Taking the sociophobic experience to a new level is London restaurant Inamo. A projection system above each table is worked by a little touchpad in front of each diner, and control of the entire dining experience lies in the virtual hands of each table. Patrons select the 'tabletop' design of their liking (60 to choose from) and it gets projected onto the surface in front of them. The same projection system displays the Pan-Asian menu in front of you, and as you scroll through the choices, an image of the dish you're considering is projected onto your place setting so you can see with your very own cynical eyes what your Berkshire Pork Neck, or Pomegranate Duck might actually look like.
While you and your date await the food runner to bring your choices, keep yourself busy by playing a projected game, scan the neighbourhood for an after dinner tipple, or order a taxi to pick you up if you feel you've been out in the world long enough - and do so all without the need to say a single word to a waiter.
Click here to learn more about this anti-social evening out.
Living next door to a big personality can be challenging. Ask Canadians, and the Swiss, and Northern Ireland. Recently, South Korea - maybe the world's most overshadowed country - launched its bid to rebrand itself, in the hopes of becoming an international centre of culture and environmental technology.
President Lee Myung-Bak has already pledged hundreds of millions of dollars as part of the grand scheme. He's vowed to: make tae kwon do an international sport, turn Korean cuisine into a global top-five favourite, and reposition South Korea as THE planet's environmental leader - and all by 2017.
From a recent wedding expo show in China comes this image of a wedding dress covered almost entirely in peacock feathers. The feathers themselves, 2009 in all on this shimmering frock, have long been considered in many cultures to invite trouble and misfortune to those who wear them. Then again, peacocks have survived this long.
The dress took eight sewers forty days to make, and can be yours for $1.5 million USD. What recession?