I'm sure you were excited when you found that you could customize your car's wheels with LED pictures, but what about people people whose only mode of transportation is by dirigible? The Lightships Group has them covered with the A-170 Video Lightsign Airship. Measuring 30 feet by 70 feet, the color screen can broadcast "live TV, internet sites, stock tickers, slide shows" and marriage proposals from guys just too lazy to actually ask their fiances. This blimp ushers in a new age of advertising where "flying electronic billboards" crowd the sky and giant videos of Paris Hilton eating a cheeseburger eclipse the sun. I think we can all agree that the night sky will be much more beautiful when it's filled with videos of monkeys talking on cell phones.
Kaya Special Optics specializes in optics and lenses that enable regular cameras to see through various types of materials. Placing Kaya's Infrared filters on certain consumer cameras and camcorders instantly creates images that "visually penetrate an object's surface to see what lies below." According to their website, their filters can capture images through fog, haze, tinted car windows and sunglasses, inks, dyes, pigments, make up, and, of course, certain types of clothes. If these lenses gain popularity, there might just be a resurgence in the lead underwear market, finally paying off for those of us who bought into the "solar radiation makes your testicles explode" rumor of 1997.
The Medical Technology company Luminetx has begun shipping the VeinViewer, an instrument that uses infrared light to clearly project the location of veins onto the surface of skin. Although the VeinViewer can be used to find veins for drawing blood and inserting IV's, its main purpose is to assist with difficult procedures that require a great deal of precision, like inserting catheters and removing varicose and spider veins. It has also been suggested that VeinViewer could be used to find the fragile, elusive veins of children, the eldery, and unconscious fans. The VeinViewer is currently priced at $25,000, so it may take a while before you see one in your neighborhood doctor's office.
When you have enough money to fund robotic lobsters, you might as well create a simulated city for robots to destroy. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that its next Grand Challenge competition will take place in a simulated urban environment. Previous DARPA Grand Challenges required participants to create autonomous ground vehicles that would navigate difficult desert routes. This next competition, scheduled to take place on November 3, 2007, moves the challenge into a "mock urban area" where vehicles must obey strict traffic laws while "merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections and avoiding obstacles." How many simulated pedestrians must perish before greedy DARPA has its fill? Only time will tell.
Students at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have successfully constructed and flown a ultralight plane that is powered solely by AA batteries. On Saturday, the manned ultralight managed to fly a "couple hundred meters" using 160 Panasonic Oxyride AA batteries. The glider's length is just over 30 feet and it is constructed out of carbon fiber and styrofoam. In other news, several local community college students managed to create a AA battery-powered beer bong by cramming a handful of batteries down a traditional beer bong.
Levi Strauss & Co. has announced that they are now shipping jeans and pants that are individually tagged with radio frequency identification tags. The company is in a testing phase with the RFID tags, sending the shipment to only one unnamed retail location in the United States. This announcement has generated concern from privacy activists about the implications of item-level RFID tagging. A spokesperson for Levi Strauss claimed that the tags will only contain stock information for the product, such as style, size, and color. As long as pants don't start calling my grandmother whenever I'm at the discount strip club alley, I'll continue to wear them.