Smart Oven

If you're going to buy a high-end oven range, it may as well be one of the smartest ovens out there. At CES Unveiled today, Dacor is announcing what it says is the first professional smart oven range — a two-oven, six-burner appliance with a built-in Android tablet that controls all of its operations. With a selling price of $11,999, Dacor's president admits that the range is meant for the "luxury kitchen." While its wealth of high-end cooking abilities are certainly a highlight, the oven's most interesting feature is the Android tablet that controls it. Though it works just like a normal tablet — it runs Ice Cream Sandwich and any Play Store apps you might want to install — an app called Discovery IQ comes preinstalled and is used to control the entire oven. You can set the temperature by dragging a slider side to side, or even download cook settings to allow the oven to automatically prepare your food properly. Dacor is also introducing a companion app today that'll work with this new oven range and its existing wall oven, which also includes the Discovery IQ app. Through the mobile app, users can control many of the major functions of their stove, such as setting it to preheat or detecting the temperature of cooking meat. For safety reasons, the oven will automatically kick off all mobile controllers whenever someone at home is actually using the stove. You also won't be able to control the burners through the app — likely also for safety reasons — though Dacor says it's working on it. The oven range on display today is a prototype of Dacor's 48-inch model, but a 36-inch model is in production as well. Both models of the smart oven should debut this summer, giving enthusiast home chefs some time to start saving up.

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High-Tech Bra

We remember when bras did what they were supposed to and very little else. Apparently the technology age has changed that and now even our lingerie is wired, for better or worse. These two conceptual brassieres use technology to perform some high-tech (and very sexist) deeds. The True Love Tester bra from Japanese lingerie company Ravijour is supposed to be “a revolutionary bra that knows how women truly feel.” The bra is equipped with sensors that are supposed to recognize the wearer’s differing heart rates during a variety of activities. The front clasp only opens when the wearer experiences “true love” as determined by an associated smartphone app. The apparent purpose of the Love Tester Bra is to keep vulnerable women from having casual flings, ignoring the fact that women are smart enough to make their own decisions. The ridiculous concept doesn’t explain what happens when a wearer runs into her true love on the street and her bra flies open – we aren’t even sure how you might get into and out of the bra every day. microsoft emotional eating bra Perhaps more useful and associated with a more reputable company, this bra is meant to stop women from indulging in emotional eating. Researchers from Microsoft, the University of Southampton (UK), and the University of Rochester (NY) came together to develop a tool that would recognize and help prevent emotional eating. The bra is full of sensors that measure the wearer’s vital signs, which are then sent through an app that is supposed to determine the wearer’s emotional state. Along with the bra’s sensors, users can rely on the smartphone app to help them stop emotional eating. The app would allow users to log their food intake and emotional states day by day, making a connection between emotions and eating. It may seem as sexist as the Love Tester Bra, but the researchers say that they chose a bra only because it rests close to the heart all day, and men don’t typically wear a similar garment. The bra and app were found to be 75 percent accurate in determining the wearer’s emotional state, but it probably won’t be put into production anytime soon.

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Flexible Battery

A Rice Univ. laboratory has flexible, portable and wearable electronics in its sights with the creation of a thin film for energy storage. Rice chemist James Tour and his colleagues have developed a flexible material with nanoporous nickel-fluoride electrodes layered around a solid electrolyte to deliver battery-like supercapacitor performance that combines the best qualities of a high-energy battery and a high-powered supercapacitor without the lithium found in commercial batteries today. The new work by the Rice laboratory of chemist James Tour is detailed in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Their electrochemical capacitor is about a hundredth of an inch thick but can be scaled up for devices either by increasing the size or adding layers, said Rice postdoctoral researcher Yang Yang, co-lead author of the paper with graduate student Gedeng Ruan. They expect that standard manufacturing techniques may allow the battery to be even thinner. In tests, the students found their square-inch device held 76% of its capacity over 10,000 charge-discharge cycles and 1,000 bending cycles. Tour said the team set out to find a material that has the flexible qualities of graphene, carbon nanotubes and conducting polymers while possessing much higher electrical storage capacity typically found in inorganic metal compounds. Inorganic compounds have, until recently, lacked flexibility, he said. “This is not easy to do, because materials with such high capacity are usually brittle,” he said. “And we’ve had really good, flexible carbon storage systems in the past, but carbon as a material has never hit the theoretical value that can be found in inorganic systems, and nickel fluoride in particular.” “Compared with a lithium-ion device, the structure is quite simple and safe,” Yang said. “It behaves like a battery but the structure is that of a supercapacitor. If we use it as a supercapacitor, we can charge quickly at a high current rate and discharge it in a very short time. But for other applications, we find we can set it up to charge more slowly and to discharge slowly like a battery.” To create the battery/supercapacitor, the team deposited a nickel layer on a backing. They etched it to create 5-nm pores within the 900-nm-thick nickel fluoride layer, giving it high surface area for storage. Once they removed the backing, they sandwiched the electrodes around an electrolyte of potassium hydroxide in polyvinyl alcohol. Testing found no degradation of the pore structure even after 10,000 charge/recharge cycles. The researchers also found no significant degradation to the electrode-electrolyte interface. “The numbers are exceedingly high in the power that it can deliver, and it’s a very simple method to make high-powered systems,” Tour said, adding that the technique shows promise for the manufacture of other 3-D nanoporous materials. “We’re already talking with companies interested in commercializing this.”

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Apple iWatch

We have all seen smartwatches from Sony, Pebble and Samsung, these watches excite a lot of people out there but what excites them the most is the Apple iWatch. There have been numerous rumors about this Smartwatch, some of which suggest that Apple will use flexible display on the watch and that it will have a very sleek design with better battery life. There have also been a constant flow of images with concept design of the iWatch although none of them is officially from Apple but we all just love to watch and read about it because it has got the Apple name associated with it. Samsung is reportedly working on the Galaxy Gear 2, the successor model of the Galaxy Gear. The next version is said to be compatible with major Android devices and will have some upgrades in terms of hardware and software. Meanwhile other small time manufacturers are coming with smartwatches that offer them with some good features in a comparatively lesser price. Some of the popular smartwatches are Pebble Smartwatch, Sony Smartwatch, Toq from Qualcomm and the most popular of all is the unannounced Apple iWatch. Today the rumor mill has churned out a rumor suggesting that Apple will launch the iWatch in October 2014. The iWatch from Apple is said to have a 100mAH battery and will have wireless charging feature associated with it. 100mAH might seem like a smaller battery but Apple will certainly make the software in a way that the battery lasts longer than its competitors. Apple lovers are certainly waiting for this latest gadget to come in the market and have their hands on it. Pebble has launched a Smartwatch which is compatible with iOS, you check that out till Apple officially announces its iWatch.

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Personal device the remote access

Without a computer in the office do not, but to drag him along everywhere – not the best solution. Come to the aid a projector Solo – compact gadget, that opens remote access to all computer functions. This unique device, that will satisfy any user. The device allows you to use the computer at any time and in any place. For this requires advance Solo synchronize with a suitable computer. With the projector the gadget displays the image on the surface. In addition to the individual user benefits the product also features a gesture recognition sensor in the lower portion of the device, allowing 360 degree input recognition, meaning anybody sat around the device can control what they are seeing. Solo will allow, for example, conduct important business meetings and presentations anywhere. Of course, for remote access will require extensive communication channels, but it is possible that these gadgets will soon appear already on shelves.

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Philips "Fluid"

With modern gadgets getting smaller and better to replace the jewelry or fashion accessories, the contemporary jewelry designers may have to face a tough time in the days to come. Yesterday we covered the Bricell Jewelry Phone in the blog, and now it’s time for another stylish gadget to tickle the trendy users. Conceived by Brazilian designer Dinard da Mata, the “Fluid” is a smartphone concept that as suggested by its name features a flexible OLED display to allow better mobility and ease of use. Designed for Philips, the mobile phone wraps around the wrist to become a bracelet for the fashionable, while gives an easy access on the go.

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LIMBO Smartphone

This future smartphone design dubbed the LIMBO. LIMBO has a flexible concept for next generation. ‘Limbo’ is corresponding to the Smartphone that is bent quite freely by using various materials and technology together with flexible display. This Smartphone provides better usability and new lifestyle in the extension of existing Smartphone. Infusing a new life to Smartphone, the Limbo includes four buttons, including master (Home button+ Power button), volume manager and two other buttons, out of which three buttons are concealed when you transform it into the watch mode. Featuring flexible materials, the Limbo can be divided into three hard modules to switch between the watch and the Smartphone. The Limbo also incorporates a number of motion sensors so it could be used as a wrist-mounted health monitor. Will it actually turn out to be true, or is it just a dream.

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