Innovation

The Bloom grocery store chain, part of Food Lion, erected a giant sign to promote its new brand of beef. It disperses the smell of steak during rush hour, from 7 to 10 a.m. and from 4 to 7 p.m. It pairs the smell with a big visual, showing a giant piece of steak and a French fry on a giant fork, and is one of the first of its kind in the country.Read More

Randy Grubb's tricked out Peterbilt features a 12v71 Detroit Diesel with two 671 superchargers

This cool ride started out life as a 1965 Peterbilt Model 351 cab, which creator Randy Grubb kept seeing parked in an old logger's place near his home in rural Oregon. After years of driving by it, he finally decided to stop for a closer look in late 2008.Read More

Vending Machine Dispenses Real Gold Bars

The five-star Emirates Palace Hotel installed a gold bullion ATM in its lobby as the first permanent gold vending machine in the world, according to Ex Oriente Lux, the German firm that developed it. The Gold To Go machine sells 24-carat gold bars weighing 1, 5, and 10 grams as well as gold coins from Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Each comes in a gift box.Read More

Laser Scanning Flyovers of NYC Will Yield Accurate 3-D Map

New York City may be on the cutting edge of cuisine and fashion, but in nerdier pursuits like cartography, NYC has unfortunately fallen behind - like, 30 years behind. But a twin-engine airplane fitted with LIDAR scanners has lately been gathering data that will close the city's map gap, creating extremely detailed digital maps of the city that will lead to better land management, inform emergency protocols, and help identify the best places to install solar panels across the five boroughs.Read More

Phantom Ray: Boeing unveils spy plane of the future... that doesn't need a pilot

Called the Phantom Ray, Boeing's cutting-edge unmanned airborne system (UAS) was unveiled at a ceremony in St Louis yesterday. The sleek craft has a 50ft wingspan, measures 36ft long and has a gross weight of 36,500lbs. It operates at an altitude of 40,000ft, which is 10,000ft higher than the average long-haul commercial airliner. It will cruise comfortably at a speed of 614mph, or 0.8mach, just shy of the speed of sound.Read More

Lights, Bots, Action! Former Car-Assembly Robots Find New Careers in Film Business

It’s great to see a startup hiring laid-off autoworkers — even if they aren’t human. Jeff Linnell (center) recently picked up three Fanuc s430iL industrial robots at fire-sale prices and reprogrammed them for jobs in TV advertising. Seems that the autobots (nicknamed Puck, Gilda, and Rosie) had transferable skills.Read More

Oyster wave power technology captures energy from ocean waves and converts it into clean sustainable electricity

Oyster is a simple mechanical hinged flap connected to the seabed at around 32 feet in depth. Each passing wave moves the flap, driving hydraulic pistons to deliver high pressure water via a pipeline to an onshore electrical turbine.Read More

These creatively custom-built snowmobiles are made entirely from scrap and powered by motorcycle engines.Read More

Want to Wake Up in San Francisco or Paris? Turn Two HDTVs into a Virtual Window to the World with 3D Perspective

Winscape is a DIY project that features two HD plasmas in faux window frames that display whatever scene you’d like to see out your window. Using a Wiimote, the setup even detects your position in the room and shifts the perspective screens' high-resolution video to create the illusion of looking out a real window.Read More

Intel's 10 Gbps Light Peak Optical Cables May Succeed USB

Intel sees its Light Peak technology for linking devices by optical cable as potentially succeeding USB 3.0, a change that in several years could mean the disappearance of a port used almost universally in gadgets today.Read More