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Top Inventions of 2007
Gibbs-Duhem writes "Time Magazine is reporting on the best inventions of the year. The top invention is the somewhat well-known iPhone, but there are some extremely cool projects included that I had certainly never heard of, including a device for capturing waste heat from car engines to increase efficiency up to 40%, a novel car designed to run entirely on compressed air claiming to have a range of 2000km with zero pollution, a James Bond style GPS tracking device that police can use to avoid high-speed chases, a small-scale printing press capable of printing and binding a paperback book in 3 minutes for under $3/book (and $50k per machine), a microbe-based technology for turning soft sand into sandstone, a water-based display which uses computer controlled nozzles to produce coherent gaps in the water, and a way to convert type A, B, and AB-negative blood into type O."
This has gone too far. There is no way you can place the iPhone as the top "Invention". It is a phone just like any other but with a lot of features you would expect on a phone removed. No novelty or ingenuity. The only thing that it has going for it is that it looks nice. If looking nice is a quality of a great invention then I proclaim the Mona Lisa as the greatest invention of Leonardo da Vinci. I will be hearing next that the iPhone gets the Nobel peace prize as well.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
The triple jump just got a lot more entertaining. :-D
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
i was going to release my teleportation prototype next week, but now I have to wait to Jan. so I can make the best of 2008 list. Either that or complete my time-machine project so I can go back and get my teleporter finished before the deadline for this award.
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Editor or poster added an extra 0... the anticipated range on the aircar is 200km (about 125 miles).
Such a great device with so much potential, it's just a shame. And I really don't even blame Apple. It's this country's telecomm industry that's broken.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
How is the IPhone even classed as an invention? IT is something that already existed (cell-phone) that someone else added some gee-gaws to.
That's like saying the 2008 Chevy Malibu is the top invention for 2008 because it is so cool and hip!
How sad...
Blinded by Light The hunt for better non-lethal weaponry gained new urgency when several people died in recent years after being shocked by a Taser. The LED Incapacitator, funded by the Department of Homeland Security, is a novel alternative. When officers shine the flashlight-like device in a person's eyes, high-intensity LEDs, pulsating at varying rates, will make the suspect temporarily blind and dizzy.
Making the Car Chase Obsolete High-speed chases may be money shots in Hollywood, but everywhere else they're just dangerous. The StarChase Pursuit Management System uses a laser-guided launcher mounted on the front grill of a cop car to tag fleeing vehicles with a GPS tracking device. Then the fuzz can hang back as real-time location data are sent to police headquarters.
Good Morning, Sunshine Embedded with a grid of LEDs, it [pillow] uses nothing but light to wake you up. About 40 min. before reveille, the programmable foam pillow starts glowing, gradually becoming brighter, to simulate a natural sunrise.
This helps set your circadian rhythm and ease you into the day.
Maybe this will inspire the people who invented the blood converter to buy iPhones with their Nobel prize money.
It's still a heat engine, which means, maybe 30% efficiency under ideal conditions. Then there's the problem with getting heat into the cylinder fast enough as the air expands so it won't even come close to the ideal.
Compare with an electric motor where 95% efficiency is not uncommon. An air car just doesn't make any sense, particularly when you're using electricity to charge the tanks.
Deleted
The fact that the iPhone placed as "top invention" speaks more to the ubiquitousness of cell phones in our society and how irritated people are with the current state of affairs with respect to the cell carriers. Most of the Time article about the iPhone spoke about how poor current phones were (the iPhone is "pretty" because "Most high-tech companies don't take design seriously") and how it will encourage carriers to open up their sandboxes ("It's not a phone, it's a platform") than it did about how cool an "invention" the iPhone is.
It's also interesting because many of the complaints about the iPhone revolve around the fact that Apple somehow didn't go far enough to crack the cell carrier hegemony (the iPhone is locked to a single carrier, the iPhone contract is two years) than it goes towards actual design flaws in the physical unit.
In fact, I've never seen people get so worked up before over a single cell phone--and I suggest it's because we all hate the cell carriers and are hoping someone--either a powerful government or a powerful company (either Apple's iPhone or Google's Android OS) will force the cell carriers to improve.
Look, I'm an iPhone owner, and I love the damn thing, no question about it.
It was worth every penny, and then some; the SDK should only make it better.
However, that said, labeling it as "Invention of the Year" is a pretty sad state of affairs for the country. I'm pretty medical, environmental, and social breakthroughs deserve FAR more attention.
I'd hate to tell the guy with cancer that the really cool virus that eats cancer cells could've had a ton more funding for R & D if only it had one Time's Invention of the Year.
The iPhone is cool, no question, but it is the height of frivolity, and can't possibly compare with all the other wonderful things mankind is dreaming up and making a reality that deserve far more press coverage than the iPhone has already gotten.
Not that I'm complaining too loudly, my Apple stock just keeps on truckin'
I've dreamed of tabbed browsing for years and finally Microsoft made my dreams come true... oh wait, that was 2006, wasn't it.
If you ignore the over-hyped (and still pretty damned cool) iPhone as 1st place, this list is pretty amazing. The water-injected engine at first glance sounds alot like the water-injection that was hyped back in the 1970s, but it's not. A little bit of digging (thanks, Google!) reveals that it's actually a 6-stroke engine that uses the heat that would normally be radiated away. If done right, there's no need for a radiator or other cooling system!
My first thought is about what this could mean for General Aviation - having the fuel burn rate cut by 40% WITHOUT needing any cooling gear (think: reduced weight) could be a real boon... already there are diesel aviation engines already that are significantly more efficient ( but need radiators, and already have a high compression ratio) this could help out even more - imagine a diesel engine that reduces fuel consumption by 60%, maybe even 70%?!?!?
Pipe dream? Yes. But I sure do hope. And it would likely happen in cars before airplanes, thanks to the glacial pace of technology advancement in aviation. Everybody's so terrified of risk that innovation is radically reduced. The reality is simply that (Private Airplanes) == (Money) == (Lawyer Bait) == (an industry that is forever on the edge of shutdown).
If you want to see the crippling effect that excessive lawyering can cause to industry, you need look no further than private aviation.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The Lucky Camera for astronomy technique has been used by amateurs for years. The Elasitc space suit was a concept going back to the 60's. Injectying water into engines is a technique that's been used for decades. These guys should edit slashdot.
Apple is doing NOTHING to break the hegemony. Apple released a phone which does barely nothing more than other phones on the market (and indeed a lot less than some), tied to a single network (which was THEIR choice), and then charged massive amounts of money for the phones. And what happened? People who either don't use phones a lot, or people who love marketing spiel, or people who love apple, bought the flying shit out of them. Apple is one of the bad guys! This article is saying that a product that isn't better than any others, but which costs more and is locked more and runs less software is somehow better than, say, any other mobile out there? That's what's truly horrifying about this. The only thing Apple is changing is how much people will pay for a mediocre phone. And currently that's $400, with a contract. Jesus.
You would be right if these were only finished products, but many of them will only be available in the next year or further. Which makes me ask "Exactly how are these 2007's best inventions?". Again.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
I'm not an architecture expert, but I have read several times that one of the largest complaints with actually living in Frank Lloyd Wright's home designs is that they were designed to look fantastic in photographs but are inconvenient to actually live in.
Regardless of whether or not that is true, it underscores the critical thing about design and function-- it's a delicate balance, and designers must be careful not to trade too much functionality for aesthetics and vice versa. Everyone's tastes differ, but Apple frequently makes design choices that I find detrimental to function with no benefit beyond aesthetics. (lack of tacticle keyboard on iPhone, gorgeous all-in-one PCs that make your monitor a disposable item, elegant slim notebooks that offer inadequate cooling for the GPU and necessitate factory underclocking, iTunes' ignorance of audio organized by folder rather than tags, no handy screws for battery replacement on the clean, mirror-finished backs of iPods, etc...)
The "air-car" is bullshit.
First, all they have is blurry cad-drawings, and still they claim it'll be on the market in 2008. That's not possible, if that where to actually be the case they'd have to ALREADY have several completed prototypes of the car at the minimum for safety-testing and similar.
Second, there's just not enough energy there.
If you believe the claims of the aircar-makers themselves, (which ain't a safe thing to do, because they assume near termic equilibrium, among other things, but nevermind) then, and I'm here quoting their website: 300 litres at 300 bars results in 46 MJ (Y 52.1 MJ with 340 litres at 300 bars ).
Okay, so a 340lite (90 gallon!) air-tank can hold the same amount of energy as 0.4 gallons of petrol. Really
So, after you've refilled this gargantuan 90 gallon tank with air, you'll have the equivalent of 0.4 gallons petrol worth of energy. Thereafter you have to refuel again. Who wants to refuel every 10 miles ? This think makes electric cars look EXCELLENT by comparison.
The bookbinding machine? That was mentioned on Slashdot previously. It's not that novel. Many of the bigger copiers/printers have a binder option. Larger Kinkos outlets can crank out perfect-bound books. The price and cost figures are vaporware; the bookbinding machine isn't actually in production. The Internet Archive has a printing and binding operation in a van (the "Internet Bookmobile"), and has for years. Uses a semi-auto binder.
The programmable water display is one of those cute one-off things. I've seen some similar gadgets, including a projection screen made of mist. That showed up at a venture capital conference in Silicon Valley a few months ago. Modulated water displays were done in Japan in the 1980s, and they've been tried in some US retail locations.
The "air car" has some grand claims. "For various reasons, one of which is industrial secrecy, we havent published all technical details on this site." Right. The thing is actually supposed to be a gasoline-powered hybrid - "The Series 34 CATs engines can be equipped with and run on dual energies - fossil fuels and compressed air". Plus, there's an electric motor and battery in there. "Parking manoeuvres are powered by the electric motor." It's not clear why they need both electrical and compressed air energy storage. The actual range they've achieved running on compressed air is only 7.2Km. All they actually have on the road is one prototype car made of welded tubes, with steel compressed air tanks driving an ordinary reciprocating compressor as an air motor. None of their claimed technology (the carbon fibre tanks, the wierd crankshaft linkage, the low-friction seals) is in use. They have a good Monster Garage project, but not a major invention.
The "40% more efficient gasoline engine" thing isn't new. See this 1979 article in Mother Earth News. Wikipedia has a good article on water injection, and there's a link to Crowder's engine. The general consensus today seems to be that turbos and intercoolers have made water injection obsolete. If you use water injection, you have to carry either a water tank about as big as the gas tank, or a condenser and oil/water separation system.
I'm not impressed with Time's selections. There must have been some better work this year, or we're in real trouble in technology.
From the article: "The future of automotive technology may lie in the past. Bruce Crower, 77, an auto-racing designer with a thriving business in San Diego, has invented a hybrid steam engine in which water is sprayed into a traditional gasoline-powered cylinder, turning waste heat into usable energy. How much energy? Enough to travel 40% farther on a gallon of gas."
This has been known for decades. The problem is that the extremely hot steam corrodes the extremely hot steel.
Slashdot editors apparently spend all their time playing video games, and learn nothing about the world.
Clearly we are in the middle of an energy crises; any innovation that can reduce our reliance on
fossil fuels could prove to be the most important of our time. My vote is for this fellow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rA-zhTJuFU
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
I don't see the issue, an invention is a technological development, it doesn't have to be feasible to be an invention. It doesn't even have to be cost effective, a lot of inventions and discoveries don't reach the mainstream until they've been improved to the point where they become cost effective.
The white city exposition saw the debut of the ferris wheel and the electric light, but neither of those things saw widespread use until later. It just wasn't realistic to within even one year wire every home in America for electricity.
The telephone and the telegraph likewise were invented, and then later put into use. It wasn't possible at the time to get them up to a useful state in only 1 year, it took a while to string up all those wires.
Even ice cream was difficult to push out until there were better means of refrigeration than were available at the time.
This article dates back to 1979 and is one of the first google results for "water injection" http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Home-Building/1979-09-01/Water-Injection-Wizardry.aspx "During the second World War, fighter pilots could push a button and inject a stream of water into the turbochargers of their monstrous powerplants . . . to get extra thrust on takeoff." Similarly, Crower's engine "harnesses normally-wasted heat energy by creating steam inside the combustion chamber, and using it to boost the engine's power output and also to control its temperature" This Crower guy must have a lot of nerve to claim as his own an invention that has been around for more than half a century. He may know how to build engines, but apparently he does not know how to search the internet ... His difference with Pat Goodman that did the same
thing back in 1979 is that Goodman did not lie (or chose to ignore) about the novelty of his idea.
And btw, unlike Crower, Goodman had his engines tested on actual vehicles:
"Pat Goodman installed his first water injection system (on a Porsche racing car) in 1964, and the racing organization responded by banning his device . . . it made the vehicle too fast! Undaunted, Pat decided that--even if the racing establishment wasn't interested in "improving the breed", he was. Today, several near-bankruptcies later, the innovative mechanic owns a vehicle that only the government could argue with: a 1978 Ford Fiesta . . . that gets 50 MPG in normal around-town driving. (This impressive figure has been verified by a MOTHER staffer, who accompanied Goodman on a 48mile jaunt around Winchester, Virginia. During the drive--which Pat accomplished with, if anything, more speed than normal--the small four-cylinder sipped only .95 gallon of unleaded gas.) "
Not to mention that to repair or do any significant work beyond (or even) memory/disk replacement is not meant to be a trivial task compared to maintenance-friendly (but otherwise unblessed) Thinkpads. While it's not easy to get to some components on a T series for example, at least you have the documentation to tell you it is only a few screws and a slideoff of the keyboard to get to the inside where the internal memory module is.
For Apple to commit to this kind of error repeatedly over multiple products (even as early as the PM 8500) seems to have them insist on looks over function. Even if the design ends up being a problem on the inside, it's usually "glossed over"(e.g. iPod battery compartment issue, the entire lack of a headless iMac despite demand).
For what "UNIX-like" qualities are in there, the hardware seems to come up looking like a knockoff Sun or IBM pSeries (before the Intel switchover) product.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
can't disagree on the fact that the year is over.
...
... what exactly ... no really, what exactly did the iphone give you ? nokias and sony-ericssons had all these features punched into a phone in the beginning of 2006, some models had partial features from these even before. what the heck ? burn the time magazine, it's just a freaking commercial. a phone with all the features of the iphone was on the market already in 2006.
... but i don't really care. the phone may be "ok" for apple fans, for me it looks like a heavy rip off (locked software, locket networks ...) , some of us just don't want to admit it.
but my question is, where is the invention part of the iphone ? seriously, where is it ? can someone give me 1 example that's actually useful in the phone and that apple introduced as first ?
[x] we did have music playing phones before
[x] we did have videos playing phones before
[x] we did have web browsing phones before
[x] we did have locked down phones before
[x] we did have quite nice looking phones before
[x] we did have overhyped phones before
[x] we did have uncomfortable keyboards before
[x] we did have unstable calling quality phones before
so
i'll probably get heavily modded down by "true iPhone fans"
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.