It’s another exciting installment of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? except in this episode we’re going to get schooled by 12-year old Elizabeth Rintels on techniques for going green. The By Kids For Kids “Going Green Challenge” is a contest that enables the youth to showcase their concerns and awareness of our dieing planet. It also shows how not every eco-friendly idea has to be transportation related.

And Elizabeth did just that, displaying her idea of the “Water Watcher,” a device that you hook onto your shower faucet which signals a red light and sounds a beep every time a half-gallon of water is used. Want to play with water? Get the Waterboard. Other than that, be wary of the water you waste every time you flush. Elizabeth ended up winning the $10,000 dollar cash prize and quite possibly saved the planet from turning into a barren wasteland. Or at least prolonged the inevitable.

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Kevin Fu, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his team have been working with pacemakers for quite some time. Having reverse engineered a pacemaker, the team found a frightening loop hole. It turns out that a built-in test mechanism for the device includes a bug that can be exploited by hackers.

There is no cryptographic key used to secure the wireless communication between the control device and the pacemaker. This makes it real easy to build your own wireless device that can control the pacemaker. And by “control the pacemaker,” I mean shut it off. Hopefully, this discovery will lead to defense mechanisms put in place that’ll defend those who wear a pacemaker from any remote attack on their heart. Until then, you might want to keep your pacemaker on the DL.

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Japanese mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo is experimenting with this mind boggling approach to mobile device control that’s sure to give anyone an eye headache worse than TV coming through your glasses. How does it work? Firstly, no hands are needed. Simply move your eyes up or down to raise volume, accordingly. To skip a track, look right twice. Currently, they only have this technology controlling a mobile music player by sensing the electric fields eyes make when they move. In the future, who knows what this form of control could be used for?

Listening to the latest and greatest Josh Groban hits? Turn that shit up. All it takes is looking up. Say there is a bird flying overhead and you just so happened to be listening to the loudest death metal, ever. You look up, the volume raises and you’re officially halfway to becoming Helen Keller. You’ll then be forced to listen to tunes with the Shake-Up headphones, which is more buzzing and vibrating than any Justice song you’ve ever heard.

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Swimming pool gadgets are the best kind of gadgets. Unfortunately, not all of them can keep people who lack buoyancy afloat.  Fortunately, for the lethargic, the “PC of the Swim-Rings” has a flotation device around the computers base which is reminiscent of a LifeSaver candy. The amphibious PC is fitted with a solar power driven processor, water-cooling system, GPRS receiver, Bluetooth wireless solutions, finger-touch input, magnetic charging interface and it’s even water-proof (go figure).

It could be used as a desktop for in-home use, but where’s the fun in that? At the moment the “PC of the Swim-Rings” is only a concept. A concept that, by the sound of the specs, is said to be better geared than any PC I’ve ever owned.
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Like many of you, I fall victim to my Grandmother’s constant request for tech support for her 10-year-old computer. There are times where I cry, pull my hair out and I curse the person who told her to buy a computer. But, I digress, there is hope and it comes in the form of Jive.

Jive is a computer/social-networking concept for the elderly/retarded/disabled. When sold to the consumer, ISP information is automatically added at the store so that a true plug-and-play experience is created. Interaction occurs via a “Friend Pass” that resembles a picture key chain. Each Friend Pass is placed in a reader and the preloaded information is brought up. This eliminates the need for a mouse, helping maintain simplicity all around.

What do you think? Would you get one to get your grandparents off your back?

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After seeing some totally unsatisfactory uses of the Segway, I have built up a bad taste for the user base of the personal transport device (with the exception of this dude.) It’s time that a new device took the Segway from the top rungs of popularity and laziness.

This newly designed transportation device by Sarah Park mashes together the personal transport of the Segway with a “skiing” like steering mechanism. The size of the new device is about the same as a baby stroller. If you’ve ever pushed a baby stroller, you know how it’s usually not a problem even if you’re tall, so the design factor works. The dual handlebars of this new device makes the navigation similar to both pushing a stroller and skiing down a slope. (more…)