Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More

SmartUSA has just announced that two Mercedes produced “smart fortwo” models will be available in the US for under $12k. That, combined with its minuscule 8.8-ft length and 5.1-ft height, make it one of the smallest, cheapest cars around. The base model doesn’t have much in the way of features (not even air conditioning), but there is a wide range ...

Mankind’s creepy obsession with building the perfect robot pet continues with Pretty Polly The Interactive Parrot. Polly features voice recognition technology that allows it to record and repeat phrases spoken to it. This robo-parrot can also respond to phrases like “Are you hungry” with preprogrammed answers. Other features include: A mouth sensor that detects an included plastic cracker placed near ...

Barbie has been a bad girl. Apparently bad enough to be executed via capital punishment. You know, we haven’t seen Ken around the mall lately. Did he get killed off at some point? Barbie could have whacked him for all we know. We must say though, that striped shirt doesn’t do Barbie any justice. To create this project you’ll need ...

Does anyone else find something a tad bit wrong with this? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want a barely teenage slave girl just like anyone else, but advertising the service online? I guess they really do have everything on the net. This girl is a tad over-priced though for my taste. I mean how much experience could she ...

I love flying and boating, I only wish I could do both at the same time. Now I can thanks to this Brio Flying Boat Kit. Sure it costs $10,000, but everything is included right? Not exactly. You still have to buy the engine, an ultra light Rotax (Austrian) 2 cycle engine to be more precise. If you check out ...

A US company named Ambient has developed a motorized wheelchair that moves when the operator thinks of specific words. The system works thanks to Audeo, a larynx control system that intercepts signals that are sent from the brain to the voice box. The signals are then relayed to a computer where they are decoded and matched to a set of ...

The sentry gun pictured above was built for the Defconbots Competition where contestants battle it out to see who can build an autonomous device that can shoot down targets in the fastest time. The gun didn’t win, but by the looks of these videos, it seems to work pretty well. And the best part is that the team behind it ...

A team of scientists from the University Of Bolton and the Hong Kong Productivity Council (and hopefully Victoria’s Secret) have developed a Smart Bra that could act as an early warning system for breast cancer for women at high-risk. Built into the bra’s inner structure (image not related) is a microwave antennae device which with the help of micro computer ...

Yamaha and media artist Toshio Iwai team up to create the Tenori-On, a new musical instrument for the 21st century. The new instrument creates an intuitive visual music interface using a 16 x 16 matrix grid of LEDs. Using a mixture of input and LED interaction, anyone can create a visual musical piece as they play around with Tenori-On’s sound ...

Transformer mania has officially taken hold of the world. The Optimus Prime Case Mod should have been a clear warning of what was to come. And now, a clever Motorola modder has turned his MOTOROKR E6 into a fully functional transformer cellphone. Whoever could have predicted that a camera phone lens could work so well as a robotic head? This ...