Post-It Notes
The “ability to make unexpected discoveries by accident” the serendipity effect.To demonstrate the importance of serendipity, we’ve put together a list of 19 examples of unintentional discoveries that too often we find ourselves taking for granted. In no particular order.. (Pics)
 

A New Kind Of Security

Kaspersky Labs, a cybersecurity group based in Russia, was recently awarded the patent for a hardware antivirus device that aims to keep your computer secure by attaching directly to the disk drive, below rootkit access.
Software can always be compromised, and solution proposed by the mad geniuses at Kaspersky is to put [...]

Truly sad news, sports fans. The inventor of the Frisbee, Walter Frederick Morrison, has died at the age of 90 at his home in Utah. Aside from a plain ol’ ball, has there ever been a more universal toy?
The Frisbee, which is technically a brand name, was originally called the Pluto Putter, and was first [...]

Is the Mona Lisa a disguised self-portrait?

Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the [...]

The computer program is called Iscanderus Visius
Beyond Las Vegas there is a world more pious. And in that holy world, a Russian inventor by the name of Aleksandr Syomochkin has developed a program that allows a computer to recognize people’s faces and then message them. The program is based on the input received by on-monitor [...]

Thomas Edison was known for his wacky publicity stunts, but during the Christmas of 1880 he went for the sentimental rather than shock value. That year, instead of electrocuting an elephant, he brought us the first electric Christmas light display.
By the time 1880 rolled around, Edison had his incandescent light bulbs pretty well figured out, [...]

Competition will range from community groups, to corporate teams, to int’l teams
On Tuesday evening the Longmont City Council gave the green light to DaVinci Quest CEO Karl Dakin to proceed with the 2010 Smarter, Safer, Greener House Competition where teams from around the world will compete to retrofit existing homes to maximum efficiency. DaVinci Quest [...]

Future agribusiness professionals will be some of the most
highly skilled people on earth, and the envy of the executive class
Tomorrow’s farm technology will make today’s look as outdated as steam-powered traction engines seem today. The stage is being set for an unprecedented new generation of farming driven by ever-greater levels of precision, relevancy and control. Many [...]

Payment device attached to an iPhone for swiping cards
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced his latest venture, a company called Square. As an attempt to solve many of the key issues associated with accepting online payments, Square promises a refreshingly simple system for cutting through the red tape.
In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell [...]

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

Another Awesome Dyson Vision

He pioneered the bagless vacuum cleaner and more recently has transformed the UK’s public toilets with his revolutionary hand-dryer. Yesterday the billionaire businessman and inventor Sir James Dyson unveiled his latest product – a desk fan that he hopes will provide a greener alternative to office air conditioning and a safer and [...]

The New Hairy Solar Panel

A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor.
Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world’s energy needs.
The young inventor says hair is easy to use [...]

Powdered Beer! What a brilliant idea! Or not!
David Ewalt: A lot of weird and wonderful stuff comes out of Japan. Kaiju. Crazygame shows.The tanuki. They make good beer, too — I’ll put a mass-market lager from Asahi or Kirin up against Budweiser or Miller any day. But I wasn’t quite so impressed when I [...]

Leonard DaVinci’s mechanical lion
A mechanical lion invented by Leonardo da Vinci to entertain the King of France has sprung back to life in the Renaissance genius’s last home.

The Jetpod Taxi is a Great Idea!

British inventor dies in crash on test flight of his flying taxi A British pilot hailed as “an aviation entrepreneur” was killed when his prototype plane crashed during take-off on a test flight in Malaysia. Michael Robert Dacre, 53, was flying a Jetpod aircraft, developed by his own British-based [...]

Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina fill the streets of New Orleans Aug. 30, 2005.
Good news, folks. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has turned his attention to controlling the weather. Five U.S. Patent and Trade Office patent applications, made public on July 9, propose slowing hurricanes by pumping cold, deep-ocean water in their paths from barges. If issued, [...]

Thomas Parker (C) was a Victorian inventor who claimed to have invented the vehicle. 
The world’s first electric car may have been built by a Victorian inventor.

 
The Modern Thinker
It’s a picture that’s sure to make your hair stand on end.
A daredevil inventor has created a shocking new image of Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ – by shooting 500,000 volts of electricity down his body as he sat in the pose. (Pics)

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Take some ascorbic acid and add a little glucose. Throw in a hint of citric acid and mix it with a few grams of 4-O-a-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol, a sugar substitute otherwise known as maltitol.
This is the taste sensation that will reach Hong Kong today, where the celebrated French chef Pierre Gagnaire will push back culinary boundaries with [...]

Go Go Gadget Tiny Car

Take two companies whose products often come out on the wrong end of a joke, slap them together, and here’s the result: The P.U.M.A., a sort of giant, two-person Segway that is designed for commuters, with a 35-mile range from its lithium-ion batteries. It has a top speed of 35 MPH, [...]

House on the Moon 
Researchers are readying a robot with the help of an artist to place a little red cottage on the moon, as a symbol of what humankind can achieve.

 
Can you see me?
Fullerton-based inventor Raz “Dr. Z” Zeineh, owner of Advanced American Enterprises, has designed what he calls a stealth poncho to keep troops hidden from night vision goggles. (Pics)

DaVinci Style iPhone, very cool!
This is one funny yet artistic and very retro. A design that show you the DaVinci Tao of designing the iPhone. Complete with the old yellow (off white) paper/background with some hand writing DaVinci version.

Back in the day…

 This post by Andy Hertzfeld over on Folklore.org about the origins of the 1982 Mac’s famous boot beep (complete with downloadable 68000 assembly source code) is delicious fodder for more technical minded Mac fans, but this anecdote will appeal even to the more casual appreciator of Apple’s corporate mythos:

I hesitate to call it steampunk, through the degradation of the term by people like me, but my attempts at describing it otherwise only end up being laughably convoluted loop-de-loops around the term. It reminds me very strongly of Disneyland Paris’ Space Mountain aesthetic, which is furnished after the spaceship design of Verne’s De la [...]