Grace Choi decided to disrupt the beauty industry when she was attending Harvard Business School. She did a little research and realized that beauty brands create and then majorly mark up their products by mixing lots of colors. (Video)
What if every object in your life could talk? A door handle warns you when someone has attempted to enter without a key. A desk ticks off your appointments when you sit down. A rubber duck quacks at a child in the tub, then his pillow sings him a lullaby to sleep. (Video)
If you wanted to look up the calorie content of a specific food you are eating you could take it to a lab and run it through a spectrometer. But accurate spectrometers are huge, expensive machines that are often only owned by institutions and require training to use. A new startup, however, wants to make it easy as running an app and pairing a bluetooth dongle. (Video)
The Advanced Tactics Black Knight Transformer is a scaled up multicopter with a wheeled cargo compartment below. It took to the air for the first time recently. (Pics and video)
Sandpoint, Idaho could be the first city in the nation with solar roadways thanks to an Idaho inventor. However, the inventor behind the revolutionary idea needs help from the public. (Video)
A new advanced water-repellant concrete impregnated with tiny super strong fibers promises to leave roads and bridges free of major cracks for up to 120 years. (Video)
Imogen Heap’s state-of-the-art wearable tech lets you control sounds with your hands. The Mi.Mu Glove for Music will change the way we make music. (Videos)
Louis Braille, in 1829, developed a tactile system that would allow those with vision impairment to read books. Braille uses a series of raised dots and the finger trails over a line of braille text and the reader interprets it, much like we do with standard letters of the alphabet that form words. Braille, however, does require some training to understand, and even now, most books, magazines, and newspapers are unavailable in braille format. MIT researchers have changed that problem with a new piece of wearable technology that reads books out loud to those with vision problems. (Video)
Boston Dynamics, a Google-owned robotics company, makes a number of stunning robots, perhaps most notably its Atlas humanoid and the “Big Dog” cargo-carrying robot. (Video)
No Business as usual with libraries, taking control of your destiny by a better understanding of the future and just in case vs. just in time scenarios. Erik Boekesteijn of This Week in Libraries interviews Futurist Thomas Frey on the future of libraries. (Video)
The Mayo Clinic is offering unlimited access to the famed hospital’s nurses through a smartphone app for about $50 a month. The Mayo Clinic partnered with Better, a California-based health technology startup, to launch the new subscription-based app. The app is not covered by insurance but offers real-time, 24/7 health care assistance. Think of it as a mobile WebMD. (Video)