If you love WIRED (I do) and got all geeky at WIREDs NextFest (I did) then you’ll crave their new TV series “WIRED Science” which aired yesterday on PBS. If ya missed it, watch it online (commercial-free) right here!(56 mins) I’d highly recommend checking out this pilot episode plus an extended interview with Elon Musk here.(I’ve had lunch with him at TED ) Afterwards, dig into their webpage for more information to get inspired. Hopefully this trial period lands them a seasons spot next year!(fingers crossed)

Here were the topics for the pilot:
- Full Show
- Meteorite Hunters (woa)
- Finding Neemo (mysterious)
- Exploded View: PlasmaTV
- Stem Cells (inspirational)
- Rocketeers (fun)
- Elon Musk (smart dude)(extended video)
- Extremophiles(very cool)

Is Wikiasari going to be the “killer” new search engine to trump over Google? I’m not sure, but what I am sure about is the dominant power that community driven sites have had over the past few years(MySpace, Craigslist, eBay,YouTube, WikiPedia, etc). Wikiasari is the vision of Jimmy Wales who pioneered and founded Wikipedia, a dynamic online community driven encyclopedia which I personally use almost everyday and trust more than the printed stuff. I’m a sucker for community driven websites and am optimistic about this buzz, but what I can say, is that there is a great deal of improvements needed for search engines. I’m just going to wait (rumored to launch in early 2007) and see what pops, but if your the early adopter craving to know, read on to these articles for more details(such as Amazons funding, etc); TechCrunch, TopTechNews, CNet.(also an influential read about this topic is TIME magazines Person of the year: You)

This is good reminder that even if a specific market is controlled by a monster company, there is always room to dominate, much like google did back in the yahoo, netcrawler, netscape days.

At a recent holiday gathering I was asked to bring a gift with a story, meaning, and perhaps a life changing experience for whomever was to receive my gift. I generally custom make gifts for friends, so making something for a stranger was a bit tough. So instead I asked myself “what are life changing products that have made a huge impact to my lifestyle and would be useful for anyone”?(this gathering was a bit tech oriented). We’ll, here are two products that have changed my life drastically along with some software producs that have done the same.

Sonicare Electronic Toothbrush : It’s a massage in your mouth using this beauty. Once you go electric, it’s hard to go back.

Logitech 8-button mouse(MX510): Navigating will never be the same! I personally use the extra buttons on the mouse to, “go back, forward, scroll, close windows, and launch internet browser”. I rarely hit those backwards and forwards button on the nav bar, nor do I ever click on that “x” to close a window anymore…saves thousands of seconds daily.(their new “hyper-wheel” seems interesting)

E-mail Clients:Eudora, Outlook(or express), Mail, Opera, Thunderbird, etc:
It amazes me how many people don’t use email clients. I can’t imagine managing emails without them. It surprises me to see people typing in passwords to check mail only to find no mail at times. E-mail clients save loads of time if you communicate through e-mails. E-mail clients still have a long way to go, but the first jump has been drastic.

Digital Calendars: Outlook, GCal, 30boxes, Sunbird,iCal, etc:
Never forget a meeting, birthday, appointment, event, etc…even have the calendar send you a text message reminder! In the world of information overload, calendars will be playing a HUGE role in our everyday future of multitasking and managing ourselves.

Lots of other compelling products out there, but these are some that I bring up all the time. Do you have a life changing product story? Let me know..
Happy holidays!!

Popular Mechanics has a great list of tech materials or concepts that are rather inspiring. Pictured above is bendable concrete:
”

The nickname for Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) is self-explanatory: bendable concrete. Specially coated microscopic polymer fibers slide past each other instead of snapping under stress, so ECC bends without breaking. The material has been used to create stretchable expansion joints for a Michigan bridge, and to allow the coupling beams in a 41-story tower in Yokohama to flex during Japan’s frequent earthquakes.
SHORT-TERM IMPACT: LOWIt could take years for ECC to be commonly used in construction, unless a major earthquake puts it in the spotlight.

”
via PopulareMechanics

The highly anticipated list of speakers for the TED2007 conference has been unleashed!!! Check out the list and be prepared to be inspired by these many speakers during soldout TED Conference next March, or over on TEDtalks after the event.

Thank GOD!!! Googles beta “Patent Search” visually reorganizes all the complex, confusing, and congested data from the USPTO(US patent and trademark office) and makes it a much better experience to seek out inventions. If you have ever used the USPTO patent site, you probably gave up after a few minutes due to the very unfriendly graphical interface then hired an expensive lawyer to suffer through the horror that you experienced for a bit. I’m super glad Googles taken notice of this craziness and I look forward to the future development of it….then again…it’s google and they will data mine what people are searching for then patent it themselves! They can be evil you know..

When you see these ads, it’ll make you want to buy a Nintendo Wii because they just scream out FUN! Yes, there is the ever so powerful Xbox and Playstation3, but when those 2 are battling for first place, the Wii stands out especially at a much lower cost($250ish) and a much more playful attitude. Sure the Xbox and PS3 are more powerful and graphic intense, but are they as much fun? Isn’t that the point of games? I’m sure their good, but not as exciting since the Wii is creating a community of people obsessed about not just the gaming aspect, but how they play it. There’s a wonderful pool of images on Flickr of Wii users! I’d like to see a comparison of pictures of people playing the PS3 or Xbox, which would probably seem like the stare of boredom that we get in webcams. Anyhow, just my prediction, but the Wii will kick butt! I want one even if I end up smashing my TV with the controller. I’m not saying the Xbox and PS3 are bad, I’m just saying that the Wii is really revolutionizing our aspect of gaming consoles.

Watch the fun ads above or after the jump(direct links: here, here, and here) I’ll throw in some images from that pool of Wii players as well after the jump.

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Wow! What an amazing story, idea, and kick-butt revolutionary company. Terracycle delivers the most eco-friendly consumer product in big box retail shelves made entirely by garbage, yet with a higher quality than most competitors and at a lower price! So, how they they do it? They use garbage!!! Founder Tom Szaky(23 yrs old when he founded TerraCycle and a freshmen Princeton dropout), explains, they get paid to take garbage away and they get paid to sell their new products. Their main product is a liquid worm poop fertilizer which is created by feeding red worms organic waste in return for their castings which get mixed with water to create a rich organic fertilizer that’s proven to be better than MiricleGro or various other competitors which are chemically driven rather than organic.(or as they claim, “The proof is in the poop!”)

Now with a great product came the task of packaging it. When they first started up, they had no money to purchase fresh bottles, hence another innovation…they ran around town collecting used soda bottles, cleaned them, added labels, and used that! They saved tons of money this way and also did something new in the product world; every single bottle was different, be it an old Pepsi bottle, Coke, Water, Sprite, etc. Their spray tops are even extras that have been dumped by manufacturers of other spray-on products and even the boxes that the plant-food is shipped in are misprinted rejects from major companies. Yup, it’s garbage made into huge profits at its best!

TerraCycle is a definite company to watch out for in our sustainably driven world. I’ve seen many companies re-use recycled goods, but I’ve never seen one come out with a product that can be used again, cost less, and is better than competiing products. They also have a pretty cool name tag concept to get kids pumped about recycling. Watch that video here.

For a deep read into TerraCycles company dig into their websites video and stories, this detailed article at Inc.com, or for a quick view, watch the YouTube video above.

More pics after the jump.

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Musicovery.com allows you to create a play-list of songs based on the mood that your seeking by filtering music by genres and time, then selecting a mood within each category; dark, energique, positif, or calme. It’s somewhat like a streaming radio station that you have a bit off control over, but you can’t save, bookmark, or copy any names quickly. Otherwise, the visaul layout is compelling enough to play with for a bit and personally I grooved to the “Calm Funk” with a bit of “positif” stream that I am now listening to.

Other music aiding services I’ve looked into are: Yahoos LaunchCast (I use this, my station), pandora.com, and Blogmusik.net.
(thanks Danny)

At first glance, I was captured by this cool baby pong picture! I clicked ahead, watched the demo video by Stokke, and figured out, dang, these Xplory strollers are pretty sweet! Just because your a baby, doesn’t mean you have view life at that height, hence, this stroller props up the seat to give the baby a higher viewpoint. Besides the viewpoint, the video also points out how a higher seat puts less stress on a parents back since you don’t have to bend over as far. Otherwise, the higher seat idea reminds me of Dean Kamens invention the iBot, which gives people in wheelchairs the opportunity to be at eye level with humans again(also has tons of other amazingly innovative features, including the gyroscope that helped launch the Segway)

via thecoolhunter

I love it when people come up with ideas that sometimes seem dumb but seriously inspire me. In this DIY example via Evilmadscientist, a mops added to a remote control car, and bahm, ya have cleaning with a zest of fun. I’m not saying this works great, but sometimes when you think like a kid again or act goofy, you get results that raise great questions and often great ideas. I almost want to clean more now with this remote mop! Why cant cleaning be fun?! Anyhow, this is an example of one of those goofy ideas that I love much like the babysuit mop found in the great Chindogu Society Books. Otherwise, for the more grown up types that hate mops, try the MopShoe.

This is kind of nifty… Are you shopping for a present but can’t quite come up with the words to search with? Well, Imagini.net allows you to search for items by creating a DNA of keywords based on a selection of images! Basically, it creates a DNA of a persons lifestyle based on simple questions with visuals answers. Once you go through the questions, it creates a grid of items that match your DNA.

I like the idea of shopping through images, or creating a palette of lifestyle images based on a person to buy stuff, but then again I’m an advocate for images over text whenever possible. This is kind of like what Amazon does for their suggestion robot since they know what your browse, what you buy, your age, location, etc.. Man, the world of data mining boggle me!