TOP INNOVATIONS OF THE YEAR

2008 is a tough year. We have to endure the pain from the backlash of the economical recession and instability of the world order. Jobs been cut in the United States, oil price and shares were tumbling down with more and more companies were flagging a white banner calling for help. The human continued to fight against each other; notably the Iraq War is going no where, while the city of Mumbai has recently been terrorize.

Nevertheless, apart of these humanity issues, 2008 is still an excellent year with many innovations and technologies were been brought forward into our life. Here, as listed on MSNBC website, is what we probably believe are the top innovations of the year 2008 the mankind ever see.

TONIUM PACEMAKER

If you dream of owning a turntable, but in a smaller size that can fit into your palm, here it is. It is the first portable digital music player that allows you mix songs together, equipped with 120GB hard drive and browsing via circular touchpad ala iPods. The best is, you also can increase the speed, add some BPMs and adjust the pitchings. The price tag of US$ 875 makes it almost cheaper than Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

KIZUNA SATELLITE INTERNET

We complaint that Streamyx is no good. Yet, the Japanese space agency (JAXA) in February had launched Kizuna, will streaming the fastest satellite Internet connections ever - a staggering 1.2gigabits per second all over the remotes land of Japan and some part of the South East Asia. Amazingly, it is capabla of adjusting its signal in changing weather and specific regions.

HITACHI ULTRATHIN TV

We knew its coming and it did. As compared to the standard 4" LCD flat screen TV, this one is now slimmed to only 1.5", even shorter than your thumb!! New diffusers allowed evenly spread of light to create a sharper image. It is also use up less electricity power supply to operate.

BAHRAIN WORLD TRADE CENTER

This 787-foot office tower is the first skyscrapper to intergrate the large scale wind turbines of three 1200-megawatt. Therefore it is the first wind-powered towers in the world. To maximize the energy output, the towers wind funnels are created in taper-shape to supply 15% of the electricity usage of the twin towers.

BOEING ADVANCED TACTICAL LASER

Remember those actions flick from Star Wars with laser beaming as the weapon. Yes, this lasers-emitting airplane was introduced on Boeing's 18-ton chemical laser fired a beam from a c-130H aircraft and destroying the target successfully. The advantage of beam over a bomb is that it is more precise and no collateral damage, that is what they claimed.

INTEL CORE 2 DUO MINI CHIP

The Intel's idea for creating a smaller mini chip processors have helped to edge the creation of world's thinnest laptop in the light sof Apple MacBook Air, Lenoco X300 and others. Compared to normal Intel Core 2 Duo chip, this one is 60% smaller. It sized at only 0.76 square inch - that is very small if you can't imagine how small it is.

MICROSOFT PHOTOSYNTH

Pictures are always in 2D. How about turning it into a visionary 3D presentation. This websites uses ordinary pictures, coupled with analyzer that enable to recoprd shots of overlapping areas and piece them together in a high resolution and sharper art define picture. It uses the art of algorithm to squeeze these pictures into well-fitting size.

CASIO EXILIM EX-F1

How to make the world stand still. Imagine this little camera essentially snap-up pictures before you even push the shutter button. Auto-filled with memory of 60 six-megapixel photos every second andit is able to capture slow motion video at up to 1200 frames per second. So talking about capturing anything that is faster than the human speed itself. I reckon picturing a lightning event first. The price tag is around US$ 1,000.

EYE-Fi WIRELESS SD CARD

Now your Wi-fi transmitter is as small as a chip of 2-GB memory card. Serious!! This products allow a camera to automatically beam photos to a computer and instantly uploaded into the web as well. It also can use the Wi-fi to find the location and to geo-tag the photos for display on map. Sounds complicated, I know.

LIVESCRIBE PULSE PEN

Imagine a pen that can listens. Pulse uses the same technology to track its location on specially printed paper, but it pairs the text with an audio recording. Lets say you are in hurry, jot only cursory notes while the pen records every sound except the paper scratching. Later tap the pan to the pad or click with the mouse on a screen to select the notes and to hear what people had just said. Cool for lectures but it costs US$ 150.

ZINK IMAGING

Years ago, Polaroid camera was ceased in production. Thanks to this new technology, Zink Polaroid is out. Its like a camera with a built-in printer that instantly print out the picture, ala the polaroid camera. It started in 2005 when a group of former Polaroid employees formed Zink (short for “zero ink”) Imaging, with Herchen as chief technology officer. They converted a Konica Minolta paper factory to make paper embedded with the heat-activated dyes and recruited Alps Electric to build the printer. Zink is licensing the technology so companies can build printers directly into devices such as digital cameras

ROCKET RACING LEAGUE X RACER

NASCAR is sometimes interesting despite those racers are driving around the oval circuit for like 200 laps. Last August, the first rocket race league flew for a live audience. Using a piston pump to pressurize fuel instead of a conventional (and much more expensive) turbopump, it is a big step toward more-affordable rocket-powered flight.

SCHOELLER COLDBLACK

Most black colour clothing absobrs heat from the Sun about 90% rate. But somehow, theseblack clothing made by the Schoeller are actually reflecting the heat like the white one. How? We do not know sionce the company keep it as a secret. Independent test shows that the clothing are somehow cooler than normal while held under infrared lamps. Another best thing is that these clothes are protective against harmful UV rays with ncorporating UPF 30+.

For the long list of Top 100 innovations, go to MSNBC science and technology section or directly to PopSci web site.

When Nightmare Become An Idea!!

Last night was a restless one. Don't ask why? Okay, I'll tell you why!! I had a dream or rather a nightmare which when I thought back, looks very much like a draft for a new TV drama series. The events in my nightmare looked pretty much like those on "Lost". 

Yes, the drama series about a group of people surviving in some mysterious island with some unexplainable events happening. Well, I'm not a fan of "Lost" and I'm curious how on earth I got this kind of dream!! 

So you ask, can a nightmare really can be turned into one of the craziest idea you will ever have in your life? My answer is why not!! And, here's how....

The "Untitled" Drama Series Project by Bernard Green-Tea

Episode 1 : PILOT

Location: An remorse island somewhere 467km east of Tahiti in Pacific Ocean

Date: Present

Mission: The Teddy Of The East

I'm...err...I dunno my character's name. I was supposed to be the only Asian in the team, probably looked more like Korean. Anyway, I was part of the 16 team members consisted of biologist and scientist on an expedition to an uncharted and remorse island. The team is headed by someone I'm pretty familiar off. 

I bet I saw him instructed me doing this and that...LOL. Anyway, our exedition was sponsored by an anoynymous rich guy whom none of us knew. But we are definitely clear that our mission is to search for the mysterious existence of Teddy Bear on that island. The rich guy only contacted our leader, whom our leader didn't even knew our sponsor, who was he and what was his motive. So we set apart from Los Angeles and reached Wellington, then took a chartered flight to the island. The island is no where to be found on the map. The pilot had difficulty to locate the area, then only to realize that we are running out of gas. He had no choice but to make an emergency landing on a barley field on that island. It was rough flight and the landing made me felt uneasy and nauseated.

So, we hiked for 2 miles across the large mysterious barley field, climbed a hill and we reached on the peak, only to find an old hut stood still there. The hut will be our station base. Only after 30 minutes on the base, one of our team member.......yes, he is our GPS guy! He detected that our GPS located some unidentified objects passing through our area at the radius of 2km. Sensing the danger, we decided to took our weapon together with our scientific gears. Arriving at the designated area, we found a trail of large footprints...been a animal expert, I told them these aren't bears' and there might be more than 5 of those. Our leader suggested us to walk and follow the path. Suddenly the trail ends when it reached the river bank. We were at dead-end.

After much arguement, we decided to cross the river. No current, the river looked calm, with water at our waist level. Our GPS guy insisted we should cross the river to check on the trail. "The water looks calm, but just don't be fooled by it". Suddenly one of our member been attacked by something. Someone yelled, "It's a piranha, get your weapon". I don't know how many, but I can see a swarm of fishes with canines, came and attacking. "Everyone, run back to the shore". We made an escape and managed to save our friend. He was severely hurt, bitten on his leg by the piranha. We made it to the land, but then we found out that those fishes were making landfall as well. "These fishes can come up to land?" We started to load and shoot on our shot guns. 

Been irritated by the piranhas, we had no choice but to blow those fishes with our C4s and grenades. "This is getting too much", yelled the Biomolecular Lady. Meanwhile, our friend whom was bitten was treated. Our leader suggested that we should be back to our base, and we made oour way back. I noticed some changes to our poor friend and I enlightened them about his condition. He started to become "fury and hairy". We were all surprised but our medical officer took his blood sample for analysis. We were still puzzled by what had just happened at the river bank and what had happened to our friend. We almost reached our base, when we suddenly heard a loud roar nearby...."It's a Teddy Bear!!"

..........

THE END

What the hell was that supposed to be...Seriously my dream was something like that but I changed a bit of the details here and there. Suddenly I realized that our GPS Guy looked like him...

Oh great, talking bullshit session.