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Innovation / Technology

This personal robot can listen, talk, take photos and even feel temperature.

This Week in Crowdfunding

Five Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded: From an Automated Home Brewery to a Personal (Robot) Assistant

Two other quirky inventions teach music in novel ways

Spire’s Austin Ellis shows off a satellite frame at Spire's San Francisco headquarters. Components, like the weather sensor, stack on top of each other inside the frame. Solar panels and antennae fold out from the frame once the device is in orbit.

New Satellite Network Launching This Year Aims to Improve Weather Forecasting

With a network of compact, low-cost weather satellites with smartphone-like internals, startup Spire plans to make future forecasts a lot more reliable

A new hotel in Japan will have robots serving its front desks.

Japan Announces Plans for the First Hotel Run by Robots

Slated to open July 17, the hotel in a Japanese theme park will be staffed by “actroids”

Faced with the only high-cost options, Smithsonian researcher Whitman Miller began building his own portable, inexpensive monitoring stations.

Saving Money is Great, but Saving the Chesapeake Bay Will Be Even Better

Whitman Miller’s “off the shelf” technology may answer complicated questions about rising CO2 and ocean acidification

The Hemingwrite is a newfangled take on the old school typewriter, featuring cloud back-up.

This Week in Crowdfunding

Five Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded: From a Digital Typewriter to Treadmill-Powered Gaming

A Los Angeles group is also creating greeting cards with personalized audio messages from top celebrities

Cattleya aurantiaca

Orchidelirium, an Obsession with Orchids, Has Lasted for Centuries

The once-elusive flower’s striking beauty has inspired collectors and scientists to make it more accessible

What Is Bitcoin, Exactly?

A new book tells the backstory and provides an easy-to-understand explanation of the much buzzed-about cryptocurrency

Graphophone, recorded in October 1881. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I am a graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Voice of Alexander Graham Bell's father.

Until Now, There Was No Play Button for the Recordings Bell and Edison Made in their Lab

An exhibition on sound kicks off the American History Museum’s Year of Innovation, enabling visitors to hear some of the earliest recordings

The chart is less a literal representation of the sea, but more an abstract illustration of the ways that ocean swells interact with land.

The Innovative Spirit - OLD

How Sticks and Shell Charts Became a Sophisticated System for Navigation

Sailors navigating with sextant, compass and maps found in the Marshall Islands that curved sticks and cowry shells were far more sophisticated

WÜF’s dog collar keeps owners connected to their canine companions at all times by offering two-way communication, GPS tracking and exercise monitoring

Five Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded

Five Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded: From A Fitbit for Dogs to Soap Jewelry

Not to mention, a bizarre bike-treadmill hybrid meant to reduce the strain on runners’ joints

The Eko Core Bluetooth-enabled stethoscope accessory will let doctors share heart sounds for virtual consultations.

Tech Watch

This Smart Stethoscope Attachment Could Lead to More Accurate Diagnoses

Eko Core clips on to existing stethoscopes and lets physicians share heart sounds through their smartphones and the Web

Cholera Belt, Dodd & Monk, Albert Mill, Canal Street, Congleton, Cheshire, 1882. With little understood about the disease, there were many bogus treatments and preventative measures against cholera. "The cholera belt seems like the most unlikely protection," writes Halls. "However, it was believed that a chilled body could cause disease, and that keeping the stomach and abdomen warm could protect against bowel complaints."

10 Victorian Inventions That Never Quite Took Off

Flops from a “knife and fork cleaner” to a “cholera belt” provide a curious look at life in 19th century England

United States Internal Revenue Service "bottle stamp"

Museums Are Now Able to Digitize Thousands of Artifacts in Just Hours

At the American History Museum, a collection of rarely seen historic currency proofs are being made ready for a public debut

A startup called Roost is developing a WiFi-enabled battery that listens for an alarm and sends a message to your phone when your smoke detector blares.

Tech Watch

This Smart Battery Sends a Message to Your Phone When Your Smoke Detector Sounds

It also alerts you weeks in advance of dying—sparing you from that annoying chirp

The dark black lacquered center of the Ming Dynasty tray, surrounded by an elegant basket weave design, made it seem almost modern.

How Curators Found a Ghostly Image Lurking Beneath Layers of Lacquer

Work in the conservation lab revealed there was more to this Ming Dynasty tray than meets the eye

An Asian tiger mosquito in action.

New Research

Could GM Mosquitoes Pave the Way for a Tropical Virus to Spread?

Modified insects designed to stop dengue fever could make it easier for another disease-carrying species to take root

Dale A. Gardner, Space Shuttle Mission 51-A, George D. Guzzi Jr. This watercolor shows Dale Gardner tethered to the exterior of Space Shuttle Discovery. During that mission, Gardner and Joseph Allen donned jet-propelled maneuvering units on spacewalks to recover two malfunctioning satellites.

Space Exploration Would Be Nothing If We Didn’t Know How to Spacewalk

The Air and Space Museum brings the privileged experience to the public in an exhibit that chronicles 50 years of technology

Gogoro is releasing an electric Smartscooter, a lithium-ion battery pack and a charging station at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas.

Will Electric Scooters Take Over the World’s Mega Cities?

A well-funded startup called Gogoro unveils its e-scooter and a plan to install ATM-like battery stations in urban areas

(Clockwise from top left) Katrin Macmillan, Ashutosh Saxena, Richard Lunt and Horace Luke are hard at work on exciting new projects.

Eight Innovators to Watch in 2015

From food science and robotics to solar tech and sustainable architecture, these folks are poised to do big things

Kevin Ashton Describes “the Internet of Things”

The innovator weighs in on what human life will be like a century from now

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