TrendCentral: Getting a waiter’s or bartender’s attention during a busy weekend rush can pose a real, and often irritating, challenge. The Draqie has arrived to potentially alleviate such frustration. Part dinner table and part waiter, it’s an interactive table that provides restaurant patrons with the ability to view and order from a touch-sensitive, digitized menu. The glass surface reacts only to finger touches, meaning an accidental swipe of cutlery or dishes won’t unintentionally beckon a server. Furthermore, participating establishments can include photos and descriptions of menu items so that customers can make their selections without any fear of mystery ingredients or allergic reactions.

Tabletop Touchdown [TrendCentral]

Popgadget: We love this very clever yet simple concept from Gong Huachao and Wang Hui, which adds a numberpad to your laptop with the help of a special sticker and a program. Ideal for those that use numbers a lot day-to-day and miss a dedicated numberpad for quick sums.

Add a numberpad to your laptop [Popgadget]

Cool ideas are one thing, but for true innovations in technology, the ones that rapidly spread and find near immediate adoption, there generally needs to be a “tipping point” reached by advances in a host of supportive technologies before ignition really takes place. There are ample stories in books and the press about connections and inter-dependencies that have come together to produce everything from radios to lasers to even the latest craze for computerized tablets. For the solar power industry, the tipping point for its breakout has suffered from constant delays along the way.

Yes, solar has come a long way, and yes, many investors have profited handsomely over the past few years if they got in on the ground floor. Lately, however, the industry has been in the doldrums, and future prospects do not look good since the largest market for the products happens to be Europe, a stagnating region already cutting back on imports. Innovation can spark growth under even the worst of circumstances, however, and one “old” idea seems to have caught fire if you wish to believe recent press releases about it.

At a recent electronics trade show in Japan, 3M presented its apparent breakthrough in solar window films. Costing 50 to 70% less than current fully installed solar panels, the innovation is seen as a financial boon for homes, buildings, and even cars, for that matter. Energy is the planet’s “Mother” of all markets, topping $6 trillion on a worldwide basis. Solar has struggled to make inroads, but innovations in storage batteries and connecting to local utility grids have held it back, while the efficiency of the cells themselves has always been suspect.

3M is not touting great advances in efficiency, and it expects to release something new in the battery arena next year. For now, a 3 to 8% efficiency rating is the output, but 3M asserts that, “A square meter under full sun can generate enough power to recharge a smart-phone.” The window films, however, will also help cool offices or homes, adding further to their appeal.

The elders among us may recall high school science projects in the seventies touting the stellar future for solar energy, but we can also remember another industry that took off when all the “stars” lined up in the eighties. Many aspiring entrepreneurs got their business plans together, ran out to get a small business loan, and made millions. The location was Florida. Illicit drugs were flowing through the state, causing a crime wave that swept through the region and beyond. Security and alarm systems were in big demand, and installations spread as quickly as you could splice two wires together.

3M may not have the perfect answer, but a small firm outside of Washington, DC, recently demonstrated before physicists, academics, and the press that its product leapfrogs the “titans” at 3M, both in efficiency and installation costs. It’s time to get a small business loan.

This post is a sponsored blog post.

Popgadget: We’ve heard of near field communication or NFC technology being used to make mobile payments (go check out Google Wallet if you haven’t already), but a student from the University of Sydney has integrated this kind of simple, transactional technology into tables at restaurants so that customers can quickly and easily order food.

Basically, stickers are placed on a table and then people can use their devices to tap them, pull up a menu on the screen, place an order AND make a payment all in one go without them even having to move. It’s convenient, innovative, but possibly a little lazy!

Brand Table uses NFC technology to order food [Popgadget]

Ecoterre: German researchers are putting the “Windows” into after-hours window shopping, an activity that has been strictly “look, but don’t touch”—at least, until the stores reopen in the morning. At the recent IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, representatives from the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute unveiled an interactive “Shop Window” system that allows would-be customers to learn more about the products in a display, no matter the time of day (or night). Using a Microsoft Kinect-like sensor that recognizes common gestures, window shoppers can learn more about a product simply by pointing at it.

Window Shopping Goes High-Tech With Motion-Sensing Interactive Displays [Ecoterre]

Electricity bills up 15%, gas bills up 19% when will it stop.

Electricity Saving Devices are responsible for thousands of companies saving money on their utility bills. The ERD (electricity reduction device)  can save customers as much as 15% (+) on their electric bill every month without sacrificing normal energy consumption and the comforts it provides.

There are many different types of electrical equipment which affect the electricity supply in different ways. Some electrical loads have a bad power factor, which results in higher electrical current flowing, irrespective of whether that is heating, lighting, mechanical power, ventilation, etc.

This means your electricity bills are much higher than they should be.  Power Factor can be regarded as a measure of “efficiency” and has values ranging from 0 to 1, where 1 is 100% efficient.

Our  equipment improves this “efficiency” so that less electrical current is needed to achieve the same result.   By improving the efficiency we can lower your bills.

Your Electricity Bills

All industrial and commercial electricity users have to pay for the energy they use. The bills that you receive are based on a number of factors:

• KWH Units
• Fuel Surcharge
• Maximum Demand
• Availability Charge
• Reactive Power

You are always charged for the first and often pay for one or more of the others – it all depends upon the tariff that you are on.  Companies with high electrical loads often have a reduced power factor.  A low power factor can cause undesirable effects such as increased electricity costs charged by their supplier.

How we can help you REDUCE your electricity bills

Our Equipment (LV & MV) and Harmonic Filters reduce charge on your electricity bills and the savings made cover the cost of the equipment supplied, often in as short a period as four months.  The Equipment will then continue to save you money for the next 15 to 20 years. Return on capital is enormous, running costs are nil – no emissions, effluent or waste products.

You Save Money. We All Win.

Money isn’t all that you are saving. It’s an energy-wise purchasing decision with many positive environmental implications. Even a small installation can reduce their CO2 emission by a few tones per year, and on large building the emission reduction can be substantial.

For more information visit http://www.tell-me-first.com/electricity_saving.htm  or e-mail info@tell-me-first.com

This post is a sponsored blog post.

TrendCentral: For those suffering from a constant influx of newsletters, store promotions, and too many daily deals to count, OtherInbox can separate the wheat from the chaff. This browser add-on works with pre-existing Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or AOL email accounts, analyzing, filtering, labeling, and archiving incoming mail to maximize inbox efficiency. An automated organizer categorizes messages and sends users a Daily Digest report, giving the breakdown of emails that didn’t make it into the main inbox.

Inbox Overload [TrendCentral]

The future of lower heating bills has arrived. Hot water and central heating costs are unavoidable and becoming increasingly expensive but they can easily be managed keeping the size of your bills to the bare minimum. FUELmaster could provide the answer.

There are many ways to achieve lower fuel bills which range from changing your fuel supplier to the installation of cavity wall and loft insulation. How economical is your boiler?

Fuelmaster works equally well with boilers that burn Gas, Oil or LPG fuels, works on residential and semi-commercial boilers.

We at Tell Me First  have what is arguably one of the most effective, least expensive and quickest ways customers can maximise fuel cost savings with the minimum of financial outlay and causing the least inconvenience to install. A typical return on product investment can be achieved in less than 12 months.

Welcome to the “State of the Art” boiler efficiency manager.

Fuelmaster is a product that can significantly reduce the amount of fuel used by boilers by reducing and eliminating a wasteful process known within the heating and boiler industry as Dry Cycling, Short Cycling, Rapid Cycling or Boiler Cycling.

What is Dry Cycling?

This unnecessary firing process happens when the boiler is activated by its own internal thermostat to simply reheat the hot water held within itself. This hot water is not circulated around the system until an external thermostat asks the boiler to fire up properly to provide hot water to the required destination. These short intermittent firings are a highly wasteful process known by all boiler manufacturers and members of the heating industry. They can be compared to you boiling your kettle 3 or 4 times to make 1 cup of coffee or driving your car to its destination and leaving the engine running afterwards. You just would not do it so why let your boiler waste valuable money on expensive fuel and produce unnecessary. carbon emissions.

You can benefit from

1. Much lower fuel bills reduced by at least 20%
2. Far less boiler pollution by an average of 1.5 metric tonnes per year
3. Greater Boiler efficiency helping to extend boiler life
4. In many cases the boiler becomes quieter to run
5. Fast payback on product cost (less than 12 months for an average home)
6. Fuelmaster is portable so you can take it with you should you move home
7. Simple, safe and quick installation with no mess
8. 20 years or more of reliable fuel saving service
9. No product service or maintenance requirements
10. You have made a profitable and helpful but inexpensive investment

For more information please go to http://www.tell-me-first.com/fuel_master.htm, or e-mail infor@tell-me-first.com or call +357 22 879 424 (GMT +2)

This post is a sponsored blog post.

Popgadget: A new ‘social x-ray’ glasses concept dreamed up by Rosalind Picard from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can identify human expressions, including whether someone is thinking, agreeing, disagreeing or confused.

A tiny camera inside the glasses works by tracking certain points on a person’s face which it then runs through special software. This software compares what’s going on at each point to a big database of faces and known expressions. The glasses then somehow tell you which kind of expression the person has.

You’d imagine that most people can pick up on these kinds of social cues automatically, but according to New Scientist we often miss important expressions because they’re so small and quick. The glasses could also be a huge help to people that find it hard to understand different expressions, like those living with autism.

Glasses that can read expressions [Popgadget]

Gizmodiva: This isn’t February but romance is in the air. The Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications is conducting research into tactile communications, with the aim of creating a device which can successfully pass on the feeling of a kiss. Basically if you take the device in your mouth and turn it with your tongue, then your partner’s device turns in the same way. This action is achieved by motor rotations, and you control the rotation positions via PC. It seems very real as it recreates almost all the elements of a kiss include the sense of taste, the manner of breathing, and the moistness of the tongue.

Pass on a Kiss with the Kiss Transmission Device [Gizmodiva]

CNET: Remember those X-ray glasses advertised in the back of comic books? Imagine a handheld camera that can reveal the unseen, inner structures of everything from concrete bridges to body parts.

Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology under engineering professor Reza Zoughi have developed a patented device that can show the inner structures of objects in real time by using millimeter and microwave signals.

Potential applications include the detection of cancerous skin cells, termite damage to buildings, or concealed weapons at secure zones like airports.

See-through camera can image invisible objects [CNET]

TrendBird: Have you ever walked into a lamppost, or tripped over a small wall, because you’ve been so engrossed in a book you simply can’t put it down? Well it’s time to stop hurting yourself — introducing MegaReader 2.1 and its new ‘heads up display.’ Using any Apple device equipped with a camera and running iOS4, MegaReader now gives you the option of displaying the text of your favorite book as an overlay on top of a live view from your iDevice’s camera.

World’s First Head-Up Display eBook Reader [TrendBird]

Trends Updates: A new kiosk selling food created by Kraft answered the final question of who goes to the supermarket to buy dinner, “What do I want to eat?” Called “Meal Planning Solution”, the machine uses a facial scanner to see what you want to eat and make suggestions for recipes and products for purchase. It is one of the products in the Connected Store, Intel project which provides several solutions to transform spaces in the stores even more interesting.

The creation is based on the idea that 70% of Americans do not know what they want to buy in a supermarket to get there. The machine then makes suggestions to people, recommending dishes that go beyond the 10 most consumed in the country, ranging from pizza, spaghetti, hamburgers and chicken. Nevertheless, the suggestions of Kraft products always involve, of course.

The sensor of the machine scans the person’s face and sorts according to the group you find most appropriate: one can be a mother, for example, searching for something to make dinner for the family. A young boy could get a hint of pizza.

A machine that tells you what you want to eat [Trends Updates]

Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed software for mobile phones that can track your facial features in real-time. Eventually it will be able to tell who the user is, where they are looking and even how they are feeling.

The method is believed to be unrivalled for speed and accuracy and could lead to facial recognition replacing passwords and PIN numbers to log into internet sites from a mobile phone.