That’s the idea behind one designer’s concept for a Fujitsu Lifebook, which would come with slots for a smartphone, digital camera, and tablet, for them all to all work together as one super device. The unique concept, dubbed "Lifebook 2013," comes from designer Prashant Chandra, who submitted the design to a competition held by Fujitsu. The laptop would feature fitted slots for various smart devices, but those aren’t for your standard connectivity. Attaching a gadget to the Lifebook would bring all it’s functions to the computer, including using its own processor to run some of the laptop’s functions.

Fitting the digital camera to the front would mean pictures could be downloaded to the computer or other devices. Sliding in the smartphone/mp3 player would allow music to be played and other data to be shared across devices. The Lifebook 2013 concept doesn’t have a keyboard itself, since an tablet becomes the keyboard once slotted into place. The tablet can also be used as a second display (like a larger Nintendo DS) or as a digital sketchpad with a stylus. Aside from potentially reducing the overall cost, another advantage to this setup would be that all the devices can be synced and updated simultaneously from the same hub.

"The proposed Lifebook is a laptop computer concept based on the principle of ‘shared hardware,’" explains Chandra. "Currently a lot of hardware is wasted when we use separate devices, as there is often a lot of ‘repeat’ of data stored and features. For example if I have my songs on my music player, why do I have to block the same amount of storage on my laptop? Similarly, if I have a processor sitting in my tablet, why can it not also run/assist my laptop? If I have a fully functional camera with its own memory and image processing power, why do I need to have it repeated in my laptop?"

Put this way it sounds like a logical step forward for the next generation of laptops, though there is the obvious question of being limited to the concept’s constituent devices, which would clearly be a bit limiting for the consumer.

A new, truly 360-degree 3-D display has been developed by researchers at Osaka University. The fog display is created by three projectors each beaming a different image into a column of thin fog, making the resulting image appear 3-dimensional from all angles. This technique means that viewers can physically walk around the display to see it from different vantage points without losing the 3-D effect.

As we see in the video, the image quality is still a little shaky, but researchers say their next step is to make the technology “more stable.” Applications for the 360-Degree Observable Fog Display are not exactly clear, but researcher Asuka Yagi says in the video that they hope to apply it in “healthcare and entertainment.” The project was inspired by amusement park fog displays, so we can only hope that means one day your children will be taking pictures with 3-D fog princesses at theme parks.

The Klang speaker concept proposes using ultrasound to direct and focus audio only where it’s required

Rather than sound being pumped out from a loudspeaker in all directions, the Klang speaker concept proposes using a low level ultrasound to direct the audio only where it’s required, leaving silence everywhere else. Such a system might allow audio output from a television to be sent to a different place in a room to sound from a hi-fi, allowing each listener to enjoy the experience without inconveniencing the other.

Industrial designer Adam Moller told Gizmag that while researching audio equipment for a six week speaker system project, he stumbled upon an online video featuring inventor Woody Norris. The successful tinkerer was demonstrating his Hypersonic speakers – a system that beams ultrasound at frequencies above the range of human hearing in a narrow column. This approach means that instead of being created at the speaker cone, sound is generated at billions of points along the path of the ultrasound beam where the high-frequency waves mix with "corruptions" in the air and are broken down to an audible range. The result: only those in the path of the beam can hear the sound.

Norris’ directional systems are already used by the military as a type of "sound canon" but it’s the potential consumer audio applications – where sound can be generated right next to the listeners ear – which grabbed Moller’s attention.

"I was immediately inspired," said Moller. "I saw technology that had the potential to connect people to their audio like never before. I also saw an opportunity to take it one step further by making the signal spread adjustable. By having the signal originate at a single node and directing it into a dish, the node’s relative position to the focal point of the dish determines the spread of the sound. This means you can focus the sound on just yourself, or spread the signal to fill a wider area if you have company. Now you can have the privacy of traditional headphones without the wires, discomfort, and isolation."

Such a system would also allow those looking for true binaural sound to point one transmitter at the left ear and the other at the right and enjoy faithful audio reproduction and without worrying about disturbing those around them. Sound absorbing objects within a room that can make or break great audio reproduction are almost completely taken out of the picture.

The Klang Ultrasonic Speakers are, sadly, just a concept model at the moment – created using a 3D printer with lathe-turned brass and instacast pieces. Moller says that the "underlying goals of this project were to get people to rethink what personal audio means to them, and to show where sound technology could be in the future."

With the ability to direct and control audio already being available thanks to Norris, that future may not be too far off.

Blinput would allow the visually impaired to navigate its menu system using hand gestures

Smartphones have already proven their worth as navigation devices for sighted people but a new concept aims to go even further for the vision impaired. Dubbed blinput, the system would allow visually impaired people to not only find their way around, but also interact with the connected world using the smartphone’s camera to gather context relevant information that would then be relayed to the user through a pair of headphones.

The blinput system would see a visually impaired person wearing a smartphone around their neck with the camera facing out and a pair of headphones that would produce audio in 3D. With sound being an even more important sense for the visually impaired, these would be open headphones to allow ambient noise to be heard.

To navigate the system’s controls the user would hold their hand in front of the phone’s camera and scroll through options, which are read out to them, by moving their hand up or down and select options with a pinch of their fingers. This simple user interface would not only allow them to get directions, but would also allow them to interact with devices such as vending or ticket machines that are embedded with RFID or Bluetooth.

Additionally, the concept envisages stores installing beacons to allow visually impaired shoppers to easily find items. Once the user has found their way to the desired product range they can then identify specific products by holding up the item’s barcode to the smartphone camera.

Because all the context specific information is stored on the blinput servers and not the phone itself, users are also able to make their own posts for others or listen to other’s location-specific posts pointing out things such as potential obstacles or points of interest.

The system can also alert the users to when friends are nearby and direct them in that direction using 3D audio. The system would then use facial recognition to analyze the person’s emotions and translate this into a particular pattern of vibration – one pattern for happy and another for sad, for example.

Although the blinput system, which is the brainchild of Norwegian designer Erik Hals, is still in its early stages and would require some cash investment to be developed further, most of the technology required already exists. In fact, one of the biggest current obstacles would be finding batteries capable of keeping the smartphone camera on for extended periods. Still, it might not be long before such a system becomes a valuable tool for the visually impaired.

IBM has announced its fifth annual Next Five in Five – a list of five technologies that the company believes “have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years.” While there are no flying cars or robot servants on the list, there are holographic friends, air-powered batteries, personal environmental sensors, customized commutes and building-heating computers.

3D telepresence

It may not be a flying car, but it’s definitely one we’ve seen in sci-fi movies before – the ability to converse with a life-size holographic image of another person in real time. The futurists at IBM point to recent advances in 3D cameras and movies, predicting that holography chat (aka 3D telepresence) can’t be all that far behind. Already, the University of Arizona has unveiled a system that can transmit holographic images in near-real-time.

It is also predicted that 3D visualization could be applied to data, allowing researchers to “step inside” software programs (wasn’t that just in a movie?), computer models, or pretty much anything else that is limited by a simple 2D screen. IBM compares it to the way in which the Earth appears undistorted when we experience it first-hand in three dimensions, yet it appears pinched at the top and bottom when we see it on a two-dimensional world map.

Air-powered or non-existent batteries

Lithium-air batteries are already in the works, and IBM predicts that batteries “that use the air we breath to react with energy-dense metal” will result in smaller, lighter rechargeable batteries that last ten times longer than today’s lithium-ion variety. While such batteries could be used in everything from cars to home appliances, it is also suggested that small items such as mobile phones might not need batteries at all. IBM is trying to reduce the amount power required for such devices to less than 0.5 volts per transistor. At those rates, it is claimed, they could be powered via “energy scavenging” – like already-existing kinetic wrist watches that get their power from the user’s arm movements, or experimental piezoelectric devices.

Personal sensors creating “citizen scientists”

As it currently stands, most scientific data must be gathered by scientists, who have to go out in the field and set up sensors or other data recording devices. Within five years, however, a lot of that data could be gathered and transmitted by sensors in our phones, cars, wallets, computers, or just about anything else that is subjected to the real world. Such sensors could be used to create massive data sets used for everything from fighting global warming to tracking invasive species. IBM also sees custom scientific smartphone apps playing a part in “citizen science,” and has already launched an app called Creek Watch, that allows us regular folks to update the local water authority on creek conditions.

Customized commutes

Invaluable as Mapquest and other online mapping services have become to many of us, apparently it’s just the tip of the iceberg. In the not-so-distant future, says IBM, sensors and other data sources (such as the aforementioned citizen scientists, perhaps?) will provide a continuous stream of information on traffic conditions, road construction, public transit schedules, and other factors that could affect your commute. When you inquire about the quickest way of getting from A to B, computer systems will do more than simply consulting a map – they will also take into account all the variables unique to that day and time, combine them with mathematical models and predictive analytics technologies, and advise a route accordingly. It is also possible that, utilizing such data, traffic management systems could learn traffic patterns, and self-adjust themselves to minimize congestion.

Harvesting computer heat

It is estimated that half of the energy consumed by data centers goes toward cooling computer processors, with most of the removed hot air simply being blown into the atmosphere. Instead, IBM sees that heat being captured to warm the air in other areas of the building, to heat water, or to be converted into electricity. The company has already developed an on-chip water-cooling system for computer clusters, which is being demonstrated on the Swiss Aquasar supercomputer. It utilizes a network of microfluidic capillaries inside a heat sink, attached to the surface of each chip. Water flows within a few microns of the semiconductor material, picks up heat from it, then pipes the warm water to a heat exchanger – from there, the cooled water returns to the computers, within a closed loop system.

As with last year’s list, given that all of these technologies are already in experimental use, it’s a pretty good bet that they will indeed one day find their way our lives. Whether that day is within the next five years, however, is another question.

Someday, This Tree Could Be Producing Its Own Light nauright on Flickr

Taiwanese researchers have come up with the elegant idea of replacing streetlights with trees, by implanting their leaves with gold nanoparticles. This causes the leaves to give off a red glow, lighting the road for passersby without the need for electric power. This ingenious triple threat of an idea could simultaneously reduce carbon emissions, cut electricity costs and reduce light pollution, without sacrificing the safety that streetlights bring.

As many good things do, this discovery came about by accident when the researchers were trying to create lighting as efficient as LEDs without using the toxic, expensive phosphor powder that LEDs rely on. The gold nanoparticles, shaped like sea urchins, put into the leaves of Bacopa caroliniana plants cause chlorophyll to produce the reddish luminescence.

In an added bonus, the luminescence will cause the leaves’ chloroplasts to photosynthesize, which will result in more carbon being captured from the air while the streets are lit. The next steps are to improve the efficiency of the bioluminescence and apply the technology to other biomolecules.

Carl Zeiss has been making their Cinemizer video glasses for a few years, but now they added 3D capability for home theater and gaming applications.

The Cinemizer Plus video glasses have a tiny 16:9 format OLED screen in each eyepiece, with a native resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. The resulting field of view is the same as watching a 45-inch screen from a distance of about 6.5 feet, so it should be a pretty cinematic experience. A small external box connects to a variety of playback sources including recent iPods and iPhones, along with many other phones and video players, various game consoles, laptops, and Blu-ray players.

One nice touch is that eyeglass wearers have a separate diopter adjustment for each eyepiece, so you won’t be trying to wear them on top of your regular glasses as with some of those shutter glasses for 3D TV sets.

Battery life is about 4 hours which covers most movies, and the battery is charged through its USB connection. Still, this sounds like the perfect entertainment companion for any longish airline trip.

The Sea Kettle concept life raft not only aims to provide shelter from the elements but also drinking water from the sea

The thought of folks suffering from extreme dehydration whilst stranded in a life raft at sea got industrial designer Kim Hoffman thinking of a way to turn all that sea water into safe, drinkable, life-saving refreshment. She took inspiration from portable desalination tools and created the Sea Kettle concept, a colorful life raft that uses heat from the sun to evaporate salty water and collect condensed run off in containers within the raft’s structure.

According to Hoffman, a product design graduate of San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, the Sea Kettle "is a life raft that combines safety, accessibility, and a desalination process. In an emergency at sea, you may not be able to obtain fresh drinking water before being forced to abandon ship. Passengers could easily die of thirst or from extreme temperatures before they are rescued or reach land."

As well as providing both insulation and shelter from the elements, the Sea Kettle would feature a number of hand pumps within the cabin. With these, the lucky survivors would draw up sea water into a Gortex covered plastic reservoir. Both the reservoir and the cover would be black to help concentrate the sun’s heat onto the water contained therein.

As the evaporated water hits the top of the cover, vapor escapes through the Gortex but the larger water molecules are condensed and the droplets run into four pockets around the raft, filling them up with drinkable water. Hoffman states that the process should provide enough drinking water for up to five people.

The designer says that the desalination process used in the Sea Kettle design was inspired by the Watercone, a portable solar still where salty/brackish water is poured into the base and the cone floated on top. The black pan base helps cater for the evaporation of the water, which condenses to form droplets on the inside of the cone. The droplets trickle down into a trough. A cap at the tip of the cone is unscrewed and the cone turned upside down to pour the drinking water into a suitable container.

Hoffman has entered her design in this year’s James Dyson Award competition and will know shortly whether it’s made it through to the next round, the first shortlist being announced on August 3. The overall winner will be crowned in October and will walk away with GBP10,000 (approx. US$15,682), a visit to one of the Dyson R&D centers and the Award trophy. If appropriate, the University Department to which the winning designer or team belongs will also receive GBP10,000.

Of course the whole life-saving process sort of depends on a Sea Kettle ending up in a location where there’s sufficient heat to evaporate the collected sea water. Rafters may still find themselves a bit parched if their Sea Kettle bobs around in stormy, bitter cold Titanic-type situations. That said, marine accidents are not just restricted to icy northern waters and I would rather take my chances in a Sea Kettle than one without built-in solar desalination.

Aerial Rendering of Recycled Island Recycled Island Project

It’s an ambitious recycling project to be sure, but Dutch visionaries want to turn the Pacific Garbage Patch into a self-sufficient, green island paradise that draws its resources from the ocean and the garbage floating therein.

“Recycled Island” would be a nearly 4,000-square-mile oasis with three primary goals: to recycle all the plastic floating in the water there, to use that material to establish a seaworthy island, and to ensure the island is self-sustaining. Roughly the size of Hawaii’s big island, it would be its own nation with its own laws. Residents of the island would harvest seaweed to create fertilizer for crops and food for fish farms, as well as to make biofuels and medicines. Meanwhile, chemicals could be extracted from the toxic water in the trash patch.

Over time, so the plan says, the island would feed off the patch until it ceased to be the disgusting environmental mess that it is. And while it seems like a pretty far-fetched scheme at this point, organizers are looking to recruit the right scientists that can help them take the first steps toward recycling the patch into useful materials. Even if a paradise island doesn’t rise out of the ocean, perhaps by putting their heads together these scientists and engineers will figure out a feasible way to clean up the mess before things get too much worse.

Equatorial Megacontinent Witold Fraczek

What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning? We don’t have any reason to think it will in the next few million millennia, but Witold Fraczek, an employee of geographic imaging software company ESRI, was curious. He used ArcGIS, the company’s flagship software, to build a virtual model of the planet in the absence of centrifugal force.

Currently, the spin of our planet (it goes 1,667 kilometers per hour at the equator) pulls the mass of water toward the equator, creating an unsightly ellipsoidal bulge, and the oceans we are familiar with.

Fraczek modeled the gradual change in the planet’s geography that would happen as Earth slowed to a halt. As the spin stopped, the oceans would all fall back toward the poles, drowning everything north of Chicago and south of Buenos Aires and creating two massive circumpolar oceans. Wrapped around the middle of the planet would be a single equatorial megacontinent, with giant dry valleys where the old Atlantic and Pacific used to be. The immobile planet would be a perfect, if somewhat mountainous, sphere.