GEAR AND GADGETS Tasty Tech Eye Candy Of The Week

This week in tech, we present amazing concepts from exceptionally creative minds. These ideas are so good, you'll wonder why no one invented them before. How about germ-proof clothing? Odors that can be sent via text message? A car that comes with its own drone and a fish that's able to drive an aquarium. Those are just a few. Read on.

STRING JUNGLE GYM: Croatian-Austrian collective Numen/For Use is known for its large-scale interactive environments. The group's latest design is an inflatable building rigged with a network of cables. The String Prototype gives kids and adults alike a jungle gym experience. Climb aboard.

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Pillow Nudges Sleepers To Stop Snoring

Trying to sleep next to a snorer is a nightmare, with not much middle ground for solution. At best, bed mates can look forward to a night of interrupted rest and nudging the other to turn over. Worst case scenario, the snorer is diagnosed with sleep apnea and forced to wear one of thosesleep apnea masks.However, with its snore-triggered nudging pillow, goofy gadget emporium Hammacher Schlemmer may have what it takes for a peaceful night of slumber. The pillow includes a microphone that picks up the sonic vibrations of snoring. When snores are detected, an air bag inflates the pillow by three inches, enough to nudge the snorer into changing positions.The pillow’s microphone can be calibrated to detect light or heavy snoring. The inflation feature can also be controlled manually, if one’s partner wants to give the elbow nudging a rest.Unfortunately, the pillow in powered by an AC adapter, so it needs to be plugged in. Which, in my case, would be a real threat. With all the tossing and turning I do, having any type of power cord in bed is liable to tangle me up or destroy everything on the nightstand.

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Hummingbirds May Change Their Tunes to Attract Females

  

The male hummingbird is a dedicated suitor, returning to the same place every day for up to eight months a year to trumpet his availability–for as long as eight hours at a stretch. He’ll repeat his song two times per second, hoping for a female to heed his call.Hummingbirds’ songs are distinguished by more than just their duration; the birds are among a select group that learn their vocalizations (songbirds and parrots are the other two). Songs can vary by individual or by location, creating what scientists call “song neighborhoods” and “dialects.

”Scientists had long thought that male hummingbirds learned their song while young and then “crystallized” that melody for life.

But Marcelo Araya Salas and Timothy Wright, biologists at New Mexico State University, have recently observed some male long-billed hermit hummingbirds (Phaethornis longirostris)changing their tunes in Costa Rica, suggesting they are capable of learning new songs even later in life. (See hummingbird pictures.)

“In most cases this new song also matches those of neighbors,” says Wright, whose work is partly funded by a National Geographic Society grant. “But occasionally a male will develop a brand-new song type.” According to Wright, this marks “the first time such open-ended learning has been shown in a hummingbird.”

                                                               

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Fisker Assets Sold For $149 Million

The assets of bankrupt Fisker Automotive were sold to Wanxiang America at the close of an auction in Delaware bankruptcy court that lasted more than two days and lasted 19 rounds.

Bloomberg reports that the Chinese company paid a total of $149.2 million for the company, or six times the price of $25 million first offered by unsuccessful bidder Hybrid Tech Holdings, whose opening bid was $55 million as the auction began.Winning bidder Wanxiang is China's largest auto-parts group. It also owns A123 Systems, the lithium-ion cell maker whose batteries were used in the luxury range-extended electric Fisker Karma sedan.Hybrid Tech had sought to buy Fisker's assets privately; when Fisker filed for bankruptcy in November, it said it had agreed to that deal.

Hybrid's attempt to gain control of Fisker was spoiled by a late bid from Wanxiang, whereupon Hybrid Tech raised its bid to $55 million. Both Hybrid Tech and Fisker had sought to avoid an auction of the company's assets.But U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Kevin Gross chose instead to put those assets up for open public auction. Fisker's many unsecured creditors would have received little or nothing from the Hybrid Tech bid.

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Many Car Dealers Don't Want To Sell Electric Cars: Here's Why

The stories abound: A car buyer walks into a dealership, educated about the electric car she wants to buy...and the salesperson tries to convince her she doesn't want that car after all.

She really wants a gasoline car, he argues.Hundreds of cases have been reported of customers walking into a Nissan or Chevy dealer to buy a Leaf or Volt, then being aggressively steered toward a Sentra or Cruze.Doom, danger, dire predictions

A buyer will run out of charge and be left stranded at the side of the road, he hears, or that very expensive battery will have to be replaced in five years.

Then the electric demo car hasn't been recharged, so its electric range is minimal on the test drive. And so forth.

A recent discussion in a Facebook group prompted us to write, once more, about how car dealers work--and what motivates them to sell specific vehicles.The salient point is that it takes much longer to sell a plug-in electric car, today, than it does a gasoline or diesel vehicle.

Maximizing profit

And dealers maximize their profits by exploiting the difference in information about complex financial transactions between buyers who do it once every five or six years, on average, and salespeople who sell multiple cars a day.

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Honda Film: Controlling Air Pollution A 'Never-Ending Race'

The fight to improve air quality may not sound like fodder for a typical Hollywood blockbuster, but Honda has done its best to make the topic exciting.

The latest short film in the company's Environmental Short Film series--this one titled "Never Ending Race"--depicts Honda's efforts to respond to the far stricter Federal and state environmental legislation in the 1970s that resulted from efforts to improve the heavy air pollution in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

It was just like racing, the filmmakers say.

While Los Angeles was experiencing around 100 Stage One smog alerts a year, Honda had just ended several years of competition in Formula One racing.

According to Honda, the tightening of emissions standards that followed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 was a challenge similar to the competition of top-level racing.

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First-Ever Porsche Turns Out To Be An Electric Car

Here's a great piece of bar trivia: The first-ever Porsche was ... an electric car.

While any ardent Porschephile knows that the first Porsche-branded vehicle was the 356 sports carof 1948, the first car designed by Ferdinand Porsche was actually the 1898 "Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model," or the P1 for short.The P1 was recently recovered from a warehouse where it had reportedly sat untouched since 1902. 

It will be displayed in original, unrestored condition at the Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen, Germany.

Designed by Ferdinand Porsche when he was 22 years old, the P1--or Porsche, number one--is powered by a rear-mounted electric drive unit that produces 3 horsepower, harnessed to a 12-speed controller.

The 2,977-pound vehicle had a reported range of 49 miles, and could briefly reach a top speed of 21 mph when in "overdrive" mode, which extracted a full 5 hp from the motor.

One unique feature was the Lohner "alternating" body, which was designed to be detached from the chassis and swapped for another body depending on the driver's needs.

The P1 debuted on the streets of Vienna on July 26, 1898, and competed in the international motor-vehicle exhibition in Berlin the next year. Porsche and three passengers took part in a 24-mile race against other electric cars.

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