Word: gadget
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...months ago, Sanyo introduced a washing machine that it says can clean clothes using only water, ultrasonic waves and electrolysis. No detergent necessary. The machine is environmentally friendly, and gadget-happy Japanese have snapped up more than 30,000 units. But now Sanyo's pitch is being refuted by the Japan Soap and Detergent Association, which says the machine doesn't clean well and can damage clothes. Sanyo says it has no immediate plans to market the product--which has an optional detergent cycle--in the U.S. But Brian Sansoni, a spokesman for the $8.5 billion soap industry, is taking...
Surely enough, cultural critics have trumpeted the detrimental impact of the cell phone on society. Are we not disingenuous hedons, appropriating a gadget with the pretext of boosting efficiency, when in fact we use that technology for useless chit-chat? Even the most avid cell phone apologists concede that this is a rhetorical question. Of course cell phones are mostly frivolous and only occasionally useful. Ultimately, users argue, the cell phone is a benign force, and on the rare occasion that it seems absolutely necessary (“Where are you, I’m outside Mather?...
CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK The Jumbo Music Block ($60, for ages 1 and up) is designed to be Baby's first gadget. Made by Neurosmith, which specializes in tech for tykes, it's a plush cube 14 in. on a side--that's about waist high on a toddler--and covered with bright, colorful touch-sensitive shapes, each of which hides a secret pocket. It's designed to teach music and motor skills: touch a shape, and it plays a maddeningly perky tune...
LIGHT FANTASTIC The hot new gadget at this week's National Hardware Show in Chicago is a breakthrough in...night-light technology? Yep, the Elumina Dimmable, available this fall for $5.99, is the most sophisticated device of its kind ever made. Its features include 10 brightness settings, an extra-long life-span and a special sheath that extends to cover the night-light's plug when it is removed from its outlet--to reduce the risk of bedtime shocks...
Using an atomic force microscope and a quaint gadget called the laser tweezer, Bustamante found a way around such limits. The microscope reads the topography of molecules by trailing a fine needle over their surfaces--much as a phonograph reads the grooves of a record. Coat the needle with an appropriate chemical, however, and you convert it into a grapple for manipulating molecules. Laser tweezers, meanwhile, trap molecules and particles in a tightly focused beam of light. Move the beam and you move the object...