The TableDrum app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch transforms rhythmic tapping on just about any surface into real-time virtual drum sounds

With a few notable exceptions, the fine art of tabletop tapping has been a purely non-digital experience for most people. Now, iDevice users can turn their rhythmic creations into real-time drum sounds, courtesy of the TableDrum app from Sweden’s Dohi Entertainment. Rather than have virtual drummers tap out the beat on touchscreen icons, this app uses the device’s microphone to pick out individual sounds made by thrumping on different surfaces, and allows the user to assign them to the various parts of a drum kit.

Who doesn’t like to while away the odd moment or two drumming away on a table, desk or counter top? The Table Drum Augmented Audio application allows iOS device users to turn that acoustic finger pounding into digitized drum sounds, in real time. The developers say that just about any real world object can be used to generate the sounds needed to make up the four piece drum kit. Each virtual pad can be assigned one of 40 drum samples.

With the app active on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you need to grab yourself some household, kitchen or office objects that happen to be lying around and place them within range of your device’s included (or external) microphone. The app recognizes the different sounds made by tapping each object with a pen, pencil or finger and each sound can then be assigned to one of the four drum pads on the screen – such as the top of an upturned coffee cup for the snare, the plastic casing of a computer mouse for the hi-hat or crash cymbal, the thud of a table top for bass drum, and so on.

"By altering sound through live interaction on an iOS device, TableDrum pushes the boundaries of table drumming" says Rasmus Larsson, Software Developer at Dohi Entertainment. "Users interact with objects in their surroundings, teaching the app their distinct drumming sounds, augmenting the input of up to four simultaneous sources into a complete drumming experience."

The TableDrum app comes supplied with a Classic Rock drum kit, but the library can be expanded to include samples from the Ethno and Jazz kit, and Electro and Glitch kit. As you can see from the following video demonstration, once the percussive objects have had drum samples assigned – you can turn your finger drumming into realistic rhythms:

It doesn’t have quite the appeal of sending a robot to do your shopping, but this Smart Cart service being trialed by SK Telecom could definitely take some of the hassle out of trolling the supermarket aisles. Just launched at the Shanghai Lotus Supermarket in China, the system consists of WiFi-enabled, tablet PC-equipped shopping carts and a smartphone app that can be synchronized with the tablet. By utilizing indoor positioning technology and augmented reality, the shopping "Smart" cart becomes a virtual shopping aide.

The Smart Cart application allows customers to search for shopping and discount information, store coupons, as well as to create a shopping list. After getting to the market, the app synchronizes with the tablet PC mounted to the cart’s handle, uploads the shopping list and authenticates the user. Wandering through the store’s aisles, customers get product and discount information linked to their current location within the store, which is established to within three feet via a WiFi network.

Provided the trial period in China is successful, SK Telecom is planning to build even more personalized service. The cart’s tablet PC could gather wide information on the clients’ habits, including analysis of their shopping history, to make product recommendations more accurate.

Further trials are also scheduled to be launched in Korea, in the second part of 2011.

Billed as "the world’s smallest true 3-way supreme audio earphones," the K3003s’ housings are each handmade from a solid piece of stainless steel. The cord’s Y connector is also made of steel, as is the 3.5 mm jack plug, and the exterior of the cord-mounted volume control/microphone unit. Both earphone cords are rubber-coated, while the single stereo plug cord is reinforced with cloth.

The AKGs are said to utilize "a new hybrid technology for great sound," and like many higher-end earphones, are reportedly able to seal out most ambient sounds using passive noise reduction. Their frequency range is 10Hz to 30kHz.

Although they won’t be officially launched until the IFA electronics show in September, the K3003‘s are available online as a "sneak peek" from June through August, via the website of Parisian electronics retailer Colette.

The result of a collaboration between Continuum Fashion and 3D printing experts Shapeways, the N12 is billed as the “the first completely 3D-printed, ready-to-wear, item of clothing.”

The high-tech bikini’s (not particularly sexy) name is derived from “nylon 12″, the material that’s used in the 3D printing process. Nylon 12 is strong, flexible and 3D printable with an impressive thinness of 0.7 mm (0.027 in). The material is innately waterproof so it’s ideal as swimwear and according to the designers it actually becomes more comfortable when it gets wet.

Specifically, a process called selective laser sintering (SLS) is used to achieve the complex geometrical design which combines circles connected by very tiny strings.

“The bikini’s design fundamentally reflects the beautiful intricacy possible with 3D printing, as well as the technical challenges of creating a flexible surface out of the solid nylon,” says Mary Haung of Continuum Fashion. “Thousands of circular plates are connected by thin springs, creating a wholly new material that holds its form as well as being flexible. The layout of the circle pattern was achieved through custom written code that lays out the circles according to the curvature of the surface. In this way, the aesthetic design is completely derived from the structural design.”

N12 was made with the use of Rhino 3D CAD software along with an algorithm written by 3D modeling expert Jenna Fizel. As well as providing the map for the the circle sizes, forms and connections the algorithm also calculates which parts need more strength and which need more flexibility.

“The visual and structural design of the bikini are very well integrated with each other,” says Fizel.

In the future this process could result in complete customization by using a body scan to create an exact fit for the customer.

The N12 bikini is for sale, but quite pricey at this stage. It costs around US$200-300 for each part of the bikini and can be ordered at Continuum Shop. Hopefully prices will fall as 3D printed clothing gains popularity.

Here’s the designers’ outline of the project:

N12.bikini – Intro Video from Continuum Fashion on Vimeo.

The ‘imaginary phone’ recognizes gestures and the position of keys on your phone so you can perform simple smart phone tasks without taking it out of your pocket

Taking on the idea that daily smartphone use can create automatic touch recall, just like touch typing on a keyboard, students at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, have created the "imaginary phone" concept that turns the palm of a hand into a smartphone touch interface. Using spatial memory built up while operating the physical device to remember gestures and the relative position of icons on the phone, users can perform simple smartphone tasks without even taking it out of your pocket.

The imaginary phone concept uses a depth-sensitive camera to detect hand gestures such as tapping and sliding, software to analyze the video, and a wireless radio to send the instructions back to the smartphone. Patrick Baudisch, professor of computer science at the Hasso Plattner Institute, and his colleagues believe that their concept could free users from physically retrieving a device to carry out the large number of "micro interactions" that users perform every day.

The imaginary phone "serves as a shortcut that frees users from the necessity to retrieve the actual physical device" says Baudisch. Unless the user is already wearing a Bluetooth headset, the concept probably won’t be much use for answering calls – unless you like yelling at your pocket – but Baudisch says the concept would be more useful for sending calls to voicemail or turning off an alarm, for example.

During the research project, a depth camera was affixed to a mounted rack and proved to accurately sync gestures with a local iPhone. Whilst the setup is far from flashy, it serves the basic idea that once the technology has been mastered, micro cameras can be fixed into clothing materials, such as a shirt button, or reading glasses.

The "imaginary" technology is similar to what we’ve seen with Skinput and NEC’s gesture control system, however it does eliminate the need for a projector and it doesn’t rely on learning new hand gestures.

The system does, however, rely on users remembering the position of icons on the phone’s display, so it will only be useful for commonly performed tasks – unless you’ve got a photographic memory. With that being said, it could definitely come in "handy" when you are driving or washing the dishes.

Watch the demo video below.

The Origami Phone concept design by Chengyuan Wei

Created by Chengyuan Wei, the Origami phone handset comes flat and like a pop-up book, transforms into a 3D handset with a few simple folds … oh, and it’s recyclable.

Wei came up with the concept after taking apart a telephone handset and realizing just how simple it is. Wei considered the fact that the market is flooded with new smart phones and mobile phone concepts, yet we haven’t seen much in the way of radical design changes when it comes to your simple home or office phone handset. Thus the Origami Phone concept was born.

The Solar Handbag has solar cells on the outside and a battery and optical fiber lighting on the inside

With a mobile phone now an essential item in any ladies’ handbag, it’s surprising that most of the solar powered bags we’ve seen up until now have been either backpacks or messenger bags. That’s fine for men who generally see bags as a purely functional piece of equipment designed to make it easier to carry things like beer, guns and pornography around. But from what I understand, it’s much different for women, for whom the handbag is an extension of their personality and needs to be fashionable as well as practical – and the practicality is probably optional. Danish design studio DIFFUS has done its best to combine the two with its Solar Handbag.

Instead of placing a single flexible thin film solar module onto the side of a bag, the designers of the DIFFUS Solar Handbag have distributed 100 smaller monocrystalline silicon solar cells over the surface of the bag to resemble oversized sequins. The surface of the bag is also embroidered with a combination of normal embroidery and conductive embroidery that transfers the energy harvested by the "solar sequins" to a lithium-ion battery hidden away within a small compartment.

With a nine percent conversion efficiency and the ability to generate two Watts, DIFFUS says the Solar Handbag’s solar elements are able to charge "a mobile device" as well as the bag’s battery even with low daily exposure to sunlight. The battery is not only used to recharge mobile devices, but also powers optical fibers attached to the inside of the bag that are activated when the bag is opened to make it easier to find things.

DIFFUS hasn’t announced pricing or availability details for its Solar Handbag as yet, but since they refer to it as a "luxury handbag," it probably won’t be cheap.

Viennese Micro-Printer Markus Hatzenbichler and Klaus Stadlmann with their micro-printer

At the Vienna Institute of Technology, a group of engineers claims they’ve created not only the world’s smallest 3-D printer, but also one that’s so light and inexpensive that it could conceivably pave the way for truly domestic 3-D printing. Lost an earring or a cuff-link? Print one out (and congratulations on your fancy life). That’s the future, and it might not be far off at all.

3-D printer manufacturers sometimes think big, but there’s just as much of a movement to think small, to bring this sort of fabrication to the masses. Our roundup of 3-D printing dream projects includes both–Enrico Dini may want to put a 3-D printer on the Moon to build houses out of moon-dust, but Hod Lipson wants cheap 3-D printers in every classroom. This project, hailing from Vienna, is more in the second group.

The university claims this is the world’s smallest 3-D printer, designed to print with a special kind of synthetic resin that instantly and precisely hardens when hit with an intense beam of light. That gives it the ability to print very intricate as well as very sturdy objects. It uses a focused beam of light, hardening layers only a twentieth of a millimeter thick, which is delicate enough that the university says it can be used to print finicky objects like hearing aid parts.

The team says the prototype is "no bigger than a carton of milk," about 3.3 pounds in weight, and can be sold for 1200 Euros (about $1,700 USD). The size and price are both flexible, and could go down if the printer sees mass demand. No word on whether they’ll attempt any sort of mass production, but this is a pretty intriguing look at our future. It’s not hard to imagine a 3-D printer on every counter, alongside the food processor and coffee machine. In fact, it’s great fun to imagine that.

Among the many announcements at Google’s I/O developer conference were the final specs for the Chromebook, a new bare-bones notebook based on the Chrome OS platform. Your data is stored in the cloud, not on a hard drive, and all computing is done through the Chrome web browser and its apps, allowing instant-on capability and an “all-day battery,” according to Google. For this you will pay between $349 and $499.

The notebooks will be available June 15 on Samsung and Acer platforms, which will boot up in about 8 seconds and update automatically. Presumably there will be more hardware to come if the platform is a success.

The $499 Samsung model comes with a free 100 MB per month of 3G mobile data from Verizon — a fairly paltry number, but one that should allow users to accomplish minor tasks when they can’t access Wi-Fi. Beyond that, there’ll be a pay-as-you-go 3G service. There’s also a $429 Wi-Fi-only model. Both Samsung notebooks feature a 12.1-inch display, Intel Atom processor (1.66GHz, according to PC World), a full-sized keyboard and an oversized clickable touchpad. The Acer model has an 11.6-inch display and weighs slightly less, at 2.95 pounds compared to Samsung’s 3.26. They both have the regular SD card slots, USB ports (for cameras and storage), speakers, and headphone jacks.

Those specs are pretty similar to your everyday netbook, but as Chrome OS was specifically designed for this sort of low-power computing, it’ll run much smoother than, say, Windows 7, and do it with tablet-like battery life as well–the Samsung Chromebook is rated at 8.5 hours of battery life, and the Acer at 6.5. At least, that’s the idea. Chrome OS is basically just a browser — all of your work is done through the browser and the web apps (sort of like beefed up, super functional websites) therein. Want to watch Netflix? Open a new tab with the Netflix web app. Want to email? Use the email web app. Want to browse through files or edit photos? There are apps for that, too.

Of course, this being a Google product, the idea of openness was stressed — anyone who wants will be able to flip a Chromebook into developer mode and mess around with it however they please. That’s very different from Windows or Mac OS, or, for that matter, mobile OSes like iOS, which have to be "jailbroken." There’s no jail to break in Chrome OS, just a friendly switch Google pretty much encourages users to hit.

Some HTML5-capable apps will run even when the laptop isn’t connected; Crunchgear points out that Google has been using offline versions of Gmail, calendar and docs. That’s important, because without an internet connection, Chrome OS is otherwise essentially useless, just like a web browser without a connection is useless.

Chromebooks won’t have the capabilities of a Windows laptop or even a tablet, which are comparably priced, so at first glance it’s hard to see how they could possibly compete. But their cloud capabilities and modest ambition could be their biggest selling point. Rather than buying a more powerful desktop, laptop or even tablet, you can use the Chromebook as a portal to data stored elsewhere — which, as we saw again this week with Google’s Music Beta, is becoming increasingly easy (if not necessarily secure). A Chromebook could be a simple way to access subscriptions to sites like Netflix or Hulu, manage your photos, and access cloud drives for music, without having to worry about pricey, more powerful processors or terabyte Seagate drives.

While Windows 7 computers in the same price range can technically run more strenuous and advanced apps, they can’t really run them well, while Chrome OS is designed to be perfectly suited to its few simple tasks. Google’s aim is to strip away all the stuff casual users typically don’t even use, and then enjoy the performance bump from such a streamlined system.

In an acknowledgement of this potential, business users can rent them for $28 a month, either for software-as-a-service or hardware-as-a-service. The rental package will include the notebooks, a centralized control console for IT admins, and tech support, PC World says. Students will be able to rent them for $20 a month.

But tablets and laptops can be used this way, too. So for the same price as an iPad 2 and way pricier than Samung’s own Galaxy tablet, we’re still waiting for the Chromebook’s wow factor. We were hoping it might be price — at $250, a Chromebook would definitely be preferable to an equivalent notebook or netbook. But at $500, we’re wondering what the real attraction is.

Atomic clocks are one of those things that most of us have probably always thought of as being big, ultra-expensive, and therefore only obtainable by well-funded research institutes. While that may have been the case at one time, a team of researchers have recently developed an atomic clock that they say is one one-hundredth the size – and that uses one one-hundredth the power – of previous commercially-available products. It’s called the Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC), and it can be yours for about US$1,500 … a little more than what you might pay for a regular clock, but not bad for one that varies by less than a millionth of a second per day.

The device is about the size of a matchbox, and operates on just 100 milliwatts, drawn from two AA batteries. By contrast, some much larger traditional "portable" atomic clocks need to be hooked up to a car battery.

Incorporated within the CSAC is a rice-grain-sized container, developed by Draper Laboratory, that contains cesium atoms. Two layers of steel sheathing keep them from being affected by the Earth’s electromagnetic fields. The atoms are struck by the beam of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), made by Sandia National Laboratories, causing them to regularly emit microwaves. While traditional atomic clocks use a more power-hungry rubidium laser, the VCSEL uses just two milliwatts.

Finally, the clock’s circuitry (designed by Symmetricom Inc.) measures time by counting the frequency of the microwaves – exactly 4,596,315,885 of them constitute one second.

One thing the CSAC doesn’t do, however, is keep track of the time of day. Instead, it’s intended mainly for use with other atomic clocks, allowing two or more geographically-separated groups of people to stay exactly coordinated over time.

These groups could include miners in underground tunnels, divers in the deep ocean, or other people who are physically blocked from receiving time signals by GPS. Security personnel disarming improvised explosive devices could also use the technology, as the electromagnetic interference that they utilize to keep telephone signals from detonating the explosives also disables GPS devices. Additionally, CSACs could find use in cross-country phone and data lines, allowing the various data packets to stay coordinated in the event of a GPS outage.

While there are various small, inexpensive devices already being sold as "atomic clocks," these simply display a signal received from a remote atomic clock. If you want the real thing, and have $1,500 to spare, you can order a CSAC from the Symmetricom website.

Development of the clock was funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.