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Air umbrella deflects rain with an air force field
The 17 greatest DIY Halloween treats – delicious yet scary!
RIP Words, Facebook Rolls Out Stickers in Comments
Get ready to tweet money at your friends – make it rain

Air umbrella deflects rain with an air force field

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 06:00 AM PDT

Umbrellas have not yet found a way to access the internet and somehow combine that with their intended use. That doesn’t mean an umbrella can’t be smart.

Umbrellas can become quite troublesome in big cities, where people gotta traverse crowded and cramped highways to reach their destinations. All things considered, an umbrella can sometimes be more troublesome than straight up getting damp. Yet, here comes a solution to get rid of the bulky traditional umbrellas that aims to make it really easy to stay out of everyone else’s way: this is not only for your sake, but also for the sake of those walking close to you. Are we in front of the first great revolution in the umbrella industry since its inception?

This gadget is called the Air Umbrella, and it works by blowing a constant stream of air that prevents rain from touching them, effectively forming a forcefield the rain cannot penetrate. Sure, this does sound like sci-fi, and the first thing we imagine is an extremely loud and heavy gadget but the video in their Kickstarter page challenges these ideas.

So far the air umbrella claims to be good enough for two simultaneous users, although it’s still in its R&D phase. It has a controller that users can employ to adjust the size/power of the air emitted. Not bad at all, we say.

Via Ubergizmo

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The 17 greatest DIY Halloween treats – delicious yet scary!

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 05:00 AM PDT

Halloween is just around the corner, and it’s time to get ready. And because everything we’ve ever loved has to do one way or the other with food, here’s a few DIY ideas.

RIP Words, Facebook Rolls Out Stickers in Comments

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 01:17 PM PDT

As if the social network wasn’t making us anti-social enough, the bright minds behind it thought that it would be better if we used stickers instead of comments.

A staple in Facebook’s Messenger, stickers are now part of the social network’s main app, as well. Soon enough, these emoji-like things will be available on the desktop version of the website, undoubtedly. I’ve grown tired of people who can barely spell (both in English and Romanian, which is my mother tongue), but apparently there’s great news ahead for the illiterate ones. Words are no longer necessary. Why convey a message using vowels and consonants, when you can easily send a sticker that has been used by millions of other brain-dead people? This is Idiocracy, alright!

Software engineer Bob Baldwin announced the addition of stickers to comments in a blog post:

“Stickers have been a delightful way to communicate in messages, and I'm happy to announce that we're bringing them to comments across Facebook. Just tap the smiley face icon in the bottom-right of any comment field to pick a sticker to send. It'll be available to all posts from people, in groups and on events now. I think stickers will allow people to reply to a variety of posts in a more fun way than words alone. You can now easily show your excitement for a post with good news, cheer up a friend who's feeling down and express a variety of more nuanced reactions.

Stickers in comments was started as a hackathon project in New York with me and (engineering manager Kwame Thomison), where we built the prototype for Web in a single night. When we turned it on for employees soon after, they loved it. We later built it for mobile web at a hackathon in California, and the iOS and Android versions soon after. Thanks to everyone who helped build this, including Kwame Thomison, Yu Chen, Mike Rumble, Anthony Chan, Michael McDuffee, Vihang Mehta, Mark Peng, Joshua Clark and others. Special thanks to Chris Cox, Chuanxin Hu and Sammi Krug for supporting this project.

Comments has been one of my favorite parts of Facebook to hack on. This was my third hackathon project to add richer content to comments: first was emoji (May 2013), then photos (June 2013) and now stickers. Stickers in comments will roll out worldwide over the next day or so. Enjoy!”

I’ll leave you with the following thought-provoking video I’ve stumbled upon a few days ago:

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Get ready to tweet money at your friends – make it rain

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 11:53 AM PDT

Who says Twitter is all about sharing inane, sarcastic comments to a crowd not paying attention? Twitter is getting ready to allow users to tweet money.

Groupe BPCE is France’s second biggest bank by customers, and a force to be reckoned with when it comes to the French economy. Their team are getting ready to work with Twitter’s, as they attempt to first dip their toes into the world of online payments. What they attempt to do is to allow users to straight up transfer money via tweets.

Apple and Facebook aren’t the only ones experimenting with alternative ways to get revenue via mobile phones or apps, it seems. Groupe BPCE has clarified that they intend to work only with French users and consumers as of now, regardless of which bank they use or whether or not they know the recipient’s details – basically, a tweet is all it takes to send money. These transferences will be managed via the S-Money service, a service which already allows users to send currency over text messages while using the credit card industry’s data security standards.

The interesting part will be the ramifications of this. Can you imagine users straight up getting money for talking about coffee, their day, and their car problems? Seems being a twitstar might eventually become a full time job, if the community engages enough.

Via Reuters

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