[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5z3HuQp_w0&w=640&h=390]

A new iWatch concept video produced by Fuse Chicken, the Cleveland-based design startup imagines what a wrist-mounted Apple wearable computer might look like with a wraparound curved display.  Combining everything that you love about your iPhone, iPod and wrist-watch, the iWatch could prove to be the modern day time keeper.

Proposing some advanced iOS 8 features for the device, the concept shows a device that looks like a smart band rather than a traditional watch. Featuring an elongated, curved screen that’s able to display various information, the device would offer support for existing iOS apps.

Siri, mail, messages, contacts, calendar, music and fitness apps would all be supported as well as new health apps, such as the rumoured Healthbook app.

The Healthbook presentation is perhaps the most interesting part of this concept: If this feature is real and is part of iOS 8, it will likely tie into any wearable hardware Apple dreams up.

Makosinski shines on Fallon

You probably recognize Ann Makosinski as the 16 year Tectorian who gave a great keynote speech at the Discover Tectoria event last December.  From our stage to the Tonight Show, Makosinski was one of three young inventors featured on the Jimmy Fallon show as part of a segment called “Fallonventions.”

In a YouTube video explaining how she created the flashlight, Makosinski said she became interested in the area of “harvesting surplus energy” after learning “humans are a great source of untapped thermal energy.”

To produce enough power to turn on LED lights in the flashlight, Makosinski used four Peltier tiles to convert a temperature difference to electricity. If one side of the tile is heated by a human hand and the other exposed to cool air, electricity is produced.

Since winning the Google Science Fair last year, Makosinski and her invention have received international attention. The Grade 11 student at St. Michaels University School was named one of Time magazine’s 30 under 30 for 2013 and has given two TED Talks.

As she left the stage, Fallon said, “I’m going to work for her one day, I can feel it.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys0WVOPmA6g?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]

We know Tectorians love electric cars. Our last Tectoria Social Club meeting featured Tesla and it was a packed house. Well, if the Tesla is out of reach maybe the Tabby is more your speed.

Tabby is an open sourced electric vehicle that you can build yourself in an hour. That’s right, in less time than people in other cities commute each day you can build your own electric car. And if you’re the engineers that helped develop it, you can cut that time to 41 minutes flat.

TABBY is the first open source framework for the creation vehicles. It has been defined as the “Ikea Car”.  It is a versatile platform that can be used to bootstrap businesses, to create your own vehicle, for education purposes, and much more.

Although the OSVehicle Tabby kit does not include things like doors, body panels and a windshield, you most definitely can still drive it.

OSV is taking pre-orders for the Tabby starter kit, with both the two-seater and four-seater configurations.  Add a battery pack, electric powertrain and seats, and you have an electric vehicle that can top out around 50 mph for just under $4,000.<

All the plans and blueprints for TABBY can be downloaded in the website’s download section. You are welcome and encouraged to improve the designs, work on them, and upload them to share your ideas with the community through the OSV forum.

[vimeo 77204604 w=500 h=281]

OSVehicle: TABBY Timelapse from OSVehicle on Vimeo.

This just popped up on Techcrunch a couple of days ago. The company is called ‘Zirtual’ and they provide a service whereby you can have a virtual assistant complete all sorts of tasks on your behalf. While we think the service solves a definite pain point, it is perhaps the business model of putting a SAAS shell on top of a service business that we find particularly interesting. They go to great lengths to really communicate just how focused they are on the quality of the service they are providing. Their website is clean, crisp. modern and generally leads you to believe exactly what they are saying is true. Check it out – the service may not be for you, but it is always exciting to see how another startup is strategically managing their launch. Read the full story on TechCrunch.

This past Christmas we really wanted to do something that would be memorable and put the tech community on the map. We decided to get involved in Victoria’s famed Santa Day parade. Of course simply participating wasn’t going to be enough. Having one of the best floats was an obvious pre-requisite of this project. Once we decided on the parade it just seemed natural that Freddy (the robot we use for our tech awards) should represent us to the community at large. At some point Dan came up with the idea of having Freddy ride a rocket which left us with one final piece to our puzzle. Who was going to bring this idea to life? Enter Ultimate Foam Creations.

While we did commission UFC to create Freddy and his trusty rocket, we did so on a (very) short deadline. Freddy was ready on time and did a great job representing VIATeC to the 40,000+ people who attended the parade. While there were some amazing floats there – few got as many looks from kids as our giant, multi-coloured, lights flashing, steam shooting, robot riding a rocket in the back of a 61 Chevy pickup with Dan at the wheel.

James Paquin and a rotating group of artists have been operating in Victoria at UFC for just over a year now. We needed their help and they came through. Their use of foam as an artistic medium allows the creation of 3-D pieces that are both lightweight, and at the same time durable, thanks to the hard coating they apply to their pieces. If you want to see more of their work (3-D signs, moveable set backgrounds, custom work trucks, etc) check out their website. If you just want to see more of Freddy go here.