The Mataerial 3D printer is as unconventional as 3D printers can get. It deviates in design and functionality from most other 3D printers, which are usually box-like in shape and structure. The latter also requires a dedicated print surface in order to print things as you intended and designed them to be.

For this reason, the Mataerial has been dubbed as the ‘anti-gravity 3D printer’ since you can use it on virtually any surface–including those inclined at an angle–or no surface at all! Thanks to its innovative extrusion technology, users will be able to form curves and print hanging structures without the need for any support material.

The stability of the Mataerial’s products are further attributed to the fact that it prints in 3D curves instead of in two-dimensional layers. It allows users to get creative as well with its full color programming feature, which allows the injection of dyes in CMYK mode to control the color of the printed paths.

The Mataerial was developed by Petr Novikov and Saša Jokić.

VIA [ Dvice ]

Cat Beards are a thing now. Images of cat owners positioning their felines strategically to make it look like they had a beard have gone viral over the past few days and the trend is still going strong.

Cat Bearding had its humble beginnings around a year ago when one cat owner decided to take a picture with his pet looking like his beard on catasters Tumblr. The rest, as they say, is history–until the next best or funniest viral thing comes along. You can hit the break for a clip featuring the best of the best cat beards posted on the interwebs so far.

Enjoy and have a cat-tastic weekend!

VIA [ Laughing Squid ]

Sometimes I find myself hanging around the charger while everyone else starts trooping out the door because my phone is running low on power and wouldn’t last the night if I unplugged it then and there. But who knew you could charge up your phone in just 30 seconds with the right device?

Eighteen-year-old Eesha Khare designed a supercapacitor that has the potential to charge phones in about half a minute. The superconductor is designed to fit inside the battery, which, aside from the rapid charging, also lasts ten times longer than other existing devices. Eesha’s paper, entitled “Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for Flexible High-Performance Supercapacitors”, can be found here.

Khare’s project is based upon the work of Xihong Lu, et. al., with one of the proponents in the study, Dr. Yat Li, supervising her as she used the laboratory equipment of the University of California Santa Cruz.

Khare’s superconductor won her $50,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which she will be using “to go to college and to keep making a lot of scientific advancements.” It looks like she’s off to a great start!

VIA [ Dvice ]

Edited May 25, 2013 for corrections. Sources: Policymic, Business Insider, and Intel.

Got a beard? Interested in making some extra cash? Then you might want to look into becoming a walking and talking Beardboard.

The whole Beardvertising concept was thought up by Kentucky-based advertising agency Cornett-IMS, which calls on men to clip on miniature billboards on their fuzzy beards called ‘beardboards.’ A&W and Eagle One are reportedly on board the campaign, with the formerr paying guys $5 a day for the beardspace.

Whit Hiler of Cornett-IMS explains: “We’re getting a ton of emails from guys with epic beards that want to host beardboards and we’re actually in talks with some brands that want to be Beardvertisers. I think we’ll probably be seeing some beardboards in the wild before too long.”

They might want to hit up Brad Pitt on becoming a celebrity Beardboard because he has rocked some pretty grizzly beards in the past.

VIA [ Laughing Squid ]

Can’t live without hot water? It’s unfortunate, but you’ll have to learn to live without it if you’re traveling or spending some time in the great outdoors. That’s only if you don’t have the Solar Kettle, though.

As its name implies, the Solar Kettle is a portable thermos of sorts that uses the sun’s rays to boil the water stored inside it. There’s no need for any other power inputs, which means you can use it to heat water whenever and wherever there’s sunlight.

So how does the Solar Kettle work? Their official page explains:

At the heart of the solar kettle is an evacuated vacuum tube. This absorbs solar energy, converting it directly into heat which heats the water inside. Each tube is constructed like a Thermos flask, so the heat energy goes in but doesn’t come out.

All you’ll have to do is place the kettle outside in direct sunlight facing south and wait. It will take approximately two hours to boil cold water, but this time is reduced substantially if the water was already heated previously.

The Solar Kettle retails for £35 or about $53.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

Riding your bike at night can be a little tricky, especially without headlights. Regular headlights are great, but the Lumigrid is a conceptual LED light that would kick things up a notch.

It can be difficult for night cyclists to get a good sense of the condition of the terrain ahead, even with a typical bicycle lamp. In many cases, a bicycle lamp will cast shadows on both concave and convex areas of the ground. This can hinder the rider’s judgment of the road surface ahead, and increase the potential for danger.

Lumigrids can project a grid onto the ground. On a flat road surface, the grid will consist of standard squares. On a rough road surface, the grids will deform accordingly. By observing the motion and deformation of the grids, the rider can intuitively understand the landforms ahead. In addition, the luminous grids can make it easier for nearby pedestrians and vehicles to notice the bicycle, reducing the likelihood of collision.

Unfortunately, it is just a concept at the moment, even if it did win Sichaun University a Red Dot Design award in 2012. There doesn’t seem to be any concrete plans for bringing it to market, but given the current state of technology, how hard could it be?

[ The Lumigrids ] VIA [ Technabob ]

The arrival of the summer isn’t a short-lived affair where one moment it’s winter, the next it’s summer, and everyone moves on. For the colder climates, it’s a drawn out period during which you appreciate the long awaited thawing out and celebrate all things summer, all the time. For example, we’re going to get all excited over stuff like the above S’More To Love metal tray for making everyone’s favorite campfire treat, the good ole S’More. The tray locks in the Graham biscuits, the marshmallow, and the chocolate, six S’Mores at a time, so that you can just place them all at once over your fire (or in the oven) and be efficient about your cooking. After all these treats are great when you’re actually eating them, not when you’re crying about how they fell into the fire and now you have to start all over again.

It’s $15.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

Disney owns the Star Wars franchise now and they can do whatever they want with it, including adding themed attractions to their parks that will let you have a Stormtrooper 3D-printed with your face on it. It’s called the Star Wars D-Tech Me experience and it’ll be available at Disney’s parks starting this summer.

The whole scanning process will take all but ten minutes, but you’ll have to wait around 8 weeks for the delivery of your customized Stormtrooper. The entire thing will set you back $99.95 plus taxes and shipping charges.

VIA [ Geekologie ]

The worst place for your smartphone to be while you’re driving, is in your hands. But let’s face it: very few of us keep it in our pockets. It’s usually lying around in the center console, where you can glance at it if you get a text or a call. The nGage Snap is a mount specially designed to place your phone in the middle of the dashboard, right where you can comfortably see it. It has a specially designed

“microblade, small enough to fit into the slot of your CD player, narrow enough to hide behind your phone, and sturdy enough to withstand the rockiest of roads.

The way we designed the blade is such that it does not go far enough into your CD slot to activate the CD player mechanism, so that means you can still have a CD in your player while the mount is installed.”

Like you, we’re a little skeptical that this would actually work and not break anything, but we’re willing to suspend our disbelief when we consider that we’ve never actually tried it, while the nGage’s designers probably have tested it extensively and found it to be possible. If it works, it’s pretty slick. It does require you to stick a 0.55mm thin, removable, non-permanent adhesive backing on your device, which will snap to the magnets on the mount. If you can stomach that, in the name of convenience, you can head over to the IndieGogo campaign and pledge $25 for yours. It’s fully funded so you should be getting it in July.

[ Product Page ]

The original Kinect became popular among home-brew, DIY tinkerers… but failed to make much of a splash among its actual intended audience, the gamers. For the next iteration, Disney Research is working on one element they feel might have been missing from the original device, and that’s any form of physical feedback. But they don’t want you wear anything in order to feel this feedback, since that would defeat the purpose of the Kinect, so they’re working on a device which basically blows compressed air on you at the right time, in the hopes of making you feel something or other. It’s called the Aireal.

The air coming out of Aireal does so as a vortex, which is capable of traveling quite a long distance without losing much speed or its shape. The Aireal device also moves to track the player, meaning precise placement of the air hits on your body can be achieved.

How well this works is still being worked out, but Disney Research will be presenting a technical paper on the technology at SIGGRAPH 2013 in July. There’s also no word on whether Microsoft is even interested in bringing this to market, or whether even Sony or Nintendo would like to incorporate this into their gaming console strategies. But credit must be given to a desire for innovation, whether it bears commercial fruit or not.

Hit the jump for another picture, a video, and links.

(Relevant portion is at 44 seconds)

[ The Aireal ] VIA [ Geek.com ]