This Pen Lets You Draw On Your Food With Spices

I'm sure we have amongst us some talented masterchefs and skilled kitchen ninjas who enjoy creating wondrous dishes that look as incredible as they taste. For the food-decorating connoisseurs out there, you can now add a little extra spice to make your creations extra nice using this nifty little gadget:

The CinniBird is a curved, pen-like device (I actually think it looks a bit more like a banana) that helps you to draw on your food using spices. Cinnamon, cocoa powder, paprika, ground parsley, you name it.

Is it bordering on ridiculous? You bet. Is it useful? Perhaps. Honestly, at the very least, I wouldn’t mind using something like the CinniBird to add a bit of a personalised cocoa powder drawing (or a sweet message to my wife for extra brownie points) to the morning coffees (yes, more than one, am I right?)

I think it could open up a great opportunity to make food preparation and mealtimes more fun. Both parents and their __kids can partake in bringing extra creativity to the table, and adding a hand-drawn seasoning smiley face might make all the difference. Decorating food with a device like the CinniBird might even help to entertain, and hopefully encourage, even the fussiest of eaters. If you’re daring and time-savvy enough, maybe you could add a little ‘please, eat me, please’ message to your kids’ insanely epic and/or healthy school lunches.

And if you or your __kids aren’t so keen on ground-up dry spices and more into liquid condiments, well then I’m sure a good ol’ squeezy bottle of tomato sauce will do just fine, too (just not in the coffee though!)

Find out more about the CinniBird

The App You Don’t Want To Live Without! David Attenborough Does It Again!

Just the other day I found myself reminiscing about my childhood Sunday nights, when David Attenborough documentaries screened before 60 Minutes. Despite the fact that this combination of TV shows caused nervous butterflies in my stomach (because it signalled the end of the weekend and the imminent start of the school week, ugh!), I still adored watching anything made by Sir David Attenborough, and it’s a love I hold to this day.

You can imagine my excitement when I discovered the app from the BBC – ‘Attenborough Story of Life’ – and the extreme joy of having my expectations exceeded when I started using it.

At last, gathered in the one spot, are over 1,000 of the greatest wildlife moments Sir David has caught on film. The app features the broadcast legend himself giving an introduction – it’s almost impossible to believe he’s 90 years old because he looks and sounds so spritely. (I’ll have what he’s having thanks!)

As for the app itself, users can explore a comprehensive collection of Sir David’s work, presented as short clips of around 2 minutes duration each. They’re perfect for our busy lifestyles and it means I can spend idle time learning and being awe-struck by nature instead of rolling my eyes at the never-ending stream of selfies on social media. This app takes us back to the days when the cameras focussed on the world around us, instead of on our own insular existences.

The content on the app spans Sir David’s 60-year career and includes highlights from more than 40 BBC programs, including Planet Earth, Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals. There are plants and animals from every continent and habitat – kangaroos, polar bears, lions, sharks, insects and whales – you name it, and this app will no doubt have it covered.

There was a particular thrill revisiting clips that I first saw when I was 5-years-old. I even loved the grainy footage, and seeing Sir David in his cream-coloured safari suit from the early ’80s was a total hoot.

As would be expected with a product from the BBC, this app is high quality, and I particularly love the innovative design. You can search for clips to watch by using your finger to scroll a wheel and selecting a category, or you can simply type in a specific word and you’ll get search results. You can then create and save your own collections of videos and share them with family and friends. And to gamify the experience, there are even hidden films featuring Sir David that were made especially for the app!

The cost? Free! The only slight catch is you need to be connected to Wi-Fi to watch the film clips, but this shouldn’t be a problem in most locations these days.

So go forth in your best safari suit and see what you and your __kids can learn about the world. No selfie stick required! Click here

This New Construction Kit Lets You Build Your Kid’s Rides!

Ever wanted to build a little ride-on cart or bike for your kid but just never knew where to start?

Normally these projects might mean flexing your carpentry and mechanic skills, but let’s face it: we all don’t have those skills to build something awesome and safe for the __kids (just yet anyway).

If you at least know how to wield an Allen key after all of your IKEA furniture-building experience, this construction set may be just right for you. Looks like building your toddler a little trike just got easier!

It’s almost like a super-sized Meccano kit that lets you make things that your __kids can actually ride on. Awesome!

Armed with an Allen key, Infento sets can let you build up to 12 rides for your child, making it an incredibly flexible construction kit that grows with your child from the ages of 0 to 10.

By having a single kit to build multiple vehicles, you eliminate the need to buy different sized trikes, scooters and bikes every year as your kids outgrow them. Infento encourages the whole family to think sustainably in this way, and to be creators and inventors of their own toys as other construction kits do.

My only concern would be making sure the loose bits of the kit are packed up properly after use – if having Lego stuck in your feet is a thing then I imagine stepping on large Infento bits will hurt just as much!

So who’s up for some Infento-ing? Check out the Infento website 

Bring your colourful clay creations to life with Play Doh Touch!

I remember countless hours playing with Play Doh as a kid, making monsters, strange hybrid animals, and yummy food (presumably for my brother and I to share with our monsters and animals).

The pure joy of building things with my bare hands is something that sure has continued throughout my life, and it's exciting to find out that __kids now have another way to explore their physical Play Doh creations - in the virtual world!

The Play Doh Touch Shape to Life Studio kit is a new offering in the 'app-enabled' toy space which allows __kids to bring their Play Doh masterpieces into an app and interact with it.

Using an iPad, you can scan the Play Doh creatures and objects created with the kit, and these can then be used within the Touch app; your clay creatures can run and jump and move about, and you can decorate the environment with other clay creations.

What I think is especially useful is that on top of the fine motor skills and imaginative play that Play Doh enables and encourages, the Shape to Life kit also helps introduce digital skills that no doubt will be required as children grow older; using a touch screen, using a digital camera/scanner, and navigating a virtual environment. There's even a kind of 'design process' if you care to think about it in that way: exploring and making a physical prototype, capturing and creating a virtual model, and then finally, using this model to complete tasks.

Could this toy be a perfect start for the next generation of engineers and designers? At the very least, it looks like a whole lot of fun!

The Play Doh Touch Shape to Life Studio is available at the Apple Store

See the future of wearable technology with these smart glasses

If you know someone who loves their glasses, or you’re a stylish and bespectacled guy or gal yourself, you may want to gather ‘round and take a closer look at this latest development in eyewear.

Feast your long- and/or short-sighted eyes on these smart new glasses!

Vue | Your Everyday Smart Glasses from Antony Bui on Vimeo.

Are my eyes deceiving me? The Vue smart glasses look like a dream come true! It allows you to answer calls, listen to music, track your fitness activity, listen to navigation instructions, charge wirelessly when you’re asleep, connect to other smart devices… and most importantly, correct your vision with prescription lenses.

The gesture control for the various functions might make you look like you’ve got some strange compulsive behaviours, but at least you’d look cool doing so; they come in two styles - Classic and Trendy - in a few colours with a few trims (plain chocolate brown for me, thanks!)

The feature I’m most excited about (other than being able to see clearly) would have to be the ‘bone conduction’ speakers, a different sound transmission method, removing the need for earphones or headphones entirely. I wonder how it would sound? And if you could have it remove unwanted noises.

By kickstarting a revolution in smart eyewear (they’re not the first, but they’re certainly quite functional, fashionable and visually normal-looking), the day is nearing when we could be walking around with Heads-Up Displays on our glasses, making us feel a bit like Tony Stark, wearing fashionable versions of Scouters from Dragon Ball Z. [link: http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Scouter As long as future augmented reality apps don’t get on the side of freaky and intense.

I think these Vue specs are the way of the future and a logical next step in smart devices. If you’re a wearer of glasses and a lover of technology, this may just be the best new addition to your collection of gadgets. And even if the battery runs out, well, at least you can still see clearly.

Would you get these Vue Smart Glasses? Find out more about the Vue here.

Oh come all ye...what now? This A.I. composed Christmas carol is seriously wrong!

Love them or hate them, Christmas carols are an integral part of the holiday season. From Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to The Little Drummer Boy we all know the usual Christmas classics.

But here’s a Christmas carol that you’ve never heard before…and you may never want to hear again!

A madcap bunch of researchers in Toronto have decided to dedicate themselves to furthering the possibilities of artificial intelligence (A.I.), by teaching a computer how to compose a Christmas carol. They played 100 hours of Christmas carols to the computer alongside showing it a bunch of Christmassy photos in order to ‘teach it’ all about Christmas songs. The result is…well, just plain weird.

Some example lyrics:

“I swear it’s Christmas Eve. I hope that is what you say…A Christmas tree. There are lots and lots and lots of flowers.”

Oh come all ye…what now???

Nightmare Machine: Artificial Intelligence is now learning how to scare us

What do you get when you take artificial intelligence and add some horror? A Nightmare Machine of course!

Warning: some creepiness up ahead!

What exactly is Nightmare Machine? No, it's not a rampaging haunted robot coming to get us (although that would be spooky). It's a computer program that's learned to use photos of things and turn them into something creepy.

Scientists from MIT have used deep-learning algorithms to manipulate faces and famous places. They are trying to answer the question, “Can Machines learn to scare us?” with some terrifying results.

The program uses existing pictures, and dials up the spookiness a few notches by adding things that humans think are scary. It looks like it's been taking already distorted faces, added some blotches of blood-red colour and unkempt hair, and added (or removed!) misshapen facial features. If you want to aid the program in identifying what's scary or not scary - it can learn from your input too!

The famous landmarks are given a bit of a different treatment, They are re-done in a particular learned 'style’. For example, there's the Colosseum in a 'Haunted House' style, a 'Slaughterhouse' -style Taj Mahal, and the Sydney Opera House as a 'Ghost Town'.

Now, imagine the scary faces in these spooky places and you've got a recipe for ultimate creepiness!

There's even a fun timeline which explores key points in history where artificial intelligence and creepy things have coincidentally crossed paths. I guess the time for machines to learn how to scare us would eventually happen, is now the time?

Imagine what would be achieved by continuing to combine technology and horror entertainment. How about combining a computer that learns what each individual finds scary, and tailors a virtual or augmented reality experience based on someone's fears - now that would be scary!

It's a bit of Halloween fun, but the scaredy-cat in me is asking; should we really be teaching artificial intelligence how to take advantage of our deepest fears?