TED talk about cool materials for toys and other uses

This is a fun TED talk: "The Inventables guys, Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht, demo some amazing new materials and how we might use them. Look for squishy magnets, odor-detecting ink, "dry" liquid and a very surprising 10-foot pole." Keith Schacht & Zach Kaplan: Products (and toys) from the future

• [Powell]

  That was friggin great! This makes me wonder what the other 100 things they found are.
  #2, bah humbug.

• [Slyinventer]

  I have to say that the Ten foot pole was created by me in 1991. It has been selling in magic stores accross the world for that long.

  It is a very cool magic effect but I think that its use may end there. It is only made of polycarbonate plastic and because its split from one end to the other it can not provide much of a supporting structure. I am frankly a bit suspicious of these guys seeing how they are demonstrating what is actually “Sylvester the Jesters” “Ten foot pole”, as new. ‘kinda makes me wonder about the other stuff too.

  you can see this effect and other magical inventions at:
  http://www.youtube.com/user/danielsylvester

  bye

• [rasz]

  WOW this was useless, this married couple is clueless. So THATS what those US patent factories look like?

  1 I already have a kitchen cabinets with magnets AND gel bumps to dump the sound

  2 I bet this magnet gel would be a poor material for shoe bottoms

  3 that board would flip in a microsecont, they had to sleep during physics classes

  4 Magnetic brake – why didnt he mention Lenz’s law? Was he trying to imply that its some kind of his own breakthrough invention?

  next the rolled up pipe, hmm maybe we could use it to make some kind of a measure device? we would call it for example Tape Measure? of wait someone came up with that one one hundred years ago. 2 minutes with the material would tell you it CANT support soccer ball frame, not even mentioning the net or the ball impact.

  next Flourinert, that stuff causes mild irritations and you want to BATH people in it? …

  next he wants to program PAPER book .. to mail pages to him … just wow

  next they talk about NOT their ideas

  then they talk how seeing this changed their understending of what was possible. Well as an engineer I already knew 5 out of those 6 (smell paint is new, I only knew about electronic noses so far). Whats the moral of the story? Talk to engineers, not PR puff think tanks.

• [Agent 86]

  Interesting talk, but I wish they had gotten someone else to give it. Awkward presentation takes away from content.

• [Takuan]

  need a new term… “pre-hacking”? Something to describe finding the hacks for not yet released/popular technologies… all I could think of looking at these (2005) items was how to subvert them.

• [AirPillo]

  I wish people didn’t use flash video players whose only volume options are “loud” or “muted”.

  Not boingboing’s fault, of course, but I seem to enjoy complaining or something.

  Please kill me q.q

• [andyhavens]

  I’m with Airpillo. What the hell is up with TED’s volume? That opening riff nearly broke my brain.

• [themindfantastic]

  This was an interesting talk but the presentation was awkward however the stuff they present while many people will go ‘WTF this isn’t all that innovative’ well thats the point with this talk most of these ideas were brainstorms, they weren’t full hashed out ideas… it was to spark interest and potential new ideas using the same materials… sometimes you have to come up with radical ideas to find out whats possible. Who thought ceramics when cooled would be superconductors? Someone had to try it out. These ideas have to be tried and when its done maybe it works the way it was intended maybe it doesn’t but it will give people ideas on what other applications these materials might be waiting to be used for.

  Next time understand what TED is about, ideas in Technology Entertainment and Design, some of these ideas are so new its not easily definable, its like the ink hasn’t dried on the name tags yet.

• [LeSinge]

  Presenters, please don’t read. It’s awkward for everyone.

• [haileris]

  I feel bad whenever I bring in the haterade, but that was the first TED talk I’ve watched where I want my 15 minutes back.