Author: Louie Vargas

A new era without street lights: Glow-in-the-dark roads

/ Louie Vargas / Leave a comment

I remember reading a blog post last year about the possibility of using glow-in-the-dark trees to replace street lamps. What a ingenious way to save energy!

Well, now that same idea has gained traction into expanding into something much more robust than trees. In the Netherlands, Studio Roosegaarde has created a “Smart Highway.” The concept makes the road lines glow bright in the night and displays snow flakes to warn drivers for ice in cold weather. Wind powered lights turn on only when a car is near and a road lane can charge electric vehicles that are being driven. If this technology starts being used on a global level the benefits of cutting down use of electricity at night would be huge. (Also, driving on a road that looks like it came out of the movie “Tron” sounds exciting!)

We hear news all the time about how cars are becoming more and more technology enhanced and it’s refreshing to hear people talk about enhancing the road those cars drive on. I hope this project does well during its testing phase and is able to expand into other countries.

Smart Highway on CNN – Daan Roosegaarde interviewed from Studio Roosegaarde on Vimeo.

 

Source: WIRED

Waterlogue: Create beautiful paintings… with your phone

/ Louie Vargas / Leave a comment

Apple’s App Store recently promoted photography applications at discounted prices. While browsing the store, most of the apps seemed very typical, like a Photoshop editing app or something that simply adds a filter to your photo.

Then I saw it.

Waterlogue.

The icon has a whale under an umbrella and I don’t know why but that alone caught my interest.

The idea seems simple: take a photo and turn it into a painting. As someone who is not very skilled at painting, this idea sounds great. I started by uploading a basic landscape photo I had taken. While it begins processing, we are able to watch it being sketched and painted before your eyes and the final result was very impressive!

Here’s a side by side comparison of one of my photos:

Untitled

I soon found myself going through my photo library to see how each photo would turn out. You are given a few options on how the app paints, such as the style of painting (which is similar to filters), size of the canvas (which controls how much detail) and how much “paint” is used. Each photo comes out great and unique.

It is currently available for iPhone and iPad and I highly recommend it!

iTunes: Waterlogue – Tinrocket, LLC