Rob Spence, a Toronto-based filmmaker, is so dedicated to his craft that he’s replaced one of his eyeballs with a camera-eye. Before you become too horrified, you should know that he hasn’t taken out a real eyeball, just a fake one that he’s had since he was a kid.

43-year-old Spence – who calls himself an Eyeborg – lost sight in one eye in a freak accident at age nine – he was shooting a pile of cow dung and badly injured his eye when he held the shotgun incorrectly. Since then, he’s lived with a fake eyeball in his right socket. But he recently thought it would be more interesting to remove it and replace it with a camera of his own invention.

The camera-eye looks like a regular prosthetic, but it isn’t connected to an optic nerve so Spence cannot actually see with it. It is equipped with a micro radio-frequency transmitter and whatever the eye can ‘see’ is played on a handheld monitor. The camera can be switched on and off with a push of a button.

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Did you know electricity can alter the way we taste food? Proving this fact is a revolutionary electric fork designed by Japanese researchers that can make any dish taste salty, thus acting as a substitute for the popular seasoning.

According to Hiromi Nakamura, a Post Doc Research Fellow at Tokyo’s Meiji University, the technology can be very useful for people on special diets. Patients with low blood pressure, for instance, can easily go on a low-salt diet and still enjoy delicious food. And with the fork, there’s absolutely no risk of over-salting your food. Luckily, the voltage is so small that there is no risk of electrocution either.

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‘Wingboarding’ is a new type of adventure sport that will soon be made available to thrill-mongers around the world. Developed by Wyp Aviation, a startup company trying to “take aviation to the next level”, the WingBoard provides riders with a stable platform that flies through the air rather than falling towards the ground.

It’s sort of a cross between skysurfing and wakeboarding and involves surfing through the sky on a board while being towed by a plane. The daredevil stunt is meant to emulate the comic book superhero Silver Surfer, who can travel through space on his surfboard-shaped craft. “The WingBoard is like a wakeboard, but instead of slicing through waves behind a boat, you’re being towed by a plane, carving through clouds,” said founder and lead engineer Aaron Wypyszynski.

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Cheap, eco-friendly machines, made from discarded bicycle parts and powered by pedalling, are all the rage in rural Guatemala. They’re called ‘bicimaquinas’, and they are used for various purposes in the community – right from simple food processing to making shampoos and soaps.

The unique device is the brainchild of ‘Maya Pedal’, a locally-run non-profit in the rural town of San Adrés Itzapa. Founded in 1997 as a collaboration between Canadian organisation ‘Pedal’ and local mechanic Carlos Marroquín, the organisation is credited with the invention of several devices that make use of spare parts from bikes and harness the power of human energy.

Each bicimaquina (bike-machine) is handcrafted at the Maya Pedal workshop, using a combination of old bikes, concrete, wood, and metal. Their designs are 100 percent original, and are both functional and economical. Priced at about $40 apiece, the machines come in several variations for different purposes.

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Jackson Gordon, a student of industrial design at Philadelphia University, has pooled everything he’s learned at school so far to build an awesome version of Batman’s batsuit! And we’re not talking about just another replica. This one is designed to withstand punches, kicks, stabs or baseball bat blows!

“I’ve always been a Batman fan,” the 21-year-old from Wayne, Philadelphia told Buzzfeed news. He started making prototypes for the suit last September, using over $1,000 raised on Kickstarter. “Before making the real suit, I did at least 10 prototypes of different parts for the suit to test out materials and sewing patterns,” he revealed. “Once I was happy with those, I started making the real suit using the patterns I had decided on from the prototypes. I cut out the internal lining fabric, then added the foam padding, then a layer of kevlar, then the top grey fabric.”

When the individual pieces were completed, Gordon sewed them together to form the suit. He made the external armored plates from quarter-inch-thick ABS sheets, cut using a scroll saw. “These plates were then power sanded, and heated up with a heat gun to make them pliable,” he explained. “The chest and ab plating was then mounted to the suit, while the other armor remains removable.”

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A team of California scientists, or ‘biohackers’ as they call themselves, claim to have discovered a way for people to achieve night-vision without the use of special goggles. They recently conducted an experiment called Science for the Masses(SftM), in which they injected a volunteer’s eyes with a special liquid solution that gave him superhuman night-vision.

After receiving the injection, the volunteer – researcher Gabriel Licina – could supposedly see up to a distance of 50 meters in almost total darkness for several hours, and could spot people running among trees in dark conditions. In comparison, people who weren’t treated with the solution did not fare as well.

The mystifying solution apparently contains a substance called Chlorin e6 (Ce6), which is found in some deep-sea fish. It has light-amplification properties, and has also been used in cancer treatment research. By combining Ce6 with insulin and saline, the team was able to produce a solution that can improve vision in the dark.

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Samsung UK has come up with a real treat for dogs and their owners – a high-tech dream house for dogs. The unique pooch pad comes fully loaded with an automatic food dispenser, a grass turf covered treadmill, a hydrotherapy pool, vinyl walls that the owner can cover with photos, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S for the dog’s browsing pleasure. With a price tag of £20,000 (roughly $30,000), the Samsung Dream Doghouse is being touted as the most expensive doghouse ever.

“With the Samsung Dream Doghouse, we wanted to reflect the nation’s growing trend for using technology,” said Samsung Electronics UK president Andy Griffiths. “From dogs who have social media profiles to owners who use video calling to check on their pet while away, technology is fast becoming an integral part of everyday life. The Samsung Dream Doghouse looks sleek and modern, featuring the kind of tech the discerning dog of the future will need.”

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There are plenty of apps that remind us to drink water, or exercise, but here’s a first – a wearable device that lets you know when it’s time to use the toilet! Triple W, a California-based Japanese startup, has come up with an innovative technology that predicts bowel movements and gives users a 10-minute heads-up before needing to use the toilet.

The concept might seem funny, but it could actually be a godsend for people whose work only allows for scheduled breaks, and also those who suffer from health problems like incontinence. All you need to do is attach the device to your stomach and connect it to an app on your smartphone. The sensors in the device can detect any swelling in your intestines and send notifications to your phone 10 minutes in advance. The app also records bowel movements to learn your daily habits and improve the accuracy of notifications.

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The Booty Drum is a high-tech musical device that, unlike most instruments, isn’t operated by your hands, but by tour butt cheeks ! All you need to do is attach the drum to your behind, start twerking, and let it transform your movements into beats.

The device was created by headphone brand AIAIAI, in an attempt to give their users some “new music to enjoy on their headphones or  on the dance floor.” They wanted to make a unique music track from scratch, using nothing but body movements. So they teamed up with Portuguese electronic musician Branko, professional dancer Twerk Queen Louise, and OWOW, a Dutch design and technology company to create something really unique. Together, the team took the widely popular twerk dance and converted it into an instrument in its own right.

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Up until a few weeks ago, the proverbial thinking cap only had a figurative meaning, but apparently science has finally managed to catch up. A couple of American scientists have created a real thinking cap that could help people learn and make decisions quicker.

This unique device is the brainchild of psychology professor Geoff Woodman and Ph.D. student Robert Reinhart of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and works by sending very low electrical shocks to the brain when worn. The duo claim that the electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain could make the wearer learn new skills and make better decisions.

Indeed, studies performed on the human brain have revealed that negative voltage spikes occur in the medial-frontal cortex of the brain, milliseconds before we make a mistake. Woodman and Reinhart figured that a part of the brain can influence learning and decision making, helping us avoid the same mistakes later.

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A Singapore restaurant has come up with a very innovative solution to cope with the shortage of manpower affecting the whole island city – flying robot waiters! The Infinium Robotics’ drones are all set to be introduced at the local restaurant-bar chain by the end of this year.

Availability of manpower has become an issue all over Singapore, ever since the government introduced curbs on cheap and foreign labor in order to slow down immigration. The restaurant industry has long depended on foreign labor, because young Singaporeans tend to look down on service jobs.

Several well-known restaurants and food stalls have actually shut down in recent months due to manpower shortage and high rent costs. In order to cope with the situation, a few restaurateurs have been experimenting with new ways – right from robots who can wok-fry rice and noodles, to iPad menus and bullet train delivery systems. But this is the first time a restaurant will have drones that serving diners.

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With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, lots of single people are probably dreading an onrush of uncomfortable questions from parents and other nosy relatives. Thankfully, there’s a new app called the ‘Invisible Boyfriend’ that could help them get through the awkward situation with ease.

The genius app, which recently went from private to public beta, allows users to pay for “believable social proof” that they’re actually in a relationship. The app generates everything that would exist in a real-life relationship, like photos, text messages, and even voicemails – all fake, but realistic.  “It really helps people tell a better story about a relationship they’re not in,” said Matthew Homann, who created the app along with Kyle Tabor. 

He revealed that he first purchased the domains ‘invisibleboyfriend’ and ‘invisiblegirlfriend’ nine years ago, just after a divorce. He didn’t do much with them for a long time, but at a 2013 Startup Weekend in St. Louis, he decided to pitch the idea. Matthew and his team won first place, after which there was no looking back. 

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‘Dead Drops’, a five-year-old project created by Berlin media artist Aram Bartholl, is probably the world’s most amazing file sharing network. It consists of USB flash drives embedded into walls, buildings and curbs all over the world. Anyone is welcome to hook up their laptops or smartphones to these drives, to drop or download files, or expand the network by embedding USB memory sticks in any old, crumbling wall in their own city.

The premise of the project is rather simple – just cement a USB stick into a wall with the port protruding, and post its location with photographs on the central Dead Drops database. Bartholl said that he created the project as a way to ‘un-cloud’ file sharing. “Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space,” the project manifesto states.

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While the age-old idiom tells us not to judge a book by its cover, this high-tech book-cover is designed to do the judging instead. Created by a group of artists at Amsterdam creative studio Moore, the book-sleeve has the ability to scan faces for prejudice. If it detects even the slightest hint of judgement, the book will simply refuse to open.

Aptly named ‘The Cover that Judges You’, the sleeve comes with an integrated camera at the top and facial-recognition software that scans the faces of people who approach it. “Our aim was to create a book cover that is human and approachable-hi-tech,” artist Thijs Biersteker said. “If you approach the book, the face-recognition system picks up your face and starts scanning it for signs of judgement.”

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The ‘Experience Helmet’ is a new, high-tech wearable device that allows people to hear electronic representations of their thoughts. It uses Electroencephalography (EEG) technology to translate brain activity into data. This basically means that the helmet can read your thoughts, convert it into sound, and play it back to you!

According to Aiste Noreikaite, who invented the helmet, it is meant to create an “audible reflection of one’s personal experience of the present moment.” Inspired by Buddhist meditation practices, the London-based artist said that she wanted to create a device to enhance self-awareness.

So she started with an ordinary bike helmet, took it apart, and installed an EEG wireless headset and headphones inside. Next, she researched ways to convert the data provided by the headset into sound. After much deliberation, she finally settled on pure electronic signals to represent brainwaves.

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