Design

Golf can be frustrating on the best of days. What better way to calm your nerves than to sail around the links on this hovercraft golf cart?

Bubba Watson, 2012 Masters champion, and his sponsor, Oakley, recently teamed up with Neoteric Hovercraft to launch this super sophisticated way of getting from hole to hole.

The hovercraft maker released a video of Watson riding on a 9-foot air cushion at Arizona's Raven Golf Club.

The BW1 has a "footprint pressure" of 33 times less than a human footprint, leaving relatively little impact on the course itself. … Read more

These days, computer-generated imagery rules the movie scene, but 20 years ago, it was still a relatively fresh idea that was difficult to integrate into film without looking fake.

When production of "Jurassic Park" commenced, director Steven Spielberg enlisted iconic special-effects guru Stan Winston and his studio team to design and create realistic-looking animatronic dinosaurs. The groundbreaking work, which included an incredible amount of engineering and artistry, forever changed the way people think about dinosaurs. … Read more

Earth -- unlike perhaps any other planet out there -- provides a mostly hospitable home for humankind. Yet we seem to have opted for unsustainable growth instead of preservation.

At least that's the message in photographer David Thomas Smith's "Anthropocene" exhibition, which Smith describes as a visual examination of global landscapes transformed by the actions and activities of humanity. Each of the 12 prints in the collection derives from thousands of screenshots, which Smith captured from Google Maps and metamorphosed in Photoshop.… Read more

At first glance, it's a black dress festooned with colorful embroidery. But Nikki Day had much more than style in mind when threading the intricate pattern into the garment's left side.

The British fashion design and knitwear student researched the morphology of various classes of cortical neurons and then embroidered images to reflect the theory of schizophrenia as a disease of aberrant brain circuit connectivity.

"The dress is tight and slightly restricts movement to reflect the effect these brain cell malfunctions can have in limiting people with the disease in everyday life," she says. "The intricate needlework draws you in and before you know it you are discussing how the cortical neural circuits are formed." … Read more

There's no denying that the ZeitEco scooter looks weird, like the love child of a Yamaha and a Klondike bar. If you want to blend into a crowd, this isn't the vehicle for you. The name stands for "zero-emission individual transport." The result is an electric scooter that can fit in the back of many vehicles.

The ZeitEco handlebars and foot rests fold away so you can pack it into small spaces. It's also ready to handle your gadgets with a built-in sound system and the ability to charge them up. It's kind of like a boom box on wheels.… Read more

You know what they say... keep your friends close, and your batteries closer.

A Washington-based accessory maker has just created a Kickstarter project for its latest product, the Rhino Battery Holster. As the name suggests, the contraption allows you to holster your camera battery like a gunslinger in an old Western.

Capable of holding two Canon 2 LP-E6 juice packs, the battery holster has an integrated belt clip that lets you attach the holster to your belt, camera strap, or camera carrier. Alternately, there are brass inserts at the rear of the belt clip that let you secure the holster to anything using a carabiner. … Read more

If you laid out all the electronics components you've ever owned on the floor, what would it look like?

Maybe something along the lines of Federico Uribe's "Tapete" (carpet). It's fashioned out of thousands of discarded computer and other electronics components.

The Miami-based conceptual artist uses objects from daily life in sculptures that evoke animals, plants, and human figures.

His work "Everybody Gets Screwed," for instance, features busts of people including Marylin Monroe made out of all manner of screws. … Read more

Were you one of those kids who saw the silhouette of creatures in the clouds? You might enjoy director Patrick Jean's "Motorville," in which a California city, loosely based on Los Angeles, comes alive and treks across the world in search of oil.

Why oil? Jean says the city needs "oil in order to feed its body, made of streets, highways, and freeways." The director originally created the video for a television channel in the U.S., but the unnamed network supposedly declined the piece after seeing it, so Jean put it on Vimeo instead. … Read more

TOKYO--The crowd lining the end of Tokyo Station's platform 22 is four people deep.

They're jostling for position with their cameras -- trainspotters, parents, and children alike -- to get a shot of Japan's latest bullet train: the Series E6 Shinkansen, known as the Super Komachi.

They all bought tickets for the privilege of entering this part of the sprawling terminal that serves 380,000 passengers daily, and operator JR East has to deploy extra security guards to keep them a safe distance from the glistening new locomotive.

With services to northern Japan on the Akita Shinkansen Line, the Super Komachi debuted earlier this month as one of Japan's fastest commercial trains.

It has been traveling at 300 kph (186 mph) and will eventually run at 320 kph (198.8 mph), also the new operational speed of the Series E5 Hayabusa, among the world's fastest along with France's TGV. … Read more