Crave

(Credit: Inventables)

You know how annoying it is when you stick your bread in the toaster and accidentally set the dial too high, and when your toast finally pops up, it's darker than you want, or burned?

Granted, most of us over the age of, say, 6 are probably able to handle an ordinary toaster most of the time. But don't you want to watch your toast, well, toasting? Don't you want to see the magic happen?

This concept transparent glass toaster lets you do just that. Or, rather, it wants to let you do just that. Yeah, I was disappointed, too, when I read that the transparent heating glass technology does not currently heat the glass enough to toast bread. But the vendor thinks that a little R&D (and, I'm guessing, a lot of VC cash) could solve that problem.

At any rate, it looks cool.

Can you heel me now? Engineer Paul Gardner-Stephen first developed his shoe phone as a theatrical prop, but later envisioned applications for remote patient monitoring.

(Credit: Ruth Mitchell)

The hollowed-out heel of one shoe houses the phone itself.

(Credit: Asthon Claridge)

Ever since secret agent Maxwell Smart rang up the chief on that infamous shoe phone, geeks have mentally scoured the gadget aisles for footwear that could look dashing while doubling as a telecommunications device.

Here at Crave, we've written about wired shoe-shaped phones before, but Paul Gardner-Stephen has pretty much left those in the dust with his wearable shoe phone that can place and receive calls wirelessly.

A post-doctoral fellow in bioinformatics at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, Gardner-Stephen developed the device by hollowing out the heels on a pair of men's dress shoes with a chisel and screwdriver and placing a phone in one cavity and a Bluetooth headset in the other.

He then reassembled the heels, punching holes in the rubber soles for the phone's answer/hangup and speaker buttons and the blue LED on the headset. He added a little plastic between the heel and sole for water-resistance, charged his shoe, and started dialing up his friends (via voice).

He first developed his device as a theater prop for a local church camp, but later envisioned applying it to remote patient management--tasks like managing pulse, blood pressure, and blood oxygenation.

(Credit: BraDryer.com)

I have friends who are girls. As girls, they tend to have boobs. And because of this they wear bras. Having dated girls (I know!), I've observed how frequently girls sometimes have to buy new bras, theirs getting bent out of shape, and the silk getting creased. It's not just about looks; the distorted bras can be downright uncomfortable (from what I hear).

The Bar Dryer has settings for different bra materials, plus a timer.

(Credit: BryDryer.com)

Here comes the science. InventorSpot tells us a woman named Katy has invented this patent-pending device called the Bra Dryer which, get this, dries bras in a more constructive fashion. By allowing this machine to dry your bras instead of a conventional dryer, they're thought to keep their shape and appearance longer.

The device uses adjustable infrared heat to dry the bras rapidly, though only one at a time. As you can surely tell from the photo, it's shaped like a female torso and comes in different breast and chest size variations that users can mix and match. It also has settings for different bra materials, plus a timer.

Hopefully the BraDryer will find use in laundry rooms across the land, if it actually works. Now if I could get something like this for my bros (or mansieres), I'd be set.

Time Magazine has named 23andMe, one of the first consumer genetic testing services, its 2008 Best Invention of the Year.

(Credit: 23andMe)

23andMe, named for the 23 chromosome pairs every human has, set itself apart from other DNA-testing services, because "it does the best job of making them accessible and affordable," according to Time.

The company offers a $399 DNA test that includes an ancestry analysis, and a health analysis. The health analysis tests for about 90 predispositions ranging from what eye color you'll probably pass on to whether you're likely to get arthritis someday.

Customers are sent a kit by mail that includes a test tube to spit in for the saliva sample and registration materials to log in online. Once the sample is registered and mailed to 23andMe, customers can expect results in about 4-6 weeks.

The company was co-founded by Linda Avey, a biopharmaceutical industry veteran with a background in biology; and Anne Wojcicki, an entrepreneur with experience in healthcare investing and a Yale University degree in biology.

Wojcicki's husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has an additional reason to be proud of Time Magazine's list. The Tesla Roadster, an all-electric sports car made by Tesla Motors, was named runner-up. Brin has given some financial backing to the struggling company.

Other inventions that made it into the top 10 include Hulu.com, the video-streaming site that legally offers free TV shows and movies online; NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter; and the Large Hadron Collider.

The full list of all 50 inventions Time Magazine has named noteworthy for 2008 will appear in the October 31 issue, but it's already been posted to Time's Web site.

A device like this prototype would shine near-infrared light through the scalp and skull, then reflect light back depending on how much blood is circulating in the brain.

(Credit: World Intellectual Property Organization)

As anyone who watches Dr. Phil has surely learned, standard polygraph tests measure responses such as blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rate to detect anxiety associated with guilt or lying. But a new kind of lie detector test could skip the psychophysiological gauges and head straight to the brain for answers on a subject's veracity.

New Scientist pointed us to a patent filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization that proposes detecting lies via near-infrared spectroscopy. Basically, a device would shine near-infrared light through the scalp and skull into certain parts of the brain. Seeing how much light reflects back would indicate oxygenation levels, which vary depending on how active the brain is at a given point and could yield information on the neural pathways underlying the cognitive as well as the emotional aspects of deception.

To measure the light, the patent filers, headed up by Dr. Scott Bunce, a professor of psychiatry at Philadelphia's Drexel University College of Medicine, have come up with a flexible sensing device that would fit around the head. Neural activity could be transmitted to a processor through wired or wireless means, according to the patent, and results could be made available after post-test averaging, or in real time, while the subject is being tested.

The inventors cite heightened reliability as the main advantage of their method. Conventional polygraphy, they say, suffers from a lack of specificity in differentiating guilt from fear or anxiety, and that can contribute to an unacceptably high level of false positives.

Ever heard of bird diapers? A talking toilet paper dispenser? A kosher lamp? Reporter and self-proclaimed "invention groupie" Steve Greenberg has.

Greenberg, also known to TV audiences as the "Innovation Insider," traveled America looking for clever offbeat products. His journey brought him face-to-face with hundreds of garage inventors, some of whom spent years, and even their retirement savings, in a quest to turn an idea into the next gadget bonanza.

In his new book, Gadget Nation, Greenberg tells the stories of these inventors--and more than 100 of their weird, and sometimes wonderful, innovations. These include the aforementioned bird diaper, a headwarmer pillowcase, and the "Take-Out-Time-Out Mat," a portable disciplinary mat parents can pull out anywhere when their kids' behavior warrants a "time out."

Steve Greenberg

(Credit: Courtesy Steve Greenberg)

I recently caught up with Greenberg for the CNET News.com daily podcast while he was stuck in traffic on a Miami bridge. He outlined a few of the gadgets in his book and talked about what differentiates the inventors he met from those people who say, "Too bad there isn't a yada, yada..." but never take it any further.

Some of the inventions profiled in Gadget Nation have proven profitable, but Greenberg maintains that many inventors would say they're driven by more than financial gain.

"Money is part of it," he said. "But it's also some sort of consumer immortality that you go to the store and you see your product on the shelf. That's a very heady experience. You've changed the world of commerce."

Greenberg, who himself was born into a family of patent filers, also has sound advice for would-be inventors. He suggests, among other things, that they find a legitimate patent lawyer, build a working prototype of their gadget, and become part of an inventors' network. Click on the link below to hear the full interview.

AUDIO

What drives inventors?
Author Steve Greenberg talks about what motivates innovators, and shares advice for dreamers who think they have the next big idea.
Download mp3 (4.33MB)

It's wasn't the first cell phone.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

You might have heard by new that Time named the Apple iPhone the "Invention of the Year." I'm not going to dissect the magazine's reasons for choosing the iPhone--News.com's Tom Krazit already did that--rather, I'm more confused as to whether the iPhone should even count as an invention. As some CNET readers have contended, Apple didn't invent the cell phone, it just built its own version. And even if everyone agrees that Apple improved on the concept, should that count as an invention? What do you think?

And lo, it was foretold in the fall of 2007, that a mobile telephone would lead humanity out of the New Dark Ages and into a better future free from roaming charges and buttons.

Time, which likes to anoint things, has named Apple's iPhone the "Invention of the Year," following such recent IotYs like YouTube and SpaceShipOne. The number one reason why the iPhone is Time's Invention of the Year? "It's pretty." Further: "An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into 'airplane' mode (i.e., no cell service, Wi-Fi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar!" Cool!

You'd think the Invention of the Year could at least cut and paste text.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In all seriousness, the article accompanying the award lays out several reasons why the iPhone is indeed very important to the computer industry. The relentless buzz around the iPhone, as well as the sales figures, are signs that the general public is starting to really think about what they want in a mobile computer. The iPhone has made the wireless industry sit up and realize that the bar has been raised. And it's also setting the stage for a future in which your mobile computer gradually occupies a larger part of your world.

We're a technology publication, and were we to pick a tech product of 2007, the iPhone would definitely wind up as one of the final three choices and would probably win. But Invention of the Year?

Shouldn't Time, a general-interest publication, really consider that a broader category that includes extremely important and noteworthy advances in other areas of science and technology? Breakthroughs that might one day have a far more profound effect on the planet than a consumer product?

I guess not. After all, this is a publication that named You, and your user-generated, Web 2.0, no sense of buzzword-irony selves as Person of the Year for 2006, joining other odd PofY choices such as 1966's "Twenty-five and Under," 1969's "Middle Americans," and 1975's "American Women." Sometimes, it's just easier to pick something that will make everybody happy rather than to actually put some thought into the person or the thing that helped change the world that year.

Besides, science is hard. Look at the shiny thing! Isn't that the shiniest thing you've ever seen!

Nathan Ball, a graduate student at MIT, has invented a motorized pulley that will let paramedics and firefighters zip up the side of buildings like Spider-Man.

Ball's Atlas Powered Rope Ascender can pull a firefighter loaded down with 80 to 100 pounds of equipment up a 30-story building in 30 seconds. Trudging up the stairs weighed down with equipment can take six to eight minutes.

Nathan Ball and the Atlas

(Credit: Lemelson-MIT Foundation)

Ball is this year's recipient of the Lemelson-MIT award, a $30,000 prize for invention annually awarded to a student at the school. The Atlas works as follows. A rope is fixed to the roof or other surface where a firefighter or paramedic wants to go (the Atlas thus is designed for the second and third waves of help). Down below, the rope is woven through a series of specially configured rollers on top of a turning spindle on the Atlas. As the battery-powered spindle rotates, it pulls the rope through the device and hoists the person.

Like a boat anchor, the Atlas exploits the capstan effect, which produces a tighter grip each consecutive time a rope is wrapped around a cylinder in the Atlas. As the grip tightens, more weight can be applied to the line.

The battery inside the Atlas comes from A123 Systems, a notable lithium ion battery start-up that's working with General Motors and General Electric.