Siri, Charge My Phone

Remembering Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, the USPS' long-overdue rebrand, smartphones charged by sound and more in our weekly look at the web

A team of researchers at the Queen Mary University of London, with help from Nokia, has developed a prototype cellphone that charges using sound waves in the atmosphere. The secret is super-sensitive zinc oxide nanowires, which convert those sound vibrations into electrical currents. This means, hopefully in the nearer future, cellphones can be charged—sans cable—merely by the sound of your voice during a phone call, …

Robin Williams: 1951-2014

Remembering Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, the USPS' long-overdue rebrand, smartphones charged by sound and more in our weekly look at the web

This week the world tragically lost one of popular culture’s most beloved icons, actor and comedian Robin Williams. An outpour of articles have emerged, offering insights on his inimitable legacy and recent mental health, as well as a few esoteric thought pieces on suicide awareness. However, it’s TIME Magazine’s commemorative issue that is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of accounts on the life of the …

POV Hyperlapse

Remembering Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, the USPS' long-overdue rebrand, smartphones charged by sound and more in our weekly look at the web

Though GoPro has made an amateur videographer out of everyone, the fact is, nobody wants to watch your hour-long POV video. To make these films digestible—and enjoyable—a new Microsoft Research project has introduced hyperlapse, a software system that uses an algorithm to reconstruct the scenes and effectively blend frames at 10 times the speed of the original video, and without any shaking.