Researchers at Kansai University in Japan have developed a machine that has the capability to scientifically measure the quantity of a person’s laugh as well as the sincerity. The device works using a series of electrode sensors that monitor the amount of bioelectricity generated by various muscles involved in laughter. The data is then whisked away to a computer where it is analyzed an assigned a numerical score based on its quantity.

Furthermore, the difference between real and fake laughter is determined by monitoring the movement of the diaphragm. If the muscle vibrations are high, that would be an indicator of a genuine laugh. Interestingly enough, the researchers are looking to make a portable version for heath and entertainment devices—which means that Carrot Top’s performing days are numbered. [Pink Tentacle]

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We love us some big ass glass. Here’s an amazing set of the homemade variety, a 400mm binoscope (a honkin’ set of binoculars basically) painstakingly hand-crafted over the course of three years by a hardcore French dude. The detail on it really makes this thing a DIY engineering marvel. [MAKE]

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Ken-ichi Horie, a 69 year old Japanese sailor, is planning a solo 4,350 mile trip from Hawaii to Japan using the most advanced wave powered boat on the planet. If successful, the trip would earn him a Guinness record while simultaneously proving the viability of wave powered propulsion. His boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, turns wave energy into thrust using two fins mounted beneath the bow. These fins move up and down with the waves and use them to generate “kicks” that propel the boat forward.

The problem is that all of that new fangled technology will only manage to scrape together a top speed of 5 knots. Therefore, it will take about three months to achieve what a diesel powered boat can achieve in only one. Plus, all of the radios and electrical equipment are solar powered. Sounds pretty dangerous, but this is the same dude that made a solo trip across the Pacific in 1999 on a catamaran made from recycled beer barrels. In other words, he’s a rugged dude. [Popsci]

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The iStick is the size of lipstick tube. But it has four touchscreens for four times the Coverflow. I don’t really get the white cube eating up a quarter of the stick though—why not just make the whole thing a solid tube of touchscreen, with the bottom and top holding the single button and earphone jack? It also has Wi-Fi, for browsing the iTunes Store on a screen the size of your finger. [Yanko Design]

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As a result of Sharper Image’s bankruptcy filing earlier this week, the company’s decided to stop accepting gift cards until they can get their finances in order. That really sucks for you if you just received a Sharper Image gift card for Christmas ‘07, but it really sucks for people who returned merchandise and could only get store credit in the form of a card. What’s even more unfortunate is the banner at the top of Sharper Image’s press release site. Ouch. [Sharper Image via Consumerist]

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I told you SSDs would be plummeting in price this year, and here’s Samsung coming along making me look like some sort of genius for finding an article that said that and then writing about it. I rule! Anyhow, Samsung is looking to double the size of its SSDs not once this year, but twice, ending up with a 256GB SSD by year’s end.

Samsung already has a 128GB drive on deck for the third quarter of this year, doubling the size of the drives we’re seeing in pricey laptops like the SSD flavor of the Macbook Air. And while there are plans in place to bump that up to 256GB soon after, it’d be done using “Multi Level Cell (MLC) storage, which is slower than a Single Level Cell (SLC) drive but stacks multiple bits of data per cell to reduce the overall cost of the disk.” That kind of sucks, as the SLC drives aren’t exactly blowing us away with their blistering speed, so it doesn’t really seem worth it to jack up the capacity if the performance will take a nosedive as a result.

In any case, the good news is that SSD prices are expected to drop 35% to 45% yearly. As far as I’m concerned, it’s fine that Samsung is playing around with big, expensive, inefficient SSDs as long as it’s also working on smaller, faster, cheaper versions that, you know, people would actually buy. No one is clamoring for a 256GB iPhone, after all. We’re not that greedy. [CNET via Electronista]

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With pico projectors on the brink of becoming available to the mobile masses, Sony Ericsson has filed a patent for technology that would automatically adjust the projected image using analysis from the handsets camera. Naturally, there is no clear timeframe for when this technology might show up in a commercial product. [Cellpassion via Intomobile via Aboutprojectors]

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Concept gadgets are great because they offer a possible vision of our future while showcasing the potential of outside of the box thinking. The one problem is that many of the designers out there are not even on the same planet as the box. The trick is to come up with an interesting, marketable idea that may actually be possible to build sometime in the not so distant future—ideas like those featured in the gallery below.

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Erica Sadun of iPhone coding fame just rigged up a sort of LoJack for your jailbreaked iPhone. Using Twitter, the iPhone can send periodic updates telling exactly where it is in terms of the location of its nearest cellphone tower. If your phone is lost or stolen, just check the Twitter update page and grab the latest latitude and longitude, which you can then use to somehow track down your phone. We’re not sure how well it’ll work in practice, but it’s better than nothing. [TUAW]

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Waiting in line at the airport sucks. Especially with people who act all surprised when they get to the scanners and suddenly bust babies, knives, lighters and giant sports bottles of water out of their pocket. Well, Transportation Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell wants to combine the harrowing misery of an airport line with the electronic patdown into a single gropefest creepily called “The Tunnel of Truth.”

Basically, you’d stand on a conveyer belt moving through a massive glass tube that scans you (with the nudie backscatter scanner, among other probing technologies, like a Predator-style thermal sensor) as you’re shuffled through, the same as your carry-on luggage. If you step out without being obliterated by lasers tackled by TSA agents, you’re clean.

Apparently shoes still outwit this tunnel of government love, so you’d still have bare your tootsies for foot-fetishist security agents. Me? I think I’ll take the freedom of open air and clueless passenger clusterfucks. [National Defense Mag via Danger Room]

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