Last year, we’d learned that some researchers in the US were working hard to establish a way to transmit electricity wirelessly. And it seems like they have little solid achievement here.

Meet the curious “M.01,” otherwise known as the Car for Paris 2030. It’s described by its designer Ashley Chichocki as exploring “what is really necessary in a vehicle,” and as such it addresses a major issue that cities are facing even today: parking. The M.01 is made of elastic fabrics stretched over a pneumatic framework. When it’s in motion, the two-seater car spreads out, giving its passengers more room. After everyone’s out, the car contracts in on itself for easy, ultra compact parking that’ll also allow several M.01s to stack against one another. Check out the gallery below for more of Ashley Chichocki’s “Car for Paris 2030″ design.

Watches may be going out of style a bit due to the fact that most people carry around cellphones that can tell time just as well, but that doesn’t mean Timex is going to stop trying to come up with new reasons for you to give them money. In fact, they just had a design contest to help them come up with forward-thinking watch ideas.

This Nail Watch entry is, well, interesting. It’s designed to slip over your thumbnail, letting you tell the time just by glancing down at your hand. You can light it up or change the mode by pressing down on the end of your thumbnail. I’m not sure what magical technologies would have to be used to create this, nor do I know how it stays on your thumbnail, but I do know that this is certainly unlike any watch I’ve ever seen. Whether or not it’ll ever actually exist is another question entirely.

If you constantly need to stop typing to take a sip of water, adjust your hair, fix your glasses, take a bite of a sandwich, or any other process that requires one hand, you might think that having to use both hands to type on a keyboard is a little inconvenient. You would be being kind of lazy and picky, but hey, I’m not one to judge.

A solution for your problem is the Clove 2 Glove, a glove that uses finger gestures to let you type with one hand, leaving your other hand free to do what it pleases. You simply need to completely relearn how to type using a complicated series of finger movements. What could be easier? Now, finally, at long last, you don’t need to stop typing that email to scratch yourself. Viva progress!

We here at Yanko Design see all manner of interesting concepts, but this is definitely the first serious attempt (from a sane person at least) that we’ve seen at an actual time machine. Though the laws of physics may be a good reason for the shortage of time machine concepts, those abiding principals did not stop designer Charles Blanca. By studying the link between senses and memories, he believes he has created a time machine and has called it “Madeline.” From here things get complicated, and since no one is more qualified to explain it, here are the designer’s own words.

Babak Parviz, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, has created contact lenses that contain electronic circuits. He’s also going to add microLEDs so that the lenses will be able to display things on them. This would make them one of the tiniest personal displays ever made.

While a prototype has been created it is months away from being powered up. The current ideas for powering it up are via radio waves and miniature antennas attached to the lenses or by using solar cells.

Parviz hopes that his invention will be able to be useful in a variety of ways including computing, gaming and medical applications.

He left off one critical use that these contact lenses would be great for, namely becoming an international super-spy.

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’ve ever been caught in a sudden and unexpected downpour (you probably weren’t wearing your weather forecasting Suunto Lumi) you’ll know that a newspaper can make for a half-decent substitute umbrella. But holding it over your head while trying to keep yourself and whatever else you’re carrying dry can be difficult. Enter designer Shiu Yuk Yuen’s Eco Brolly concept. Essentially it’s an ultra compact collapsible umbrella frame that’s designed to use newspapers, plastic bags or anything else you can get your hands on to keep you keep dry.

Now obviously newspapers have the tendency to disintegrate when they get wet, but I don’t think the Eco Brolly is designed as a replacement to an actual umbrella. Think of it more as an emergency solution that’s small enough to carry with you on days where there’s a slight chance it could rain. I actually like the concept, particularly since you can just chuck the newspaper into a recycling bin when you get to where you’re going, instead of having to hang it somewhere to dry like with a regular umbrella.

If you’re one of those weird and sometimes gloomy people (like me) who get the urge to close the curtains on even the nicest of days, a new solar development will give us a new excuse to do it: It might help the environment and save us a few bucks.