No need to hit ‘Save’ when you are finished with a sketch or idea and want to move on – simply scroll further along the roll to store your creation in a physical archive.

Safe from power outages and surges, remote hackers and obsolescent operating systems, the Analog Memory Desk was designed and effectively open-sourced by MCAD student Kristen Camara.

Rolled up below but available on demand, thousands of feet of butcher paper  are connected to the legs supporting the surface above. The top, meanwhile, will record anything from scribbles to coffee stains. “1,100 yards of paper will record the lists, the phones numbers you call once, the pixel size of that box on that website, the street name of that business, and the long division you try to remember.”

Licensed Creative Commons, anyone can download the plans and build their own version of this desk. “I’ve come to realize that I’m somewhat obsessed with how we remember the past. This is the latest installment in that series and a more serious attempt at furniture making. There are a hundreds of little things that we don’t try to remember every year or even every week. Does the sum of all these tiny parts produce a new narrative on our lives?”

The post DIY Analog Memory Desk: 3,300 Feet of Scrolling Paper first appeared on Gajitz.

Throughout the years, almost as far back as the history of television itself, companies have been trying to introduce the element of scent into TV shows. Not surprisingly, the attempts have all failed miserably – it seems that no one really wants to experience Conan’s aftershave or the smell of Dexter’s kill room. But a French company called Olf-Action is giving the whole smell-o-vision thing yet another try with a device they’ve helpfully named SMELLIT.

The SMELLIT is being developed more for gaming and movies than for television, but the concept already boasts an impressive library of scents: dentist’s office atmosphere, smell of horse, and smell of polluted cities are among the highlights. The scents are released through chambers that look a little like tiny airplane engines. The next time you’re playing Grand Theft Auto you might just be able to smell the burning rubber and spilled gasoline.

Although SMELLIT is little more than a concept at this point, it may eventually prove to be the one scent-driven accessory that becomes a household item. Then again, it could go the route of every other smell-o-vision gadget in the history of television and simply fade into the forgotten history of things that never quite took off.

The post Dawn of Smell-O-Vision? Gaming Gizmo Lets You Smell Mario first appeared on Gajitz.

What if you and your friends could put all of your web-enabled screens together – laptops, tablets, netbooks and smartphones – to create one large display? The team at MIT’s Civic Media lab have devised a way for you to do just that, and you don’t even have to do any of the hard programming work. It’s called the Junkyard Jumbotron, and it lets you display anything you want on a screen array just by taking a couple of pictures.

According to the video above, you put all of the screens together, point all of the gadgets’ browsers toward a unique URL (which you get at the Junkyard Jumbotron site) and then take a picture of the array. After emailing the picture to a special email address, the software figures out how to slice up the pic you want to display on the screens. Imagine being at a meeting or presentation, asking everyone to contribute a web-enabled device and using all of their gadgets to create a one-of-a-kind display. It’s a completely awesome way to bring together participants or just show off how tech-savvy you are.

The post Collective Cool: Patchwork Display From a Bunch of Screens first appeared on Gajitz.

Designers have been all about the e-paper designs lately, and a major electronics company even unveiled a working prototype in early 2010. But so far, the designs haven’t centered on trying to maintain a familiar form. That’s where this concept from student designers Manny Darden, Jae Kim and Scott Liao differs from the others: it’s meant to call to mind the traditional look and feel of a newspaper. Its four-column layout does indeed look like one of those old-fashioned newspaper contraptions, but with some notable improvements: it’s weatherproof, the content is user-controlled, and it’s much thinner than a newspaper but with more information.

THE PAGE_Adaptive Delivery Device from Scott Liao on Vimeo.

The Page is an adaptive delivery device that makes carrying around large amounts of information much less cumbersome. The designers realized that there is something about newspapers that is intrinsically appealing to many people, something that can’t easily be replicated by electronic readers. They sought to keep that tactile appeal while adding to the possibilities and capabilities of the reader.

The reader’s layout looks like that of a traditional newspaper, but a few simple touches let the user control what content is seen on the page. Unlike most other e-reader concepts, The Page is foldable. This characteristic makes it simple to carry around in a pocket or bag, while its ability to store and display huge quantities of information makes it utterly convenient. There’s no information on how the team expects to fit the necessary memory and wi-fi abilities into a paper-thin device, but those are details – there’s plenty of time to work them out before this concept becomes a reality.

The post Paging the Future: Paper-Thin Next-Generation Newspaper first appeared on Gajitz.