Engineering to inspire

Featured Video: 9min History of the Telephone

From then to now… how the telephone was built and how the infrastructure and set up happened over time.

Montage of telecom history thru the last century using public domain footage and edited to music by Propellerheads (pending permission.)

Take the Create2011 engineering challenge and tell us your vision of Future Mobility to win the grand prize of: A Nokia Experiential Journey in Beijing and Singapore! Check out our Facebook fanpage for exciting contests & giveaways!

We’re now culturally-shocked tourists…

Create 2010 winners guest blog about their travels to Munich.
This trip is generously sponsored by BMW.

Day three: Mo’ museums, a culture of cars?, the palace, and the streets of Munich

Choo-choo train going nowhere. But we are headed to the…

Watcha got planned for the hols?

It’s the holidays!

It usually means time off to slack, watch TV, and head out to the movies. Bugger that… There’s plenty to do in sunny Singapore and in your void deck. So don’t waste your time vegging out infront of the goggle box. And besides your mind’s too good to waste on popcorn and Gummiberry juice (so sue me, I made that one up :P).

Here are our picks of things to do this March holidays…

Asian Inventions

What happened on UCreateChange.com (22-28 Feb 2010)

The Japanese and Koreans are technology whizzes. After all the world’s best electronics come from that part of Asia. The latest news has them turning tech into art, like the OLED screens that double up as art pieces from Nanobrick. Or they’re keeping it beautifully functional like the Zero emission house in Japan that’s built with ecologically friendly materials and uses the latest technology to generate and monitor energy use.

Closer to home, did you know that Singaporeans invented many things that we use today?

The PC sound card that turns beeps and bleeps into voices and music comes courtesy of Creative Technologies Sim Wong Hoo (crica 1989). Or the ubiquitous Thumb Drive by Trek Technologies that everyone carries photos, articles and videos in. Now some of them have even become as collectible as Be@rBricks! More recently there are the X-mini capsule speakers that use vacuum to mimic sub-woofers. Odd, I thought sound couldn’t travel in a vacuum?

Can’t get enough of Asian inventions?

Here are 50 of the best Asian inventions that have made an impact throughout the centuries. Apparently Asians have domesticated animals, cultivated crops, and created the toothbrush way before anyone else!

Let’s make good sounds: The art of sound engineering

Sound engineers deal with sound and make it sound good. They record, synchronize, mix, or reproduce music, voices or any other sound.

And sometimes they’re the music police for concerts.

Sound engineers make sure that the musicians are synced up with each other. So they might dim the clash of drums, tweak up guitar strings and let the lead singer’s voice wail through the concert hall for an Über musical experience. So if you got no satisfaction from the speakers at a gig – that’s the sound engineers’ fault.

Thus they are important folk in making music, acoustics, and even movies (remember THX sound system?) sound good.

There are courses out there (Nanyang Polytechnic’s AV technology course for instance) that will teach you the basics. But to be really good, you’d need a ear for it, and plenty of curiosity and desire to investigate the aural spectrum.

Like Diego Stocco, a master sound engineer who makes music from the unlikeliest sources such as “clothes drying rack, pipes with water running through them, a burning piano, light bulbs, a typing machine, a bass made from a bedside table, and a ‘sonic washer’”