It turns out that it’s possible to develop film in a mixture of instant coffee, washing soda and vitamin C. This is, to me, amazing. Here’s the recipe.

12 oz. water

5 teaspoons instant coffee crystals

3 1/2 teaspoons washing soda

1/2 teaspoon vitamin C powder

Dubbed cafenol (its a geeky photochem joke), the developer is used just like a regular developing solution, only you can make it by raiding the kitchen cupboard (apart from the instant coffee, of course. We know you all have French presses and espresso machines). You will still need a real fixer solution to deactivate the light sensitive materials, and you’ll need to take the same care in loading the film into a developing tank as you would if using regular ol’ Perceptol, but the results are surprisingly good.

Cafenol will turn any film into a black and white negative, similar in effect to cross processing (developing a slide film in color print film chemicals, for example), and you’ll still want to keep the extractor fan running. Despite the ingredients, this mixture is foul smelling. Photojojo:

Holy frijoles! How can things that smell like coffee, nothing, and nothing combine to smell like grim death?

Also, don’t drink it. One thing about this hack that isn’t surprising is that there is a Flickr group dedicated to cafenol photos. And it goes without saying that if you do try this at home, post your results to the Gadget Lab Flickr pool.

[via]

Camera in a mobile phone does make sense, but how will you use a camera implanted in your headphones? Only the designers, Andy Kurovets & Kris Dekeijser, can explain the functionality of their unnamed gadget that features a camera in the headset. Probably they are targeting the spy agencies as their potential buyers. If you are also a die hard fan of Sherlock Holmes and looks to capture every detail of the incidents going around you, the head or webcam maybe an ideal spy device for you.

Usability:

The headphones present a giant crystal on the side that conceals the webcam when not in use. You may simply pull the webcam out of the crystal and place it in your table or PC to be used as a camera.

[via]

You aren’t still using a pizza cutter to slice up your pizza, are you? That is so 20th century. We’re living in more exciting times these days, times in which we don’t need stupid blades to cut our food. No, now we use lasers. LASERS!

Just take a look at the above video, which shows a pizza being divided into 8 perfectly, precisely equal slices. Sure, it’s not the most energy efficient way to slice a pizza, but it’s definitely the most impressive. Well, maybe tossing it up in the air and slicing it with a samurai sword like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is more impressive, but this is a method anyone can do. Anyone with a laser, that is. Welcome to the future!

[via]

Check out this new key fob from Delphi, using E Ink and destined for a futuristic auto near you. Using the same E Ink tech in the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader but 40 percent thinner and on a smaller scale, it sips power, digitally painting images on a screen without continuously using energy. This key fob is an example of what can be done with E Ink’s next-generation segmented display cells (SDC), thinner and flexible enough to bend around curved devices. This groundbreaking gadget will wirelessly communicate with your car, telling you from a distance if you need gas, giving you remote starting capabilities, letting you adjust your car’s climate control, and even helping you find that vehicle in a vast, crowded parking lot. Its E Ink allows this handy little bauble to go a long time without a battery charge. Best of all, the company says mass production will keep the price low. Whoa. [via]

While there are some devices out there that can get juiced up by the sun using solar panels, that’s really not all that convenient. What about when you’re inside? When it’s cloudy? There’s got to be an even more convenient way.

There is! It’s the power shirt, a shirt infused with nanotechnology that’s able to get power from the basic movements of your body, transferring that energy to the gadget of your choice. It’s still in the early stages of development, but eventually you might be wearing shirts with USB jacks built in, intentionally walking briskly to keep your cellphone from dying. The future is so crazy! [via DVICE]