The Pileus system loads a humble umbrella with a lead sinker’s worth of gear to take photos, upload them to flickr, and browse them on the inside surface of the umbrella. On a rainy day I’m loading beach pictures.

Devices to assist the elderly or disabled are a definite growth industry, as we turn to technology to empower those less fortunate than ourselves. Japanese researchers are trying to overcome one of the consequences – the increased number of motorised wheelchairs has brought with it an increase of accidents and collisions. To this end, they have equipped a wheelchair with a camera system that has an uninterrupted 360 degree field of vision. This ‘all-seeing eye’ can not only avoid collisions, but keep watch on the chair user’s wellbeing too.

We’ve been hearing a lot about prosthetics design in the last week. Here’s a new spin on the field – open source design and development. Iraq war veteran Jonathan Kuniholm lost a limb to an IED, and was fitted with the standard issue replacement. Meanwhile, his engineering colleagues were working hard to develop a more advanced model. In a spirit of great altruism, they realised that the best thing they could do would be to share the designs with the rest of the world so that more people could benefit from them, and the Open Prosthetics Project was born.

The folk at Philips are nothing if not diverse in their outlook. Having decided that clothing with lights embedded in it is a great idea, and lauching textiles with light-up logos as an opening salvo, they’re now turning to the world of haute couture. The ‘SKIN’ fashion range is comprised of high fashion garments with lights or colour-morphing textiles that react to environmental stimulus and the emotions of the wearer. Which is a lovely idea, very futuristic. It’s just a shame it all looks a bit like the wardrobe department of the old Buck Rogers series.

The tides that whip in and out of the mouth of San Francisco Bay are something fierce, and may in the next few decades become a source of electrical power for San Franciscans.