Here in my rainy home of London, stories about “yoofs” and “hooligans” glassing each other with beer pints are pretty rife, which is why I’m hardly surprised the UK government is redesigning the pint glass to cut back on violence. Supposedly 87,000 glassings occur each year in the UK, which says quite a bit about our culture here. Anyway, the government has weighed in and enlisted the help of the Design Council to create a safer glass, with a few different prototypes made so far. The first is coated in plastic to stop it from cracking, with the second design made from two layers of glass, bonded together with resin. It kind of begs the question of whether pubs should just sell the amber liquid in plastic glasses, but you know those Brits—they may be hard-fisted purveyors of a good ol’ glassing, but they still want to look classy while doing it. [ BBC ] Image Credit: OwenBlacker

How’s this for a crazy-sounding product: liquid glass from a spray bottle, able to safely coat everything from clothing to plants to keep them safe from dirt, heat, infection and UV radiation. The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily. Other organizations, such as a train company and a hotel chain in the UK, and a hamburger chain in Germany, are also testing liquid glass for a wide range of uses.

Breaking news in the world of sponge technologies: Obsorb is a new nano glass matrix sponge that, when dipped into water, swells to suck the pollutants right out. Intended to purify our groundwater from dangerous pollutants like gasoline (note: it doesn’t appear that Obsorb can handle crude oil, but I could be mistaken), Obsorb is a hydrophobic material comprised of active glass—in other words, its glass actually bonds with bad chemicals, but it won’t take any water along with the pollutants. Once full of up to 8x its weight in gunk, Obsorb floats to the water’s surface where it can be skimmed, ringed out (by other chemicals, we believe) and dropped back in the water hundreds of times. And, if you listen very closely, you can almost hear the Stayfree exec who dropped the ball on the “Obsorb” trademark sobbing into his tie as he gives his letter of resignation one last pass.

Maybe if you had a free weekend and Mjǫllnir, hammer of Thor, you could crack Corning’s Gorilla Glass . But that’s a made-up thing! And this stuff is impervious to the very real threats of key scratching and localized pressure. Gorilla Glass is an unscratchable, unshatterable material used as a protective window for your mobile phone, PMP, or laptop display. It’s in 65 products already, and I can assure you that the very nice man from Corning is not faking it. Your intrepid reporter also gave this several tries with all his blogger strength, and couldn’t make a dent. I was, however, able to scratch the heck out of some polycarbonate.

I would like to live in this glass house, a place in the middle of the woods that even has glass-based furniture. Why? I just want to walk around naked all day. Like I do now, but better. Sadly, it’s just a concept based on a furniture line by Santambrogiomilano. The furniture is real, however.

Think those plastic glasses are filled with Daisy’s fresh milk? Wrong! The battery-powered white LEDs light up the opaque plastic, fooling everyone into thinking you’re drinking nature’s own juice. Instead of gin. [ Amazon via OhGizmo ]

Remember those plastic glasses we had as kids, which changed color if liquid was inside? You’d quite often get them for 99c with a kid’s meal at a fast food chain. These are the next (grown-up) step in the evolution. While it’s just a concept for now, I’m really hoping designer Damjan Stankovic can send them off on the production line. Each Cipher Drinking Glass has a multitude of colored dots in a seemingly random pattern, but once liquid is added, the dots actually spell out what sort of drink it is.

Corning’s darn-near-impenetrable Gorilla glass certainly isn’t new — in fact, we spied it in a few of Motion Computing’s tablets just a few months ago — but it’s still not commonplace on mainstream gizmos. Yet. SmartPlanet sat down with Dr. Donnell Walton, senior applications engineer at Corning, in order to discuss the merits of the display technology as well as its importance in the gadget space. The discussion also mentioned that both Motorola’s Droid and Dell’s Adamo (not to mention Cowon’s S9 PMP ) are sporting the glass, which acts to make displays “damage-resistant.” Not surprisingly, the company is seeing huge demand in the smartphone arena, where touchscreen-centric phones are being shoved into pockets at random and then costing manufacturers big bucks as return rates creep up. It’s a pretty interesting read if you’re into that type of thing, and yes, we did just give you permission to try and split your Droid display wide open in a moment of frustration

Corning’s darn-near-impenetrable Gorilla glass certainly isn’t new — in fact, we spied it in a few of Motion Computing’s tablets just a few months ago — but it’s still not commonplace on mainstream gizmos. Yet. SmartPlanet sat down with Dr. Donnell Walton, senior applications engineer at Corning, in order to discuss the merits of the display technology as well as its importance in the gadget space. The discussion also mentioned that both Motorola’s Droid and Dell’s Adamo (not to mention Cowon’s S9 PMP ) are sporting the glass, which acts to make displays “damage-resistant.” Not surprisingly, the company is seeing huge demand in the smartphone arena, where touchscreen-centric phones are being shoved into pockets at random and then costing manufacturers big bucks as return rates creep up.

If you were cursed with buttery fingers, you might want to consider what kind of display glass your gadgets are sporting. Devices like the Motorola Droid, Dell Adamo laptop and Cowon S9 PMP have added strength because of Gorilla Glass . Apparently, Gorilla Glass differs from the product you might find in a typical smartphone because it allows “larger ions to penetrate the surface more deeply to increase the compression tolerance and tolerate deeper scratches.” This is achieved though a aluminum-composite composition that can be made extremely thin and light because of its strength. Corning, the company behind the glass, is hoping to expand the reach of their product to other consumer electronics and even vehicles—anything that needs to withstand the elements. And by “elements” I mean clumsy, uncoordinated types… Adam