Tag: SPAIN

A 57-year-old Spanish man is back in prison today, after using something called a fax machine to break free. The inmate, Juan Carlos Serna, reportedly got his wife to send a fax to the jail, posing as an official order from a regional court. The letter demanded that Serna be released, and was followed by a phone call to confirm. Police then let him stroll out of the facility, in much the same ...

'Super Mario Bros.' recently turned 25-years old, and the birthday gifts keep coming in. One Spanish neighborhood has given the iconic hero an impressively geeky present that may be the first of its kind: an entire street. During an elaborate public ceremony, the planned community of Arcosur, Spain officially unveiled the 'Avenida de Super Mario Bros.' Along with the expected costumed spectators, ...

If there is one thing that we've learned here at Switched over the years it's that, while video games may be fun, moving the mechanics of console fun into the physical realm is often far cooler. That's why we're so taken with this electromechanical 'Running of the Bulls' table-top game, inspired by the pre-console games of the mid-20th century . Using a small motor, a timing belt and a ...

Some musical prodigies can listen to a song once, then bang it out, note for note, on a piano. Others can pick out A-flats and C-sharps from the cacophony of rush hour traffic. These rare kinds of aural abilities, though, are no longer restricted to the domain of Mozarts and Mendelssohns, thanks to a new music-transcribing software developed by Spanish engineers. As PopSci explains, the ...

What's the ideal tour guide through one of the largest banks in the world? A sleek and shiny red robot, of course. According to Engadget, Santander's Group City in Madrid enlisted YDreams to craft a fleet of robots to help visitors around the nine massive buildings that make up the bank's complex and that house about 5,500 employees. Upon entering the bank's visitor center, you walk up to a ...

Blog lovers this week are lamenting the loss of one of the Web's oldest and most beloved bloggers. According to Reuters, Maria Amelia Lopez of La Coruña, Spain passed away this week at the age of 97. In her blog, Lopez discussed the tribulations of living through the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, as well as current topics including hosting Spanish Prime ...

Who needs the Hubble? Not Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta­ Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort, that's for sure. The four Spanish teenagers, working with their teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol as the Meteotek team at the IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia, started with a fairly lofty goal: They wanted to launch a balloon with a digital camera and some custom-built ...

With renewable energy being a thing of the future, a Spanish town called Santa Coloma de Gramenet is making it a thing of the past. And the dead. The town has erected a sea of solar panels sitting atop is local cemetery. Flat, sunlit land is apparently so scarce in the region that the graveyard is essentially the only viable spot to install its solar energy program. The 462 panels installed ...

Here in the U.S., the practice of sending troubled kids to institutions for mental problems has seemed to lose favor in recent years. American kids with issues seem to either be coddled by parents who act like there's no problem, or they're shuffled onto the stage for an episode of 'Dr. Phil' and a dose of tough love. Things are handled a little differently in Spain, where two kids have been ...

As Randy Newman once crooned, "Short people got no reason to live." Far be it from us at Switched to dismiss those who don't measure up to certain height standards, but a doctor out of Madrid, Spain, may have a solution for the vertically challenged, or at least a way to change the general perception of height (if not a person's ability to reach items on the top shelves of kitchen cabinets). ...

While Americans have been lovingly showing off their iPhones since the end of June of last year, Apple fans in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom were only recently given the opportunity to buy their phones this past November. The rest of Europe is still (officially) out of luck. Now, though, it looks as though that's finally about to change, with talk of other members of the European ...

This time of year, when the temperatures are soaring, there's nothing like a nice dip in a cool body of water to make the heat tolerable. Who knew the same could be said for buildings? Apparently, a group of Spanish aircraft engineers do. The engineers recently developed a technique to pump water through specialized double-pane windows. The sun heats the water, which is moved elsewhere and ...