Companies like iGo want you to be aware that vampire power sucks, but it’s hard to be aware of something that doesn’t actually smack you around for wasting energy. This is what the leech plug does. Just like a real leech, anything connected to the leech plug will sate itself and then disconnect, or rather, it’ll get physically disconnected whether it wants to or not, driving a steak through the heart of vampire power.
Almost every geeky kid dreamed of being able to fly the Millennium Falcon. That is unless you were a Star Trek fan. Were/are you a Star Trek fan? Then keep moving, because these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Anywho, Hasbro has finally given us the opportunity to fly our very own replica Falcon. Unfortunately it comes in the form of a cheesy helicopter-like toy.
This 11-inch by 8-inch toy was just announced at the Toy Fair. It looks like you’re going to get the Falcon and a charging remote for $50 this fall. I’m hoping that it flies a little better than some of the other R/C helicopters I’ve flown in the past. I guess what I’m saying is that while I know she doesn’t look like much, I’m just hoping she’s got it where it counts.
This art installation seems to date back to 2006, but since it’s new to me, I’m going to assume it’s new to at least a few of you as well. In the same way a television uses colored pixels to produce images, the VSSTV plotter injects bubble wrap with cyan, magenta and yellow ink using a printhead featuring 3 long needles.
Created by Gebhard Sengmüller, in collaboration with Jakob Edlbacher, Johannes Obermayr, Gerhard Proksch-Weilguni, Ludwig Ertl and Andreas Konecky, the VSSTV is supposed to be a new television format built upon something called SSTV or ‘Slow Scan Television’ which is an image transmission system used by ham radio enthusiasts. Except that since the VSSTV system they developed can only produce a single frame of ‘video’ per day, I think they have a tough battle ahead of them when it comes to convincing the public, no matter how fun bubble wrap is!
An ear-piercing alarm is an effective way to alert most people about a possible fire or emergency, but what about the deaf? Flashing lights can be effective, but only if they’re visible, and the person isn’t sleeping. So a Japanese company called Air Water Safety Service has developed a new type of fire alarm that uses smell instead of sound. More specifically, it uses the chemical compound allyl isothiocyanate, which you’ll find in horseradish and wasabi, in specific quantities so as to wake someone up without giving them a burning sensation in their eyes.
In testing the alarm has been found to be effective in a room roughly about 50 square feet in size, waking someone up with smell alone in about 2 and a half minutes. Not exactly springing out of bed mind you, but it does seem to work. Unfortunately the $560 price tag has meant the units aren’t exactly flying off the shelves, but the company hopes a redesign can bring the price down to a slightly more reasonable, but still kind of expensive, $225.
I’m not entirely sure if listening to music while working on a construction site is the best idea, best if you must, I don’t think something as delicate as the iPod Touch is gonna cut it. You need to go with a brand that’s synonymous with construction tools and durability, like Ryobi, who just so happen to offer their own rugged MP3 player now. The Tek4 AllPlay Job Site Music Player supports MP3, WMA and unprotected AAC files, and the 2GB of storage is good for about 500 songs. The whole player, including the control buttons, is water, dust and impact resistant, and thanks to that hefty battery you can expect to get about 72 hours of playback per charge. Available from Home Depot for $69.97.
Update- Apparently Flyfire is a secret still, since it looks like MIT has pulled the video, plus the website, just an hour or so after we posted this. Weird…
By Evan Ackerman
The problem with true three dimensional displays (displays that you can walk around) is that they require pixels to be floating in space. This has been done with lasers and plasma, but such technologies are super expensive and limited in many ways. MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory) has hit upon the idea of creating huge free form three dimensional displays out of individual “smart pixels” made up of micro helicopters carrying LEDs:
Gigantic 3D displays made up of swarms of micro helicopters that can be released into any open space… How awesome is that? More, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
With the rise of instant messengers, we saw a rise in the use of acronyms. I remember the old days of chatting on ICQ and learning simple ones like ‘lol’ and ‘afk’. These days I still use a few when chatting or texting, but not nearly as much as the current school-age generation. Not only does half of a conversation consist of acronyms, but now they don’t even have to bother typing all of those out. Now there’s a keyboard that will spew out 3 or 4 meaningful characters (in caps no less!) with the push of a single button. I give you proof that the current generation is doomed: the Fast Finger Keyboard.
If you thought that 12 function keys that are dedicated to acronyms was bad, you’re in for a real treat. The standard QWERTY layout has been tossed in the back seat so that children don’t get confused. Instead, all of the letters are lined up alphabetically. They’ve even added in a “www” key (because apprently no one told them that you don’t need to type that on every address) and a second “@” over on the tilde key. If only they’d thought to toss in dedicated question mark and exclamation point keys, your child would never have to mess with the pesky shift key again!
I loved playing with slot cars as a kid, but the first hour or so after digging them out of the cupboard was always spent rubbing down the track with steel wool to clear the metal rails of corrosion so the cars would actually run. To a kid, that borders a little too close to work, so as much as I loved slotcars, they didn’t see a lot of playtime. And for that same reason I’m really digging this Doodle Track Car which basically does the same thing as a slotcar, but by following a black line on a piece of paper instead.
So, you can either sketch out a course by hand on a large roll of paper, or even better, you can use the track creator on the Doodle Track Car website to design a more professional looking course, which can then be easily printed out on multiple pieces of paper. After that it just takes a few minutes with a roll of scotch tape before you’re off to the races! Now the fact that the Doodle Track Car isn’t controllable (from what I can tell) is a big downside, since it essentially removes the ‘race’ part of slotcar racing, but that’s also probably why each car will also only set you back $14.99.
If you’re looking to kill a few hours online, and by a few I mean enough to cover the almost 10,000km route between Moscow and Vladivostok taken by the Trans Siberian Railway, then head on over to Google.ru where they’ve teamed up with the Russian Railways to create a virtual version of the trip.
Not only do you get a small snippet of Google Maps keeping you constantly updated on your current location, but a series of YouTube videos provides an actual view out of a passenger window as well. And if you find the scenery lacking or the trip a bit boring, you can even choose to listen to a small collection of Russian literature along the way including Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which is sure to liven things up and make the trip fly by!
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