e-Readers are booming in popularity and they now come in all manners of shapes, sizes and feature-sets. But the granddaddy of them all, the Kindle, does not include any form of backlighting, so if you want to read in the dark, you need a light. Today’s project, the Kapsule Lightstand, is made specifically for the Kindle Keyboard and adds a bunch of functionality. First off, one retractable and adjustable gooseneck serves as an LED; pull it out and it lights, push it back in to turn it off. Another retractable gooseneck at the bottom of the accessory serves as a kickstand, so you can prop your reader up for hands-free enjoyment. And finally, the shape of the Kapsule itself serves as an added hand grip.
Currently on Kickstarter, you can get yours starting at $40 with estimated delivery in February 2012, if the project is fully funded.
With prices of gold near record highs, don’t expect this to be coated with anything other than paint. Not to mention, this PS3 is not a custom mod but rather a real product Sony is releasing in Japan on March 1st to mark the release of One Piece: Kaizoku Musou. As you can see, aside from being golden, there’s a stenciled Luffy from One Piece on the console. Amateurs of manga will likely drool, everyone else will wonder why anyone would want this gaudy thing.
“Priced at ¥38,170 (US$489) and comes with a copy of the game and a 320GB PS3.”
“The G770 is Lenovo’s only consumer 17-inch laptop, featuring “Sandy Bridge” Intel Core i5 processors, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, Intel or ATI graphics, 17.3-inch HD 1600×900 LCD, and up to 750GB HDD.” And this is what one reviewer had to say about it:
The Lenovo G770 packs fantastic power and good graphical performance into a solid big-screen laptop which is great for the home. We’d recommend it to anyone looking for a desktop replacement
Well, today you’re looking to save $300 on a Core i5 configuration of this laptop, bringing the price down to $599. Also included at that price: 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD, DVD drive.
It’s kind of ironic that there seems to be a developing trend of using new technology to breathe new life into really old tech. Like that retro looking cordless handset we wrote about a little while back. And now we hear of a hack that pretty much resuscitates the operators of old. Maker and hacker Davis Remmel took an old rotary phone and made it play nice with Siri. He took a Bluetooth headset, relocated the speaker and microphones to their respective places in the dumbbell receiver and wired the board so that dialing “1″ activated Siri. A sticker with the Siri logo in the center of the dial completed the effect. Watch the video, it’s very future-old-timey…
Here’s a video of a lizard playing Ant Crusher. He’s pretty decent, for a lizard. We can’t help but feel sorry at his look of puzzlement every time he snatches an ant and fails to get full.
Say for a minute that there’s something, anything, interesting under water. And that you’ve got some desire to go record a high definition video of whatever that is. We say “get a hobby!” But you’re stubborn. So you have a few options. You can spend $300 for a GoPRO Hero2 rugged HD camera and dive up to 60m (200ft) underwater. Then you get to futz about with the camera hoping to get anything cinematic looking. Or you can spend almost twice as much (not quite true if you pre-order) on this rugged FourPro mount and dive half as deep (100ft). Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, the FourPro has a few advantages. First are the Teak handles that allow you some kind of control over your phone/camera, making for a potentially more stable shot. And these handles have threaded holes to accommodate lighting equipment. Lights! Who would have thought things could get dim 100ft under water?
Right now it’s just a project on Kickstarter, and as of writing it appears to be a non-starter. They’ve raised $800 from the $20,000 they need. For $400 you get the whole kit, which is lots, sure, but less than their expected $699 retail if it ever sees an actual marketplace.
Hit the jump for links and a video that features a guy giving a very Troy McClure introduction: “You may know me from…”
An entire horse? Well then, you better get a hold of the “I could eat a horse” spaghetti measuring tool from Icelandic designer Stefán Pétur Sólveigarson. What it does should be fairly clear from the picture. It comes in three models: green and white at €12.90, and for another €8, stainless steel.
Rovio is sure having a good old laugh all the way to the bank. Just last November we heard they had passed the 500 million download mark. Plus the Angry Birds merchandise seems to be doing quite well. And now there’s news that the company will be teaming up with activity park manufacturer Lappset Group to open two such parks in Finland in 2012. Plus a bunch more in the UK with location and exact time undisclosed.
Hopefully the new activity parks will not feature giant slingshots, lest enterprising kids actually try to hurl themselves around, as kinds tend to enjoy doing.
Privacy laws in Europe are a little tougher than in North America, and if you request that Facebook send you everything it has ever logged of your activity on the site… it has no choice but to comply. That’s exactly what 24-year-old Max Schrems of Vienna, Austria did. And sure enough, he received a CD in the mail containing 1,222 PDF documents listing in excruciating detail just what he’d been doing on the site since he joined. While we’ve known for some time that this was going on, it’s interesting to see just how much data is actually collected.
Collected together were records of when Schrems logged in and out of the social network, the times and content of sent and received messages and an accounting of every person and thing he’s ever liked, posted, poked, friended or recorded. The archive captured friend requests, former or alternative names and email addresses, employment and relationship statuses and photos, in some cases with their GPS locations included, to name a few.
As we said this practice is nothing new, and maybe Zuckerberg was onto something when he declared last year that the age of privacy was over. Yet there is this feeling that there isn’t enough transparency and education with regards to just how much of our lives are leaving digital footprints, and just how exposed we truly are. Maybe privacy is dying, but it would be nice if it did with our informed consent.
Related Tags: E-Readers, kickstarter, Kindle
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