A lot of yuppies like to claim that the business card is dead, instead pointing you towards their Facebook or Twitter accounts to get in touch with them. But I still think they’re alive and well, and are a far more succinct means of giving someone your contact details than making them endure your snide comments about your local coffee shop. And depending on your line of work, they can be a really good way to make a great first impression. We have a pretty big soft spot for particularly unique and original business card creations, as long as they’re still effective at what a card is supposed to do.
So I’m not doubting that Jared Foster is a skilled and creative electrical engineer, I would just find his circuit board business card, which uses persistence of vision to display his name, phone # and website address, to be incredibly annoying. I’m certainly impressed that he made the cards entirely by himself (for about $2 each) and created an Instructable outlining the process, but having to wave it around in the air every time I wanted to contact him would get old real fast.
When I was a kid there was no better way to spend a snowy day than sledding with my Pa. But it kind of became less fun the day I had to start hauling my own sled back up the local hill. After that the whole tobogganing idea became less appealing, unless I had had the engineering prowess of these guys. Their Winch Project is exactly that, a winch tethered to a tree that uses an 8HP Tecumseh Power Sport engine to pull a 2100 foot long rope that’s looped up a hill. The rope itself weights 70 pounds, but the setup is capable of towing up to 3 adults (at a 30 degree incline!) up a sledding hill at a pretty quick pace from the looks of the video I’ve included below.
There are no plans or directions on how to build one yourself, but if you have the capability and skills of building such a device I’m sure the glimpses they offer in the video are enough to put you on the right track.
Here’s a really cool idea. Let’s say you want to give someone an item, but you really want to make them work for it. There are many ways you could do it, but few as interesting as this DIY reverse-geocaching briefcase. What does it do? Well it can be programmed with specific coordinates, and will only open with the briefcase is actually in the listed spot.
The case uses an Arduino, GPS sensor and some cool-looking nixie tubes to pull off this feat. Once the location has been programmed, it will use the GPS sensor, then display the distance to the location on the tubes. Once you’ve gotten to the spot, a motor will release the latch holding it closed. Expect to see something like this in the next James Bond movie, only with a bomb as the contents.
If you’re a crafty type with a penchant for gadgets you’re probably already familiar with the Cricut. It’s kind of like a printer, but instead of printing your design on paper or other materials, it cuts them out. However, it can be a pain to use since it requires everything you want to cut be attached to a stiff matte before passing through the machine, and designs are limited to what’s already available on expensive cartridges you have to buy in addition to the cutter. (Should you choose not to use an unapproved SVG-friendly third-party program.)
But the eCraft Cutter does everything the Cricut does better, and even a little more. It can cut on any thin material up to 12-inches wide in a continuous roll without the need for a matte underneath it, and the included eCraftshop software allows you to either design your own patterns and graphics, or import an SVG file exported from your favorite ‘illustrating’ application. It’s also able to draw thanks to a marker tip integrated into the cutting head, and from what we saw the cut results were as crisp and smooth as if someone had used a fresh hobby knife. Available some time in the next couple of months for ~$300.
If you’re wanting an authentic looking lightsaber, then you’re probably going to look at purchasing one that’s been mass-produced. Generally the Force FX sabers are the go-to for authenticity. However, not everyone wants something that was built in a factory. After all, part of the jedi training is building your own lightsaber, and that’s exactly what Bradley Lewis has done.
Looking through the pictures on his website and watching the video below, this guy has thought of everything. Something you don’t see on most crafted sabers is the ability to open it up and see the “power crystal.” Granted, it’s actually just a set of LEDs, but who cares? If you have the time, patience, skills and tools, then you’ll find the step-by-step instructions on his site most helpful on your journey to become a jedi.
They might be cheap and reliable, but the name brand digital clocks you can get at your local big box electronics store aren’t really designed for tinkering. Now obviously that’s probably not a feature at the top of everybody’s wish-list, but those who prefer to do-it-themselves, and like to be able to customize their gear, will find the DOTKLOK an appealing option.
Designed by Andrew O’Malley, the motivation behind the DOTKLOK was to create a clock that could tell time in a variety of different ways, whether through standard numbers, words and even animations. It’s powered by an ATmega328 microprocessor running the Arduino bootloader which allows it to be easily updated and/or customized, and the 24×16 LED display allows for a high-degree of creativity, while still having a bit of retro charm. The DOTKLOK kit is available from Andrew via Etsy for $150 with either red or green LEDs used for the display, and an experienced builder can put it together in about 90 minutes. However, if soldering and wiring isn’t your thing, there are also pre-built DOTKLOKs available, but they’ll set you back $200.
Forget about whatever’s going to be revealed at CES next week, we’ve already found the must-have convergence device for 2011. For no other reason than it was obviously the right thing to do, modder ‘goteking‘ created this, um, useful mashup of an HTC Android phone, the shell of a Game Boy Pocket and a fake white iPhone 4 that’s been enhanced with a an internal set of LEDs that show through the housing as they light up to display messages and animations. Sounds pointless right? Well this video of it in action will 100% confirm that.
Obviously you can’t put a price tag on such innovation, but if you check out goteking’s site I’m sue you can glean all the materials necessary to build your own.
While Nintendo does what it can to hinder ‘homebrew’ solutions from running on their various consoles and gaming platforms, eventually their measures are compromised. The most recent success comes from Team Cyclops, who were responsible for the most excellent CycloDS Evolution for the DS and DSLite. Of course those carts don’t work on the latest version of the DS, the DSi, but the team’s upcoming CycloDS iEvolution will, with an important advantage over its competitors.
The DSi’s countermeasures were circumvented a while ago, but only while the DSi was in ‘DSL’ mode, meaning its new tricks like the cameras and SD card slot were inaccessible to homebrew applications. But Team Cyclops’ new card works in ‘DSi’ mode which means that developers will finally have the ability to access those features. The new cart isn’t available to the public just yet, but the team is encouraging legitimate homebrew developers to contact them for a free iEVO cart to help in its development.
You can compare this Nebulophone to the Stylophone that was re-released a few years ago, but that’s not really doing it justice. They can both be used to produce some retrorrific electronic music, but the Nebulophone is built on an Arduino so it’s compact and, well I’m just going to come out and say it, adorable.
It does require some electronics know-how since you have to build it yourself, like soldering and stripping wires and what-not. But because it came from your hands the final product will be all the more satisfying to play. As you can see it even has a tiny keyboard, but improves on the Stylophone with additional settings and dials for changing the waveform (ramp, triangle, square, pulse or noise), adjusting the decay, switching between major and chromatic keyboard mapping, arpeggio modes and three speed settings of portamento. Yeah, all that stuff. The only things you have to provide are a 9-volt battery, a speaker and talent. $54.99 from ThinkGeek.
Related Tags: 
Permalink
