Month: October 2006

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Bush Likes “The Google” on the Internets

ABC World News showed a clip tonight of Maria Bartiromo of CNBC interviewing the Pres. At one point, she asks him if he uses the Internet, if he Googles things. He said what he likes to use on “The Google” is the maps. He likes to look at the satellite pictures of his ranch in Crawford, cause it “reminds me where I want to be sometimes” (like on one of his next regularly- scheduled vacation?). He said that he also doesn’t do email because he doesn’t, basically, want the electronic papertrail of such communications (oh, kind of like with the Diebold voting machines?).

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LEGO Flamethrower

I bet this was the farthest thing from the minds of the creators of LEGOs, even for the more tech-focused Technics and Mindstorms products. And while these guys’s parents are probably afraid that they’re in their room streaming porn and bittorrenting movies, they’re instead doing their level best to try and torch the house, in the name of science, of course.

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Top Ten Open Source Windows Apps

In this week’s “Geek to Live” on Lifehacker, Gina counts down her favorite open source apps for Windows. Many of them will be familiar and you may already be using them (Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office), but a few might be new and worth checking out, like the free and open anti-virus app ClamWin, KeePass (password manager), and TrueCrypt (file encryption). And as always, Lh’s readers chime in with their own worthy candidates, such as FileZilla, 7-Zip, and Democracy.

We just finally made the switch to OpenOffice on all the PCs and Macs here at Street Tech Labs and we’re glad we did. Besides running XP, a neccessary evil of working in the tech/tech journalism biz, we have very view pieces of code left with Microsoft’s stink on ’em. And as Martha would say: “It’s a good thing.”

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Is This the Next Mattel JuiceBox?

I4U has a piece on the forthcoming RipRoar PMP/PVR from ToyQuest. Targeted as a kid’s media player, the RipRoar has a 2.5″ color screen that ToyQuest claims offers the same image quality as an iPod. It can record directly from a TV and is rated at 5 hours of playback on a charge. It only has 512MB of on-board storage, and offers up to 2GB more via an SD slot. The price is slated to be US$200. No word yet on availability, or how many months it’ll be on the market before it’s discontinued and we can buy them at Overstock.com for pocket change.

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Saul Griffith of Squid Labs Gets CNN Shout-Out

One of my MAKE Board compadres, Saul Griffith of the splendifferous Squid Labs, Instructables, and HowToons, got a nice little write-up on CNN’s site, as part of their excellent Explorers piece, looking at innovators and their work. Other researchers and innovators covered include James McLurkin, one of the chief proponents of swarm robotics, Henrik Wann Jensen, master of digital skin rendering, and Deborah Estrin, UCLA’s sensor net guru.

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How-To: Score Better Booty at Trade Shows

No, not THAT kind of booty, we’re talking about swag, and not just the T-shirts, mugs, and mousepads, we’re talking Flash drives, power supplies, memory, and other electro goodness. Well, we’re not talking about it, this guy is. He offers his tips on getting the premium goodies and even has pics of his “hauls” from various shows this year. A little trailer trashy, when you get THIS into it, but hey, if you’re there and they’re willing to toss it into your Gimme Bag…

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Turntable PC: Coming Soon?

Protein Feed has an intriguing bit about a Fujitsu prototype mobile PC that has a touch-sensitive “turntable” “platter” on the lid so you can scratch videos, ya know, if you’re a nightclub DJ or in a hip-hop posse, or like to pretend you are. It could be on the market in a couple of years. Um, is there a big market for this sorta thing that I’m not aware of?

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Words on the Street

Limbaugh Slang for Viagra or any other Erectile Dysfunction drugs. Originated in the porn biz.

Ratpacking Gangspeak for using mobile phones, PDAs, and other mobile comms to coordinate a drive-by or other swarm-style attack.

Random Shutdown Syndrome (RSS) Term coined by disgruntled Apple MacBook owners for the tendency of some of the new mobile Macs to intermittently shut down.

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Chad Vader: NIGHT Shift Manager

Back in August we provided some enthusiastic links to Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. The creators of the series had two episodes in the can (on the removable media? In the RAID array?).

Well, if you haven’t been following along in your news feeder, Blame Society Productions now has two other episodes available. The BSP website also has some additional material, like behind the scenes photos, interviews with the creators, and even some fan music videos (fan films of a fan film: who’d a thunk it?). BSP is also looking for donations to pay their substantial bandwidth charges. They have Chad Vader Cafe Press merch to help the cause. Perhaps a Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager thong for Mrs. Vader?

Oh, and by the way, it’s Chad Vader: NIGHT Shift Manager now, and Chad is NOT happy about it, or the fact that the checkout girl, Clarissa, may be going out with his arch nemesis, Clint, now DAY Shift Manager.

Here’s the link to Episode 3.
Here’s the link to Episode 4.

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Robot Performs Suicide by Coke

I love some of the art that people are making with bots. This one, called Coke Is It, finds a hexapod walker traipsing around a gallery sucking up puddles of Coca-Cola that it finds on the floor. It then sprays the corrosive sugar-water all over itself. Over time, the Coke eats through the “skin” of the various components and into its sensitive circuitry, and then it’s lights out for little Johnny-5, or in this case, C3 (a reference to C2, Coke’s new low-carb can of caramel sugar-water).

This slow-mo destruction of circuitry through liquid reminds me of one of the more amazing stories from WWII. Legend has it that Polish slave labor, put to work by the Nazis at Peenemünde to build V-2 rockets, would pee on the control electronics they were working on when their guards weren’t looking. By the time the rockets had been assembled and sent to the launch pads, the urine had corroded the innards and many of the rockets malfunctioned. I don’t know if this is an apocryphal story or not, but this kind of ingenuity (and bravery and selflessness) is always inspiring.

[Via we-make-money-not-art]

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