Hardware Beyond the Hype
This is a fun hardware hack: a cheapo alarm clock outfitted with an accelerometer so that it will go into snooze mode when you smack it, whack it, punch it, toss it off your nightstand, etc. That’s showin’ time who’s boss! Check out the video, it’s a stitch.
[Via hackAday]
Fascinating piece on NPR about DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) and it’s miraculous ability to seemingly “switch off” intractable depression in some patients.
[Thanks, Kate!]
According to createdigitalmusic.com, the DIY graphics tools that ship with Mac OS X 10.4 (aka “Tiger”) let you load graphics and QuickTime movies, then process them using output from your Mac. Output like sound, MIDI, etc. can control movies and pictures…and you can save the whole thing as an application. The best part: all the necessary tools are included on the Tiger DVD.
Please join me in giving a round warm of applause to Andrew Sasaki, Street Tech’s new Senior Editor. Andrew has been a member of the infamous “Street Tech Irregulars” for years, but now, he’s got a bigger part in the cast, at least he has a swankier title to add to the resume. So who is this Sasaki fellow?
Andrew is a systems manager in the Big Applet by day and a gadget geek 24/7. A true renaissance man, he’s been everything from a graphic designer and a video editor to a bartender and a radio DJ. He’s been a computer geek since the days of punch card and paper tape and a cybernaut since the dawn of the BBS (man, this d00d might be older than I am!). His interests in consumer electronics include photography and audio equipment.
So, from now on, please send all hate mail, computer virii, and cease and desist orders c/o Mr. Sasaki. We kid, we KID, we kid the new recruit!
A nine year old Pakistani girl has become a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP). If you had any doubts that Thomas Friedman’s new book, The World is Flat, is right on the money, this goes a long way toward proving his point.
If you’re reading this story, it means we’ve successfully moved from our old hosting service to a new one. Hopefully, nothing got screwed up in the process, but Murphy’s Law is one that we’re very familiar with. So if things seems a little screwy for a few days, please forgive us.
If you read my TiVo book, you may remember a story I told about a discussion I had with a TV exec at NATPE a few years back about the future of advertising in a DVR world. He said that future TVs might have printers built into them that would spit out ad coupons if you skipped over the commercials. Silly Suits.
But that doesn’t mean that somebody hasn’t done it (at least the built-in printer part)! Epson has just entered the already overcrowded HDTV market, and their rear-projection 57″ monstrosity, called the LivingStation, has a color printer built into it. It doesn’t crap out ad coupons (yet) and no, you can’t print out a hard copy of the last episode of “Lost.” So far, the printer’s only designed to make prints of your photo libraries that can be displayed on the set. ExtremeTech offers a fairly in-depth review of the “LivingStation” (catheter and feeding tube not included) here.
Think “snail mail” is slower, MUCH slower, than DSL? Think again. A group of IT geeks in Israel pitted an actual snail, pulling a wee chariot with wheels made out off two DVDs carrying 4.7GB of data each, against an ADSL connection. The snail won (at 37,000 Kbps vs. 1500 Kbps). And for those of you alpha geeks in the audience who remember the earlier experiment with pigeons carrying memory cards (so-called “Wi-Fly Networking”), SNAP (SNAil Protocol) beat it as well (with Wi-Fly managing only 2270 Kbps).
Photoshopping conceptual images of desired gadgets seems to be a full-time job for some folks these days. Wonder if corporate R&D departments take any notice? Here’s some schmo’s mock-up for an iPod Photo Mini with a camera add-on.
[Via Gear Live]
[Via Engadget]
