RFID Stapler, Office Products of the Beast?

RFID staplesLooks like a fine idea to me, I’d love to be able to sweep a scanner over a stack of papers and find out if a lost report is in it. Oh yeah, don’t let the title of the post fool you. That ‘xxx of the Beast‘ crap is for silly ninnies that don’t want the trains to run on time and like constant turmoil caused by the stupid notion of what happens to you after you die. I just figure that by using it in a title it’s a good way to get noticed. Note to all my friends that believe in that sort of thing, sorry to exploit your beliefs but why shouldn’t I  when it’s so darn easy?
Anyway, the RFID enabled staples are something that I’d buy now if I could. I’d staple everything. Papers, boxes, books, you name it! I’d never lose anything ever again. Ah, bliss! However, if I did have a cool high tech trackable stapler I’d more than likely invest on one of these fine DataSafe Security Wallets. It’s best to play it safe now and again, don’t you think? In the mean time I think I might have a closer look at this nifty RFID Experimentation kit I saw over on MAKE.  Think about it, how cool would it be to run a scanner over a sealed box of books and then be able to tell exactly whats in side of it? Anyone with a closet full of stuff will appreciate this I’m sure.

[via SCI FI Tech | SCIFI.COM]
Popluar Science (click on the slideshow)

Spherical Photovoltaic Solar Cell, Flexable too!

Sperical Solar CellThe latest offering from the guys in Japan:

Sphelar® captures light from all directions, which means it can catch reflected light and diffused light. In addition, there is no need for the superfluous operation of tracking the sun. The spherical light-receiving surfaces achieve unprecedented high generation efficiency.

[via metaefficient]
Spherical Photovoltaic Solar Cell | Kyosemi Corporation

Rocket Sport in Russia

Russian model rocket contestI was quite impressed when I learned that the sport of model rocketry was alive and well in the former Soviet Union. Every year in Baikonur, Kazakhstan the World Model Rocketry Championship is held. I stumbled upon a load of photos over at English Russian and decided to do a bit of research on the subject. I happened on the World Spacemodeling Championship website (Google translation here) that has information on the event. Looks like the next one is going to be on April 21. If you happen to be in the neighborhood you should plan on attending. Or you can read about what it’s like in this article on when Vernon Estes (namesake of Estes Rockets) visited there in 2006. Sounds like great event, not only do you get to see some world class model rockets fire off but you also get to tour some of the buildings at the famous Cosmodrome.

Time-Synchronous Photography

zb1 This grabbed my eye today.

Camera-object designed for time-syncronized double exposures of opposing settings (180°) on one film. 2x agfa box (widely modified), wire, glass, plasic, velvet, double cable release, roll-film (modified/ without halation protection)

Looks like a nice camera mod.

[via Flickr]
zeitsynchrone photographie
(machine translated page from original German)

Internet TV

wwITV.comActing like a TV guide to the entire world, Netherlands based wwITV.com is a portal to hundreds of video streams from around the world. Everything from the latest news recap from the BBC to the home shopping network in Japan you can pretty much find something you like here. Now, you’re going to need to have Media Player or Real Player installed on your system. I didn’t have Real Player on my system but the Firefox plugin installer took care of that without even a browser re-launch. Nice. If you don’t want to bung up your system with even more suspect from Microsoft you can use Media Player Classic (Media Player Classic is an extremely light-weight media player for Windows. It looks just like the good-old Media Player v6.4, but has lots of nice extra features) or VLC.

wwITV.com

Soundgin Audio Synth On A Chip

Today on Retro Thing I saw that there is a new on chip audio synthesizer on the market.

The Soundgin is a serially controlled Sound Synthesizer in a PIC.
It produces complex sound effects, synthesizer style music and English speech with an unlimited vocabulary.
For use in manufactured electronics and home projects. .
The Soundgin is an 18-Pin Microchip PIC18F1320 that has been programmed to generate complex sounds by incorporating six oscillators which can interact with each other in various ways. The oscillators are configured by sending short serial commands to the Soundgin via the RX pin. These configurations result in the Soundgin’s oscillators continuously generating sound. The Soundgin also contains presets that can be used to configure the oscillators to generate predefined sound such as a Gong, Steam Engine, Etc… The six are spit up into two identical units referred to as Sound Engines.

The sample on the page are quite good. I can see this as an easy to implement addition to a  lot of DIY music projects or a speech synthesizer for robots.

[via retrothing]
Soundgin