How cool is this, a TV (and gobs of other devices) remote that does not require batteries. You give the knob at the bottom a few twists and its good for about 7 days. Zip on over to Shiny Shiny and have a look.
Shiny Shiny: Wind-up remote control for your telly
Category: Technology
Bizarre Stuff
Take a look at all the cool stuff you can build in your own (well stocked) kitchen.
Bizarre Stuff
MAKE: Blog and Website
In this day of disposable phones and electronics so cheap that you don’t bother to fix even the most minor of problems with them, the entire notion of the fix-it guy is in real danger of becoming a thing of the past. Not so if O’reilly publishing has anything to do with it. With the sucsess of books like ‘Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks‘ they may be trying to breath new life into the spirit of “Buy a new one? Heck no, hand me that JB Weld and an old coat hanger!” This is so the magazine for me. I can see these bound on my bookself along with my 50’s edition of Scientific American’s “The Amateur Scientist” and my equaly vintage copy of Forrest Mims Engineer’s Notebook. I can’t wait until the first copy arrives! I’m looking forward to reading about kite photography and the magstripe reader projects.
iPod Photo Stereoscope
This is a pretty cool little hack. Now I only know two people that own iPods and one of them lives in Canada. I can’t see someone like me buying two of the photo iPods to build one of these, plus I’d hate to mess up my stereopticon. It does make me think that two of those little Juice Box media players might be a cheap analoug.
IPOD-Photo Stereoscope
Tools of Mass Construction
Here is the perfect site for a rainy day with the kids. Hide the remote, turn off the Xbox, and axe the TV! Get ready to have fun learning.
I quote from the site:
“Howtoons are one-page cartoons showing 5-to-15 year-old kids “How To” build things… with practical build-it projects letting kids learn-by-doing, MIT-style!”
Build a motor, a zoetrope, an underware viewer, make ice cream, build a rocket, bend light and much much more!
Augmented-reality in Real Time
The real application for this technology would be to be able to walk around your office at work with a camera, feed the video into a computer, and then sit down to play a Counterstrike game set in your workplace.
-Greg
Augmented-reality machine works in real time
I can see this being handy as a mapping system while walking around in a city. You could ask it where the nearest subway station was and all you would have to do it follow the big arrows floating in the sky or look for the glowing building. Cool. Thanks Greg!