Category: Technology

MAKE 04

Make vol4

The latest issue of the tech DIY magazine is soon to be hitting my mail box, if you don’t have a subscription already you can buy from Amazon (and a nice discount I might add). The editor, Mark Frauenfelder has this to say about the latest issue:

The fourth volume of Make magazine, which I edit, is now available on Amazon.
The major projects include an electric cigar box guitar, a kit to take high speed strobe photos (so you can capture a balloon or light bulb in mid-pop), and how to turn kids’ electronic toys into musical instruments. There’s also a guide to a bunch of different kinds of kits (electronic, beer making, robots, etc) and a how-to by Mr. Jalopy on converting a vintage hi-fi cabinet into an LP and CD ripper, burner, and player.
David Pescovitz started a new column for the magazine called Proto, which profiles cool makers in corporate labs around the world, and Cory Doctorow weighs in on the Supreme Court’s unfortunate Grokster decision.
I’m especially excited about the do-it-yourself section with ways to hack your coffee and espresso makers.

I can’t wait to read this!

Buy MAKE 04 from Amazon here
MAKE site
[spotted over at BoingBoing]

Windshield Shade Solar Oven

Windshield Shade Solar Oven

I’d use binder clips in place of the Velcro, but that’s just me. I have once of these sun shades in my car’s trunk (yeah, it keeps the trunk cool…). I think I’ll pull it out and have a go at this on my next camping trip.

Take a $3 reflective car windshield sunshade, sew some Velcro tabs along one edge, then fold the shade into a funnel shape. Viola!

Here’s the list of needed materials…

A reflective accordion-folding car sunshade – a cake rack (or wire frame or grill) – 12cm (4 ½ in) of Velcro – black pot – bucket or plastic wastebasket – a plastic baking bag.

[via Unplugged Living]
Windshield Shade Solar Oven

Lens For Your Cameraphone

About a year ago I saw a fisheye lens that was built like this. I’d like a set of these, the camera in my Motorola V300 absolutely sucks and needs all the help it can get.

Instead of screwing them onto your lens, there is a magnet built-in and they will stick on to the lens (I’m having some doubt here). They don’t seem to be a joke at all: the telephoto lens offers up to 2X zoom power, the macro lens offers up to 4X zoom and the wide angle lens allow you to zoom out 0.5X. Each comes with a cellphone strap, when you are done using it, they turn into a charm!

[via Picturephoning]
Lens For Your Cameraphone

Taxi Cell Phone Charger

Rooftop Wind Turbine

Now this is clever. Here’s the idea: the roof top turbine convert the breeze created by the moving car into electricity and is routed back into the car’s battery. Passengers are invited to charge their cell phones while using the cabs. All of this is to promote awareness of the environment and renewable power sources. Sounds like a good idea to me except that the drag crated by the turbine might negate the power crated by it, but then again the taxis themselves are equipped with an engine “idle stop” features, which temporarily shuts off the engine when idling to reduce the amount of exhaust and gas consumed.
And they have bike racks too, now that is a good idea. Perhaps in the future more cab companies will offer things like this.

[via Unplugged Living]

Taxi’s Rooftop Wind Energy Charges Cell Phones

Chinese Cellular Companies go ga-ga over Porn

Sino cell porn

Porn, the destroyer of Communism. 🙂

“However the Chinese government has some pretty strong controls over internet so the recent turmoil is quite understandable. Due to the excellent growth of high end cell phones in China, a lot of subscribers have signed in for getting internet access on their phones. They are now however being bombarded by sex sites which send them teasers in the form of Multimedia messages. These include some kind of sexy chat message along with a vulgar picture”.

Chinese Cellular Companies go ga-ga over Porn

I/O Brush

I/O Brush

I saw this tacked on the end of a Rocketboom episode a while back and thought it was a clever project. Students at MIT have built a paint brush that uses sampled video as its paint bucket.

I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by “picking up” and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special “ink” they just picked up from their immediate environment.

Dow does it work?

In our current prototype, the brush houses a small CCD video camera in its tip with a ring of white LEDs around it. Force sensors are also embedded inside of the brush, measuring the pressure that is getting applied to the bristles. When the brush touches a surface, the lights around the camera briefly turn on to provide supplemental light for the camera. During that time, the system grabs the frames from the camera and stores them in the program.

I like it and so did the judges at the competition. It won a gold award.

I/O Brush: The World as the Palette