After trying to find a way to remotely control their DSLRs, the clever hackers at HDRLabs couldn’t really find anything that would do what they wanted. So what did they do? Built a control of their own, using a Nintendo DS. HDRLabs went on to make the device available, for free. All you have to do is build one yourself. → Read More
Here’s something old, but definitely cool and worth showing you. Livejournal user Igor113 posted some pictures from his trip to… somewhere in Russia. He loves to travel and take pictures, and these are some extremely cool photographs of some rusted and cool equipment. Igor did apologize for the quality of his camera though, and requests that you don’t kick his legs. → Read More
BB has some great images from Nepal’s CAN InfoTech, a 17-year-old tech trade show. It had 238 stalls where folks were flogging amazing 8TB hard drives and the three year old Nokia N81. → Read More
Mr. Jones watches are unique in many ways; they are produced by a small design studio, there are generally limited quantities available, but they are pretty much inevitably cool. Normally, they are also easy to read, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Cyclops Special Edition. → Read More
Electron microscope photography is cool, and it’s been around for a while, but that doesn’t mean that that they can’t still find cool things to take pictures of. Take a record for example. It’s amazing to look a those little tiny grooves and see how raw and uneven they are, but still able to produce beautiful music. It’s even more amazing when you compare the analog to the digital, and see how… → Read More
Whoa, whoa, whoa, look what you can do with the internet! According to the video’s description: “Brian at CAIN MOSNI thought of a cool concept and coordinated a virtual “jam session” with musicians from all over the world!” Very, very cool. [YouTube via Gizmodo] → Read More
Over the past 120 years, National Geographic Magazine has been one of the most important publications ever printed. From the insightful articles to the brilliant photography, NatGeo has been the benchmark that other magazines compare themselves to. Now, you can own a copy of every single issue without having to build a new addition to your house to store it. → Read More
Hot off yesterday’s news of the DIY USB wall outlet (replace your standard outlet plugs with two USB plugs) comes a product that addresses the shortcomings inherent with getting rid of the standard plugs altogether: a wall plate with both standard and USB plugs. Problem solved – and it only costs $10. → Read More
Okay, just humor me and watch the video, please. It’s not like I get paid to describe things with… those… um, you know, the things that make stuff readable. With individual letters, etc. And periods, commas — the things in between those. → Read More
Cideko is a wireless video sharing system. You connect one box to your computer and another to your TV and you can control the computer from a mini-keyboard. Considering that the potential for this device – and ease of set-up – I’m surprisingly impressed. → Read More
If you’ve ever wandered around an older building you’ll notice something that looks like an ashtray bolted to the wall. These ashtrays, which usually say something like “Watch Station,” once held keys to wind up a watchclock, a mechanical wonder that forced the night watchman to make his rounds through the building under mechanical supervision.
As you moved through the building carrying the clock… → Read More
Wow. Jerry Jalava lost the tip of his left ring finger in a motorcycle accident and made his own prosthetic fingertip which doubles as a USB memory stick. → Read More
Wow. While building a digital pinball machine out of a giant LCD and a second, slightly less-giant LCD might cost more than buying an actual machine, the ability to play multiple machines using the Future Pinball simulator effectively turns it into an almost endless supply of fun for any serious pinball fanatic. → Read More
I don’t have the time, patience, carpentry skills, open space, or wherewithal to build my own trebuchet but after seeing Mark Winkler’s “Mongo the Trebuchet” launch a flaming ball of fire across an open field under the cover of darkness, I suddenly have the urge to go to Home Depot with a quick stop at the local Fireball Emporium (or wherever they sell fireballs). → Read More
Wow. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Hatfield Hotdog Launcher that’s brought out in between innings at the Phillies’ games. A lot of work went into getting all the science-y stuff right and even then, sometimes the hot dogs fly out of their wrappers mid-flight (watch at about the five-minute mark). Very cool. → Read More
Hats off to Joshua Callaghan of Los Angeles for coming up with a way to not only hide those utility boxes you see all over your neighborhood, but to also turn each one into something of a conversation piece. Callaghan calls it “public art” after answering a call from the city of Los Angeles to somehow disguise the boxes. More photos after the jump… → Read More
I’m not one to get overly excited about the technology behind transportation logistics (or am I?) but this thing from HP looks pretty cool. It’s basically a handheld wireless-enabled barcode scanner that can also print quick-drying ink directly onto boxes. So if you work at, say, UPS, you scan a box coming in, that info is transmitted wirelessly to your warehouse servers, and then you print… → Read More
Jalopnik has a pretty extensive photo gallery of the second-generation Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) from Discovery’s Storm Chasers series. For the uninitiated, the tank-like TIV is able to drive into the middle of tornados, allowing owner Sean Casey to film from the inside out in high definition. If you haven’t seen the show, check it out. The TIV2 weighs a staggering nine tons and gets 12… → Read More
It’s entirely possible that most ordinary people won’t ever have the problem of trying to figure out what to do with two empty fire extinguishers (that’s a lot of fires) but just keep this idea in your back pocket should the scenario ever present itself. A Russian man has turned a couple of spent fire extinguishers into some pretty cool-looking speakers. It’d be an understatement to say… → Read More
This old girl has been stripped of all over component parts, hollowed out and filled with a CPU and lots of cool audio circuitry. The result? The Fender Bender, more machine than guitar, more monster than musical instrument. The creator, Dan, even made a pickguard out of an old motherboard, soldering out each resistor with a burning cigarette that he held in his mouth threateningly. It appears… → Read More
Here’s a Steampunk phone prototype by designer Arthur Schmitt. You make calls using binary punchcards. Punchcards! There are also some dials and a metal grill-type earpiece. The backside of the device seems to contain some sort of rolling counter that likely either keeps track of call duration or gives you the time. → Read More
While I personally am a fan of micro-dirigibles as opposed to the (IMHO) wasteful helicopter-type UAVs, this is certainly an awesome version of the latter. Its multi-rotor setup enables some serious agility, as you can see in the videos. If you’re filming, you might need some serious image stabilization, although it’s easily good enough for recon or aerial photography. There are… → Read More
Yeah, I know, it sounds a bit dry; how could a chart of microprocessor stats be awesome? Well, just look at it! It’s glorious! And huge! It’s so very complete and monolithic that I just have to stand in awe of it. There’s just so much… information! It’s organized by date, by core, by what have you, and having it visualized is a revelation. I like the color scheme… → Read More
This might be a little to ambitious for most of us desk jockeys, but Instructables has instructions for creating your own cement-filled lightbulb wall hook that you can create for fun and profit. Note: You do not actually leave the glass part of the bulb intact. At the end of the experiment you break the glass off and then stick the huge lag bolts into your wall. The results, needless to say, are… → Read More
This is really cool. This guy wrote an app that essentially saves the signal strength at a given location and then collates the data points into a little map, giving an approximate location of the access point and the places where one finds the best average signal. This seems really practical to me; if it’s not too hard to do, IT departments around the globe might take it up and use it to… → Read More
Wow, this is really, really goddamn cool. I love how the “skeleton” created by all the photographs is visible, a ghostly meta-world based entirely on aggregate data and an insane amount of processing power. You can switch between day and night, rotate smoothly, zoom, it’s color-corrected, it looks fantastic. I’ll let the guys in the video explain just what is going on, but… → Read More
Christian Cantrell, an Adobe employee and editor of WatchReport just sent me a link to his latest project. It’s called Apprise Reader and it’s basically a feed reader with two very compelling features. On the surface, Apprise Reader hits all the right buttons: Adobe Air, Twitter, AIM, RSS. It is, at its core, a feed reader with a dead simple interface. It accepts standard OPML files to… → Read More
Oh, look at me! I’m DeepNote! I’m the best Guitar Hero player in the world! Jealous? I score perfectly in every game. Watch me beat Cult of Personality on expert mode! I kid, I kid. DeepNote is cool. It’s a robotic whatsit that uses diodes as eyeballs and can tell what color’s coming when in Guitar Hero. Watching this video just goes to show you how long it takes your own human eyes to… → Read More
Blood! Hardware! Heavy metal! Add some sand paper to your old dead hard drive and turn it on to make an excellent grinder/sander for your next hard-core steampunk project. via Make → Read More
If you walk into a bar and see this robotic arm situated at one end of an air hockey table drinking a Miller High Life with a cigarette hanging from its lip yelling “Who’s got next?!", don’t, under any circumstances, play against it for money. It’ll beat you pretty badly. Politely offer to play a gentleman’s game and if the arm refuses, just walk away. The robot was… → Read More
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