Something to do with an AOL CD
Subject it to
1000 volts, in a tesla coil. Not the kind of thing you usually find lying around really. But im sure you cant think of other things. Comment with your own ideas.
Open Source
Well, everyone loves open source. There is a big, alphabetical, wiki list of open source software here. Or at least, it contains everything considered as worthy of the list. Some of it is rubbish, but it’s worth a look
iWood Kiosk
This is a masterpeice of design. It is designed as a public information kiosk for librarys and schools. What better computer to compliment its design than the beautiful iMac G5. They are however, rather exclusive, and very expensive. But, well, its a thing of beauty.
Shuffle in a Tape
Ever wanted to hack your
iPod shuffle into a cassette tape? Well, it’s do-able. It involves modding the tape case so the iPod can fit without changing the shape of the tape. The headphone jack is then soldered to the read head on the tape, and then, you can enjoy your digital music on an analogue tape player. Yay! The only question is “why?”, but hey, its pretty cool.
Because new is not always better.
This site is a largish collection of the older versions of many popular or useful programs. The site, created in 2001, feels there is a need to archive cultural artifacts and that if older versions of software are allowed to disappear a piece of our computing history will be lost. They will also accept old installation files from people who feel they may be of some use.
Dora
This Vehicle, named ‘Dora’, is one of many competing in the
DARPA Grand Challenge. The Challenge comprises a 175 mile course with both natural and man-made obstacles. The first vehicle to cross the line, within 10 hours, will win $2,000,000 for its team. This particular ATV from
Team Banzai is named Dora and is driven remotely (there is no human intervention, once it is set off only time will tell whether this team got it right) by three Mac Mini’s running Tiger. They control the steering, brakes, Off Road Functions and the Radar and GPS. The Entire Object Orentated control program, is written in Objective-C and Cocoa. The three Macs communicate over a wired network (wireless is forbidden) and are called Navigator, Tactician and Driver, after their respective jobs. I think this is a brilliant idea, and that we should all support the first OS X driven car!
The ‘Bean’
This is the new Sony PSS Mp3 player, released to compete with the
iPod shuffle. It comes in two colors, Liqourice Black (above) and
Cotton Candy Pink and there are two sizes, 512MB and 1GB. Although it is slightly higher priced than the Shuffle, it does have more features than its main rival, mainly the FM radio reciver and EL display. It also has Sony’s new battery technology, giving it 50 hours battery life and the capacity to charge to 3 hours worth of use in 3 minutes. Sony’s ATRAC software can be used to fit up to 695 songs onto the 1GB player. Although these specifiations are impressive, I think it is far from elegant and would much prefer a 1GB Shuffle.
Blizzard
This week, graphics hardware company
Sapphire, anounced a revolutionary new change in Graphic Card cooling. Dubbed
Blizzard, these new graphics cards are liquid metal cooled. The metal, which is non-toxic and none flammable, is 65 times more thermally conductive than water. The cards will require no refilling and no user intevention. They only take up one additional PC slot and because they use an electromagnetic pump, have no moving parts, consume much less power and are virtually silent. With 16 parallel pixel piplines, 256mb GDDR3 memory and a PCI express interface they will satisfy even the most hardcore gamers. The first commercially avaible versions are due to ship in July.
P.A.T.R.I.O.T
Following september the 11th, the USA passed an act allowing the secret services huge amounts of freedom over the various ways they collect information on suspects. This act, called the P.A.T.R.I.O.T act allows the secret services access to literally billions of phone, medical, financial and student records with very little judicial oversight. It also broadens their power over internet and phone surveillance.They will have permission to perform searches without warrants and without ever informing the subject of their search. (more…)
