2006-04-28

eBay of the Day: Sega Genesis Guitar

eBay of the Day: Sega Genesis Guitar: " Its eBay of the day and its a link to an item thats for sale on eBay and its a Sega Genesis guitar. What more is there to say? There is probably something more to say but I can't think of it right now. Two days left and only one bid....I'm not sure I'd bother with this even if I did have any money. If it was a bass however, now that would be a different story. I still have grandparents that I could sell to raise the cash for one of them.

Bella Catapult enables camcorder-to-iPod recording

Bella Catapult enables camcorder-to-iPod recording: "Filed under: Digital Cameras, Peripherals, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Storage
Camcorder accessory manufacturer Bella has just announced a new device that will let you toss those MiniDV cassettes straight out of your bag and replace them with your iPod or nearly any other USB 2.0-compliant storage system. The Catapult, as it's known, is an paperback-sized digital encoder that plugs into any standard or HD camcorder with a FireWire port and processes the video as you're recording, eliminating the need to convert your footage later on. Besides saving time and offering access to higher storage capacities, the Catapult also enables your cam with a number of features not available out of the box, such as time-lapse recording, remote trigger capabilities, and both pre- and post-recording ability. Pre-recording is an especially attractive option, as it seems to buffer whatever your CCD is capturing for a preset timeframe, allowing you to essentially 'turn back the clock' and preserve events that already happened once you hit the record button.

Lighsnake USB guitar cable

Lighsnake USB guitar cable: " So, $39.99 gets you a Soundtech Lightsnake USB guitar cable, which glows when you plug it in, and contains a tiny A/D coverter to take your guitar into your computer by magic. I have no idea if it works, but it sure does glow nicely.

2006-04-27

Fujitsu demos color e-ink LCD

Fujitsu demos color e-ink LCD: "Filed under: Displays

We've been seeing a lot of e-ink passing through here lately, especially noteworthy was Citizen's recent e-ink LCD. But we have a feeling it's going to be a little while before anyone tops Fujitsu's bezel-tastic QVGA color LCD e-ink display, which holds color images steady in perpetuity without power. It's hard to tell how good the color representation is, what with that blaring flash, but the applications of color e-ink are enormous, especially as the displays get larger (and smaller) -- and Fujitsu does claim to have sheet paper-size prototypes.

gizmag Article: The Walkodile – ingenious child safety walker

gizmag Article: The Walkodile – ingenious child safety walker: "The Walkodile child safety walker is a significant development in the field of child safety as it offers a stress-free method of shepherding a group of primary school age children in public. The UKP200 Walkodile links four to six children to a central flexible spine, which they can hold on to whilst they walk.

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - 'Starquake' explosion rips neutron star open

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - 'Starquake' explosion rips neutron star open: "Astronomers have measured the thickness of the crust of a neutron star for the first time. The technique, which involves studying how the dense stellar corpse reverberates during a 'starquake', may one day reveal the nature of the exotic matter thought to lie at the star's core.

2006-04-26

Miller Beer To Come In Self-Cooling Cans

Miller Beer To Come In Self-Cooling Cans: "

Miller plans to bottle its beer in Tempra's self-cooling I.C.Can cans that 'lower beverage temperature by a minimum of 30° F (16.7° C) in just three minutes.'

Kennewick Man Skeletal Find May Revolutionalize Continent's History

Kennewick Man Skeletal Find May Revolutionalize Continent's History: "What the experts were able to ascertain from their brief encounter with Kennewick is that he did not look like a Native American. In fact, a Middle Tennessee State University researcher says Kennewick's facial features are most similar to those of a Jaanese group called the Ainu, who have a different physical makeup and cultural background from the ethnic Japanese.

2006-04-25

Scientists Make Major Finding On Potential Cure For Type 1 Diabetes

Scientists Make Major Finding On Potential Cure For Type 1 Diabetes: "A major finding, which represents an important step toward a potential cure for type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes, has been made by a research team at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology (LIAI). The team, led by Matthias von Herrath, MD, an internationally recognized expert on the molecular basis of type 1 diabetes, used a combinatorial treatment approach in laboratory mice and found it reversed recent onset type 1 diabetes in the majority of animals tested.

Nano Machine Switches Between Biological And Silicon Worlds

Nano Machine Switches Between Biological And Silicon Worlds: "Scientists have created a molecular switch that could play a key role in thousands of nanotech applications. The Mol-Switch project successfully developed a demonstrator to prove the principle, despite deep scepticism from specialist colleagues in biotechnology and biophysics.

2006-04-24

The Ladybag remembers your stuff with RFID

The Ladybag remembers your stuff with RFID: "Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables

We carry handhelds so we don't forget what we've got to do, but what happens when we forget our handheld? Six students from Canada's Simon Fraser University don't have an answer, but they have developed the latest in purse technology to help prevent the aforementioned situation from occuring to the ladies. The Ladybag's function is fairly simple: an RFID scanner in the bottom of the bag will display a LED-lit icon of whatever it is you didn't remember to embagify. (It'll also display emoticons of how your bag thinks you're feeling, depending on how you're holding and handling it.) Of course, if you're like us and frequently forget your bag when out and about, you'd do best to skip the Ladybag (or Manbag, as it were) and make like us: find a keeper.

Grow a grass armchair

Grow a grass armchair: "

Spring is springing, and you're in the market for some lawn furniture. Why not grow yourself a grass armchair? UK furniture store Purves & Purves has one all ready to get growing in your yard.

The package includes 14 cardboard frames, and a humungous pack of grass seeds. You fill in the frame with soil, seed and water every day. After ten days you've got yourself the greenest seat on the block.

Just make sure you pick the right spot, because this thing ain't moving. The Grass Armchair'll set you back £65 and looks quite popular - it's out of stock at the moment.

2006-04-21

Tiny Reactor Boosts Biodiesel Production - Forbes.com

Tiny Reactor Boosts Biodiesel Production - Forbes.com: "A tiny chemical reactor that can convert vegetable oil directly into biodiesel could help farmers turn some of their crops into homegrown fuel to operate agricultural equipment instead of relying on costly imported oil.

'This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people,' said Goran Jovanovic, a chemical engineering professor at Oregon State University who developed the microreactor.

The device - about the size of a credit card - pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly.

By comparison, it takes more than a day to produce biodiesel with current technology.

2006-04-19

Nanotube sheets come of age

Nanotube sheets come of age: "They're soft, strong, and very, very long.

Large, transparent sheets of carbon nanotubes can now be produced at lightning speed. The new technique should allow the nanotubes to be used in commercial devices from heated car windows to flexible television screens.

'Rarely is a processing advance so elegantly simple that rapid commercialization seems possible,' says Ray Baughman, a chemist from the University of Texas at Dallas, whose team unveils the ribbon in this week's Science1.

Nanotubes are tiny cylinders of carbon atoms measuring just billionths of a metre across. They are light, strong, and conductive. But for years their promise has outweighed their utility, because the complicated processes involved in making devices from nanotubes were too slow and expensive to be used in large-scale manufacturing.

But now, nanotubes have gone into warp drive. Baughman's team can churn out up to ten metres of nanoribbon every minute, as easily as pulling a strip of sticky tape from a reel (see video ). This ribbon can be up to five centimetres wide, and after a simple wash in ethanol compacts to just 50 nanometres thick, making it 2,000 times thinner than a piece of paper.

The ribbons are transparent, flexible, and conduct electricity. Weight for weight, they are stronger than steel sheets, yet a square kilometre of the material would weight only 30 kilograms. This is basically a new material," says Baughman.

High efficiency flat light source could be the end for the light bulb

High efficiency flat light source could be the end for the light bulb: "April 19, 2006 The end of the lightbulb is nigh! Scientists studying organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) have made a critical leap from single-color displays to a highly efficient and long-lived natural light source. The invention is the latest fruit of a 13-year OLED research program led by Mark Thompson, professor of chemistry at USC and Stephen Forrest of the University of Michigan. If the device can be mass-manufactured cheaply - a realistic expectation, according to Thompson - interior lighting could look vastly different in the future. Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets or tables. Since OLEDs are transparent when turned off, the devices could even be installed as windows or skylights to mimic the feel of natural light after dark - or to serve as the ultimate inconspicuous flat-panel television...

2006-04-18

Bunnyocalypse - Marshmallow Bunny Apocalypse :: Marshmallow Peeps

Bunnyocalypse - Marshmallow Bunny Apocalypse :: Marshmallow Peeps: "Through the Easter season (and until the marshmallow bunny supply runs out), BUNNYOCALYPSE presents a gallery of episodes detailing the on-going Marshmallow Bunny Apocalypse. New episodes will be posted as they become available -and- a gallery of visitor submissions is in the works. For now, enjoy the episodes...

2006-04-14

Seed: Prime Numbers Get Hitched

Seed: Prime Numbers Get Hitched: "In 1972, the physicist Freeman Dyson wrote an article called 'Missed Opportunities.' In it, he describes how relativity could have been discovered many years before Einstein announced his findings if mathematicians in places like Göttingen had spoken to physicists who were poring over Maxwell's equations describing electromagnetism. The ingredients were there in 1865 to make the breakthrough—only announced by Einstein some 40 years later.

Print me a heart and a set of arteries

Print me a heart and a set of arteries: "A new 'bioprinting' technique uses droplets of 'bioink' -- clumps of cells a few hundred micrometers in diameter that behave just like a liquid. This means that droplets placed next to one another will flow together and fuse, forming layers, rings...

The Remains of Lady Be Good

The Remains of Lady Be Good: "In early November, 1958, a British oil exploration team was flying over North Africa's harsh Libyan Desert when they stumbled across something unexpected… the wreckage of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) plane from World War 2. A ground crew eventually located the site, where a quick inspection of the remains identified it as a B-24D Liberator called the Lady Be Good, an Allied bomber that had disappeared following a bombing run in Italy in 1943. When she failed to return to base, the USAAF conducted a search, ultimately presuming that the Lady and her crew perished in the Mediterranean Sea after becoming disoriented. The British oil surveyors found that the desert environment had preserved the aircraft's hardware astonishingly well; the plane's 50 caliber machine guns still operated at the pull of the trigger, the radio was in working condition, one of the engines was still functional, and... (More Inside)

2006-04-13

ScienceDaily: High Efficiency Flat Light Source Invented

ScienceDaily: High Efficiency Flat Light Source Invented: "Scientists studying organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) have made a critical leap from single-color displays to a highly efficient and long-lived natural
The invention, described in the April 13 issue of Nature, is the latest fruit of a 13-year OLED research program led by Mark Thompson, professor of chemistry in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and Stephen Forrest, formerly of Princeton University and now vice president for research at the University of Michigan.

'This process will enable us to get 100 percent efficiency out of a single, broad spectrum light source,' Thompson said.

If the device can be mass-manufactured cheaply - a realistic expectation, according to Thompson - interior lighting could look vastly different in the future. Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets or tables.

High Efficiency Flat Light Source Invented

High Efficiency Flat Light Source Invented: "A group of chemists and electrical engineers succeeds in making a prototype white-light organic LED. Assuming the development of a waterproof backing, the advance could bring major changes in indoor lighting.

2006-04-12

Sweet Sounds of Stradivarius

Sweet Sounds of Stradivarius: "Noboby made violins like Antoni Stradivari, but two Swedish researchers are going to give it a try. Yet even they admit that whatever it was that made a Strad a Strad, technology is unlikely to match it.

2006-04-10

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Battery electrodes self-assembled by viruses

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Battery electrodes self-assembled by viruses: "Genetically modified viruses that assemble into electrodes could one day revolutionise battery manufacturing.

Researchers in the US have created viruses that automatically coat themselves in metals and line up head to tail to form an efficient battery anode – the negatively charged component that channels electrons to generate current. These nanowires could be used to make revolutionary new forms of lithium-ion batteries, the researchers say.

'Now it's simply a matter of designing the other components, and we'll be able to form batteries by simply pouring all the ingredients together and letting them self-assemble,' says Angela Belcher, a biological engineer at MIT who led the research. 'Plus we can make them at room temperature in very safe conditions, instead of the high temperatures and dangers usually associated with battery production.'"

Damn Interesting » Germany's Pleasure Dome

Damn Interesting » Germany's Pleasure Dome: "In the northeastern portion of Germany, about thirty-six miles southeast of Berlin, a passenger train and shuttle service delivers men, women, and children to the door of one of the most voluminous structures on the planet. They arrive throughout the day and night, every day of the year. The enormous dome stands 350 feet tall, and encloses 194 million cubic feet of space. It was originally commissioned by CargoLifter AG as a hangar for their heavy-lift airship concept, but their dirigible was never developed, and the company went bankrupt in 2002. The following year, Malaysian Tanjong company purchased the gigantic building and filled it with something never before seen in northeast Germany: tropical paradise."

GottaBook: The Fib

GottaBook: The Fib

Mathematical-ish poetry blog

gizmag Article: Double-decker living

gizmag Article: Double-decker living

2006-04-07

Evergreen's $8.50 DN-2000 MP3 player

Evergreen's $8.50 DN-2000 MP3 player: "Filed under: Portable Audio


Japanese Co. Evergreen is no stranger to the cheap and crap-plasticy product. Now they combine their love of the two and apparent hatred for human-kind in this $8.50 DN-2000 MP3 player targeting the ill-fated shores of Japan, and perhaps, beyond. It runs for 5-hours on a single AAA battery and supports 1GB SD cards. You realize of course, that we are now at the dawn of disposable MP3 players don't you? Gawd save our souls.

2006-04-04