Archive for May, 2008...
Filed under Gadgets
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
While we of course rock oh-so-very-hard on Rock Band’s drums, the pedal just never felt right under our weakling calves. The problem is naturally exacerbated for folks in wheelchairs, since there’s no way to avoid the kick drum or re-route it to another button — at least out of the box. Some folks at Kinetic Communications modded up a doorbell to work as the kick drum button and screwed it to a drum stick. Not the prettiest mod in the world, but it got their wheelchair-bound buddy drumming for about $20, and it shouldn’t be hard to replicate their instructions.
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Filed under Gadgets
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Chalk another one up for Sharp. The company has landed yet another partner willing to utilize its solar panels in order to make news, wow onlookers and give Mother Earth a modicum of a break. Napa Valley winery Far Niente has flipped on its self-coined Floatovoltaic installation, which was developed by Thompson Technology Industries and installed by SPG Solar. Nearly 2,300 Sharp solar panels were secured for the job, and we’re told that the array generates 400 kWs at peak output, which “significantly offsets the winery’s annual power usage and provides a net-zero energy bill.” Don’t expect that coveted bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to be any cheaper as a result, though.
[Via CNET]
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Filed under Slashdot
Ken E. writes “Asus has backed down in the face of complaints from UK Eee PC 900 owners about the ultra-portable’s low-capacity battery. Confusing statements posted in online reviews led buyers to believe that they would get a larger capacity battery than they actually did — and they weren’t happy. Asus has, however, made a conciliatory gesture by extending a £10 high-capacity battery upgrade offer. Mobile Computer has the full announcement, plus quite a bit of background on how this fuss all got started. The batteries will be available June 10 and in the meantime Eee PC owners can download a BIOS update that Asus claims will add half an hour to battery life.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Filed under Slashdot
MojoKid writes “A little over a week ago Netflix unveiled the Netflix Player, developed by the team at Roku, a set-top box for watching on-demand movies and TV. This interview with Tim Twerdahl, the VP of Consumer Products for Roku, goes into some detail about the guts of the box and the future of the set-top box. Of course the system runs an embedded Linux OS but interestingly also runs on a Nexperia (Philips) media processor.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Filed under Gadgets
Filed under: Wearables
This day and age, there’s really no excuse to have too little room in your average pair of cargo shorts for all the gadgets needed in a day. Convergence and shrinking PCBs have left us with do-it-all handhelds that can fit in the rear pockets of size 2 jeans on a size 4 gal, so really, you have exactly zero reasons to actually buy that abomination pictured above. If you must know, the FreeHand is a wearable neoprene pocket that keeps your keys, flash drives, RSA token and chump change within easy reach, and if you’re lucky, you may be able to convince the boss it’s being worn to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Folks who haven’t listened to a word we just said can ignite a Jackson right now — or spend $19.95 on this, same difference.
[Via Coolest-Gadgets]
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Filed under Slashdot
Lucas123 writes “IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, announced it has developed a 32-gigabit NAND flash memory chip that is expected to enable the production of cheaper solid-state drives with twice the storage capacity of today’s products. The 34-nanometer, multi-level chip is smaller than Intel’s latest CPUs. Samples will be available in June with production by the end of the year.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Filed under Slashdot
Enigma2175 writes “CNN is reporting that videos from the Coachella music festival showing Prince covering Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ have been removed by Prince’s label, NPG records. Thom Yorke of Radiohead, when told of Prince’s action, said ‘Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our… song.’ No comment from YouTube or Prince yet. Under the DMCA, YouTube is not required to verify the entity making a request is actually the copyright holder and this seems to be just another example of DMCA abuse.” As the article points out, Prince seems to have a love-hate relationship with the Interwebs.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Filed under Gadgets
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Frighteningly enough, this isn’t the first (or second) time that we’ve seen scientists pat themselves on the back for creating a mind-reading machine, but a dedicated team from Carnegie Mellon has just announced a computer that “has been trained to read people’s minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words.” In a completely unsurprising move, gurus familiar with the development are suggesting that the breakthrough could be used to better understand how the brain organizes knowledge, and eventually, treat language disorders and learning disabilities more effectively. That’s all gravy from here, but when this stuff starts passing as evidence in court, you’ll know it’s time to seriously investigate a relocation to Mars.
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Filed under Gadgets
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Frighteningly enough, this isn’t the first (or second) time that we’ve seen scientists pat themselves on the back for creating a mind-reading machine, but a dedicated team from Carnegie Mellon has just announced a computer that “has been trained to read people’s minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words.” In a completely unsurprising move, gurus familiar with the development are suggesting that the breakthrough could be used to better understand how the brain organizes knowledge, and eventually, treat language disorders and learning disabilities more effectively. That’s all gravy from here, but when this stuff starts passing as evidence in court, you’ll know it’s time to seriously investigate a relocation to Mars.
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Filed under Gadgets
Filed under: GPS
First things first: considering the huge amount of press garnered by a recent position art scam, this here could indeed be just another spoof to get your hopes up. That being said, we’re pretty sure no one with any level of decency would do such a vile thing on Easter Sunday, which is precisely when the above bunny was purportedly created from waltzing about with a Magellan GPS and a digital camera. The artist himself admits that what you see above is a slightly cleaned-up version of the actual path, but we’re told that any edits that occurred had no huge bearing on the outcome of the piece. You be the judge.
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