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This is how you make a hot tub, hillbilly style. Three guys from the prairies of Illinois turned an old stock tank sitting in the open air into a jacuzzi, and heated it up using quicklime, that scary caustic stuff that burns your skin off if you're not too careful. A video of how they did it, using gas masks, tin baths and a lot of ingenuity, is after the jump.
How many times have you been walking around SoHo when you spot a robot celebrity trying to play it cool? You tap him on the shoulder and are like, "You're the Robot from Lost in Space!" And then he turns around and...how embarrassing. It's just a gumball machine with some hosing stuck to the side. Wait, no, it was the Robot from Lost in Space! See? It gets tricky.
What's the first thing we did with our Casio Exilim EX-F1, the Hiro Nakamura camera/camcorder that makes time stand still? We recorded a mini Cuisinart laying havoc to some tomatoes. Why? If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't be here. The top vid is a view of the carnage at 300 frames per second. (As you'll see, I call my food processor "Hitchcock" because it's always keeping me in suspense.) Below, additional tomatoes get annihilated at 600fps and then 1200fps, with increasing detail, but decreasing resolution and light.
Evolution Robotics ViPR visual search technology is coming to the iPhone this June. ViPR allows you to take a photo of any movie, CD or book, send it to a server, and automagically get an email back loaded with information and links pointing to YouTube videos or iTunes Music Store links. It will also be deployed in Japan on KDDI's au camera phones this Spring. As you will see in the iPhone demo after the jump, it works incredibly well, even when the object is partially occluded:
Think you've got what it takes to out-do Wing Commander Andy Green and the 1,228 kph land speed World-record set by Thrust SSC? Well, the team at North American Eagle may have a spot behind the controls for you: they've launched an open contest for the driver of their vehicle. The crazy red car looks a shade like an F-104 Starfighter, you say? Well, that's because it actually is one. With wheels. For going along the ground, faster than the speed of sound.
We are very big fans of Rubik's Magic Cube, even while none most of us have not solved it yet. Not even trying this one, really. Until today. Why I didn't think about this before, I don't know, but that felt oh-so-good. [Rubik in Gizmodo—thanks Carlitos]
When I saw this Bonanza banana, I thought of this. Eddie Murphy stuck one up a tailpipe, now you can stick a banana up your USB port—well, you can stick it wherever you like, it's Friday and we're all adults here. The fruity flash drive has an 8GB capacity, looks lovely, tastes rubbery, and is made by a firm called Hantat. [AVING via Pocket-lint]
Just the other day we were banging on about graphene, the new "wonder material" based on graphite, and now a British team has used it to craft the world's smallest transistor. It's just one atom deep and ten wide, and we don't need to tell you that that's teeny. In fact, it's more than three times smaller than the 32nm transistors at the cutting edge of silicon-based microelectronics: so it looks like Gordon Moore's law of transistor shrinkage has a bit of life in it yet.
Fans of space, high definition television, and watching-your-washing-machine-while-stoned rejoice! Honoring planet Earth and hoping to bring us closer to the awe that astronauts feel while watching or home planet, NASA is going to start transmitting crystal-clear HD video of Gaia taken from orbit—both totally silent and also with commentary.
Sanyo's new Xacti isn't much of a change over the previous version: mainly a new 8 megapixel CMOS sensor (versus the previous 6) and a "face chaser" mode. This maintains exposure and focus settings on people you're videoing or snapping. There's a new underwater shooting mode too, which corrects for blue-colour light effects, and seems sensible for a cam that can be taken down to 1.5 metres underwater for an hour. The rest of the camera remains the same, including the case and 5x optical zoom. Next time give us a waterproof HD version, eh Sanyo? Available in Japan at first, mid-May, for around $500. [Akihabaranews and Impress]
Microsoft will release a limited-edition Joy Division Zune sometime around June 5, coordinated with the launch of a DVD about the band. It is thought that the Joy Division Zune will be designed by Peter Saville, the graphic designer behind both Joy Division album covers, and a big player in the Manchester music scene of the '80s. While there are not yet any pictures of the artwork available, there is every indication that the design will be something along the lines of that which is on the band's Unknown Pleasures album. [Wired and Pitchfork—Thanks Scrypt]
I don't know what's more creepy about this 11-inch remote controlled drone developed by the USAF for reconnaissance missions. Maybe it's the flexible wings, which close and open like a bat when landing. Perhaps it's the crawling on the floor, modeled after cockroaches, to reach hidden places to spy. Or most probably is the fact that they are planning to develop a large drone that will carry 50 of these little beasts, ready to burst out of its belly at any time. Whatever it is, I want one. [Flight]
We've been talking about pico-projectors for a while, and here's what's apparently the World's first commercially available media player with one built right in: the Sunview PMPP. The LED-lit iView IPL630 unit inside it can project a VGA display up to an impressive-sounding 53 inches, but only a brightness of 9 lux at this size. The rest of the PMP sounds ok: a 3.5-inch LCD, speaker, remote, SD slot and size of around 13.2 x 7.9 x 2.5 cms. Interestingly it runs a Windows CE core, so it should be able to project documents and presentations. How does it look or sound? We don't know, as it's only available in limited quantities for now, and there's no word on prices. [Display Daily]
If you lack the upper arm strength to lug around your laptop, worry no more. Thanko has created a regular looking laptop bag that sports a telescoping mono-wheel. Whether you haul around some ultra-light and super-portable contraption or an 4 kilo gaming beast, Thanko thinks that they have got you covered.
In a cafe deep in the heart of Amerikamura, Osaka, tables of otaku are sitting down to tea and cake with women old enough to be their mothers. Mother Café is an otaku fetishist establishment staffed with women that give off a motherly vibe; maid cafés are so yesterday.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 12:53 PM on April 18, 2008
I've been playing with the Beta of the new ABC Playback service for about a week now, and thought I'd post some of my thoughts up here for you guys.
Firstly though, the service is still in beta, so some of the things I've encountered could be a result of that. I think that there's a lot of potential here, but there are also a lot of things that will need to happen before the site hits the mainstream.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 12:16 PM on April 18, 2008
Posted by Nick Broughall at 11:41 AM on April 18, 2008
After almost destroying the internet as we know it (ha!), Linksys have decided to embrace nature by revolutionising their product packaging.
Here's what they've done:
Nikon's flagship full-frame DSLR, the D3, is a lot of things, but a megapixel warrior it is not, shooting a mere 12.1MP to other flagship DSLRs' 20+. Nikon said it was avoiding the pointless megapixel war. But the latest firmware update for the D3 turns up a string for the "D3x" containing the image sizes "6048x4032 24.4 M" and "5056x4032 20.4 M." Given that everyone else is speeding along pro DSLRs with 20+ megapixels, the D3x probably exists, and shares common code w/ the D3. Nikon expert Thom Hogan goes further, suggesting the reason it's in the code is because "there are some D3 bodies out there with the new sensor being tested." That's right, the new DSLR king, out there, right now. [DP Review via Gadget Lab]
Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet has a pretty interesting rumour on a Zune Marketplace-like service in development code named "Zune Video X". It's supposed to take what Microsoft's learned from their Xbox 360 Live Marketplace endeavor (menus, selling movies, renting movies, organisation, etc) and port it into a Zune ecosystem. The point? "A single hub where Zune users could buy and download music, videos, TV shows and more entertainment content."
You're old, weak and your bastard kids want to put you in a home. The uBOT-5 could one day offer a solution that could help you maintain your independence without having to resort to depressing nursing homes or lame Life Alert badges. Thanks to researchers at the University of Massachusetts, their uBOT-5 robot is capable of picking up small objects, dialing 911 and even using a stethoscope to check vitals.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 9:54 AM on April 18, 2008
Section 47 of the Act prohibits exclusive dealing which broadly involves one trader imposing restrictions on another's freedom to choose with whom, in what or where it deals. In some cases, exclusive dealing is prohibited outright and, in other cases, only where it substantially lessens competition.eBay doesn't feel that restricting it's customers to Paypal will substantially lessen competition. They stand by their claim that the move is done exclusively to protect customers.
I'm pretty sure when I was young, kids this dumb were sent out into the wild and only allowed back into society after they'd done battle with rabid wolves and survived, to ensure accordance with Darwin's law. Anyways, look kid, the crappy, Chinese-made stuffed toys inside, they're not actually worth it—not the quarter you conned out of your parents to play, and not the years of therapy you're going to have undergo to get over this. If it had been one of the ones where you can win like a Wii, okay, 'cause they can still be kind of hard to come by. But it totally wasn't. [YouTube via Geekologie]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 8:45 AM on April 18, 2008
With Jaxtr, we've got a cheap (free) and easy way to send messages internationally. Before now, whenever we saw a hot lady dressed up in a Stormtrooper outfit we had to send Jesus hundreds of IMs in hopes that the chime would wake him up. No longer! Now all we have to do is log on to Jaxtr—it works from the iPhone too—and type our message in there. Their service only supports a limited number of countries such as the UK, Sweden and Germany, but it leaves out some big ones like Japan and Spain. Wait, Spain? Guess Jesus is going to have to wait a few hours to see Ms. Stormtrooper. [Jaxtr via Gear Diary via JkOnTheRun via Into Mobile]
You may not remember this because the news came out during CES, but back in January there was a gigantic leak of Windows Mobile 7 details, including an Alaskan Senator's dump truck full of images. Brandon from Pocket Now recently got to SEE Windows Mobile 7 at a Microsoft MVP event, and while he thinks it's a fantastic OS, he's got a huge problem with the release date.
It may not be Kurt Russell's stunt car, but if a European company named Prevent is successful in its quest, the world will have the first "uncrashable" vehicle. As their name suggests, the approach they are taking does not involve any space age armour to avoid damage in the event of an accident, rather, the focus is on new technologies that prevent accidents from occurring in the first place. A list of some of these innovations are listed after the break.
Kohler's Karbon faucet is not the first to receive a cutting edge design, but it packs that extra wow factor with it's segmented, cylindrical design. The articulated faucet not only looks like a series of James Bond-esque pistol silencers, but it lets you drag and hold the f
What's the first thing we did with our 
I don't know what's more creepy about this 11-inch remote controlled drone developed by the USAF for reconnaissance missions. Maybe it's the flexible wings, which close and open like a bat when landing. Perhaps it's the crawling on the floor, modeled after cockroaches, to reach hidden places to spy. Or most probably is the fact that they are planning to develop a large drone that will carry 50 of these little beasts, ready to burst out of its belly at any time. Whatever it is, I want one. [
This is a mockup of a method of shipping people made by Elric Petit. I'm sure there's a joke here about flying coach, but I'm too lazy to find it. I leave that to you, my friends, in the comments. [