Team koelse.org have created the Jazz Trash robot for the upcoming Artbots ’08 competition, and as soon as the cobbled-together robot’s music hit our ears, we liked it. The team’s main idea is to connect a large number of experimental instruments together producing a huge array of strange sounds from recycled electro-mechanical components: “Anything from circuitbent toys to hardware-hacked vacuumcleaners.” Interestingly the interactions mean that Jazz Trash can be sort of tuned, but what the end music will be is unpredictable, which explains the random, ear-grabbing nature of the sounds it makes in the video.
LG’s VX9100 flip phone, with a two keypad design—one dial, one QWERTY—has just been officially added to Verizon’s phone lineup. The 15mm deep device will have a QVGA screen, 2-megapixel camera and up to 8GB of storage. [Akihabaranews]
newVideoPlayer("makersiphonewatering.flv", 494, 300,""); Peter set up a robotic watering can to take directions from an iPhone. When Safari’s screen state goes from horizontal to vertical, it sends a status update to a webserver via javascript that sets the watering can up or down. Pretty simple but clever setup. [Maker Faire]
Fuel’s expensive. I paid $1.80 per litre for diesel the other day – it was like mugging my own wallet. The only thing that left me with that same feeling of being financially raped was when I first held the LG Prada phone – and that didn’t even cost me any money.
Another thing that’s quite expensive is Microsoft Office, especially when you look at Google Docs and Open Office. To help ease the financial burden that Microsoft’s software package will create, they’ve decided to offer customers a $40 fuel voucher for anyone who purchases pretty much any of their Office suites.
The offer is valid for boxed copies purchased from May 1st 2008 up to 31st July 2008, and the fuel voucher is a StarCash Card redeemable at any Caltex or Ampol outlet, where EFTPOS facilities are available and operational. To get your voucher, you just need to redeem it by going here.
[Microsoft - Thanks Jase!]
Folding bikes aren’t new. Hell, even this folding bike isn’t new. It’s been around for a couple of years, easy.
What is new is the fact that you can now get one in Australia – Tesora is selling the Fold-A-Bike for just $149.
The Fold-A-Bike weighs just 5.5kg and folds down to just 66 x 30 x 15cm. Even better is the fact that you can unfold it in under 10 seconds, making it the near perfect city commuter vehicle. Just imagine the wind flowing through your hair and your suit jacket flapping out behind you while you run over those pesky “walkers” on your way to the train station after a hard day’s work. Makes you want one, doesn’t it?
[Tesora]
Telstra shut down their CDMA network last week and despite the media buildup, the closure seems to have been a massive success. According to The Age:
A spokeswoman for the Consumers’ Telecommunications Network said they had not received any calls of complaint since the network’s closure.
“We haven’t received any calls today,” the spokeswoman said.
I wonder why…
[The Age - Thanks MikeyMike!]
newVideoPlayer("makersmacgyver.flv", 494, 300,""); While yesterday’s revelation at Maker Faire by MacGyver creator and real-life inspiration Lee D. Zlotoff that a MacGyver blockbuster was in the works was a pretty sweet surprise, today we asked him the most pressing MacGyver question of all: Would a modern day MacGyver still use a Swiss Army knife? [Maker Faire on Giz]
The Microsoft-sponsored Next-Gen PC Design Competition asks its contestants to design the next generation of Windows-based PCs and judges the resulting entries on innovation, user experience, aesthetics and whether it can ever be manufactured. This year’s contest focused on PC designs that “help people do what they feel passionate about.” Public voting is over and the winners will be announced sometime this month, but even if we can’t participate in the voting process, a lot of these concepts are worth gawking at. Check out some weird and interesting prototypes after the jump.
Robotics maker Mark Single hooked up a Rock Band guitar to Christmas light show software and scored 100% on Green Grass and High Tides on Expert, one of the hardest songs in the game. He’s detailed how he did it so you n00bs can try your hand at it too. I’ve never really understood the point of modding a game to play itself, but in case you were one of the lame asses who needed to cheat to get sweet scores in Guitar Hero III and panicked at the thought of actually playing to pass songs in Rock Band, Pure Pwnage has got you covered. Though, at the end of the day, is it really worth it to get a perfect and still feel so empty? [Pure Pwnage via HacknMod]
