Forget the Picoo Z's, no matter how much fun they are they can't be as cool as making and flying your own indoor remote-control 'copter. And over at this site there's a set of instructions that'll help you DIY, assuming you have some spare CD drive motors and servos lying around, and are happy with soldering and detailed rotor-carving. The instructions even say how to add a wireless cam beneath the fuselage... useful for, um, imaging the precise moment you crash it into your cat? I suspect more nefarious purposes. Still, it's a full cyclic-control aircraft, so it should be extremely flyable. [Heliproject via Hacknmod]

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Over at Instructables is this DIY project that will let you make your own slender electronic business cards with built-in LED display. They're pretty cool, displaying a number of different scrolling data messages at the push of a button, and apparently cost just about US$5 per card. The "slender" description means you'll have to be good at soldering surface-mount components, though. To me it's a cool project that will impress people, but kinda misses the point of business cards: easily disseminating your contact info. An LCD QR-code business card— now that's something I'd fancy. Head over to Instructables if you've got the LED maker-urge. [Instructables]

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Retro gaming fans that enjoy a good DIY project will certainly get a kick out of the latest work of a console modder that goes by the name "Bacteria." Basically, he has devised a way to cannibalise those Plug-n-Play TV gaming units into interchangeable cartridges that can be plugged into a single, portable system (he also claims that a GBA add-on is currently in the works). Unfortunately, Bacteria continues to be uninterested in details like aesthetics and ergonomics (as we first noticed in his previous project), but that is something you can probably correct should you decide to take on the mod yourself. Hit the link for the complete instructions. [Modded by Bacteria]

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Want to build the most complex machine human kind has ever produced? All you'll need is €6 billion, enough real estate to hold your 17-mile-long ring, a staff of international geniuses, and these plans (free!). The 115MB of documentation just made available by the Journal of Instrumentation has all you need to understand the inner workings of all the major LHC components, from the EMCAL super modules to the ionising gas straw tubes to the calorimeter end-caps. And the schematics within are, just like everything else large-hadron related, beautiful.

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While visiting the Philips research lab here in Amsterdam I came across a company that is getting the Star Trek replicator closer to everyday life. Imagine being able to create any 3D object you want--a World of Warcraft avatar, a chess set, a lamp, a Lego piece you are missing, a house for a train model, or a fully articulated astromech droid--print it remotely, and have it delivered to your house in just 10 days, even without knowing any 3D software. This is exactly what Shapeways does. Not next century, but right now, today.

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The speakingObject is a voice-synthesising board that's easily tweaked with two buttons and a typical three-axis accelerometer. What's that mean? You get a completely original, vaguely human techno-ready track with the flick of a wrist. And yes, it's only a matter of time before some tripped-out a'hole at a concert is doing this right next to you while waving his iLighter high in the air. [joerg via bbGadgets]

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This sassy little thing is the brainchild of L. Scott Hudson, who recently participated in MAKE's Dorkbot Austin robot building event. This gal is kind of like the Twitter box bot we wrote about this week (also a MAKE find), but it's got the added bonus of moxie. It also gives you step-by-step self-assembly instructions in the video. See? Robots are ready to start building themselves. Earth: Doomed.

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Popular Mechanics has a great DIY feature, showing you how to build a waterproof video boombox for your iPod. Making use of an iPod touch, some old speakers, an 8" personal video player screen, video cables, gorilla tape and a hard camera case, Anthony Verducci has created a waterproof video case for the iPod that he believes is the first to float.

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The B&D messenger, designed by Okada Noriaki, bills itself as a way for both blind and deaf people to communicate via text message. Though there are several Braille phone products already in the market, Noriaki device is much smaller in size and pretty inexpensive. On one side of the gadget is twelve points that rise and fall in braille lettering; on the other side is a small LCD screen and a regular numerical touch pad. Users must connect the B&D messenger to a computer for it to receive and translate texts.

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The mad scientist behind this hack was faced with a problem. His beloved Amazon Kindle had a shattered screen and was all but dead. Distraught, he thought to himself: "what if I could sacrifice a Sony reader and perform and unholy cross species screen transplant? Yeah, it just might work because the e-ink screens on both devices are nearly identical."

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