A lot of us skip breakfast in the morning, be it because we don’t have time to make something, don’t have the patience, or for some other reason. Yuri Suzuki and Masa Kimura are aiming to make your breakfast a little easier, a little quicker, and a lot more interesting. Their latest project is a Rube Goldberg-like machine that does everything from fry your eggs to brew your coffee. The coolest part about this project is it was built with the help of the public. The two designers put out an open invitation for people to come help in constructing…
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The incredible breakfast machine
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Open garage door indicator
How many times has this one happened to you? Just coming home from work, you walk in from the garage, settle down, and pick up the newspaper. But wait, did you remember to shut the garage door?
Presenting the open garage door indicator. [xjc2010] chose the simplest circuit possible, using only a switch to turn on and off the setup, an LED acting as the signal, and a transformer/resistor combo to drop the voltage to an acceptable LED friendly 2.8 volts. We don’t like how he strung wire all over his house to place the beacon, and would have…
Business
Brad Pitt honored for humanitarian work in New Orleans
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actor Brad Pitt was honored on Thursday for his humanitarian work in helping rebuild hurricane-ravaged New Orleans at former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s philanthropic summit, the Clinton Global Initiative.Pitt was presented with a plaque from the U.S. Green Building Council which said the actor and his foundation “Make It Right” had created the “largest and greenest single-family community in the world.”"‘Make It Right’ has exceeded my expectations,” said Pitt who set up the foundation in 2007.”Our criteria from the beginning were at odds, to say the least. We demanded that these homes be sustainable, that they…
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Tear your iMac’s insides out
Saying that [Ian] had some overheating issues with his iMac G5 would be an understatement. After losing three hard drives due to heat he decided to do something about it. The first step was replacing the thermal paste with Arctic Sliver. The solution for the hard drive was a little more unorthodox.
[Ian] picked up a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Blue drive because of its very low noise rating. He used rubber grommets to mount it outside the case and ran SATA data and power extension cables through a quarter inch hole to the motherboard. He mentioned to us…
Business
AT&T gives time frame for Friday’s iPhone MMS launch
t’s already known that AT&T is activating MMS for the iPhone on Friday, but the company has now narrowed the time frame to within a few hours.(Credit: Apple)As reported by AppleInsider, AT&T’s official Facebook page said the service will be activated late morning Pacific time Friday. That’s not exactly definitive, but at least no one will need to sit around all morning wondering if it’s on yet.The iPhone’s multimedia messaging service will allow the transmission of photos, contacts, audio files, and locations with the Messages app, according to Apple.In order to get the service, you will need to download a…
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Steal the administrator password from an EEPROM
Did you forget your hardware-based password and now you’re locked out? If it’s an IBM ThinkPad you may be in luck but it involves a bit more than just removing the backup battery. SoDoItYourself has an article detailing the retrieval of password data from an EEPROM.
The process is a fun one. Disassemble your laptop. Build a serial interface and solder it to the EEPROM chip where the password is stored. Connect this interface to a second computer and use it to dump the data into a file. Download a special program to decipher the dump file and dig…
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Berlin Hack Day
This past weekend, Berlin played host to Music Hack Day – an event where attendants built and tested hacks, contraptions, and software all dealing with sound, music, or the distribution thereof. Some of the hacks are simply mind blowing to see built in only a day or two. Like the location based CitySounds.fm or Tracks on a Map – mapping out where your music is from. Or the music based games and composition tools, iLoveAcid squencer and MaschineFighter – adding some crazy fun to MIDI.
Oh, we almost forgot, we can’t go an entire post without mentioning something Arduino;…
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Universal credit card in the palm of your hand
Do you remember the magnetic card spoofer in Terminator 2? It was a bit farfetched because apparently the device could be swiped through a reader and magically come up with working account numbers and pin numbers. We’re getting close to that kind of magic with [Jaroslaw's] card spoofer that is button-programmable.
Building off of a project that allows spoofing via an iPod and electromagnet, [Jaroslaw] wanted something that doesn’t require a computer to put together the card code. He accomplished this by interfacing a 20-button keyboard and a character LCD with an AVR ATmega168 microcontroller. Card codes can be…
Facebook
Live Coverage Of Facebook’s Advertising Announcement
Sheryl Sandberg is speaking today at 11:00 AM EDT. We’ve embedded the stream of the keynote live below. We’re expecting Sheryl to announce “Brand Lift” the company’s new partnership with Nielsen to measure the effectiveness of various advertising campaigns. We actually have some screenshots of Brand Lift in action that we’ll be updating this post with shortly. In the meantime you can watch the stream live below.
[11:06 AM EDT] – We’re still waiting for Sheryl to come on stage. The stream just temporarily posted a shot of the stage however we’re still on stand by.
[11:13] – We’re still…
Business
How I Met Your Mother Season 5 Episode 1 s05e01 Premiere
How I Met Your Mother : The Tv series presents its latest episode no.1 “Definitions” from season 5, which is airs on September 21, 2009.Tv series : How I Met Your MotherTitle : DefinitionsGenre : Comedy, RomanceDirector : Pamela FrymanWritor : Carter Bays, Craig ThomasAir date : September 21, 2009.Starring Cast of How I Met Your Mother s05e01 :Cobie Smulders as Robin ScherbatskyJason Segel as Marshall EriksenAlyson Hannigan as Lily AldrinNeil Patrick Harris as Barney StinsonJosh Radnor as Ted MosbyBrett Ryback as GuyKim Matula as GirlAbhi Sinha as GuyLaura Ornelas as GirlDale E. Turner as Professor CalzonettiJoe Manganiello as BradMichael…
Facebook
Brand Lift: Facebook’s Answer To The Brand Advertising Conundrum
There are two primary types of online advertising: direct sales marketing and branded ad campaigns. Direct sales models like online affiliate marketing or email marketing have already been proven. However large brands have only begun spending billions of dollars online, because there have been very few ways to monitor the effectiveness of campaigns. Let’s say that you set up a Facebook application which millions of users interacted with. How do you then measure the ROI of that program once it’s complete? Given that large companies spend hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars on advertising everywhere, it’s difficult to…
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MP3 Hand Grenade
One man’s useless machine is another man’s treasure… or something. [Matt] shared a link to his MP3 gr3nade in the comments of our useless machines post. The project took a decomissioned hand grenade and shoehorned an MP3 player into it. His decision to locate the headphone jack where the safety pin goes is a nice touch.
This reminds us of the boss from a previous job who had a chrome plated hand grenade on his desk. Now that was a useless object (and a useless boss). This project actually does something, but are you really going to ride around…
