No matter how grumpy you are in the morning, this video should make you smile. This is one of the jobs many of us dream of. Take a tour around Nokia’s product testing facility with Engadget. Watch in the video as phones are squashed, pinched, smacked, baked, shaken, dialed, slid, opened, and closed repeatedly. Sure, we don’t get to see any of them obliterated, but it sure is fun to see those machines at work. Each one of these tests will be run until the phones eventually come apart or cease to function. Too bad they didn’t show us…
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Nokia: destroying phones for fun and profit
Facebook
Facebook Becomes Television Thanks To UStream
What really makes television what it is? Is it the fact that it’s sitting in some dedicated space in your living room? Or is it the fact that it’s probably one of the larger monitors in your apartment or house? Maybe it’s not connected to a computer, and that’s what makes it a television (although they’ll all soon be computers). Whatever it is, Facebook is going head on with television not only through their new Brand Lift service but also through their numerous Ustream partnerships lately.
I’ve written numerous times about how social networks have rapidly become the new television…
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Halloween props: DMX controlled skeleton
[scarylady] has posted this video about her setup. The skeleton was rigged up to a rotating base with a single pneumatic solenoid to jostle it. She then goes on to show how she has it all connected to her computer with an explanation of the software setup. Though some of us might feel she could have accomplished very similar results with a simple oscillating fan, this is a decent intro to DMX.
We also had several people submit this fantastic list of Halloween projects, The Halloween monster list. There is enough information there to keep you busy for quite a while. We were…
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Pong on your wrist
[John] wanted to take a pong clock and put it in a wristwatch form factor. Take an afternoon and pour over his detailed build logs. This multi-year project is done with meticulous cleanliness that makes us jealous. He’s milled the case and buttons himself, achieving a professional look that equals or surpasses the quality of some commercially available “gaming” watches. The project centers around an OLED display driven by a TI MSP430F2013 processor. Don’t miss the video after the break covering prototyping, PCB work, case milling, and the watch in action. Currently, this is the third generation of development…
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Capacitive buttons control all life
Projects involving Conway’s Game of Life and utilizing a Nokia 3310 screen are quite popular with electronics hobbyists. [Droky] put these two together and went one step further by adding capacitive sensors to control the Game of Life. His work is a great example of how to use the Atmel QTouch capacitive sensor (QT100a datasheet). This chip does the heavy lifting that we’ve seen in other touch sensitive solutions. It operates from 2V-5.5V, requires only three capacitors and a resistor, has a one pin active high output, and sells for around $1 in low quantities. One thing [Droky] overlooked…
Facebook
Does It Really Matter How Many Fans You Have?
Last week we finished up the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program and while some people may or may not have reached the 3,000 fan target, the real question is: does the number of fans really matter? Last night I was watching a video of Seth Godin where he says “it’s worthless to have lots and lots of friends on Facebook.” With so many people selling the importance of having fans, followers, and friends though, how could Seth Godin, a thought leader in marketing, make such an assertion?
It’s Relationship Marketing
Seth has a valid point. If you don’t build…
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Open Source Weapon Makes You Puke
[Limor] of Adafruit Industries and the Ice Tube Clock has made her own open source non-lethal weapon: The Bedazzler. After attending a conference by the DHS where she saw the big-budget Dazzler, she decided to make her own. Thirty-six LEDs, six switching FETs, a Boarduino, and a former flashlight later, the Bedazzler makes a better rave toy than a weapon. It doesn’t work as-is, but we figure it will only be a matter of time before someone hacks this to make people… umm hack. See the video after the break.
Facebook
This Week In Facebook – September 27, 2009
It’s time again for our weekly recap of the latest Facebook news stories! While Facebook didn’t acquire any companies, or surpass any significant milestones this week, there was still plenty of news for the fast growing social platform. We also have the second volume of the This Week In Facebook video series being produced by my sister. The video is jam packed with YoVillians, burglars, and a game of Risk so check it out!
Protests In YoVille
This week was a volatile one for the world of YoVille, as the much beloved widgets factory was transformed into a Sweets Factory.…
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Halloween prop: the ground-breaker
[casafear1] has put out this video detailing how to build the “ground-breaker”, a zombie escaping from the grave. It is a simple frame for the arms and shoulders, with a couple pneumatic pistons to make it jerk as though it were pulling itself from the grave. He goes into a decent amount of detail explaining the physical construction, offering several tips to prolong the life of this prop. Unfortunately, he doesn’t enlighten us as to his control scheme. Is it manually controlled? Is it automated? Does it get activated by passers by or is it always going?
Last year,…
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SLI anytime anywhere
SLI, for those who don’t know, is the process of taking two Nvidia graphics cards and allowing them to work in parallel to render to a single monitor. In theory this doubles the power, getting more FPS for video games. Great right? Except due to encryption, only a limited amount of motherboards can actually support SLI.
That is, until now. Russian hackers at xDevs discovered that the newer encryption is based around string identifiers. This can be modified within the operating system itself, so in theory any motherboard could work. Be wary, this could brick your system; but if…
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Radio controlled beetle flight footage
Earlier this year we were amazed when University of California researchers controlled a beetle via electrical implants. The video available at the time of the original report showed beetles tethered in place while electrical stimuli was applied via the chip. New video of free flight is has now been posted. Although the motion is rather sporadic, it is obvious that simple commands to start flight, stop flight, and turn left or right are having their intended effect. Check out this cyborg action after the break. Is DARPA one step closer to unleashing legions of insect warriors on unsuspecting masses?…
Business
New Mobile Chips From Samsung!
Samsung is paving way for the next generation mobile devices with the introduction o f various mobile chips. The company has rolled out two 1-GHz ARM Cortex A8-based application processors, and announced that these chips are capable of 3-D graphics rendering, high-resolution video support, and real-time Internet access, and both have low power architectures. The S5PC110 is targeted at smaller devices like smartphones, and the S5PV210 is aimed at portable computing devices like netbooks or tablets, reports The Information Week. These processors could eventually find their way into a wide variety of devices, as Samsung chips are found in multiple…
