Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
Debatable as it may be, one can make his or her own house the ultimate gadget. In this ultra-geeky and fantastic show of awesomeness, overall geekiness, and utmost grandeur, James May is planning to erect a full working house made entirely out of Lego Bricks.
You might be thinking that you singlehandedly did that when you were just a bit older than a toddler. Let me tell you that this James May bloke, presenter of the show Top Gear, has much more ambition than a small, ratio-ed resplica of a house. He is planning to build it 1:1, life-sized, complete with a staircase and a working toilet, plus indoor plumbing! (more…)
For some it’s just a way to make that ugly beige computer tower on your desk look better, and add something to the aesthetics of your work space. For others, it’s a labor of love modifying their computer cases to create an amazing work of art. And then there are those who need to carve a bit more utility out of their computer cases. For everyone else, there are pictures…of the creations these folks have devised.
So sit back, grab some popcorn, don’t forget to get a cold drink from the fridge, and take a look at 13 amazing computer case mods.
- Dodge Charger PC Case (Pre Fabbed)
A marriage between car and computer never looked so good. The company behind this case mod has built a fully functional computer and put it inside a car model. The headlights and taillights blink and the hood ornament serves as the power button. Featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors, these sharp looking computers actually boot up to the sound of a HEMI engine. For those that like to change the look of their PC often, the outer shells of these bad boys are interchangeable. Want a Dodge Magnum body instead? It’s easy to change because the components are all mounted on one standard frame.
- The Giant Tetris Case
This case comes to you from the creative minds of a Spanish gaming group. There are several computers that actually make up the display as seen in the picture above. The colorful Tetris blocks are actually acrylic panels built to attach to each other to form the pile of blocks.
- Computer Desk and Case in One
This case mod brings a whole new meaning to the words “Computer Desk.” The senior technology editor over at Popular Mechanics set out to create the ultimate computer desk. The result is a beast of a machine with all the latest and greatest components they could find. The transparent desktop allows you to see the innards of the computer, and the blue lighting really adds to the displayability of the desk. Just make sure you have a cloth handy to wipe down the finger prints.
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As everyone know’s, the frenzy over Apple’s WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) always brings news of new Apple products, and the iPhone has been the main attraction in the last few years. The new iPhone 3G S was announced in both 16GB and 32GB versions. The “S” in 3G S stands for speed. Some of the highly anticipated features include upto 2x faster web surfing, a 3-megapixel camera and the long awaited landscape keyboard. The landscape keyboard will also be available on older iPhone models through the OS 3.0 update.
It also has a voice control feature which allows you to call someone on your contact list, or listen to a song on your iPhone, all by simply telling it to do so. (more…)
Amateur and student inventions have a long and noble tradition. We all know about Youtube or Ford, but did you know that the guy who invented TV was also an amateur? (thank you, for making Firefly possible.)
Lately, amateur science has been making strides all over the place thanks to better micro-chips, modular components, and huge advances in miniaturization and nanotech. Today’s amateurs (or “independent inventors,” as they are sometimes called) have a lot more to work with than their sprocket-wielding ancestors, and it shows. Here are a few of the most recent, and coolest creations.
- The Uno Electric Unicycle
This hip-looking uni-wheeled electric bike was built, designed, and conceived by 18-year-old Ben Gulak. Sick of smog, he decided to create something that could be a viable alternative to driving, something like the Segway, only… way cooler. He came up with a cross between an electric bike and a motorcycle, with two wheels side-by-side. The bike is stabilized by gyros; to speed up, you lean forward. He designed it for commuters, and you can ride it for between 2 and 2.5 hours before it needs a recharge. He built it with the help of his grandfather, who is also a tinkerer and worked as an engineer, so he had all the necessary equipment on hand. The secret? The Uno is powered by electric wheelchair motors.
- The Flying Car
Although I’m still waiting for something that looks like Luke’s landspeeder before I’ll believe that the future has truly arrived, this will have to do in the meantime. Its inventor, MIT student Carl Deitrich, calls his creation a “Personal Air Vehicle.” It’s a hybrid airplane-car, built to make short trips between 100 – 500 miles using the hundreds of small public airports and runways that dot the country.
It’s about the size of an SUV, but unlike an SUV this baby only seats two, plus luggage. It uses gyroscopic control in the air, and once you land at the airport you don’t need to “de-plane” and wait with a hundred other people to snatch you luggage from the conveyor belt – instead, you just flip the “Personal Air Vehicle” into “Personal Ground Vehicle” (car) mode, fold the wings into the body, and hit the highway.The construction of the plane includes all the standard vehicle safety stuff – seatbelts, crumple-zones, etc, but under the hood there’s definitely something special. It uses an ultra-efficient rocket engine that doesn’t require a turbo-pump to deliver the fuel, so it’s both cheaper, and lighter, than any other engine of its kind, which is what makes the whole thing possible. And while Deitrich admits that the idea for a flying car is nothing new, he’s the first guy to actually have one in his garage.
- The Wall Scaling Batman Style Belt
This utility belt is just like Batman’s, but real. It can lift 250lbs (ie: Batman plus his suit) 50 feet in 5 seconds. It’s supposed to be used for good – towing things, getting soldiers into hard-to-reach places, helping firefighters get up buildings (last year, another guy created a device that will help them get down again), etc. But we know better: it’s just completely cool to be able to scale buildings. There are several models being created now that get you up further, faster, or carry more weight, but the idea is the same.
- The Wearable Computer
Debuting at TED this year was an invention by another MIT student, Pranav Mistry, whose speciality is human-machine interface. His “SixthSense” computer system is wearable, and it’s hard to describe, except to say that it is completely awesome and kind of crazy.It uses a real-time gestural interface – a camera around your neck and watches your hands, and a projector beside it allows you to project data onto walls, or onto your hand, or onto anything else, and interact with it as if it were real – using a projected calculator, checking a projected wristwatch, or rearranging projected photos.
Some of the most wow-inducing examples presented at TED include a Wall Street Journal that, when pointed at, turns interactive, playing its lead story as a video, projected right onto the paper. You can play, pause, and enlarge the video by pressing the projected buttons underneath it. The set up is basically a laptop, camera, and projector, and the whole thing is internet-enabled, so you can look up product specs and compare prices right in a store, for instance, by pointing at an item and making a certain motion. It’s a hardware mash-up of found technologies from everywhere, but Mistry has put them together into a completely mind-bending package.
- The Invisibility Cloak
This cloak invariably invokes comparisons to Harry Potter, but it’s not quite that good – yet. Japanese prof Susumu Tachi and his grad students created what they call a “retro-reflective projection system,” which basically means that what’s on one side gets projected onto the other. The jacket is made up of special reflective beads, which function like cats-eyes, reflecting almost all the light back to the source with a minimum of scattering (the effect they harness is the same one desponsible for “red-eye” in photos). When the rearward image is projected onto the front-facing beads, their shape and highly-focussed nature makes the picture look three dimensional… more or less. Each bead acts like a giant pixel. Watch the video to see it in action.
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