Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

What better way to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the Mooninites’ invasion of Boston than to drop $80 on Evil Mad Scientist Labs′ new Peggy? It’s easy to fall in love with this 12 x 15-inch hackable pin grid for pluggable LEDs, which also features a programmable microcontroller capable of animating its 625 positions. Just be cautious when using it to spread your propaganda outdoors, some big city populaces apparently don’t like being toyed with by way of LED signage.

 

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Original post by Ryan Block

iandoh writes “A team of scientists at Stanford University has tracked the movement of carbon nanotubes through the digestive systems of mice. They’ve determined that the nanotubes do not exhibit any toxicity in the mice, and are safely expelled after delivering their payload. As a result, the study paves the way toward future applications of nanotubes in the treatment of illnesses. Previous research by the same team demonstrated that nanotubes can be used to fight cancer. The nanotubes do this in two ways. One method involves shining laser light on the nanotubes, which generates heat to destroy cancer cells. Another method involves attaching medicine to the nanotubes, which are able to accurately ‘find′ cancerous cells without impacting healthy cells.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Soulskill

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

See, this is how you bust out a hologram — unlike the mind-numbingly boring virtual Prince Charles we heard about the other day, Sony’s invaded Tokyo Bay with a water-and-laser sea monster. The apparition is part of the promotion for a movie called “Water Horse: Legend of the Deep,” but even with a title like that, we’ll definitely check it out on import DVD when it arrives Stateside just to provide more incentive for stunts like this. Check out a video after the break.

Continue reading Sony unleashes a holographic monster on Tokyo Bay

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Original post by Nilay Patel

The Żak Gallery in Berlin has an exhibition up with an extensive collection of 1960s Polish homemade tractors (photos only, unfortunately). - [via] Link.

Related:

MAKE: Volume 11: Alt Vehicles - Link.

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Original post by Becky Stern

Check out this nifty automated strip cutter for surface-mount components built by some Dutch students from printer parts (stepper motor and LCD display), an Atmel ATMega8 controller, and a servomotor.

STORES Cut Ding - [via] Link

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

WebsiteMag brings us news from the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) about a recent study of drop catching —’a process whereby a domain that has expired is released into the pool of available names and is instantly re-registered by another party.’ The eleven day study showed that 100% of ‘.com’ and ‘.net′ domain names were immediately registered after they had been released. CADNA has published the results with their own analysis. Quoting: “The results also show that 87% of Dot-COM drop-catchers use the domain names for pay-per-click (PPC) sites. They have no interest in these domain names other than leveraging them to post PPC ads and turn a profit. Interestingly, only 67% of Dot-ORG drop catchers use the domains they catch to post these sites — most likely because Dot-ORG names are harder to monetize due to the lack of type-in traffic and because they tend to be used for more legitimate purposes.”

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Original post by Soulskill

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Another colorful point-and-shoot, you say? Yes, but with a difference: General Imaging’s E-1050 uses Geotate’s clever approach to geotagging your photos. Add that to a 10-megapixel sensor, 5x zoom, electronic image stabilization and face detection and red eye removal that’s in vogue this year, and you’ve got an interesting little package. Unfortunately, the unit was tethered by its HDMI port to a TV, so we couldn’t play around with the unit and give away our location, so we’ll have to wait and see if geotagging is enough of a checkmark to differentiate this little digicam.

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Original post by Steven Kim

David Ellis made this owl instrument, inspired by a player piano. - [via] Link.

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Original post by Becky Stern

I know I once wrote a column that said “Buh-Bye, Moto,” but I didn’t mean it.

Yet now here we have Greg Brown, Motorola’s new CEO, releasing a bizarre statement where he says he’s exploring selling off the half of the company that makes consumer mobile handsets. In our news story, Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson tries to play that down, saying it’s business as usual. But if so, why even mention the option?

I have two theories.

Theory #1: I do not understand the stock market. I have no individual stock investments, and the market makes no sense to me. This insanity is designed to have some sort of positive effect on Motorola′s stock price. If you look closely at Brown’s and Erickson’s quotes, they try to drive you in that direction - it’s like a petulant teenager declaiming loudly that she’ll run away because her parents (in this metaphor, the stock market) don’t love her enough.

Theory #2, the more insidious one: CEO Greg Brown comes from the enterprise/networks side of the business. Over the past two years, Motorola massively improved its position in the big-business world by buying Good and Symbol, an acquisition Brown was highly involved in. These things are facts. My speculation is that Brown, coming from that world, sees it now as Motorola’s core business, and sees consumer handsets as some sort of fever dream from the minds of former CEO Ed Zander and former CTO Padmasree Warrior. (Erickson disagreed, of course, but what do you expect her to say?)

In any case, Motorola departing the consumer handset business would be an utter disaster for US consumers. Motorola is US based, it’s #1 in the US, and it takes the US market seriously, often releasing devices here before they do elsewhere. For Nokia and Sony Ericsson, our market is an irrelevant sideshow. We’re more important to Samsung and LG, but they often save their top technologies for Korea and Europe. If a foreign firm buys up Motorola’s handset unit, you can be sure that they won’t feel the same connection to the US market that Motorola has built over the past sixty years - and that Americans’ phone choices will decrease.

Original post by Sascha Segan

Filed under: Cellphones

Alright, HTC Touch owners — who’s going to take the hit and install this leaked build of TouchFLO 2.0 that’s been spreading around under the codename Manila? From the screenshots, it looks like it does a better job of taking over from the standard WinMo interface, but it still retains the reskinned-launcher relationship with the OS that we find slightly awkward. Still, we’re curious — who’s got the stones to give it a shot?

[Via The Unwired]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Here’s a site with PDFs for making custom cardboard boxes for Poker-, Bridge-size and “big deck” playing card boxes. There’s also a link to an app for generating custom-size “tuck box” templates. I have some tarot decks that could use a new home. It’ll be fun to design custom art for them.

Making Custom Card Boxes - [Thanks, Patti!] Link

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Bryansix brings us a story about the 50th anniversary of the United States’ entry into the Space Age. On January 31st, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first U.S. satellite to reach orbit. The New York Times is running a similar feature. “Explorer 1 gave America a chance to recover some of its confidence and prestige after the Sputnik shock, but there was a scientific payoff as well: The data returned by the satellite showed that Earth was not surrounded by a swarm of killer pebbles, as some scientists had feared. However, the cosmic-ray readings hinted at the existence of bands of radiation surrounding the planet - an unexpected result that led to the discovery of the Van Allen Belts.”

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Original post by Soulskill

 
If you are thinking of doing something different this upcoming Valentine, why not get the woman you love a miiSTOR glittering platinum and diamond USB drive ? Its only $29,000, which would be peanuts for rich people like Bill Gates. I am sure your woman would like to wear this bling bling to the next […]

Original post by colbert low

Filed under: Peripherals

For the individual first on the waiting list for inflatable garb (and the average traveler looking to trim down that carry-on), the Jelly click is quite the dream come true. Granted, it seems as if this blow-up critter is merely a concept at the moment, but that’s not to say some unorthodox peripheral company out there won’t grab hold of the idea and run with it. In case you couldn’t piece it together based on the photo above, this mouse lays perfectly flat for intercontinental jaunts, but a few light puffs turns it into a tool your hand can really get along with — until it brushes up against a sharp object, that is.

[Via Yanko Design]

 

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Original post by Darren Murph

Here′s a note from Sean, one of the people who were in the media last year for the Mooninite event, he sent this in… post in the comments with you thoughts! -

Hi, I′m Sean Stevens, From the infamous Mooninite Madness of 1-31-07. Unfortunately I′ve been totally buried in work and other things so I didn’t have a chance to “celebrate” the anniversary… But if you would, please send a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has remembered the day. It’s a scary world where the people in Office don’t understand the need to change things, Make them how we want. But it’s a basic desire. The desire to Create. The desire to Make things Better. The fact that people have created Bushinites and Binladenites…. Even a Zebblerite! And put them all over Boston…In some of the same spots even… To me it’s a real show of strength and civil disobedience. Of course, I know it’s all in fun too… That’s all it was ever meant as. (Though I prefer the “LOLz” spelling personally) Anyways, I hope that more people will put effort into trying to understand things that they don’t… Fear of things that aren’t understood that is the root cause of Terrorism. Until more people start thinking for themselves and stop letting the government/media tell them what is truth I′m afraid we are stuck with that fear. Government and Police can only write laws and try to stop those who break them. Then they can publish stories of their “Success” and hold press conferences… To make us think we are safe. But we aren’t. Rely on yourself. Rely on Community. Live your life, be aware of your surroundings. The only thing worse than loosing one’s life is giving it up for false safety-Sean Stevens

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Original post by Phillip Torrone