Circuit bending is about the non-thereoretical exploration of sound making circuits via shorting different points together. Take a toy (that is battery powered – important!) and let’s get to work!
There’s something unusual about the motorcycle Denis Andzakovic likes to ride…
Kitted out with a miniature Raspberry Pi computer for a heads-up display (HUD) integrated in an external helmet, two Mikrotik routers, wireless sniffing and attack tools, GPS and a netbook, the motorcycle is able to detect wireless access points and plot them on Google Maps.
Will blinking blue lights of servers soon fill the aisles that previously offered the Blue Light Special? Sears Holdings has formed a new unit to market space from former Sears and Kmart retail stores as a home for data centers, disaster recovery space and wireless towers.
With the creation of Ubiquity Critical Environments, Sears hopes to convert the retail icons of the 20th century into the Internet infrastructure to power the 21st century digital economy. Sears Holdings has one of the largest real estate portfolios in the country, with 3,200 properties spanning 25 million square feet of space. That includes dozens of Sears and Kmart stores that have been closed over the years.
What is Animatronic Beaker-bot? Well, the Beaker-bot is a animatronic puppet that will “sing” to the sound that I play through him. Meaning, If I hook up an iPod or other music playing device, he will lip-sync his mouth to the music or words. He is also a fully functional puppet with Beaker style head and hand control. He also has a electric button to control his animatronic mouth, and for fans of more classical puppetry, Beaker-bot does have a classic rod to control his mouth as well.
Beaker-bot, for me is both an excellent puppet for someone like me who does not have good enough puppetry voice skills to talk on my own. I also can have him on display, and he can talk and sing without a puppeteer, which is one of the major advantages of animatronics. I plan on having him on display during holidays such as Christmas.
I better mention right here that this is my first attempt at anything puppet or animatronic related. I am very happy with the results for my first try. I have no clue what the professionals use in their methods, and I am pretty sure that the methods I use are not the same as what is done professionally. That being said, the methods I used turned out very well for my needs.
Australian truck drivers entering too-short tunnels is enough of a problem in Sydney that they made this awesome water curtain and projection stop sign called Softstop. via Core77
what if stores could count patrons automatically, tallying up basic demographic data through a webcam installed at the register?
That’s what New York-based IMRSV is trying to do with Cara, cheap face detection software that can scan faces up to 25 feet away and determine age and gender with around 90 percent accuracy using a standard webcam. The technology can be used in stores, advertising, and art exhibits.
Over a century ago, The New York Public Library was founded with a basic purpose: to provide free access to information, literature, and cultural resources for the enjoyment and enrichment of all New Yorkers.
In the late 19th century, this meant accumulating vast collections spanning all subjects and languages, erecting beautiful buildings to store these books, and hiring brilliant, dedicated librarians to serve them to the public. But what would it look like if we founded The New York Public Library today?
Look around you and you’ll notice that knowledge organizations of the early 21st century look radically different from their 19th and 20th century forebears. Twenty-first century institutions aren’t only marble sanctuaries, they’re also distributed networks. In addition to managing printed materials and catalogs, they compile big data and user relationships. Rather than only centralizing authority, they make it porous, and welcome collaboration.
At NYPL, we’re engaging the 21st century by reimagining the public in our name. Inspired by the accomplishments of the open source software movement and collective efforts like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMaps, NYPL wants to tackle some of its thorniest (and most interesting) challenges with your help. We began by buildingparticipatory websites and crowdsourcing apps to involve users more closely in the improvement of our collections. Now we’re calling directly on engineers, hackers, tinkerers, designers, data scientists, new media artists and creators of all types to help find inspirational, yet functional solutions to some of our most future-oriented problems.
To test the waters, this summer we will be issuing a series of deadline-driven tech challenges. These will be open to all, with prizes for winning submissions. The winners may directly create or inspire new tools and services at NYPL, with the potential to impact libraries everywhere. There are a number of possible areas we could focus on, but in the spirit of the endeavor, we wanted to ask you first.
In the list “Hardware hacking: Build smarter tools for on-site use”
I am happy to announce that we have just signed a deal where Autodesk will purchase the Tinkercad site and core technologies. This is a great day for all Tinkercad users, Autodesk is a very enthusiastic and capable steward. There are two main impacts of this deal: the site is fully operational and Autodesk has some very exciting plans for Tinkercad.
The shutdown plan has been rolled back and effective immediately new users are again able to sign up for the site. Even better, at the request of Autodesk, we have supercharged the free plan. You can now create unlimited designs, all import and export functionality is enabled and ShapeScripts are turned on for free accounts. We have automatically upgraded all existing free accounts to this new powerful plan. This account will be offered for a limited time only so make sure you sign up as soon as possible.
Before signing the deal the we spent a lot of time talking to Autodesk engineers and product people about their vision for Tinkercad. We were impressed by the deep insight the Autodesk team had into the Tinkercad interface and the underlying technology. There is also a strong alignment on topics like furthering education and the vision of making design more accessible. But most of all we are very excited about the roadmap Autodesk has drafted for Tinkercad.
As our team continues working on Airstone I’m pleased to see Tinkercad find a safe and welcoming home. I can speak for everyone when I say that we are looking forward to using Tinkercad for a long time to come.
When self-driving cars reach the masses, thanks may be due to a 19-year-old high-school student from Romania who developed an artificial intelligence that slashes the cost of the technology. He took top prize — a $75,000 scholarship — Friday at an international science and engineering fair.
Budisteanu ran 50 simulations with his system and in 47 of them it performed flawlessly. In three, however, it failed to recognize some people who were 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) away. He said slightly higher-resolution 3-D radar should do the trick and still keep costs at a fraction of Google’s.
The high-resolution 3-D radar used by Google, he noted, costs about $75,000. His whole system should work for no more $4,000.
Even the most modular, bland work space tends to succumb to the tastes or personality of its inhabitant. How can it not? The average office worker spends nearly six hours a day sitting at a desk. In the first of an occasional column, we take a close look at how successful people organize their work spaces. Their answers have been edited and condensed.
Three months ago, celebrated video game publisher Valve did something completely out of character: it fired up to 25 workers, in what one employee dubbed the “great cleansing.” At the time, co-founder Gabe Newell quickly reassured gamers that the company wouldn’t be canceling any projects, but it just so happens that one project managed to get away.
Valve was secretly working on a pair of augmented reality glasses… and those glasses are still being built by two Valve employees who lost their jobs that day.
Former Valve hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth and programmer Rick Johnson spent over a year working on the project at Valve, and have been putting in six days a week, 16+ hours a day on the project ever since. “We believed in it… that this is going to change the way that people interact with computers and play games,” says Ellsworth. “This is what I’m going to build come hell or high water. It was just a no-brainer that when we were not at Valve… we just had to do it.” They formed a company, Technical Illusions, to commercialize the tech. This weekend, they flew down to Maker Faire to show their crazy prototype to the world for the very first time.
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