Step-by-step instructions for making your own light-up, buzzing, working Batphone with its own cake-dome — via boingboing
You know you want one
You think your new car is festooned with information-seeking sensors? Imagine this: sensor modules, each the size of a speck of dust, that are networked together wirelessly to relay information. In this array, the tiny Smart Dust devices can sense your presence when you enter your office, for example, and will adjust the light, heat, and other comforts to your preferences. Kris Pister, founder and CTO of Dust Networks, has already shown working sensors in an academic lab
Earlier this year Microsoft released a major security update for Windows XP, which was designed to strengthen the operating system’s defences against attack from viruses and hackers. One major part of the update was an improved version of its firewall software, which the latest Bagle variants are designed to attack and disable
Some interesting accounts of people in the US confronted with the reality that they live in a police state.
The November 2004 issue of Romance Writers Report has an article about an author getting an unexpected called from the feds because she was researching Cambodia. It appears that her online purchases of books were tracked.
A LiveJournal user got a visit from the secret service after a political post was incorrectly reported by some pissant little nobody as constituting a threat to King George II’s health.
Kids at Richland Centre High School got a chance to meet King George II during an official visit. However, any student who turned up wearing a pro-Kerry pin, hat or shirt was threatened with expulsion.
The colour LCD screens on mobile phones and PDAs can get badly scratched in pockets stuffed with loose change and keys. And CDs and DVDs become unplayable in no time when children use them as indoor frisbees. Now a tough, transparent polymer coating developed by chemists from TDK in Japan is set to make scratched phone screens and scuffed discs a thing of the past
UK experts believe that a vaccine that prevents infections known to cause cervical cancer could be available to women within three years. By guarding against human papilloma virus, it could save thousands of lives and may end the need for smears tests. The vaccine would be given to girls before they are sexually active. Trials have shown a jab can offer 100% protection against strains of HPV linked to about 70% of cervical cancers
This £16.95 kit was developed at Middlesex University — it’s a collection of materials and DIY instructions for building a mechanical gramophone. It even comes bundled with a pair of old 78 RPM discs to test it with — via The Red Ferret Journal
Notes from someone who bought and assembled the kit — via boingboing
Scientists at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have developed contact lenses that deliver eye medication to treat diseases like glaucoma. If the drug is water-soluble, it will be trapped within a network of tiny inter-connected, water-filled channels in the material. If it’s water-insoluble, it will be trapped within nano-spaces in the polymer matrix, and slowly leach out into the channels. In contact with fluid on the eyeball, these channels open up and release the drug
Bob Cringley was a great write up on Ken Schaffer‘s TV2ME, an amazing piece of technology that has managed to pull off streaming television via the internet where so many have failed
Google has acquired 3D mapping company Keyhole for an undisclosed sum, and announced that it’s cutting the price of the consumer edition from US$69.95 to US$29.95. Keyhole’s EarthViewer mapping service is a technical tour de force, making use of the 3D capabilities of modern PC graphics cards to do the heavy lifting, or rendering in this case
A small bushy-tailed animal was at the centre of a fresh Commons row after penetrating right to the heart of the Palace of Westminster. A fox was discovered padding past MPs’ offices on the fifth floor of Portcullis House. The animal had somehow eluded tightened Westminster security to get to the top of the building. It was unclear as to whether the fox could have been smuggled in as part of a pro- or anti-hunting protest. It was later removed by the RSPCA to a wildlife centre in Essex after it was established that it was not a local fox
Aquatic training product manufacturer Finis has just released a waterproof digital music portable for swimmers and surfers that claims to solve a problem with such devices in the water. Regular earphones don’t work well because they need an uninterrupted air channel to function. What makes the SwiMP3 unique is that it uses bone conduction to stimulate the inner ear and deliver sound — via Slashdot
In the 1940s, Frances Glessner Lee constructed incredibly detailed and spooky crime scenes in dollhouses to teach forensics to a homicide investigation seminar. The founder of Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine, Lee was named an honorary captain of the New Hampshire state police. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death is a book collecting Corrine May Botz’s fantastic photographs of Lee’s macabre miniatures — via boingboing
Firefox, the much-anticipated open-source browser, reaches a major development milestone, as an official test version debuts
After two days of silence on the hundreds of tons of missing plastic explosives in Iraq,the retarded monkey boy defended himself by stating that the explosives might have been removed before the US invasion. The photos seem to suggest otherwise — via BoingBoing
Australian anthropologists have discovered a new human species that could rewrite the history of human evolution. They unearthed the skeleton of what is believed to be a fully-grown female, barely a metre tall, on the Indonesian island of Flores
The retarded monkey boy‘s web site [via anonymous IP] now blocks all non-US traffic. I’m sure the US citizens who live or work abroad are thrilled — via BoingBoing
Two Google site vulnerabilities that could be used to mount phishing attacks have been reported, says the Internet search giant. It already has fixed one, and expects to patch the second shortly
Canadian company, iFire Technology, is near to commercialising a flat-panel TV technology that will provide TVs with pictures comparable in quality to those of LCD TVs, but at a lower cost
Ran across an article on highlighting comments made by particular authors at Dan’s site the other day.
All you need is a set class to add to the lump of comment code and you turn it on via your specified parameters using a nifty little MovableType plugin called Switch.
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