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.
The irises I bought last year from Isabella’s Iris‘s Norma Hart have started to bloom.
First off the rank is Blackout in black and deep purple.
Yum!
Members of the Bits of Freedom group conducted a test to see how much it would take for a service provider to take down a web site hosting public domain material and have published their results.
They signed up with ten providers and put online a work by Dutch author Multatuli, who died over 100 years ago. They stated that the work was in the public domain, and that it was written in 1871. They then set up a fake society to claim to be the copyright holders of the work.
From a Hotmail address, they sent out complaints to all ten of the providers. Seven out of ten complied and removed the site, one within just three hours.
Only one ISP actually pointed out that the copyright on the work expired many years ago.
The conclusion of the investigation is worth reading, it starts It only takes a Hotmail account to bring a web site down, and freedom of speech stands no chance in front of the Texan-style private ISP justice
— via boingboing
A US federal judge has ordered Stanford Wallace, otherwise known as the Spam King, to disable spyware programs that infiltrate computers, track internet use and flood users with pop-up advertising
Proposals by the Security Service to place CCTV cameras in Westminster’s corridors of power have outraged MPs who fear that the proposals for protecting the Commons will enable MI5 to pry into their affairs
A federal appeals court this week struck a blow against Lexmark‘s attempt to protect its share of the lucrative market for refill printer cartridges. The court vacated a preliminary injunction that barred Static Control Components from selling computer chips enabling third-party manufacturers to clone Lexmark’s cartridges
In a decision aimed to response to the retarded monkey boy‘s tighter sanctions, Cuba’s President Fidel Castro announced the end of the circulation of the US dollar within the territory of the island acting from 8 November
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