GadgetReview

WTF.  Top speed of the Mac G4 Motorcycle  is rumored to be about 30mph.  That’s a hell of a lot faster than my current G4, which currently sits idle in my bedroom due to a bunk hard drive.  I’d like to see the douches at the Genius Bar diagnose this Mac’s problem when it breaks down.

More pics after the ‘leap’ …Continue reading: G4 Motorcycle, I Probably Shouldn’t Even Bother Asking

Well, that’s it for me, folks–my science fiction lobe has officially collapsed on me, because I was just reading about a new military project that’ll probably change the way war is fought forever.

I read about cyborg beetles.

It seems that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA, the guys who started the Internet in the first place) have been working on a kind of “cyborg beetle” that’s been surgically altered and given all sorts of awesome mechanical doodads to engage in fighting and surveillance of the enemy.  They can be controlled remotely by humans in the field, and are actually part of a much larger overall project called HI-MEMS, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electric Mechanical Systems.  HI-MEMS, if I understood correctly, will yield history’s first-ever truly bionic organism.

The article went on from there about what all they could do, but my head started swimming about the time I pictured wasps jammed full of uranium so they gave poisoned radioactive stings to their targets.

They’re the perfect soldier.  Absolutely expendable.  Kill as many as you please, the colony will hatch a few million more.  Heaven help us when they start carrying explosives.

They’re the perfect assassin.  Can you lock yourself down so effectively that even a spider can’t reach you?  And a cybernetic black widow could definitely take out a target, probably without ever being noticed.

I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified, and right now, I’m trending toward horrified.

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Without a doubt the NES Guitar gets the ‘random post of the day award’ (we don’t actually issue that award).  Apparently, this is the second iteration of the mod and it actually works.  Flipping up the cartridge slot reveals the 3 knobs generally found on a guitar and the AV out and power ports have been converted accordingly.  Check the video below for a demo and complete walk through of their work.

[via Technabob]

So 3M, those great innovators, have come up with a way to get you to watch 3-D on your mobile device of choice, but without the glasses entirely.  Check THIS out:  they’ve developed this optical film (that you can apply to any gadget’s backlight system) that uses two alternating rows of LED to project left and right images one after the other to the viewers’ eyes.  This in turn allows for a stereoscopic 3-D image but without the need for glasses.

The film works on any device with a viewing size of nine inches or smaller, and to watch video in 3-D via this method requires the video be displayed at 120hZ.

I find myself a bit skeptical to the value of this, but admit from a conceptual level this is blisteringly cool–after all, turning any mobile gadget into a 3-D player with only a strip of plastic?  That’s MacGyver-grade gadgetry right there.

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If you don’t like the color combination’s the PS3 Slim is offering, you’ve got one of two choices–you can wait for the PS4, or you can talk to the folks at Colorware and get a custom paintjob.

For just a hundred and forty nine bucks, Colorware will offer you a complete repaint from any of a whole panoply of available color options.   They’ll even throw in one Dual Shock’s worth of painting absolutely free.  A second controller, however, can be done for thirty bucks.

Now, I’m not sure why anyone would want a color-coordinated PS3–the whole point of the thing is to play it, not to stare at it–but if you’ve really got a thing about room decoration, then this may be exactly the service you’re looking for.

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How do you prevent your hard drive from being stolen?  Simple, you stuff it inside an original Nintendo Gameboy.  At first glance, it looks like a full working Gameboy with a massive amount of storage.  Sadly, it’s devoid of any game operation and that screen shot you see is in fact a piece of paper with a graphic printed on it.  It’s maker then stuffed a 2.5-inch 80GB SATA drive into the portable gaming system’s back along with the hard drive’s LED status light and USB ports.

Now that I think about it this might garner more attention than not, since it very well could be the coolest hard drive mod I’ve seen to date.

[via Hackaday]

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This is a development the folks at Amazon likely weren’t expecting.

Seems that some enterprising soul out there, whom you might recognize when I tell you it’s Jesse Vincent, managed to get his recently-released Kindle 2 ebook from Amazon to run Ubuntu 9.04.

He apparently did it for no other reason than 1. to prove it could be done in the first place and 2. to get some serious geek cred at Foo Camp last weekend, where he showed off his new, previously unheard of Linux Kindle.

The practical ramifications of this do escape me somewhat, but even I’ve got to admit, as a concept, it’s still pretty cool.

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If you’re still thinking that you need one of those uber expensive helmet cams to capture a first person perspective video, think again.  Jesse Rosten has come up with a way to use an everyday bungee cord to achieve stunning results.  Don’t believe me, then hit the video below.  All you need to do is shorten your camera’s neck strap to chest level, wrap the bungee cord around your back and then attach either end to the base of the neck strap.  Ingenious!

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How do you attest your dieing passion for the video game Left 4 Dead? Simple. You request one of your friends to build a custom Xbox 360 in its image.  But as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.  FatalJapan, who received the custom art work on his video game console, free of charge, had no qualms with noting that his buddy left out some of the details, such as a Left4Dead logo, but at the very least appreciates that he fixed the E74 error message.

[via Technabob]

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A modder by the name of ‘Bacteria’ took the original Turbo Graphix 16 and manged to convert it into a portable gaming machine.  The irony is, though, that NEC came out with their very own portable system called the Turbo Express.  It was equitable in power to the console system and the very same games could be played on it.  So why one would take the time to convert the console into a portable gaming system is anyone’s guess, but at least it I got to relive all those fond 16-bit memories.  Check the videos below.