Hasta La Gadget!

The clickety-clack of manual typewriters have long been replaced by PC keyboards and even that is now disappearing with touchscreens. But for those nostalgic about old-school manual typewriters, a hack lets you update and make them compatible with PCs.

Jack Zylkin worked for nine months to create the design and schematics for a USB-based typewriter that can replace the keyboard on your PC.

“Typewriters are a lasting marvel of classic engineering and design, which are now a casualty of our disposable whiz-bang techno-culture,” says Zylkin who created this project at Hive 76, a hackerspace in Philadelphia. “I wanted to do something to make these beautiful machines relevant and useful again. I have seen machines that are 100 years old and still functional as the day they were made, why should I let them go to waste?”

Zylkin estimates it can take five to 10 hours to mod a manual typewriter, if users follow his instructions. But it seems pretty easy to do.

“Its a weekend project for when you are snowed in with no TV,” he says.

Zylkin posted the step-by-step guide to creating the USB typewriter on Instructables.com and his post is now featured as part of the site’s ongoing back to school contest.

Others have attempted the USB-typewriter hack before, says Zylkin, but those projects “involved endless jumbles of wires, a disemboweled keyboard circuit and a phalanx of momentary switches.”

The USB-typewriter hack isn’t an expensive project.

“On eBay, you can get a quality machine for anywhere between $30 and $60,” says Zylkin. “Sadly,the people who trade typewriters on ebay only want to saw the keys off and make jewelry out of them! What a waste! ”

So Zylkin suggests asking friends and family to get an old typewriter from the attic. He is offering $50 DIY conversion kits that include the printed circuit boards for the project.

But if all that’s too much work for you, Zylkin has some USB typewriters available on Etsy priced at $350 to $500.

See the short clip showing the USB typewriter at work:

Photo: Jack Zylkin

[via Hack a day]

Continue reading Robotic Yale Aerial Manipulator grabs a can of Guinness

Robotic Yale Aerial Manipulator grabs a can of Guinness originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen these kinds of Verizon launch decks before, so we tend to believe the September 8 date we’re seeing for the Fascinate here is legit — granted, Wednesday is an odd day to launch a phone, but not a lot weirder than the Thursday, September 9 date we’d had before. Either way, it’s looking like a sure thing that we’re going to see this on shelves come next week, completing Sammy’s impressive four-way coup to get its high-end Galaxy S line launched on all of the US nationals. Like the Droid 2 and Droid X, the Fascinate will feature Blockbuster Mobile to let you download full-length movies on the go — in other words, that’s a feature that won’t be a Droid brand exclusive — and Bing search will be installed out of the box, giving Microsoft a fun little foothold in Google’s kingdom. So, who’s buying? And while we’re on the subject, why isn’t this thing called the “Droid Fascinate?”

[Thanks, Bryan]

Samsung Fascinate launching on September 8? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You guys know about the Apple event happening this Wednesday at 10 AM PT, right? Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve managed to think about anything else in the meantime, save for the barest of necessities–frankly, I’ve even forgotten to eat on a few occasions.

As always, Gearlog will be on-site, live blogging the event, and frankly, you’d be silly to go anywhere else. That’s how completely amazing our coverage is going to be. (I’m not overselling it, am I?)

In the meantime, all we can do is sit around and write out a bunch of predictions for the special event. Here’s what we know on the most basic level: the event is music (iPod)-related. For one thing, Apple holds its iPod events every year around this time. Second, there’s the invite that Apple sent out to press folk (above, in party), featuring an acoustic guitar with the Apple logo as the sound hole–an image which itself has led to a lot of odd guitar-based product speculation.

After the jump, some of the more popular rumors broken down by likelihood.

At this point we’re fairly certain we’ll see updated iPods at Apple’s event on Wednesday, but we’re still in the dark when it comes to that updated iOS-based Apple TV — we know it’s in the works, but we don’t know if it’s coming this week. But if you’re feeling optimistic, a new Apple iTunes customer survey seems to offer a tiny little hint — it lists “Titles are available to watch instantly” as a reason you might totally love watching video on the iPad. Of course, you can’t watch iTunes videos “instantly” right now — the iPad requires the entire video file to download before playback begins, and the current Apple TV requires a fair bit of buffering — so this could be a big hint that instant streaming is coming quite soon. On the flipside, this could just be a mistake or oversight and actually mean nothing at all, but honestly, where’s the fun in that?

[Thanks, PeteO]

Apple survey hints at iTunes streaming video service coming soon? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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