Dec 20
Retailer permanently discontinues its restocking fees on all but special orders, which still generate a 25 percent fee.
Originally posted at The Digital Home
Dec 20
Artists and geeks have a lot in common. Namely, they often share the plight of social awkwardness, a trait that grants them the freedom (or perhaps, sentence) to fritter hours upon hours toiling away at their chosen pursuit. Be they Wozniak or Duchamp, Zuckerberg or Banksy, these peculiar creatures of culture place a singular effort into building the next great technology or crafting aesthetic perfection.
On occasion, these two wonders of society are merged into one. The above video is an effort of three “artists” who spent three days that they will never get back working in the medium of Google Docs Presentation software to create a fairly impressive animation sequence. This is just about the geekiest piece of art since the multi-faceted image made in MS Paint that took four years to complete (video of that amazing and sad creation after the jump).
Dec 20
Prototype Pleo motion capture exoskeleton up for grabs: $2,400 OBO
Posted in: prototype, robot, sensor, Today's Chili
Still haven’t nailed down the perfect Christmas gift for that special someone in your life? Shame on you. Just kidding. But on the real, if you’ve got $2,397.99 and a lust for robotics, there’s hardly a better buy available right now than this. The concoction you’re peering at above isn’t apt to go on sale to the general public again anytime soon, as it’s a rare prototype motion capture exoskeleton that was used by (the now-defunct) Ugobe in the creation of Pleo. Word has it that this suit was vital to the R&D efforts surrounding the first edition of the outfit’s robotic dinosaur, with one Caleb Chung fitting in and hulking about as computers analyzed and recorded movements. So far as we can tell, all of the circuits and wires are still here, meaning that you actually could use this for R&D of your own provided you had the right equipment to read it. Unfortunately, it’ll cost a small fortune to ship a 350 pound crate anywhere outside of the continental US, but for those of you currently living overseas… well, here’s your excuse to relocate.
[Thanks, Colin]
Prototype Pleo motion capture exoskeleton up for grabs: $2,400 OBO originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | 
eBay | Email this | Comments
Dec 20
File this one in the making lemons out of lemonade category. Remember all of those booms used to help curb the flow of oil during this year’s massive Gulf Coast spill? There were 100 miles of them in all. Yeah, well, General Motors will be collecting them up to make parts for the latest version of the Chevy Volt.
The car maker plans to collect 100,000 pounds of booms in all, turning the plastic resin into air deflectors, which will go into the vehicle’s radiator. The deflectors will be made up entirely of recycled parts–a quarter will come from the booms, another quarter from recycled tires, and the rest from other assorted recycled parts.
Says GM’s manager of waste reduction, John Bradburn,
This was purely a matter of helping out. If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down and we didn’t want to see the spill further impact the environment. We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.
Dec 20
Want to feel better gifting electronics this holiday season? Well, Best Buy finally announced that it would stop charging stocking fees, for returned items (except special orders). So if the products that you gift aren’t exactly what the recipients wanted, they can return them without being slapped with a hefty restocking fee, which was previously 15% for most items (pricey).
Best Buy recently announced on its website:
Best Buy continually listens to our customers, and they told us they want to give confidently this holiday season and every other day of the year — and with that comes easier returns. Effective Saturday, December 18, Best Buy is improving its return policy by removing restocking fees for all products except special orders. Customers can visit BestBuy.com for further information.
To elaborate, The Consumerist reported that in an e-mail sent from Best Buy HQ to stores across the country, the company stated that the new policy would go into effect December 18th and would apply to computers (including notebooks, tablets and iPads), projectors, camcorders, digital cameras, radar detectors, GPS navigation, in-car video systems, DJ equipment and lighting, Pro-Audio equipment, and iPhones. They also said that customers who were charged a restocking fee between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17 can come into the store and get the fee refunded.
Happy Holiday’s Best Buy Shoppers!
Dec 20
Biddle’s got the classics, GoreTex-ified. Mascari has ’em in brown, (iconoclast), and I’ve got the tall fleecey ones—I hate getting cold ankles. Blam might order a pair. I’m talking about the L.L.Bean Boot: the accidental, unofficial shoe of Gizmodo. More »
Dec 20
Networking products reviewed during 2010 that are likely to stay relevant for a long time.
Dec 20
Control Sega’s New Urinal-Based Video Game With Your Pee (Video)
Posted in: Japan, Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, video gamesI know for a fact that I’m not the only guy who LOVES peeing into public urinals that have a bed of ice cubes at the base. I assume bars and clubs place the ice there to damper any “ricochet” from hitting the floor and to mitigate the sometimes pungent aroma of rented beer. But whatever its purpose, peeing on ice is fun! The cubes melt away into nothingness as soon as they come into contact with the warm stream of urine. It’s exactly like playing Super Breakout. With pee. This is the secret game of men everywhere. Taking this phenomenon to the next logical level, the good people at Sega have created a video game system built for public receptacles that you can play with your urine.
The system includes a screen directly over the urinal that reacts to the liquid it collects. The system can be a benefit for bars and clubs looking to keep any mess off the floor by providing a “reward” for drunken patrons to collect their fluid deposits in the right location. It also gives pee-ers an activity to occupy their mind during the isolated act of urination. And Sega will get a chance to sell advertising space for a very captive audience.
Everybody wins.
(For you ladies who are looking for the men in their lives to be more open about their inner psyches, this is an example of some of the things we keep inside. Think long and hard if this is really what you want to hear more about.)
via PopSci
Dec 20
WordPress for iPhone: Ultimate Photo Blogging Tool?
Posted in: Freeware, Google, iPhone, Newly Released, Pre-Release, Software, Today's ChiliThis article was written on July 22, 2008 by CyberNet.
There are a lot of great applications that are coming through Apple’s App Store for both the iPhone and iPod Touch, but one of my new favorites would have to be the 100% free WordPress for iPhone. You might recall that TypePad users have had a blogging tool since day 1 of the App Store launch, and that program was also “free.” The catch, however, was that you are required to have a paid subscription to TypePad which is a minimum of $5 per month.
The WordPress application, on the other hand, will work with multiple WordPress.com accounts and any WordPress blogs you’ve setup on your own servers. The only requirement is that you be running WordPress 2.5.1 or higher.
How well does it work? It took me less than 30 seconds to get it setup on my iPhone, and it does almost everything that I would want from a mobile blogging client. You can add photos, manage existing posts, and even see a live preview of what it will look like on your blog using the embedded Safari browser.
One of the first things that popped into my head after using this is how great it would be for photo blogging on-the-go. You can snap a bunch of photos on your iPhone from within the WordPress software (or pull from your camera roll), write up a quick post explaining what the people are seeing in the images, and publish it to a blog. Want to restrict who can see the post? No problem, just password protect it right from the iPhone. To be honest I plan on creating a free WordPress.com blog just for posting photos in this way.
Right now there’s just one downside when using this for photo blogging. Images are uploaded at the medium resolution (640×480) which may or may not be something you want. In the future I’d like to see it offer a full resolution upload option, but the scaled down photos are faster to upload when you’re on-the-go.
Aside from that there are just a few other things I’d like to see this include:
- Comment management – being able to approve/pull comments would be handy.
- Search posts – right now you can see up to the most recent 50 posts on the blog, but that is it. At the very least you should be able to search through past posts, and possibly navigate through “pages” of recent posts.
WordPress for iPhone Homepage
WordPress iTunes Link (opens in iTunes)
Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Related Posts:
- CyberNotes: Mobile Blogging (Moblogging)Chyrp: A WordPress Replacement?Zoundry Raven: Free Blogging SoftwareSnapmania Creates Photo “Tourist Remover” ToolCyberNotes: Blogging Humor – Signs You’re Addicted
Dec 20
Google Docs presentation makes PowerPoint weep, beg for mercy (video)
Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, video
And you thought your year-end PowerPoint — complete with that snazzy “Ding!” after every slide — was something to admire. The video below is a Google Demo Slam entrant, going up against a Voice Search piece featuring Maria Sharapova. We know precious little about what it took to create, but somehow or another, a trio of animators created a mind-blowing 450 page presentation in just three days, and none of ’em were located in the same space. Thankfully for you, it’s all explained in a blistering one minute, twenty-nine second YouTube clip. Enjoy.
Continue reading Google Docs presentation makes PowerPoint weep, beg for mercy (video)
Google Docs presentation makes PowerPoint weep, beg for mercy (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Google Demo Slam, YouTube (Google), Google Docs | Email this | Comments
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.