Hasta La Gadget!

Thodio, maker of the Furby-like portable iBox speaker, will now sell you a €100 tea-tray customized to hold an Apple keyboard and trackpad. The MacDec trays, in wood ($138) or acrylic ($165), are carved or machined with hollows that hold the keyboard and pad in a laptop-style T-shape, for use on the lap or the desk. They also use neodymium magnets to keep the peripherals in place, although last time I looked, aluminum wasn’t a material that stuck to magnets.

It’s a fairly useful product, if expensive, but the purpose of this post is to wonder why these things exist. The one obvious use case is the media-center Mac, but how many of those are there really?

There has been a recent flurry of these holders, in the T-shape seen here and also in a more usual side-by-side configuration (Twelve South’s MagicWand), so somebody sees this as a popular market. I prefer the laptop layout, as I don’t have to move my hand to control a cursor. I also find it incredibly comfortable to type with the tiny Apple aluminum keyboard on my lap whilst in a easy chair or on the floor, sending text to my iPad. But so far, for computer use at least, these various products don’t quite work, however well made they may be.

Any ideas? I have no answer, other than that this is a non-problem that doesn’t need to be sold. Maybe there are a ton of media-center Macs out there after all? Suggestions, if you have them, in the comments.

MacDec product page [Thodio]

See Also:

• Seperated at Birth? Thodio iPod Speaker and Furby
• A-Box, A Speaker For Real Men
• MagicWand Helps Aluminum Keyboard and Magic Trackpad Stick …
• Aluminum Tray Turns Desktop Keyboard into Laptop Keyboard

This article was written on June 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

It was just Monday that Digg v3 launched with a new breath of life. However, some people were not too fond of how Digg changed the layout. The most talked about change was the placement of the sidebar on the left-side.

There are several sites (like this, this, and this) that have come up with new CSS code that will overwrite the code that Digg already has in place. So how do you use this CSS code to redesign Digg?

It is actually amazingly simple for Firefox users (I haven’t tried this on other browsers). To make it as simple as possible you could just download the Stylish extension. You just need to copy the CSS code into the extension. You can then enable and disable different CSS styles as you please.

While Stylish makes it really easy I always try to minimize how many extensions I use to prevent memory leaks. So here is how you do it without using an extension:

1. Browse to your Firefox Profile. In Windows XP/2000 it should be located at C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default\. Here is some help on locating your Firefox Profile.
2. Open the chrome folder.
3. If you do not have a file called “userContent.css” then copy the file “userContent-example.css” and rename it to userContent.css.
4. Open up the userContent.css file in a text editor like WordPad.
5. Add your CSS code to the end of the file. You will find the code that I used below.
6. Save and close the file.
7. You will have to restart Firefox in order to see the changes on Digg.

That is it! You should now have a customized version of Digg. Feel free to tweak with any of the CSS code until you have it the way you like it. Here is the code that I ended up using:

@-moz-document domain(digg.com), domain(www.digg.com) {
.sub-menu .tool strong { font-size: 11px !important; font-weight: bold !important; padding: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; background-image: none !important;}
.news-summary { margin-bottom: 12px !important; margin-top: 12px !important; }
.digg-count { margin-top: 3px !important; }
h2 { font-size: 18px !important; }
h3 { font-size: 13px !important; font-weight: bold !important; letter-spacing: normal !important; }
.toggle a, .view-all a, .side-friends a, ul a { font-weight: normal !important; font-size: 11px !important;}
#top_ad, #item_ad, #footer, .copyright, .top_ad_image, .banner_ad, .comments_ad_image {display: none !important;}
.digg-count a strong {font-size: 14px !important; font-weight: bold !important; }
.sub-menu li .toplinep { width: 138px !important; }
.comment {width: 710px !important;}
.news-digg img { padding-top: 4px !important; padding-left: 1px !important; }
h3 a { border: none !important; background: none !important; font-weight: bold !important; font-size: 11px !important; letter-spacing: normal !important; text-decoration: underline !important; padding-left: 3px !important; }
.news-submitted { margin-left: 3px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; }
p { margin: 3px !important; }
#contents, #sidebar { float: left !important; border: none !important; background: none !important; font-size: 11px !important;}
#container {background: none !important; }
#sidebar {padding: 20px 0 1em 35px !important;background-position: 0 0; }
#footer {background: none !important;}
}


So now that you have Digg customized you start to think about how many other sites this technique might work for, right? This technique will work for many sites and userstyles.org already has hundreds of CSS styles that people have developed. These styles will take you to a whole new level of customization!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

CyberNotes: Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary!Diggdot.us and Others Forced to Remove ‘Digg’ from AddressDigg Branches Out and Starts Digg DialoggHow Stuff Works Tells Us How Digg WorksPligg Starts Looking Even More Like Digg V3

That’s LOPES (Lower-extremity Powered ExoSkeleton) — not Lopez — and while this rehab robot can get otherwise disinclined parties to move their butts, it doesn’t resort to monotonous dance beats to do so. Researchers at the Netherlands’ University of Twente began work on LOPES in 2001 to assess motor skills and teach stroke victims how to walk again. Ten years later, LOPES — which looks like Forrest Gump’s leg braces on steroids — now sports eight degrees of freedom and automatically adjusts to fit the specific support needed per patient. LOPES’ overlords are working on a more compact and user friendly iteration, and expect a market-ready version to be available by mid-2012. In the meantime, LOPES has been enlisted in a larger EU project called Mindwalker, testing advanced control algorithms “to be used in autonomous exoskeletons.” Video of the future real-life RoboCop after the jump.

[Thanks, Mike]

Continue reading LOPES rehab robot gets bodies moving — no relation to JLo (video)

LOPES rehab robot gets bodies moving — no relation to JLo (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Tecca  |  University of Twente  | Email this | Comments

The very busy folks over at TomTom have just squeezed out two new sets of PNDs sporting touchscreens, voice recognition, and a “new, intuitive user interface,” but despite the company’s high profile on the GPS market, the GO 2435, which works a 4.3-inch screen, and the GO 2535, a 5-inch iteration, slipped out without much ado. Both PNDs come in three versions: the “T” series supports lifetime traffic updates, the “M” line offers lifetime map updates, and the “MT” edition features — you guessed it — lifetime traffic and map updates. Thus far, the basic specs resemble those of previous GO PNDs — both tout Bluetooth calling, 4GB flash storage, and 3 hours of battery life — leaving us to wonder what’s up with this “new, intuitive user interface?” Among other things, TomTom is still mum on price and availability, which means we’ll have to wait until they speak up to give you all the dirty details.

TomTom’s GO 2435 / 2535 PNDs get quiet teaser, we’re left wondering what’s new originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  GO 2535, GO 2435  | Email this | Comments

A dark shadow has befallen the Sony NEX-3 interchangeable lens camera, the shadow of being described as “no longer in production” by its maker’s official website. Coming out in June of last year alongside its more celebrated NEX-5 brother, the NEX-3 enjoyed some decent success with critics, mostly owing to its oversized 14.2 megapixel sensor, and showed no signs of struggling commercially, however Sony has seen fit to halt production within eight months of its introduction. Reasons haven’t yet been given, though we imagine people were willing to spend the extra cash to upgrade to 1080p video recording and a magnesium alloy body on the NEX-5, which is what rendered the NEX-3 expendable. At least we know the NEX-5 and the NEX-VG10 will keep E-mount lenses going into the future, so current NEX-3 owners should have little to worry about. If anything, their camera just became that extra bit more exclusive.

[Thanks, Gavin]

Sony NEX-3 discontinued, probably has NEX-5 to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink VR-Zone  |  Sony Japan  | Email this | Comments