Hasta La Gadget!

This little camera is in fact a pencil sharpener

Sticking a pencil into the top lens of this tiny TLR camera feels like you’re sticking a pointy stick in somebody’s eye, but that’s ok, as that’s not really a lens. In fact, this isn’t really a camera — it’s a pencil sharpener.

The design is delightfully camera-like. You pull the top section out and slot the pencil in. To adjust sharpness (pun in original) you move a small lever, and to actually do the wood-shaving you turn the film-winding handle on the side.

Back when I was a young schoolboy and still knew how to use pens, pencils and paper, I would have loved this sharpener, made by Chinese stationery company Deli. I would also have liked its $15 price, which is small enough to make this an impulse buy.

Vintage Camera Pencil Sharpener [Kikkerland via PetaPixel]

See Also:

• Drill-Mounted Pencil Sharpener: What Could Possibly Go Wrong …
• Eight Cylinders of Pencil-Sharpening Action, And a Pizza Cutter …
• The Forensic Disassembly of a Pencil Sharpener
• Gory Doll's Head Pencil Sharpener
• Pencils

The home-made IR trigger is super simple. Photo: iPhone Guru

With a very simple bit of workshoppery, and a $5 companion app from the App Store, you can turn you iPhone or iPod Touch into an infrared remote for your Canon SLR camera.

It works like this. The DSLR.Bot application sends a signal to the headphone jack of your iPhone via a third-party IR transmitter that plugs into the jack socket. You buy the app, and then you watch this video, in which the iPhone Guru shows you how to build your own IR beamer:

It’s incredibly simple, involving the jack and cable from an old pair of broken headphones, a pair of 940nm IR LEDs and some “sodder”. I assume this means “solder”, as the “l” is included in the written list at the end of the video.

You “sodder” one LED to the positive and negative wires inside the cable, and then “sodder” the other one in reverse. If you have two ground wires in there, they should be twisted together. Insulate and clean things up with some electrical tape and you’re done.

Pop your new beamer into the headphone jack and point it at the camera. Tap the on-screen button to fire the shutter, or shoot with a two-second delay. You can also bracket, shoot time lapses and long exposures, and even record the GPS co-ordinates of each shot.

The app costs just $5, and the LEDs will run you a few bucks at your local electronics supply store. If you have a Canon DSLR, a “soddering” iron and a steady hand, it seems ridiculous not to do this project, so easy and cheap is it.

Use a DIY IR Trigger and DSLR.bot to Control Your DSLR Camera With Your iPhone [YouTube via Photography Bay]

DSLR.Bot [iTunes]

See Also:

• IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Ugly Universal Remote
• Camera-Triggering iPhone App Allows Remote Viewing
• Remote Controls to Get a Wireless Upgrade
• Sometimes the Remote Pushes Your Buttons, Too

We’re still waiting on LG’s ginormous 72-inch LZ7900 to make its debut on store shelves, but the rest of CES’s primo 3DTV crop is rearing to ride out, with Sony’s HX929, HX820 and HX720 series of LED-backlit LCD screens and LG’s Infinia PZ750 plasmas now priced at Amazon. 3D-Display-info.com found Sony’s locally-dimmed Bravia sets starting at $2,099 for a 46-inch HX720 with Gorilla Glass protection, all the way up to $3,799 for the premium 55-inch XBR-55HX929 with a full-array LED backlight. Meanwhile, the 50-inch LG PZ750 (with Smart TV, naturally) starts out at $1,599, while a 60-inch version of the same thing will run $2,199. Which one fits best in your den? That depends on a number of things, but we will add that the Sony sets are merely up for pre-order, while the LG units are listed as shipping within a matter of weeks.

Sony and LG price a swath of 3D HDTVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink 3D-Display-info (1), (2)  |  Amazon (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9)  | Email this | Comments

Japan’s NTT DOCOMO just announced a March 31st retail offering of LG’s Optimus Pad. The Honeycomb tablet listed as model L-06C is the same 8.9-inch 1280 x 768 pixel slab known as the G-Slate ’round T-Mobile subscribers. Besides its 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor and internationally compatible 3G data and GPS, the Optimus Pad’s most noteworthy features are the stereoscopic rear-facing video cameras capable of 1080p 3D capture which can viewed directly on the L-06C with a pair of passive glasses. Unfortunately, NTT DOCOMO is mum on pricing. Remember, although T-Mobile originally hedged with a spring launch (recently rumored for April 20th), LG told us that it’d be arriving on US soil in March. So… T-Mobile, anything you’d like to add before Thursday?

LG’s 3D-shooting Optimus Pad nabs March 31st retail date in Japan as T-Mobile fiddles originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 03:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  NTT DOCOMO  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on December 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft is not going to stand on the sidelines when it comes to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. They have given 40 engineers the daunting task of getting Windows XP running on the OLPC (a.k.a. XO project), which is equipped with a 433MHz processor, 256MB or RAM, and a 1GB flash drive. The biggest chores they face is getting XP to fit on such a small drive, and writing drivers that will work with the laptops specialized hardware.

Microsoft is trying to convince the XO project to add a slot for an internal SD memory card, which would be able to boost the amount of storage space to 2GB. It sounds odd that the XO project would listen to Microsoft’s requests, but there have been reports that countries are holding out on buying units because they do not run Windows. So there is some incentive for the XO project to keep an open ear to Microsoft.

Microsoft is hoping to have the a test release of XP for the OLPC in early 2008. They are investigating the possibility of having the operating system installed before the computers even leave the factory, but schools and government will still be required to buy a license. There’s no word on how much that would cost, but manufacturers are rumored to pay $15 to $30 per license for regular versions of Windows, so it will likely be lower than that.

Maybe they’ll also be able to change their slogan from “One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time.” to “One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time. Unlimited Blue Screens!”

[via BBC]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

OLPC Project Has Sold 4 Million Laptops AlreadyXP for the OLPC is Ready to go!OLPC to Dual-Boot Linux and Windows?The OLPC Laptops Will Come Loaded With Wikipedia ArticlesOLPC Retail Price Exposed as Mass Production Begins