If you’re not an avid gardener it’s hard to stay on top of keeping indoor plants like herbs and spices watered and cared for. So consider this Urban Cultivator like a personal gardener. It’s designed blend in with your other kitchen appliances, but it keeps a small herb garden alive and well all year long. More »
The gradual unfurling of NASA‘s Curiosity rover continues, with the head of the Martian explorer ‘bot now fully deployed and taking photos, albeit not at final quality. The Rover itself – or its tweeting human representative on Earth – announced the successful erection with a new photo from one of the Navcams mounted on the head, which will eventually be used to snap 3D imagery for navigation and control. However, there’s far more pixels incoming.
Also on Curiosity’s head is a pair of “MastCam” cameras. Each shoots 1600 x 1200 stills and 720p HD video at up to 10fps, in true color rather than the black & white of the NavCams. One of the MastCams is for narrow-angle photography, with a 100mm focal length, 5.1-degree field of view, and the ability to show 7.4 cm/pixel scale at 1km, while the other, medium angle camera has a 34mm focal length, 15-degree field of view, and 22 cm/pixel scale at 1km.
However, the MastCams aren’t expected to be deployed until roughly a week after Curiosity’s landing. That’s down to a combination of dust in the environment and progressive testing; only earlier today did the rover whip off its Hazcam dust covers and send back some unblinkered 3D shots of the Martian terrain.
If you’re wondering about the QR-code style glyph in the bottom of the image, that’s apparently part of the calibration process for Curiosity’s head. Today NASA is also due to establish direct communications with the rover, using its high-gain antenna.
Curiosity gets curious: Rover lifts head and looks around Mars is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Microsoft has thrown open ticket sales for Build 2012, the latest gathering of Windows and Windows Phone developers, which kicks off in late October. The event will unsurprisingly focus on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, two platforms with no small degree of importance to Microsoft’s financial future and relevance in the computing and smartphone spaces. However, it’s not cheap to attend.
Early-bird tickets are priced at $1,595 apiece, though only 500 will be made available. After that, full-price tickets at $2,095 each, while there will be 100 $995 academic tickets in addition. If you want an academic ticket, you’ll need to contact Microsoft first and request a code.
Build 2012 will take place on Microsoft’s own Redmond campus between October 30 and November 2, and include activities in the surrounding area as well as coding workshops. For the rest of us, the key interest will likely be in the opening keynote; last year, Microsoft used that to launch the Windows 8 developer preview and show off prototype hardware.
This year, Windows 8 will have already been available for roughly a week and we’re expecting to have seen not only fresh Windows Phone 8 devices from Nokia, HTC and others, but Apple’s new iPhone 5. SlashGear will be at the Build 2012 keynote to bring back all the details as they’re announced.
Microsoft Build 2012 tickets go up for grabs is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Don’t get us wrong, we adore 3D printers and the whole additive manufacturing movement. But, if all you’re going to get out of the ABS-jets are some companion cubes and a raptor claw, well then, we don’t think there’s much hope for the technology. Thankfully there are people out there (much better people than us, we might add), who have turned to 3D printers to actually improve peoples lives. Take, for example, the tale of two-year-old Emma, born with the congenital disorder arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC). The disease causes a person’s joints to become locked in a single position, in Emma’s case, it was her arms. There are prosthetics that can help, but most are made of metal — including the anchor vest — which would make them too heavy for a 25-pound girl.
Instead of going off the shelf, doctors turned to a 3D printer from Stratasys to create custom molded parts and a lightweight vest for Emma. The result: the two-year-old who once could not lift her arms is now able to play, color and feed herself. Printing the parts also solves another major issue — Emma is growing… quickly. The adorable tot has already outgrown her first vest, but her mother just calls the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children and has a new one made. The same goes for replacement parts. Should a hinge or brace break, it need only be a matter of hours (not days or weeks) before a new one is delivered. For more details check out the heartwarming video after the break.
Continue reading 3D printed ‘Magic Arms’ give a little girl use of her limbs
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3D printed ‘Magic Arms’ give a little girl use of her limbs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I’m sure I’m not alone in having a love for all the geeky and cool products that ThinkGeek offers. I’ve got more than a few them, with one of my favorite being that pizza cutter that looks like the Starship Enterprise. Now, if you have an awesome idea for a geek themed product that would be perfect for ThinkGeek, you will want to pay attention. ThinkGeek has launched the IdeaFactory where you can submit your product ideas and actually make money.
The way the system works is you submit your idea using a written description and an image of some sort. The image can be a detailed drawing or a rendering. ThinkGeek has 60 days to evaluate the idea and get back to you.
The company can tell you your product is crap or love the idea and actually build it. If ThinkGeek chooses to build your product idea, you get $1000 and 10% of retail sales for the product. If the sales from your awesome geek idea hit the $1 million mark, your cut of the retail sale drops to 5%. Royalties are paid quarterly and you have to own the intellectual property rights for ideas you submit. Guess that eliminates my proposal for a bald Captain Jean-Luc Picard cookie jar that says “Shut up Wesley!” each time you open the lid.
The photo and video editors available on Windows 7 have always been somewhat basic, but Microsoft has today decided to revamp what’s available to users. Windows Photo Gallery and Movie Maker have both been updated for Windows 7 and Windows 8, offering a wealth of new functionality. Movie Maker sees the biggest change, offering some video tweaks that should help you get the most out of your smartphone or camera footage.
The big addition is a Video Stabilization option. If you’re filmed significant amounts of video on your smartphone, you know that things can get a little bit too shaky if you’re moving around or can’t keep a steady hand. The new stabilization tool in Movie Maker automatically corrects the jitters, and you can fine tune it to your specific footage with “low”, “high”, and “auto” settings.
A Music option has also been added that allows to insert tracks from your own collection or the internet. Microsoft notes that anything from your own library might be stripped from YouTube if it falls foul of copyright infringement, so the company has added several free music database such as AudioMicro and the Free Music Archive that lets you find suitable music for your video. Text effects have also been added to Movie Maker, so you can add outlines or enhance text to make it stand out.
Photo Gallery, meanwhile, adds a new Auto Collage option. That takes your available photos and intelligently pieces them together for the best results. When you’re done with your movies and photos, you can publish them straight to Vimeo thanks to a new partnership. It’s an interesting move from Microsoft, and one that Apple made with the release of Mountain Lion as well with the addition of a Vimeo sharing option.
Microsoft releases new Photo Gallery and Movie Maker is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The Internet Archive is making over a million pieces of archived content available through BitTorrent. The site’s collection of public-domain books, audio and video is being added and tracked — with Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Plan 9 From Outer Space and Night of the Living Dead among the top 25 most popular downloads. Unfortunately, it’ll be a while until Manos: The Hands of Fate falls out of copyright, but it’s something we’ve got to look forward to.
[Original Image: The I.T. Crowd / TalkBack Thames]
Continue reading Internet Archive makes 1 million public-domain files available with BitTorrent
Filed under: Internet
Internet Archive makes 1 million public-domain files available with BitTorrent originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 10:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple’s retina MacBook Pro may well be the platonic ideal of a portable computer. It’s fast, it’s thin, it’s brilliantly realized. Oh, and as iFixit has discovered, it’s a gigantic—and expensive—pain in the ass to fix yourself. More »
Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina Display was strongly criticized from some quarters for its resilience to DIY-repair, but new unofficial guides suggest it’s more a case of how determined you are to complete your own tweaks. iFixit has pushed out a fifteen-part tutorial for removing and replacing different elements of the flagship Apple notebook, with the pinnacle of difficult probably being switching out the battery.
“Removing the battery is very difficult” iFixit warns. “There is always a chance of inhaling noxious fumes and lighting the battery on fire. Work in a well ventilated area.” The preliminary steps involve wiggling out fans and other components from within the tightly-packed computer – tricky but not necessarily dangerous – but gets significantly more worrisome when you’re actually trying to peel up the battery from the glue holding it in place.
“You will be using a plastic putty knife and a spudger to release the adhesive holding the battery to the upper case” iFixit describes, going on to point out that “the adhesive is very strong, and will require a lot of strength and patience to remove.”
If all that sounds like too much hard work and death-dicing, Apple will happily do it for you – albeit for $199. That could actually be something of a bargain, however; iFixit estimates that “third party battery replacements will cost over $500 if technicians follow the safer Apple-suggested procedure and replace the entire upper case assembly along with the battery.”
In short, if you’re keen to have a MacBook Pro you can repair yourself, the older-style model is probably what you should be looking to; a slim machine like the Retina Display version demands some compromises. Apple is yet to release sales breakdowns indicating exactly how many people have made that compromise in return for the notebook’s undoubtable charms, though the company apparently struggled to keep up with demand post-launch as shipping times extended into several weeks.
[via 9 to 5 Mac]
Time, patience and a taste for danger demanded for DIY Retina MacBook Pro fixes is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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