Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon lockers have been popping up at 7-eleven stores and UK retailers, but now they’re arriving at what seems like a conflicted destination: bricks and mortar (and online) arch-competitor, Staples. The service allows shoppers who missed a delivery to head over to a locker and nab their packages using a 72-hour code, with the host retailer keeping a small fee in return. But there aren’t too many items at Staples that you can’t also find at Amazon, so we hope the office supply giant got a sweetheart deal.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Filed under: Misc, Amazon

Order your office supplies from Amazon, pick them up at Staples with upcoming lockers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Nov 2012 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gadget modder extraordinaire, Benjamin Heckendorn, has returned with season 3 of The Ben Heck Show. Along with new segments such as news, viewer questions and rants, you’ll find that Ben has whipped up a creative solution to the problem of texting while driving. Using the ShopBot CNC router, Ben carves out a chastity belt of sorts — his words, not ours — to form the casing of a system that will sound an alarm whenever one’s car is running and their phone isn’t in the protective dock. The anti-texting system also logs its status to an SD card, which can then be reviewed at a later time. It won’t be until next week’s episode that we get to see the final product, but all the geeky bits that make this project possible can be found in the season opener, which you’ll find right after the break.

Continue reading The Ben Heck Show kicks off season 3 by clamping down on texting while driving (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Mobile

The Ben Heck Show kicks off season 3 by clamping down on texting while driving (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, you can always play catch with the dog, but what kind of game can you play with a caged rodent? Well, “find the poster,” apparently. A team of researchers from Universities in Spain, Germany, Austria, England and the US have put together a virtual reality system designed to let humans interact with rats at the rodent’s scale, challenging human participants to find and lead the rodent to a unmarked goal. According to a paper published in PLoS One participants were “beamed” into the rat’s environment by linking a head-mounted display and joystick to a rat-sized telepresence robot. Human players were then treated to a proportionally accurate representation of the game arena. The rat was there too, tracked with an overhead camera and represented by a human avatar.

Participants were tasked with coaxing their opponent in front one of three posters in attempt to sleuth out which one represents the “winning” position. When both players are in front of the correct mystery poster, a bell sounds and the game ends. The game was primarily created to test a scaled immersive virtual reality teleoperator system, but researchers are optimistic the technology could be used to observe animal behavior from a new perspective. Check out the setup in action after the break, or read on through to the source link below for a detailed description of how mankind and some of nature’s smaller creatures can get along in a virtual space.

Continue reading Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents

Filed under: Misc, Robots

Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hurricane Sandy dominated the news this week as the storm surge flooded large swaths of New Jersey and New York, knocking down trees, crippling the New York subway system, and leaving thousands of people in the dark after a Con-Ed station in lower Manhattan exploded. The storm caused an estimated $10 billion worth of damage in Manhattan and Brooklyn alone, and it caused lasting environmental contamination when 336,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled between Staten Island and New Jersey. And it reminded us of the potential dangers of nuclear power when the storm forced three nuclear reactors offline and New Jersey’s Oyster Creek power plant was placed on alert.

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Tetris pumpkin, giant cardboard ghetto blaster and the world’s largest offshore wind farm

Filed under: Misc, Science

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Tetris pumpkin, giant cardboard ghetto blaster and the world’s largest offshore wind farm originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just in case you thought the Lightning to micro-USB connector was Europe-only (to stave off that pesky European Commission), Apple has decided to sell it stateside as well. The tiny choking hazard recently made its way to the company’s online store in the US for $19 each (over in Europe, it’s £15 / €19), and brick-and-mortar locations will probably get them too — if they’re not in stock already. We’re not sure if there’s a huge demand for this, but if you’re a recent iPod, iPhone, or iPad (Mini or 4th gen) owner with a plethora of existing micro-USB cables, an adapter like this could help lighten your nest of wires.

Filed under: Misc

Apple’s Lightning to micro-USB adapter now available in US, not just Europe anymore originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Nov 2012 02:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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