Hasta La Gadget!

Beeri: ‘Pour’ a beer using Siri

The folks at RedPepper software might have scored more nerd points if they’d had Siri serve tea (Earl Grey, hot), but it’s hard to argue with a Rube Goldbergian machine that brings you a beer when you ask for it. Behold: Beeri.

Beeri is less of an app or device and more a convoluted process to bring beer to a lazy iPhone 4 owner. It works like this:

Tell Siri to “Text Tweet Beeri,” and include the word “pour” in the message body. This sends a text which is then turned into a tweet. Beeri, an Arduino based robot, sees the word “pour” and roars into action. A remote controlled truck with a can of beer pre-loaded speeds off down the table and rams into a spike at the far end, ripping open the can.

The freed beer pours through a hole in the table to a waiting glass beneath, from whence it can be supped.

It is ridiculous, messy and completely impractical. And it is also a sure indicator of many, many Siri-based projects to come.

Have Siri Pour You a Beer [RedPepper via ReadWriteWeb]

SAN DIEGO — There’s no way around it: Banking sucks. And if you’re broke like me, opening up your browser to your online banking site only to continually find a zero balance sucks even more. Aside from getting a higher-paying job, there’s not much out there to boost your balance. But an interface makeover from a small software company could make the experience a little less painful.

Lithuanian software outfit Etronika created a new Kinect-based, motion-activated user interface for the company’s banking software, letting users manipulate and manage their accounts with a literal wave of the hand. Clapping your hands together selects an icon and brings up the appropriate screen selection, while swiping back and forth navigates the carousel of icons.

“A lot of banking software apps are filled with boring crap,” said Etronika CEO Kestutis Gardziulis in what may be the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard. “With our software, you could be on the couch at home, having a beer, all while dealing with your bank account and kicking back.”

In June, Microsoft released its Kinect software developer kit free for download, allowing third party developers to create Windows-based applications that interact with the low-cost Kinect hardware. Since the release (and even prior to it), thousands of hackers have created all sorts of applications that take advantage of Kinect’s camera and microphone-based input. We’ve seen dancing apps to fighting games and now, with Etronika’s entry, banking software.

And it won’t stop at motion interaction, apparently. “We’re digging into voice, facial recognition — all the possibilities that come with the SDK,” Gardziulis said. “Why not use this popular gaming UI for banking, too?”

However superfluous, it’s a fun hack for an otherwise mundane (and often depressing) practice. Check out the video here for a quick demo of the software.

TV-B-Gone-B-Gone. Thwart pranksters and vandals alike with the IR Jammer

The most famous TV-B-Gone prank must surely be the one executed by Gizmodo at 2008’s CES. When MAKE magazine gave a bunch of gadget bloggers a widget that would cycle through IR codes and quickly shut off any TV in the vicinity, it must have known what would happen. The result: much bluster and moral outrage from people with no sense of humor, and the banning of Gizmodo writer Richard Blakeley from subsequent CES shows.

If only these humorless TV manufacturers had had the IR Jammer Kit, which also comes from the Maker Shed. This is a little like selling guns and bulletproof vests, or supplying an insecure desktop OS as well as anti-virus software.

The jammer interferes with IR signals by spraying out IR noise at six popular frequencies. The jammer comes as a kit, with everything you need to get going except a case (an Altoids tin would be traditional). You can adjust the balance between range and power consumption (it uses a 9v battery) by adjusting some resistors.

Why bother, unless you are exhibiting TVs at one of the few events Gizmodo hasn’t been banned from? To guard against football haters, of course. I have been watching my local team, FC Barcelona, in local bars and a few times the TV has flipped channels or switched off. As a cynical nerd, I immediately expected foul play. As a lazy, beer sipping spectator. I didn’t do anything about it. In the future, a quickly deployed jammer might do the trick. $19.

IR Jammer Kit aka TV-B-Gone-B-Gone [Maker Shed via BoingBoing]

See Also:

• Why Gizmodo is Cool: Giz Pranksters Turn Off TVs at CES
• Our Remote Controls Are Amazing, Yet Nobody's Happy
• TV-B-Gone Creator Going Strong With Open-Source Hardware …

This robot is designed to test the iPad 2’s camera app in place of human fingers. Image: Pheromone Labs

There’s no better way to handle a boring, repetitive task than to let a robot do it for you.

Except, of course, if it’s a Lego robot. How much cooler can you get than that? (Answer: Not much.)

That’s exactly what Pheromone Labs did when they were tasked with manually testing the iPad 2’s camera app 10,000-15,000 times. They used a Lego Mindstorms kit to build what essentially boils down to an automated poking machine.

It works using a capacitive touch iPad stylus as a giant finger, driven by a set of motors. The finger pokes the iPad’s on-screen photo capture button over and over in what amounts to an infinite loop (so to speak). The robot setup uses a cardboard box placed on a desk with an iPad 2 secured inside, almost like a little photographic robo-cinema.

It’s a win-win situation. Developers get to work on less mundane tasks, while an unemployed robot gets put to work.

Thank goodness Pheromone Labs didn’t decide to just hire a poor intern to do this job.

The Robot (English version) from Pheromone Lab on Vimeo.

TUAW via TechCrunch

iFixit tears apart the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch. Image: iFixit

It’s always a pleasure to find out what makes our favorite gadgets tick. And how difficult, and costly, it’ll be to repair them should they have an unfortunate run-in with a concrete driveway or a rambunctious, unintentionally destructive child*.

That’s why we love iFixit: They tear apart every new gadget they encounter.

iFixit’s latest teardown is of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, Sprint’s CDMA/WiMAX sequel to the Samsung Galaxy S. So what sort of goodies are inside?

First and foremost, the Samsung-made glass display and AMOLED panel are fused together. So if you end up cracking your screen, a repair is going to cost you. However, the 1800 mAh Li-ion battery — which should provide 8.7 hours of talk time or over 10 days in standby mode — is easy to replace. All you have to do is pop off the back plate. Once you’ve done that, you’ll also find a microSD card slot which you can use to bump up the device’s internal memory specs if 16 GB isn’t enough for you.

The Epic 4G Touch is .04 inches thicker and .49 ounces heavier than its European counterpart, bringing it to a practically obese .38 inches and 4.52 ounces (blame the french fries). It also doesn’t support NFC like its fancy skinny Euro cousin (C’est la vie, Google Wallet).

The front-facing camera shares a ribbon cable with the LED and ambient light sensor, so if one of those craps out on you, repair will be a bit more expensive.

iFixit’s Miroslav Djuric said the Epic 4G “was not too challenging” to take apart — you can use pretty basic tools to disassemble the smartphone, like a Phillips #00 screwdriver. The iFixit team gave it a 7 out of 10 for repairability.

*Full disclosure: I once destroyed my dad’s watch by slamming it repeatedly on our driveway. You probably shouldn’t give electronics to babies.

Samsung Epic 4G Touch Teardown [iFixit]