Hasta La Gadget!

Zoybar is a like Meccano for music. It’s an open-source guitar kit which you put together yourself, and the modular parts can be arranged in many combinations to make differently shaped instruments. The kit can be bought in either bass or six-string configurations, but the twist is that you can further customize the designs yourself.

The guitar kits are licensed under the Creative Commons, and the CAD files can be downloaded and freely tweaked in the open source 3-D software, Blender. Here we see the Zoybar Tor, a fretless six-string whose body is 3-D printed to give pretty much the minimum amount of material to work. There’s a scoop to rest on your leg, an arch at the top on which you can rest your arm and, well, that’s about it.

The Zoybar kits ship with a fretless neck, tuning gears, a humbucker pickup (it looks like an old PAF pickup) plus parts to make a skeletal body, and some bolts and Allen wrenches to hold it all together. Prices start at $670, and go up depending on shipping options.

So how does a 3-D printed guitar sound? Check it out:

Zoybar Tor [Zoybar. Thanks, Glen!]

See Also:

• NES Guitar: The Real Guitar Hero
• Gibson Dark Tiger: 'The World's Most Advanced Guitar'

If I could have every one of the books on my groaning bookshelves converted to EPUB format and shrunk to fit my iPad or Kindle, then I’d do it in a second. Or rather, I’d pay someone else to do it in a second. Yusuke Ohki, spurred on by the twin motives of a a typically tiny Japanese apartment and a lack of laziness, not only scanned 2,000 of his own books, but started a company to do it for people like me.

The company is called BookScan, and you can have his 120-strong team of employees convert your paper books into electrons* for around a dollar (¥1,000) per book. The books are ripped into individual sheets and the scans are returned to you as PDFs. Once the hard work of digitizing has been done you can set your own computer to work processing to EPUB or other e-book formats. You can opt to have the scans “tuned” to your device, with margins trimmed for phones and colors removed for Kindle. After scanning, the books are dumped.

The iPad has fueled a sharp increase in demand for e-books in Japan, and yet there is still no equivalent of Amazon’s Kindle store to supply them. Thus, people have taken to scanning.

Sound familiar? Remember when the only way to get your music onto your MP3 player was to rip your own CDs? And look where that led: The music industry almost destroyed itself until Apple and iTunes yanked the music folks’ collective head from the sand and started selling the music. Every time I can’t find a book I want on Kindle, I think that the book publishers are going the same way. Especially if mass-scanning takes off and suddenly the internet is awash with DRM-free PDFs.

What about y’all, Gadget Lab readers? Would you pay to have your books scanned, clearing your shelves of dead trees? Or do you still like to leaf through your cook-books with a glass of wine, deciding what’s for dinner? Or should we just get free e-books for every real book we own? Answers in the comments.

BookScan product page [BookScan via Bloomberg]

Photo: BookScan

* I realize they already contain electrons, but you know what I’m getting at here.

See Also:

• The $20 DIY Book Scanner
• DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes
• The Internet Archive Keeps Book-Scanning Free
• High-Speed Camera Scans Books in Seconds
• Google, Authors and Publishers Settle Book-Scan Suit

This is the Robo-Rainbow by artist Mudlevel, and its purpose is to brighten your day – whether you like it or not:

There’s not much to explain that can’t be gleaned from watching the hypnotic video, a piece of production as beautiful as the robot itself. Powered by a cordless drill, the torque is transferred to a counterweighted arm which lifts six paint spray-cans in an arc.

What looks like an Arduino circuit-board controls the speed of the arm as it traces an arc across the wall of your choosing, and triggers the servos that spray the paint. Even the spray-can mount is ingenious: six cans around a circular hoop that keeps everything lined up as it makes its circle, and at the same time gives the cans space whilst keeping the nozzles close together.

And best of all, the whole rig packs into a bike trailer.

It’s hard to find anything about this that isn’t awesome. The only problem might come from the cops. After all, you may be able to make a quick getaway on your bike, but with a long boom rattling paint-cans behind you, you’re going to be pretty easy to spot.

Robo-Rainbow [Mudlevel / Vimeo via Adafruit Industries and Hack an Day]

See Also:

• Rainbow Apple Sticker: The Ultimate iPad Accessory
• Plastic Flash Filter Kit: Is That a Rainbow in your Pocket …
• Gun Camera Adds Graffiti to Other People's Photos
• Halo: Light-Writing Graffiti Spray-Can
• Paint Whole Buildings with Light Graffiti

Hack a Sony gadget and you might get slapped with a lawsuit. Hack a Windows phone, however, and you might get a T-shirt and a free phone from Microsoft.

That’s the sort of treatment Windows Phone 7 hackers report receiving from Microsoft: warm embrace, a willingness to collaborate and free gear as if they’re part of a new team.

In recent weeks, Microsoft representatives have reportedly met with Windows Phone 7 jailbreakers to discuss how they can support “homebrew” apps — third-party software that doesn’t require the approval of Microsoft — in a way that benefits both parties.

“Microsoft is interested in further understanding the “Home Brew” developer community’s perspectives on Windows Phone and invited a few members to our Redmond campus last week for an exchange of ideas,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told Wired.com.

This friendly approach even managed to impress George Hotz, the youngster who gained fame as the first hacker to unlock the iPhone.

“Perhaps a more appropriate way to deal with jailbreakers,” Hotz wrote on his website, linking to a story about a Windows Phone 7 hacker getting a free T-shirt.

Brandon Watson, who is part of Microsoft’s developer relations team, posted a public message on Twitter offering Hotz a free phone for making apps.

Microsoft’s friendly interactions with hackers are unusual in a highly litigious technology industry. Recently, Sony asked a court to remove all traces of a PlayStation 3 hack from the internet, alleging that it violated copyright law and would eat into PS3 game sales.

Similarly, Apple in 2009 attempted to make jailbreaking the iPhone illegal. The move was unsuccessful, as the DMCA in 2010 declared hacking the iPhone lawful. Jobs once described Apple’s relationship with iPhone jailbreakers as a “cat-and-mouse game.”

Of course, the PlayStation 3 and iPhone are far more popular than Microsoft’s newest mobile operating system, which debuted in October, 2010. As of December, an estimated 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 devices had shipped to retailers, and there were just 4,000 apps available for the platform. Recruiting hackers could be part of a much-needed developer- and customer-outreach campaign.

Microsoft isn’t being a complete pushover, of course. The first jailbreak for Windows Phone 7, dubbed ChevronWP7, will be broken with the next Windows Phone 7 software update, according to ChevronWP7’s makers. However, that seems to be a temporary roadblock.

The ChevronWP7 team says it’s under a non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft about just what will be officially supported with regard to Windows Phone 7 hacks, but that it’s “genuinely excited” about what lies ahead.

“We appreciate Microsoft’s outreach, genuine interest and involvement in this matter and we hope the community can understand we’re working towards a win-win scenario,” ChevronWP7 wrote in its blog.

See Also:

• Why Windows Phone 7 Will Make Android Look Chaotic
• Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 Packs Intuitive, Visual Punch
• Microsoft Tells Windows Phone 7’s App Story
• Windows Phone 7 Doomed? Actually, It’s Just Getting Started …
• How Microsoft Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL on Windows Phone

Photo: iStartedSomething

It’s surprising to us that it took almost a month since the wide release of Tron: Legacy for a light-cycle–inspired Segway to come, but come it has, nonetheless.

In true fanboy fashion, Ricky Brigante tricked out his Segway i2 Personal Transporter to look like one of Flynn’s grid-gliding beauties, pimping a ride that Xzibit himself would be proud to cruise in.

For something so flashy, Brigante’s method was relatively easy and low-tech. Using only white 2-inch reflective tape, a strand of blue LED Christmas lights and some electrical tape, Brigante took the plain black matte finish of his Segway and artfully applied the design using a mock-up model he made in Photoshop as a guide.

The finished product is simple yet geekishly elegant:

Start to finish, Brigante’s mod time took around four hours. Total cost? About 15 bucks (Segway not included, of course).

Not bad, for a user.

Check out the video below of Brigante’s hog in action:

TRON Segway Mod

Photos: Ricky Brigante/Insidethemagic.net [via Gizmodo]