Hasta La Gadget!

In case you haven’t noticed, all the cool kids are using Micro SIMs nowadays. But help is at hand if you’re stuck with an old and busted Module, thanks to this stainless steel SIM trimmer. Painfully simple to use, it accepts old school chips, smashes down on them with the full force of modernity, and spits out an appropriately streamlined Micro SIM. But wait, you can reverse the modification too — just use the included “back to normal” kit to turn back time and restore compatibility with your dated gear. The first batch of 500 has already sold out, but the next is expected to ship by the end of this month at a price of $25 or just under €20, depending on where you reside. What else do you need, a written invitation?

Cut My SIM does as its name commands originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Engadget German  |  Cut My SIM  | Email this | Comments

Continue reading Lego printer writes ‘Hello World’ with felt-tipped pen (video)

Lego printer writes ‘Hello World’ with felt-tipped pen (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Wired  |   | Email this | Comments

Tired of touchscreen tablets that lack speed, a usable UI, or support for a certain streaming video format that will go unnamed? As one of our favorite sayings goes, if you want it done right, do it yourself. One Engadget reader took that idea to heart in crafting the 13.4-inch carbon fiber contraption you see above, imbuing it with enough high-end netbook parts to run Windows 7 at a brisk pace and play 720p video on its large, resistive touchscreen. Starting with the guts of an MSI X320, adding an accelerometer and 40GB solid state drive and finally sandwiching a random Chinese digitizer on top, the whole 1.6GHz Atom Z530 machine cost him under $700 in parts. For that price, we’re sure many of you would be happy to follow in his footsteps, but if not, by all means continue complaining to your tablet manufacturer of choice. We have another favorite saying: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Video after the break; Q&A with the creator at our more coverage link.

Continue reading MSI X340 reborn as DIY carbon fiber tablet, watch it stream YouTube at 720p (video)

MSI X340 reborn as DIY carbon fiber tablet, watch it stream YouTube at 720p (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Carbon Tablet  | Email this | Comments

When an inmate at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre near Gatwick, West Sussex, England, needed access to a tattoo gun (presumably banned in UK lockups, just as they are in the US) inspiration struck. According to The Sun, the inmate used the motor of a PlayStation’s optical drive to move a sharpened ball-point pen. Sure, there are better ways to get ink — such as waiting to be released — but it ain’t exactly a prison tattoo if you don’t get it in prison. The paper goes on to say that from time to time a similar contraption made from “Nintendo consoles” turns up stateside, although the only such device we’ve ever seen was in an episode of The Wire, and it was made from an old cassette player. Either way, this is one mod we surely won’t see from Ben Heck any time soon.

PlayStation tattoo gun mod gets inmate a stern rebuke, admiration from his cell block originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 May 2010 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack-A-Day  |  The Sun (UK)  | Email this | Comments

DIY weaponry gets more lethal with each passing year; where once we were content with a simple foam missile launcher, technology has progressed such that our automated turrets now spew screwdriver bits, airsoft and paintballs. As progress forges ahead, two engineering students at the University of Arkansas have added injury to insult with this four-stage DIY coilgun. Using an Arduino microcontroller to actuate the firing mechanism and steer the monstrous wooden frame, they nimbly control the badass kit with an iDevice over WiFi, and line up targets using a repurposed PlayStation Eye webcam. While we’d of course prefer to have our phone SSH into the gun over 3G, we’re not going to argue with success. We’d like to keep our lungs un-perforated, thank you very much. See it in action after the break.

Continue reading Students accelerate cubicle arms race with PlayStation Eye-tracked, iPhone-guided coilgun (video)

Students accelerate cubicle arms race with PlayStation Eye-tracked, iPhone-guided coilgun (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PC World  |  Hack A Day  | Email this | Comments