Oct 15

Tiny, Fully-Functional Rubik’s Cube Smaller Than a Thumbnail

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Evgeniy Grigoriev’s home-made Rubik’s Cube is the smallest in the world. It measures just 10mm across, beating his own previous record of 12mm. In inches, that’s… Well, just take a look for yourself. This thing is tiny.

Even more impressive is that the thing is fully functional, and is perhaps even more frustrating than the full-sized original, bringing in the added challenge of twisting the tiny layers with the fingertips and nails.

Should you want one of these, you can have one. Or at least, you can have the huge 12mm (0.47-inch) model. The models come via Shapeways, the on-demand, 3D-printing people, and are supplied in a scattering of tiny fragments which you have to assemble yourself. This has two great advantages. One is that you will learn how the internals of a Rubik’s Cube work (although as a Gadget Lab reader you’re likely nerdy enough to have already taken one apart to peek inside), and the second is that you can assemble straight it into its finished, uniform-sided state, avoiding the troublesome task of actually solving the puzzle.

The price is an incredibly cheap $15.

Microbic product page [Shapeways via Pocket Lint]

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Oct 14

Mailable, Mechanical, Movable Sculptures for the Geek in Your Life

Posted in: diy, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

If you were wondering what to buy Gadget Lab editor Dylan Tweney for Christmas, her’s your answer. Send him a Mechanicard, a mailable greetings card which is also a handmade kinetic sculpture. Dylan is both a tinkerer and a sucker for cool stationery, so he’ll love it. Just don’t expect it to be a surprise – I’m pretty sure he reads this blog.

There are five different Mechanicards, from the Radial Engine seen in the picture above through the Strum-U-lator (plays music!), the Dragonfly Surprise (it has a dragonfly. Surprise!) and the wonderful Ambigulator, “featuring a hand-cranked optical effect, and a mechanism that asks more questions than it answers.”

The kits are all hand-operated with a tiny, supplied handle, and can be had fully made or in kit form. The kits begin at $45 assembled ($35 for the DIY option) and the prices rise to $75 for the more complex models. If you’re feeling stressed today, then go grab a cup (or cocktail glass) of your favorite beverage and watch the video of all the Mechanicards in action. It’s hypnotic, and very relaxing.

Mechanicards mailable sculptures [Mechanicards]

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Oct 13

World’s First 3D Printed Frisbee Also Most Expensive?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

The Frisbee has come along way since hungry Connecticut schoolkid first gobbled down one of William Russell Frisbie’s tasty pies and tossed the empty tin at a friend. Now, going by the tortuous name of FrisMe, we have the “World’s first 3D printed frisbee”.

Printed in Belgium by I.Materialize, the plastic FrisMe is available to anyone and can be customized to any design or shape (hint – keep it round and dished or it won’t fly so well). If you have your own 3D printer, you can download the 3D file and print your own.

Should you opt to have I.Materialize make one for you, you might consider locking it up and never throwing it. A standard FrisMe will cost a staggering $215. Add your “initials and your choice of texture” and the price goes up to $230 (including shipping). And if you choose to fly out to Belgium, have the I.Materialize folks take a 3D scan of your hand and have it immortalized in a flying disk, you’ll pay $1,300 (plus flights and accommodation).

Available now.

Customized 3D printed FrisMe [I.Materialize. Thanks, Joris!]

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Oct 07

Play Vintage Text Adventure Games on Your E-Reader

Posted in: gaming, kindle, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Enterprising gamers are formatting vintage text-based adventure games such as Zork I, II and III for the Kindle and other dedicated e-readers.

“Many people cut their teeth on the imagination-fueled text adventure games released by Infocom back in the ’80s,” PortableQuest’s edman writes at MetaFilter. “Whispernet combined with the handy keyboard and the limiting browser made the Kindle perfect for text-based adventures.”

Everyone agrees that E Ink screens render text beautifully. E-readers’ slightly older but tech-inclined demographic definitely includes lovers of vintage games. And the ability to save and reload games using Amazon’s Whispernet is a nice feature.

Are the Zork games at times frustrating? Yes — maybe even more so on the Kindle, where text entry isn’t as fluid as on a full keyboard. (You occasionally have to enter in numbers, and the alt+Q=1 shortcut is a lifesaver there.)

Are they immersive and addicting? Yes. And I’m not even very old: These games and I are about the same age.

Text adventure games on the Kindle could benefit from including a few images here and there and introducing slightly more intuitive gameplay while staying within the text-based-adventure genre. There’s no reason why mid-to-late-80s RPGs, like my beloved Ultima and Wizardry series, couldn’t be made to work on the Kindle. And that, my friends, is the future of Kindle gaming — just 20-odd years too late.

Hat tip to Oliver Hulland.

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Oct 04

Terrifying Robot Mecha-Suit. For Kids

Posted in: Robots, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Imagine a typical young child: impulsive, vindictive, cruel and prone to lashing out during screeching tantrums, yet also harmless due to its tiny stature. Now imagine that same little monster, only now it’s inside a mech-suit, an unstoppable wearable robot with arms that could knock aside Smart-cars and hydraulic hands that could crush its kid-brother’s skull. Imagine no more. The nightmare is real. Behold: The Kid’s Walker, by Sakakibara Kikai

For just $21,600* you could turn your child into a merciless, unstoppable killing machine, a 1.6-meter (5′3″), 180Kg (400lb) gas-powered cyborg capable of pulling the legs off his playmates the way a normal kid pulls the legs off flies, a hissing, hydraulic horror with the conscience of a serial-killer.

There is one ray of hope in this otherwise dreadful scenario: Like the original Daleks, the Kid’s Walker appears incapable of negotiating stairs or any kind of rough ground. So, if you ever glimpse this children’s exo-skeleton around the neighborhood, make sure you hold little Jimmy’s next birthday party atop some kind of small hill. A grassy knoll, perhaps. What could possibly go wrong?

Kid’s Walker [Sakakibara Kikai via Gizmag]

*$21,600 is the estimated price. Thankfully, the machine is not for sale.

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Oct 04

Brit Nostalgia-rama: ZX Spectrum Emulator on iPhone

Posted in: iPhone, Retro, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Fire up ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection on your iPhone and you’ll smile at the familiar sound of a program loading from a cassette tape. Launch one of the six included games and you’ll cringe at the graunchy, square-wave racket that blasts thinly from the phone’s speaker. How the hell did my parents put up with that noise back when I played for hours on end back in the 1980s?

The Spectrum originally launched as a 16k home computer in the UK, way back in 1982, but the most popular version (amongst my friends, at least) was the 48k version which followed soon after. It had no internal storage, loading software took many minutes from those error-prone cassette tapes, and you had to hook it up to a TV to enjoy its eight-color delights. I loved it, and as it only cost £129 (probably, like, one million dollars back then) it was as popular in the UK as the Commodore 64 was in the US.

ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection emulates the Speccy, and comes with six games: Frank Bruno’s Boxing, Chuckie Egg, Harrier Attack, Turbo Esprit, Saboteur and Buggy Boy. More are lined up for release this month, and apparently “one of the 80s’ biggest” developers is already signed up (please be Ultimate Play the Game. Please).

Games load in seconds, not minutes, and you play using an on-screen controller. Originally, you would have had to use the rubber keys of the Spectrum’s squishy keyboard, but the app has a more modern layout with buttons in a ring. And how are the games? Ugly, basic, frustrating and boring. In short, the emulation is perfect, and the button-mashing gameplay and impossible learning-curves remain intact. If any of your friends whines about the “good old days” of 8-bit gaming, steer them away from that NES and give them a few minutes with Chuckie Egg. They will shut up forever.

The app is 99-cents, or more accurately, £0.59, available now. For Brit nerds of a certain age, it is probably an essential download.

ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection [iTunes Store]

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Sep 29

Han Solo Lego Minifig Encased in Carbonite

Posted in: Star Wars, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

All you toy manufacturers may as well down tools and go home. Give up. Your career is over. Lego has made the ultimate toy, and nobody ever needs to make another toy again.

As you are no doubt aware after excitedly reading the headline and drooling over the picture above, this toy combines three of the most powerful forces in the universe: Lego, Han Solo and Carbonite. I love how the design is of a Lego-ized Solo frozen into suspended animation, and also that handles have been added to fit the tiny curled hands of any other minifigs that may need to carry poor Han and pin him up on Jabba’s wall like a Persian rug.

The set, which also contains a de-frosted (or perhaps pre-frosted) Han for proper reenactment, is just $25. It can also be had as a part of the $87 Slave 1 set, but who wants to give any money to that bounty-hunting scum Boba Fett?

Don’t say: “There will be no bargain. I will not to give up my favorite decoration. I like Captain Solo where he is.”

Han Solo Carbonite minifig [Amazon via Oh Gizmo!]

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Sep 27

Six-Pound Bike Just $45,000

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

What happens when a bike maker forgets about the UCI rules that govern the weights of competition road bikes? You end up with a machine which weighs just six pounds. That’s not a typo: 6-lbs.

Lance Armstrong and the other racers in the Tour de France must have bikes weighing 6.8-kilos, or 15-pounds. This machine, built by Fairwheel Bikes of Tuscon, weighs in at less than half that. And according to the anonymous owner, it is tough enough to ride, having clocked up around 20,000-miles.

To get the weight down, pretty much every part has been tweaked. Almost everything is made from carbon fiber, of course, but here are a few ridiculously small numbers for you. The brakes are AX Lightness (130-145 grams the set, depending on model). The crankset, iuncluding bearings, is 281-grams. The AeroLite Lite Pedals weren’t Lite enough, so they have been drilled to further reduce weight. And the wheels? According to Rico de Wert, the builder of the cranks, both wheels together weigh just 585-grams. That’s 1.29-pounds for the pair.

Velonews spoke to the folks from Fairwheel, who were showing off the machine at this year’s Interbike, and you can read the full list of specs over at the site. It really is a crazy-light bike, and it gets me thinking about just how pointless it is, too. While properly inflating your tires won’t add a significant amount to the weight, drinking just three liters of water before getting in the saddle would actually add more to your weight than the mass of this entire bike. And imagine how light this thing would be if they took off the gears and made it fixed.

The bike isn’t for sale, but if you were to make your own, it would cost you $45,000.

A $45,000, six pound carbon road bike assembled by Fairwheel Bikes [Velonews]

Photo: Velonews

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Sep 24

Serendipitor Gives City Navigation A Gaming Layer

Posted in: Games, iPhone, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

We usually freak out at the idea that computer algorithms might tell us what to do. Yet we’re constantly asking them for instructions: how to contact person X, find document Y, or move from point A to point B. We just pretend that we’re in control. What if, instead, we made that submissive experience explicit, producing something unexpected — and fun?

You see, e-books may not yet have their avant-garde, but mapping apps just might. Self-described artist/architect/post-disciplinary researcher Mark Shepard built his alternative navigation iPhone app Serendipitor (currently in private beta) to inject Google Maps with the ethos of postmodern participatory art movements like Fluxus or Situationism. But when you mash-up movement with art, you get something very much like an alternate reality game.

Here’s Shepard’s description of how Serendipitor works:

Enter an origin and a destination, and the app maps a route between the two. You can increase or decrease the complexity of this route, depending how much time you have to play with. As you navigate your route, suggestions for possible actions to take at a given location appear within step-by-step directions designed to introduce small slippages and minor displacements within an otherwise optimized and efficient route. You can take photos along the way and, upon reaching your destination, send an email sharing with friends your route and the steps you took

As it happens, this dovetails with “Reality Has A Gaming Layer,” a terrific article published yesterday by game designer Kevin Slavin for O’Reilly Radar. Essentially, Slavin argues that mobile applications like Foursquare, virtual games like Second Life, simulated-reality objects like the Tamagotchi, and casual games like Farmville or Parking Wars are converging with the “big games” — essentially, games that require extensive play in the real world — that he and other designers have been working on for years.

What we’ve been creating, as we’ve taken these gadgets out of our office and living rooms and brought them with us into the world, are experiences that blend information, entertainment, and interaction. When you’re taking a photograph or looking up a map on your smartphone, you’re really waving around a video game controller. Serendipitor might be the perfect example of that.

(out of the) wayfinding with serendipitor [Serial Consign] via Nav Alang/@scrawledinwax

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Sep 24

Scrabble Is First Paid Game App for Kindle

Posted in: amazon, Games, kindle, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Screenshot of My Kindle, Getting Beat By the Computer – Image: Tim Carmody

This might be the happiest chapter in Scrabble’s short digital history: Electronic Arts has released an official version of Scrabble for Kindle. This is the first paid game — or application of any kind — available for the e-reader.

Scrabble fits in well with Amazon’s existing game offerings, as it’s a word-based game that requires simple, five-directional navigation. It shows up in a Kindle user’s home screen, right next to existing games and books. (It’s easy to make a “Games” collection/folder if you like to keep your entertainment media organized/segregated.)

The game is, if I may say so, well put together; you use the controller to navigate to particular spaces, and once you’ve chosen a direction, you can just type out words. There are also smartly-chosen menu options, including a very useful list of two-letter words.

It’s fast and responsive, and I predict it will be a big hit. Scrabble has a huge built-in fan base that overlaps well with book- and word-loving Kindle owners, and Scrabulous (later rechristened Lexulous) has been a tremendous casual gaming hit on Facebook. In fact, Scrabble-makers Hasbro and Mattel had to fight with Facebook and Scrabulous when the game broke out faster than they were ready with an official version. Words With Friends is the similar unbranded iOS application.

Major drawback: Unlike Facebook’s or other online iterations of the Scrabble game, there is no social dimension. You can’t play with another Kindle user online; the best you can do is set up a two-player game where you pass the Kindle back and forth.

Electronic Arts’ Scrabble costs $4.99 and is available for purchase and download today.

The First Kindle Paid App Is Out – It’s Scrabble [iReader Review]

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