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Homemade Snowmaker

Scott — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:06:42 +0000

So as of right now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a white Christmas. If you really had your heart set on some snow, fear not. You can now make a run to the hardware store for some parts to build your very own snowmaker. Appropriately named Instructables member, MakeSnow has a very nice step-by-step on how to build it.

Snowmaker photo by MakeSnow

2011 Holiday Gift Guides

Scott — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:27:36 +0000

Well folks, it’s Cyber Monday again. You know what that means… it’s time for another iteration of my holiday geek gift guides. I started this quite a few years ago as a list of gift guides to help me find gifts for the people I shop for. Most of these are geared more towards geeks and gadgets, but there are several for more general gift giving. If I run across more, I’ll keep this post up to date. Or if you know any that I missed, leave me a comment, and I’ll add ‘em to the list.

CNET 2011 Holiday Gift Guide
Boing Boing Gift Guide 2011
2011 Uncle Mark Gift Guide and Almanac
ThinkGeek Holiday Gift Station 2011
5th Annual Wired Wishlist
Wired GeekDad Holiday Gift Guide
Wired GeekMom Holiday Gift Guide
iLounge’s 2012 iPhone + iPod Buyers’ Guide
TreeHugger Green Gift Guide 2011
Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide, 2011
Gizmodo Gift Guides 2011
MAKE Magazine Gift Guides
TechCrunch 2011 Gift Guide
PC Magazine 2011 Holiday Gift Guide
ZDNet Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2011
Digital Trends Holiday Gift Guide 2011
2011 InfoWorld geek gadget gift guide
New York Times Holiday Gift Guide 2011
Ain’t It Cool News Quint’s Holiday Gift Guide 2010

Uncrate Gift Guides
Cool Hunting: Gift Guide 2010
Core77 End of Year or End of Days Gift Guide
The Awesomer: Awesome Awesome Gifts 2010
Perpetual Geek Machine Holiday Book guide
DVICE Holiday Gift Guide 2011
Popular Mechanic’s Can’t-Miss Holiday Gift Guide for 2011
Inc. 2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Editor’s Picks
The GQ 2011 Gift Guides
Tom’s Hardware Holiday Gift Guide: Computers Of All Kinds (added 11/29/11)
Earth Techling: 2011 Holiday Green Gift Shopping Guide (added 11/30/11)
GigaOm: Cord Cutters Gift Guide (added 11/30/11)
Lifehacker Premium Web Services Gift Guide (added 12/10/11)
2011 Unclutterer Holiday Gift Giving Guide (added 12/10/11)
Dry as Toast 2011 Holiday Gift Giving Guide (added 12/10/11)
The Verge – Holiday Gift Guide 2011 (added 12/15/11)

(Guides from previous years: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004)

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

Scott — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:19:26 +0000

This is a slick little gadget. It’s a little green ball with cameras mounted all over it. You toss it into the air, and it created a spherical panorama at the apex of your toss.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wonder how careful you have to be when throwing this. I bet a little bit of spin would mess up your panorama. Either way, it’s a pretty cool idea.

iCufflinks

Scott — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:40:53 +0000

Want!

(I just need some more french cuffed shirts)

Neurowear, Ears Controlled by your Brain

Scott — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:36:31 +0000

Have you ever wanted to display your mood with a pair of giant cat ears? Well, the wait is now over. A Japanese project called Neurowear has created a set of robotic ears that react to your brain waves. The concept is a little odd, and I’m not sure if this is something I’d wear in public, but it’s a very interesting idea to communicate what you’re thinking using a peripheral that you wear on your body.

Click here to view the embedded video.

They need to create a dog tail to communicate happiness when it wags.

Hot Wheels Video Racer

Scott — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:32:40 +0000

Playing with Hot Wheels just got a lot more fun (not that it wasn’t fun to begin with). The Hot Wheels Video Racer appeared at this year’s CES event. It’s a regular-sized Hot Wheels car, but it has a small point-of-view camera built into it, as well as a little monitor on the underside of the vehicle. So you can feel like you’re driving the car through the ups and downs and loopty-loops of your Hot Wheels track. The car is supposed to hold 12 minutes of video, and it comes with a USB cable to hook it to your computer. It is also packaged with editing software so you can refine your racing videos. It is supposed to be out in Fall of 2011 and will sell for about $60. This almost makes me want to dig out my old Hot Wheels tracks again and “go play cars.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Social Networking the Nativity

Scott — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:44:13 +0000

The digital story of the Nativity. What if Google had been around 2000 years ago?

Click here to view the embedded video.

2010 Holiday Gift Guide

Scott — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:14:44 +0000

Another year has come and gone, and with it, comes another iteration of my holiday geek gift guide. The gift lists are chosen because they appeal to me, and the people I shop for. Feel free to let me know if I’ve missed any lists that you find helpful, and I’ll ad ‘em to the post.

Kotaku’s 2010 Video Game Gift Guides
Connected Reviews Holiday Gift Guides 2010
The Unplggd Gift Guide for Geeks
Ars Technica 2010 Holiday Gift Guide (added 11/30/10)
Uncrate Gift Guides (added 12/1/10)
Tom’s Hardware Give and Get Geeky: Holiday Guide (added 12/2/10)
Cool Hunting: Gift Guide 2010 (added 12/10/10)
Core 77′s 2010 77 Design Gifts Under $77 (added 12/10/10)
The Awesomer: Awesome Awesome Gifts 2010 (added 12/10/10)

(Guides from previous years: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004)

A Tiny Lens for my Camera Phone

Scott — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:00:07 +0000

I got a present in the mail yesterday straight from China. The tiny little macro/wide angle lens I purchased had finally arrived (apparently free shipping from China takes a while). Yes, you read that correctly. I purchased a lens for the crappy camera on my phone. I figured this was a $10 experiment to see if a lens for a camera phone would actually work, and surprise-surprise, it doesn’t do too bad of a job.

The lens came in a blister pack which included the actual lens, which is pretty sturdy with a metal housing. It also includes a lens cap and a little magnetic bottom cap with a tiny lanyard on it. The way the lens works is by attaching to the back of your phone with a small magnet ring around the bottom. If your phone doesn’t have anything for the magnet to stick to, they include two small metal rings (like little tiny washers) with peel off adhesive on them that you can stick to the back of your phone. I ended up sticking it to the case I have over the back of my phone. The lens itself is made two pieces screwed together that change depending on the type of photos you want to take. The lower, smaller piece is the macro lens, and the upper wider piece, when screwed on is the wide angle.

I was somewhat skeptical of how well a lens for a camera phone would work, but have been pleasantly surprised with my experiments. I started with a few macro shots and it does a pretty nice job. See the examples below. I took some shots of a few small items I had laying around. For the macro shots, I took a normal shot of the Old Capitol, then one with the wide angle lens. The wide angle shots aren’t as nice as the macros, but all in all, it’s a nice little tool to have.

If you want to own one of these yourself, I bought my from Deal Extreme, but they are all over ebay as well.

MapCrunch (random teleportation)

Scott — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:22:28 +0000

Do you want to take random trips around the world (via Google Street View)? MapCrunch allows you to teleport around the word to some pretty beautiful places on Google Street View. It also looks like you can submit you own cool places via Twitter (@mapcrunch) to be the “View of the Day” on MapCrunch. I also like putting it into slide show mode and hitting the full-screen button in the corner. Someone needs to figure out how to make a screensaver out of this.

Maybe artist Bill Guffey can use this site to help him find places to paint.

It only took me about 25 tries to find a shot from Iowa.