RC Hydrofoam that can go over water, concrete, dirt, and also kinda fly~

This is cool info if you are thinking about developing postal code reading embedded application, you will have to make a better application than Pitney Bowes though…well our mail machine kinda sucks, will someone develop a better one???

Microsoft has how to read those little bar codes the post office uses on your mail… - “This article describes how to read a postal bar code in order to determine whether Microsoft Word created a correct postal bar code. A postal bar code is composed of three main components: framing bars, number bars, and checksum bars. The first bar on the left side and the last bar on the right side of the postal bar code are framing bars for the postal bar code. You can ignore these. To read the bar code, start with the second bar. Group the bars into groups of five bars each. Each number in a postal bar code consists of five bars.”

via make

Cool, here’s an emerging technology that is very innovative and at its incubation stages. Although the helmet does weigh massive 6 pounds, with the speed of changing technology, we should be able to expect a 3-4 pound version at production. It would be very nice if they could make some glasses instead of a heavy looking helmet… or maybe at least make it look like a motorcycle helmet, then it would at least be stylish and rad…

Toshiba has developed a 6 pound giant freak helmet to give you a 360 view of your TV or video game. Aside from the fact that most TV is so awful that I do not want or need a 360 view, the only possible use for this to succeed will be pr0n.

via realtechnews

Okay, today I was trying to re-partition my new HP laptop so I can install Linux without erasing my new Windows Media edition that came with it.  After downloading about a dozen partitioning software that don’t actually let you partition your drives unless you pay them like $50,  I found this GParted GOLive download, which is a Linux CD bootable disk that lets to repartition your harddrive with ease.  Yes, this one is FREE, these are the days I love Linux over Windows… You don’t need any knowledge of Linux, it just runs on Linux, just boot it up, re-partition and bam, you are ready to go without reinstalling Windows…  Well, one thing I had trouble was the video driver for my laptop, just select the mini-Vesa option at the start and you should be fine.  Hmmm, these little boot CDs are neat with Linux, you can put a whole operating system plus a little partitioning software under 30MB, something you can’t do with Windows…

Kinda cool hack for charging batteries in sequence…

I’m getting pretty interested in building an electric motorcycle, and I ran across this little hack to charge multiple batteries with one charger. It uses a 4020 counter that’s pulsed by my dear friend the 555 to activate a series of relay pairs to switch a single charger sequentially between battery cells. A more advanced version could use a microcontroller to monitor the state of each cell to ensure even charging. If you’re thinking of constructing an uber-ups, this could be useful.

via hackaday

Kinda cool automated defence system on a tank

Developed by various defense companies, the Trophy system is basically an active forcefield around a tank or an armored vehicle to defend against RPG rounds. It’s not an actual forcefield like the USS Enterprise, it’s a system that detects when a round is incoming and shoots out a projectile to eliminate the threat. Best of all, there’s only a 1% chance of injuring surrounding personnel when the round is exploded.

via gizmodo

Wow, here’s a cool way to put your old linux box to good use…TV wave hacking!

AMXL shows you how to use a SAA7134 based TV card and Debian to tune in to all sorts of waves you can’t normally get with your TV… Looks like it will work with many of the TV cards out there too… - “If you have a TV capture card in your computer, you probably already have all the hardware you need to listen in on much more than just TV and radio (only software changes are needed). The hardware will also allow you to hear emergency services, taxi and freight radios, UHF citizen band radio, aircraft transmissions, and more. In this article, I show you how you can make your Linux distribution (I used Debian Sarge, but other distros should work too, as long as you have a 2.6.x Linux kernel) and SAA7134 based TV card tune into those frequencies you can’t get at with a normal radio or TV.”

via make

Here’s an upgrade for your Razor V3 which I junked a couple months ago for my LG Chocolate and the HTC 8125…

We can almost hear the voices of skeptical readers whispering in unison, “fanboy Photoshop,” and we’d normally have half a mind to agree. After all, the bizarre gray exterior (just a reflection, perhaps?) seems incongruent with the rest of the phone, the contents of the external display are obviously faked, and the coloration of the Verizon logo doesn’t make a lot of sense — not to mention that the concept of a CDMA-based MOTORAZR MAXX is a bit… shall we say, new to us. Alas, it turns out the picture’s authenticity is rock solid (not to say it’s not a Photoshop job, but if it is, it’s an official one) seeing how we just downloaded it off Motorola’s official site for press multimedia. We know nothing about it besides what we’re seeing here, but truth be told, the picture alone is a lot to process: Verizon gets a strangely colored variant of a high-end RAZR we didn’t even know existed. It looks like a 2-megapixel cam is in the cards, and if the specs mirror its GSM cousin, we can expect a QVGA display, microSD expansion, and 50 odd megabytes of internal storage — not a bad piece to slot in right above the K1m, if we do say so ourselves. As soon as we catch wind of availability (or catch wind that Motorola is playing an extraordinarily unsportsmanlike practical joke on us), we’ll pass on the good word.

via engadget

Wow, cool…this TV ad shows that PSP3 is still a big mystery and you gotta buy to solve it…haha…just in time for thanksgiving…

The first TV ad for the PS3—”The Wait”—is now floating around that damnable Internet and we’ve really got to hand it to Sony: not only does the ad not tell us a single thing about their upcoming system, but they’ve somehow managed to create an ad that evokes the same type of feeling you get when you watch the “Daisy” ad and a “say no to drugs” commercial. Bravo. At least there’s no melting clocks this time around.

via gizmodo

Wow, here’s some robots being put into good use in the medical field.
This $20,000 “Pregnant Robot” — developed to help med students — “simulates the pertinent vital signs and exports of a pregnant woman, including blood, urine and a baby.”

Video overview after the jump. Even the baby simulates vital signs, and can change colors from pink to blue to signify oxygen deficiency. A human controller can initiate different complications, or just sit back as the robot runs through its program of baby ejection

via techeblog