Has anyone ever rented a movie from a redbox?, The redbox corporation (which is located in Oak Brook, IL) has boxes all over the place, inside jewels, walgreens and many other stores. They give out promo codes for free rentals for various different promotions. I found a website that lists all these different free rental…
Author: Sabrina
L.A.S.E.R. Tag
This project comes from the Graffiti Research Lab. Which is, “Dedicated to outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies for urban communication.” This group of scientists/artists use their laser to create art instead of defense systems and weapons. The tags look great on the giant building. I like the drip effect they put on the…
Dark field x-ray technology
A research team in Copenhagen at the Niels Bohr institute have come up with a more effective CT scan system. By using a concept that biologists use called “dark field microscopy” , researchers are able to get very clear and vivid x-rays that they couldn’t have been able to get previously. The only components that…
Super Nightvision Headset Hack
Here’s a fun little hack that makes use of some dated (therefore inexpensive) technology. By using the analog viewfinder from an old VHS camcorder with the help of some powerful infrared LEDs, a spycam, and batteries, one can easily construct a powerful night vision scope. The site offers both instructions as well as a hilarious…
$70,000 Industrial Robot Modded to Fire Flameballs
What’s better than having a giant robotic arm? Using it to throw things at stuff. What’s better then that? Lighting things on fire then throwing it at stuff. A group of friends borrowed the company robot and play around with it. The article claimed they hacked it to do the things it did and they…
Bionic Eye
With more and more advancements being made in the field of laser eye surgery who would have thought that a possible cure for blindness would come from a tiny camera. The device consists of two parts. One is the camera implanted directly in the eye and the second is a chip which is located in…
Hacking Electronics = Copyright Infringement?
While not as cool as the previous Wii manipulation post, I thought this was relevant due to the small electronics hacking element. This guy took a Wii remote and re-wired it to control his robot: Modifications such as this one are quite likely the bedrock of product advancement. As soon as the Wii came out,…
uncanny or sentient?
David Hanson, a graduate of RISD pushes the envelope of the uncanny. His art incorporates A.I. and is connected optically, reflects emotion through facial expression and learns. How’s that for responsive…it learns! A little something to reflect on…What does it mean to be human?Check out the site and David’s interview for the Texas Sculpture Symposium….
Nexus
The program “Nexus” was built as a Facebook application (I don’t know if any of you guys have this, there’s a similar application called “Friend Wheel”) which calculates friend similarities, categorizes them by groups, and so on by a series of interactive lines. When you select one of these lines, it will highlight and show…
Economical infrared control
Johnny Lee is a student at Carnegie Mellon University who has been developing a series of methods to repurpose the Nintendo Wii’s infrared wireless joystick. His latest projects have been developing multi-point interactive systems, seen here. The Wii joystick ordinarily reads two infrared points (usually an infrared light bar that comes with the game system,…
Blueprint for a Green Laptop
In 2009, worldwide laptop sales are expected to surpass the sales of desktops for the first time, reaching more than 150 million. Since a majority of laptop owners trash their machines after only 3 years, designers need to start making the jump to eco-friendly laptops, from manufacturing to recycling. This article makes note of the…
Head tracking using the Nintendo Wii
Although I wasn’t in class on Monday and missed the general explanation for this blogging part of the class, I think what I’m posting should be alright. Seeing this video gets me very excited about the future of video games. Owning my own Nintendo Wii, I really wish that I had the brains to figure…